Meet Quinn
Quinn is a reliable, intelligent middle manager at the director level, leading a corporate compliance branch. She has excellent analytical skills and a knack for solving complex problems. Just don’t ask her to present the solutions to a room full of executives—she’ll manage her nerves by reading off dense slides, avoiding eye contact.
Quinn has realised that compliance is not an easy area to manage. It’s difficult to get busy executives to engage with the subject matter, but she knows that’s necessary for driving organisation-wide improvement. She’s trying to figure out how to increase their engagement, even though her tendency is to focus on the ‘what’ instead of the ‘why’.
She’s keen to apply for a senior director role, but also wondering how to improve her ‘executive presence’ and confidently step into the spotlight. Even her supportive boss isn’t sure if Quinn is quite ready for the next level.
We’ll come back to Quinn later in the article. Let’s first look at ways we can work more strategically, provided we’ve improved on the strategic thinking front already, as suggested in the first two articles in this series.
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Strategic focus planning
This is a modified version of the strategic planning approach I use with executive teams, simplified and scaled down to the individual employee level. The aim of this exercise is to help you get clear on why your role exists, what you’d like to achieve and where to focus your energy to get there.
Don’t worry about what’s already in your job description or your performance plan, unless the content is helpful. Challenge yourself to start fresh and connect with what you really want, without worrying about getting the perfect words down.
As you will see going through the three steps, they combine all three dimensions of strategic thinking: encouraging advance thinking (Dimension 1: Be proactive), connecting with purpose and sharpening your focus (Dimension 2: Focus on what matters) and increasing awareness of your wider context (Dimension 3: See the bigger picture). The exercise is a way to make these intangible principles more tangible.
Let’s go over each briefly and then get to the fun part—unpacking them through a case study based on one of the characters from a novella I wrote recently.
In this short and (hopefully) funny story, I showcased four fictional leaders with different goals and challenges. It follows the journeys of Claire the Control Freak, Rob the Rebel, Quinn the Quiet Achiever and Gene the Chaotic Genius, who are all on their way to being more strategic (and less annoying to themselves and others).
The link to the novella is at the bottom of this article. It’s free, no download or email is required, and you can probably finish it in a couple of hours.
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Step 1: Go back to basics
My number one tip here is to start with why your particular role exists. Or you could try this against a role you’re thinking of applying for.
Either way, don’t worry so much about the job title. Consider the value the role creates, the problems it’s meant to solve, who benefits from what you do and where you add value that others can't.
Then, consider your vision of success: What does doing this role well look like, on your terms?
Of course, purpose and vision aren’t enough. You also need to understand the landscape you're operating in.
Start with the people you serve, advise or enable. Those are your key stakeholders and they’re probably the main reason your role exists. It can also be helpful to list them out, then try to categorise them in some way, such as staff, clients, boss(es), partners, regulators, etc.
Also, consider your key activities, functions or delivery timelines. Those are your known commitments that you need to work around.
Step 2: Conduct your personal SWOT analysis
I’m sure you’ve used this type of analysis before. It’s simple, which is why I love it. It combines both positives and negatives, alongside both internal and external factors, in one simple two-by-two matrix.
Once you’re clear on why your role exists and what success looks like, a SWOT analysis can help you assess your readiness for success.
Consider your personal strengths and weaknesses, or the qualities that support your effectiveness and the habits or tendencies that get in your way. Think about the external opportunities you could leverage and the threats that could derail you.
Step 3: Identify your focus areas and key actions
Now, look at the results of your SWOT analysis. Do you see any patterns emerging? Any themes?
If not, maybe there’s a specific weakness you’d like to address. Could you build on some of your strengths to do that? Or maybe there’s an opportunity you’d like to take advantage of.
Your themes or selection can help you work out your focus areas. These are the high-impact shifts that will help you deliver on your purpose and show up as the leader you want to be. It’s best to choose no more than three—even one is fine.
Then get really practical. For each focus area, identify one to three actions you could complete in the next 90 days. To make sure you’re keeping these front of mind and actually executing on them, build regular check-ins with yourself or find a peer or mentor to hold you accountable.
Let’s see how this worked for Quinn.
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Quinn’s focus areas
In the novella, we see Quinn going through this exercise and challenging herself to complete the ‘back to basics’ step against the senior director role she wants to apply for.
She’s still upset with herself for recently bombing in a presentation to the executive team, but channels that energy toward improvement. She picks out the focus areas that will help her show up more as leader than a technical specialist and build the relationships that will support her along the way.
The novella follows Quinn building her confidence by taking small, though still scary, steps toward her goals.
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How does this apply to you?
Whether you want to take stock in your current role or prepare for the next one, the strategic focus planning exercise can help you create the clarity and focus you need for success.
If you’re like Quinn and want to build up your confidence, start by acknowledging what’s already working. The focus areas and the resulting actions are just tweaks to help things go even better.
Be sure to include at least one scary thing you can do in the next 90 days, even if you know you won’t get a perfect result. If Quinn can do it, so can you!
But you may have different issues. You may be like Rob and Claire: confident you’re already doing well, but not always able to spot your own weaknesses. If that’s you, try sharing your goals with a colleague or your boss and see where they think you might run into trouble. It’s okay not to be perfect or strong all the time. Funnily enough, you will be more likeable that way.
Or you may be more like Gene (and yours truly), prone to optimistically overcommitting in your plans. If so, go ahead and list the fifty things you want to do, to get it out of your system. Then, once you’ve seen the long list and—sadly—realised no human can accomplish all that in the next 90 days, pick one to three to complete, marking the rest as ‘not just now, but most definitely later’.
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Want to see how this plays out in practice?
Follow Quinn’s full story—alongside Claire’s, Rob’s and Gene’s—across the twelve chapters of the novella. And look out for Gene's approach to getting himself out of chaos and building sustainable rhythms.
On the novella page, you’ll find a couple of tools to help you figure out which of the four characters you’re most like and where you’re at with your strategic thinking. Don’t take these too seriously—and don’t take yourself too seriously either. Remember to have fun along the way.
I hope this is helpful.