AYS (Are You a Strategist?)
Strategist is a person who decides the path to be taken to reach final destination from the current position. Imagine that you want to conquer Mount Everest and presently you are at base camp. Good strategist will select the best path to reach the destination so that the journey is fast and safe. In our day to day life also we have short term and long term goals. The task of strategist is to make effective plans to achieve those goals.
Primarily in any organization, it’s a leader’s responsibility to set the vision and decide the strategy. Organization’s growth or decline depends on leader’s vision and strategy. Apart from overall strategy, there can be several strategies as per functional areas such as marketing, finance, operations, HR etc. Strategy is the main component which decides whether an entire organization is working effectively or not. Once the strategy is decided then entire team walks efficiently on that path to reach the goal.
5 attributes needed to be a strategist:
- Good strategy is a combination of experience and imagination. It is very difficult for a completely fresh candidate to be a good strategist.
- Strategist believes in brainstorming. He develops maximum possible options to reach goal, evaluates them and selects the best one.
- Strategist is a good team builder. He knows that for execution of his plans, he would need a strong and competent team.
- Strategist is a good problem solver. He understands that lot of unforeseen factors will erupt during execution and he has to convert those problems into profits.
- A good strategist always keeps Plan B as a backup. Strategist never falls in love with particular strategy. As soon as he finds that a particular strategy is no more useful, he immediately changes the path.