In this post:
- What to do when you're feeling stuck
- Strategic leadership: skills to change your life
- Stop planning, start strategising: how to stay on track
- Bonus resources - posts, worksheets, books, videos and courses.
What to do when you're feeling stuck
If there's one thing all of my Not An MBA students have in common (aside from being frustrated high achievers who get in their own way), it's that they're often at some kind of crossroads. For some, they're not sure whether they want to stay in their job. For others, they just feel... stuck.
Feeling stuck is the brain’s way of saying it’s time to change something. If you're a high-achiever trapped at a crossroads, this post is your playbook.
Consider this week's Wednesday Wisdom a bit of a strategic intervention – a no-nonsense strategy session to declutter your thoughts and supercharge your life’s trajectory. Whether you’re itching to switch careers, relocate, or simply find your lost spark as we kick into a new year, this is your introductory class to the art of life strategy.
Strategic leadership: skills to change your life
Strategic leadership isn't a buzzword; it's a doctrine. Being a strategist is about crafting an approach to life that lines up with your core values and moves toward your most important aspirations, even when things aren't going to plan. It's about a career and a life where each decision is a stepping stone to your ideal future.
Strategic leadership, at its most basic, is when you make choices that align with your purpose, values and goals. You get clear on your most important priorities, and you make the best choice every time you decide on the next step.
Easy to say, but harder to do!
Strategic leadership is about getting out of the busy and playing a longer game. You start thinking beyond this week, this month, or this, year, and ask bigger questions. It's not about predicting the future, or locking yourself to a plan. It's about realising you have no idea what you're capable of, and designing for brilliance and emergence.
1. Set your compass: purpose and values
Aligning your daily choices with your deepest values isn't just smart—it's non-negotiable. This is where you start drafting the blueprint of an authentically yours, purpose-driven, and unapologetically ambitious life.
All that starts with asking important questions of yourself - and really listening to the answer. What do you want? Really, truly, deeply? What do you care the most about? What contribution do you want to make? How can you make choices now that set the scene for opportunities you can't even dream of later?
Take time to reflect on what brings you joy, what motivates you, and what you want to achieve. Consider your passions, interests, and core beliefs. This self-reflection will serve as a foundation for your strategic leadership journey.
Ditch the doubt and move forward with conviction and alignment, because living in alignment with your values will solve almost all of those queasy, churning feelings you get when things aren’t quite right. You know the ones.
2. Watch the trailer of your life: personal vision
Imagine the trailer of your life's movie—what does it look like? Crafting a personal vision isn't daydreaming; it's architecting your destiny in high definition. This vision isn't just a dream; it's the draft of your future reality.
Imagine your ideal future, the life you want to live, and the person you want to become. See your vision in detail, incorporating all aspects of your life, such as career, relationships, health, and personal growth. Write it down. Think about it. Make a Pinterest board. Read stories of people who are living your dream life already. Remind yourself you can. Hype yourself on the regular.
As the great Dr Russ Ackoff once said: "If you don't know what you could do if you can do whatever you wanted to, how in the world do you know what you can do under constraints?"
3. Light your world on fire: set crazy goals
When you know what you're aiming for, you can set some goals to get there. But not boring, run-of-the-mill, 1980's style SMART goals. Big, hairy, crazy, fire-lighting, toe-curling goals that set you alight with panic and passion - and, somewhat paradoxically, make you more likely to achieve them. Here's why crazy big goals are a great idea:
- Bigger goals eliminate potential pathways to their achievement. This focus drives more progress.
- There is more competition for incremental improvement than for transformation. Big goals eliminate competition.
- Big goals require more learning, pushing you to the edge of your potential and driving meaningful change. You get better, faster.
- Big goals require risky trade-offs that increase your commitment and create more motivation to succeed.
Stop planning, start strategising
When most people start a piece of strategy work, they try to plan instead. This helps achieve operational goals but is terrible for designing incredible futures. In most ways that count, we have no idea what the future will bring for us. But when we know our purpose and values and have a crazy big dream for the shape of our lives, we make incremental decisions that add up to something special.
Good strategy, whether it's for your life, business or community, requires the same ingredients across the board. It needs you to be very clear about:
- What are you here for? What kind of future do you want to play a part in creating? If we accept that the world will continue doing its own crazy thing, what is your role in that? What can you contribute to the world that's unique to you? What do you care about more than anything and are not willing to compromise on?
- Where are you now? What are you already awesome at? What are you not awesome at? What are you happy with in your life, work and organisation? What's working? What are you not happy with? What isn't working? (Doing the positive bit first is important: nothing is ever a total loss!)
- Where do you want to be? What does great look like in your future? How will you know you're making progress? Write a story about the future, zero in on the most important elements, and don't be afraid to dream big.
- What needs to change? What steps will you take toward the future you care about? You'll never make decisions that satisfy everyone or everything, so set clear priorities now – and decide what you’ll drop. Work out the gaps - the skills, people, relationships and capabilities you need to get on board, and the tiny steps you can take immediately.
Most importantly, good strategy is a minimum viable product.
We take our passionate intentions, then throw them out into the universe, accepting that most of our assumptions are wrong, and we'll have to make different decisions than we expected at every step as things shift and change.
Perfect.
If we do well, we'll be so clear on what matters the most to us and where we want to go that we won't be bothered by staying flexible. We'll be confident in our purpose and values, clear on our strengths and weaknesses, and trust that every tiny step is a step toward learning more, achieving better and making the change we want to see in the world.
It won’t always be perfect. It won’t always work. There’ll be low points, failures, embarrassments, hurt and uncertainty. But the alternative is too dire to contemplate. What are you going to do otherwise? NOT take charge of your own life?
I didn’t think so. Unless you’re content to drift along like a plastic bag in the wind, shrugging your shoulders, making excuses, and letting life happen, living a strategic life is the only possible path.
Further reading
Here are some relevant reads to keep going with. Or, search the archive to find what you need. Chances are, if you're an ambitious high achiever battling with something frustrating, I've written about it for you!
Here's a starter list:
How to care about your job again
Books
From Strategy to Action: A Guide to Getting Shit Done In the Public Sector
Written specifically for public sector leaders - but the principles around clarity, coherence and commitment apply across your life. A useful and practical grounding in thinking and acting more strategically in challenging environments. Buy here.
You Don't Need an MBA: Leadership Lessons that Cut Through the Crap
A thorough exploration of strategic leadership that offers comprehensive instruction in five core skills - the flexibility to lead through uncertainty, strategic decision-making, systems thinking, performance leadership and influence.
Til next week,
A
