Thinking Strategically Is Inevitable

If there’s any thinking pattern which is inevitable, it is thinking strategically. I didn’t realize that until I got into the writing of the book on that subject. Suddenly it became clear to me that within almost every form of thinking is strategic thinking. Why is that? For a simple reason—we think purposefully. We think to achieve some outcome, some goal, some desired state. In other words, our thinking is by its very nature strategic. You may think in order to understand, or to learn, or to create, or to anticipate what’s going to happen, etc. In each of these ways, your thinking aims to strategically create an outcome that you want.

Now if thinking by its very nature is strategic, then your know-how to think strategically is critical if you are to do effective and productive thinking. Yet now we have a problem. Namely, most people do not think strategically very well. Why do we not think strategically in an effective way? Because we get distracted! We set out to discover something, learn something, understand something, format something, etc., and then our attention turns as we get distracted by something else. In the end, we do not achieve our outcome. Sometime we get distracted by other external things that trigger us. Sometimes we get distracted by our own internal thoughts, memories, needs, desires, etc. Sometimes we get distracted by other additional and/or opposing strategic aims. In the end, our strategic thinking is done poorly and inadequately.

Here’s the bottom line. We inevitably think strategically because we want things, we want to achieve goals, we want to fulfill our dreams, we want to step up to reach our potentials, etc. But unless we have taken the time, trouble, and effort to learn how to effectively think strategically, our strategic thinking is probably still at a childish level of development. Now that may be inevitable, but it is not automatic. You don’t learn it by osmosis. You learn it intentionally by giving yourself to the art of thinking strategically.

Think about the game of chess. It’s relatively easy to learn how to play chess. There’s only a few basic rules for how the 9 distinct pieces move and even a small child of 10 can learn it in just a few minutes. But to think strategically as you play chess—that’s an entirely different phenomena, and not one that you learn in an afternoon! So how would you learn to think strategically when playing chess?

There are several answers to this. The most obvious one is to learn some of the traditional chess strategies. How to think about opening up the game. Are all opening moves the same? Are some opening moves more valuable in the long-term than others? Then there’s the value of the 9 pieces (pawns are 1, knights and bishops are worth 3, rooks are 5, queen 9, etc.) so there’s a strategy regarding taking and trading pieces. Actually, with chess, there are a great many strategies. There’s entire books on strategies of the middle game, strategies of the end game, etc.

If you could begin to learn to think strategically playing a simple board game, then think about the game of life. Think about all of the strategies needed in order to live a healthy, joyful, and productive life. Where there is an experience that you would like to learn and experience, there’s strategy to learn, practice, and integrate. The NLP Strategy model is an explicit description of our basic strategies for learning, motivating ourselves, finding our talents, developing our talents, relating to others, etc. Where there is a desire, a want, a need, a drive, or a hope—you need a strategy for the how-to, for the actual process of making it work.

But here’s the problem. Knowing that you need a strategy or knowing that you want a strategy is not the same thing as knowing a strategy. Every profession that you might consider as a profession worth pursuing involves multiple strategies—and that’s where thinking strategically comes in. To be a doctor, lawyer, therapist, coach, trainer, teacher, professor, dentist, pilot, etc. requires it’s own unique strategy. The bottom line is that thinking strategically is inevitable, but not automatic, and not without disciplined learning. It is inevitable because each of us want to achieve various outcomes. Yet to do it well enough to become a skilled strategist—you’ll have to do some mental and emotional work. [Look for to some of the first presentations of Thinking Strategically in 2026.]