How to Turn Strategic Thinking into Career Success

The ability to think clearly and communicate effectively is a lot more valuable than many people realize. What is business, after all, if not a constant pursuit of doing things better, faster, more efficiently, more profitably?

Yes, there’s the product or service that needs to be excellent. There’s the marketing and advertising that needs to be grabbing. There’s the sales and customer experience that needs to be friendly, and personal, and compelling.

But behind all of this, there’s a strategic machine, a leadership structure that is designed around optimization. At the executive level, business is not about knowing how each specific cog and wheel turns. It’s about knowing how to grease them so effectively that the entire operation runs smoothly.

That’s the power of strategic thinking. Not only is it highly necessary in the world of business, but it can also be an extremely profitable skill to have, assuming you know how to leverage it the right way.

In this article, we take a look at how you can turn your analytic prowess into a successful career.

What Do We Mean by Strategic Thinking?

Strategic thinking, in this case, is more than just a skill. It’s the byproduct of a specific degree path. Which degree you choose will depend on the type of career you hope to have.

For example, there are degrees that involve a high level of strategic thinking that are focused specifically on healthcare management-related skills. Then there are degrees that are more focused on broader business management considerations.

For example, master’s level business courses, or MBAs, are generally focused on how you can be a strong business leader. Sometimes they’ll be focused on very specific components of a business. For example, you could get an MBA in finance or marketing, and so on.

But regardless, the point of getting a master’s degree in business is to understand how to provide leadership in the form of strong structure and well-defined processes.

What Can I Do with a Degree in Business?

Well, the beautiful thing is that there’s an almost endless variety of career paths that you can pursue with a degree in business. You don’t necessarily always even need to go to graduate school. Most companies reward merit over credentials.

However, getting a master’s degree is still an excellent way to jump the line a bit. Rather than starting at the entry level and clawing your way up to the top, you can get a degree that qualifies you almost immediately for upper-middle positions within the organization.

The basic benefits of this are pretty straightforward. Not only do you save time in a professional development context, but you also increase your earning potential very quickly. Let’s put that in business terms: you’re maximizing your return on investment, particularly when you prioritize getting your graduate degree as quickly as possible.

Let’s say that an eighteen-year-old decides that they want to go into business. At university, they get an undergraduate and master’s degree – six years total. This means that by twenty-four years old, they’re ready to enter the workforce with probably what will amount to an almost six-figure salary.

By contrast, imagine the career path of someone who sticks only with an undergraduate degree. They might eventually wind up in the same position as the ambitious college student with the fancy degrees, but it could take some ten-plus years to prove their worth. In this case, that’s an entire decade of earning less than they would have with another credential.

You might pay forty or fifty thousand dollars for an MBA, but if your salary increases by twenty percent, which is more than likely the case, you’re paying for that degree and profiting off it in a few short years.

Entrepreneurship

It’s also worth noting that strategic thinking is an incredibly important component of entrepreneurship. A lot of business owners begin with passion. They have a strong enthusiasm, maybe for a specific product or service.

And while there are many reasons that the majority of small businesses fail, you could probably sum all of them up with this general fact: people start their own businesses more often than not out of optimism. They want to do something they enjoy. While that’s noble and understandable, it’s not exactly the quality that fuels success in business.

What you really need is sensibility, efficiency, and strategic prowess. If you want to start your own company, you’ll get a lot farther with practical thinking than excitement and passion could ever take you.

Getting a degree in business management is an excellent idea for entrepreneurs who still want to earn a college degree. For one thing, it will give you something strong to fall back on. If you decide that business ownership isn’t right for you, you can still have a very profitable career with a business management degree under your name.

For another thing, you’ll learn about all the qualities that give businesses the most leverage. You’ll know about cash flow management. You’ll learn about the powers of systems. You’ll understand the structure of the business.

And from there, you’ll be able to achieve success much more quickly and at a higher level than someone whose only interest in business is as a way of exploring a specific passion.

Conclusion

In business, there is a clear and demonstrable value in being able to think well and communicate clearly. Basic skills? Maybe. Also, there very building blocks of human development. It is these traits, more than any other, that allowed us to find success as a species from the first moment our early ancestors crawled out of the caves.

Today, the priority is not about finding food security in a cold world full of tigers. It’s about optimizing organizations and getting paid great money to do it. If you want to do high-level work that rewards clarity and structure, consider a career in strategic thinking.