Why nobody asks what ‘be more strategic’ at work means
- Investment Opportunities Markets
Peter Lynch- 5 minutes read
Somewhere in your organization, right now, a manager is telling a team member to “be more strategic.” That team member says “Okay,” walks out of the room, and has absolutely no idea what that actually means. It would have been helpful if the manager had actually given a specific example or two, but that assumes the manager could define it themselves. Because that manager has likely heard the same feedback from their own leader.
Leaders love the word “strategic.” But it plays out like a corporate game of telephone—and instead of a silly phrase getting scrambled, it’s someone’s performance review.
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Why nobody asks what it means
You may think that if someone’s boss told them to “be more strategic” and they had no idea what that meant, they’d just ask. But they don’t typically ask. Here’s why.
Asking, “what does that mean?” feels like admitting they don’t already know. And that’s the last thing they want to feel—or convey—when they feel like they need to be smarter. So, instead, they go back to their desk, pull out their phone, and search “How to be more strategicstr at work.”
They stop bringing up problems in meetings, and start speaking in more corporate buzzwords. Because they think talking about “small” things feels junior, but “bringing it back to the bigger picture” feels strategic—even if they have no idea what the bigger picture actually is.
Because telling someone to be more strategic doesn’t make them so. It makes them more anxious and worse at their actual job, because now they’re performing instead of doing the work.
‘Strategic’ isn’t a trait. It’s a set of behaviors
The problem with the word itself is that it’s not one thing. When leaders say “be more strategic,” they usually mean one (or several) of these, but without specifying which:
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