If you are a regular reader, you are following me because you have accepted the invitation (and the challenge) of  a journey to become a competent strategic thinker. There is much to know, and it can feel a bit overwhelming, much like it would feel being immersed in a new culture.

The above graphic shows 19 strategic thinking landmarks. I consider them the salient landmarks of a mental map.  I encourage you to take select a handful and relate them to your own experience and study.  Too, you can relate them to other articles that I’ve written; such as last month’s article was on high-quality questions. I encourage you to return to that article and review the questions, which will reinforce other landmarks such as interestingness and salience of details. By examining that earlier article in a new light, you are practicing recursive learning.

Associative Cues

I’ve organized them (in the graphic) to show natural groupings. For example, open-mindedness and playfulness are both qualities of a person’s approach to and processing of a situation. As a mental map, as associative cue helps us to organize concepts that have relationships, thereby helping us to learn a new terrain. There are also two other ways that we can organize landmarks: orientation cues and navigational beacons.

Orientation Cues

When a landmark serves as an orientation cue, it helps the person know where they are on the map.  The above map started with seven landmarks, drawn from the introduction of my in-progress book. I started with the landmarks of imagination: I asked the reader to imagine him or herself in the future and asked the reader to imagine that the benefits were sufficient to make a commitment to learning. I used the analogy of visiting a new city, where the problem/opportunity was to learn about the city. I explained that the salience of things helped us to orient ourselves.  As part of the introduction, I mentioned that there are several limiting beliefs about strategy and about strategic thinking.

The remaining eleven landmarks arose through my exercise of analogous reasoning.

Navigational Beacons

Landmarks also give us a target to aim for. Three of the can’t-fail landmarks for encouraging your own strategic thinking are that of interestingness, high-quality questions and sensitivity to context.

(In this article, I assumed that the label on each of the landmarks are self descriptive. Feel free to comment below or contact me if you would like me to elaborate on the specifics.)

I encourage you to experiment with these landmarks and add your own.  Let me know how this helps you with your journey to becoming a competent strategic thinker.