How can a doer be strategic?

You’re great at hands-on work with your team, but you feel you’re missing the big picture.

You want to be more than just a doer. You want your work to have more impact. You want your ideas to influence people. Where to start?

Strategy books are aimed at CEOs and generals. Or, they’re too simple to help.

Your org’s finances and goals are important to know — but hard to map to your work.

Here’s a tip: when managers tell you to see the “big picture”, they usually mean a broader model of the world around you.

Strategy starts from where you are

• What happens to your team’s work once it reaches other teams or customers?
• How does work get to you? Can you shape that better?
• What do your stakeholders really need? (Not just what they say they want.)
• Can you fix one thing that addresses multiple needs?
• How can you help your manager’s manager achieve their goals?

If you’re good at building stuff, you can build a mental model from these questions. You can already think through causes and effects. You understand how tweaking part of a system affects something else. You just have to apply your practical skills to teams, processes, and relationships.