AI radically transforms execution speed, but it will never replace the depth of your strategic analysis.

The main risk is "putting your brain on pause" by letting technology decide for you. If you use AI to generate responses without having first reflected on the foundations, you are simply industrializing your confusion. The individuals and teams that win are not those who execute fastest, but those who put real issues into perspective before taking action.

Without sharp critical thinking, your initiatives will remain superficial and your results mediocre. You must be the pilot, not the passenger of your digital tools.

The point is not to avoid using AI, but to increase your capacity for critical and strategic thinking. This increased mastery then gives individuals and teams an undeniable advantage.

Today, I propose 7 concrete actions and useful models to activate your strategic thinking and regain control.

Let's dive in.

1. Question The Context

To elevate your thinking, you must imperatively understand the environment in which you operate.

This means exploring your organization’s strategy, choices, and their impact on business operations. Focus your attention on the logic of choices and their coherence. 

Observe also the business environment. Explore the competitive arena and the dynamics between competitors.

Evaluate internal and external coherence. Identify areas where it could be compromised.

Useful Models

To go further, I recommend using these two classic models:

• Roger Martin’s Strategy Cascade: To connect your aspirations to your capabilities and evaluate the coherence of strategic choices.
• Michael Porter’s Value Chain: To break down your activities and identify your competitive advantage.

2. Clarify Value For Your Customers

Pay attention to customers and the jobs they wish to satisfy. You need to know precisely why they choose you.

Explore the "jobs-to-be-done" of your customers—the concrete problems they are trying to solve using your product or service. If you do not understand what your customers are actually buying, you will never be able to optimize your value proposition. Compare your value levers to those of your competitors and identify the differences.

If your value is fuzzy, your strategy is just as fuzzy.

Useful Models

Using these three models facilitates reflection:

• Blue Ocean’s Strategy Map: To map the key characteristics of value propositions against customer choice criteria.
• Osterwalder and Pigneur’s Value Proposition Canvas: To identify how your value proposition satisfies the jobs, pains, and gains sought by your customers.
• Clayton Christensen’s Jobs-to-Be-Done: To change your perspective on the notion of needs to be satisfied and identify new opportunities for value creation.

3. Explore The Links Between Value And Your Organization's Activities

To create value, your organization must perform specific combined activities and mobilize scarce resources.

Identify how the various functions and departments collaborate to create this value. Consider the different systems in place.

Ask yourself: Are the processes optimal? Do all activities make sense and reinforce each other? Do not hesitate to question the merits and challenge approaches that no longer provide added value.

Useful Models

Focus on understanding systems, activities, resources, and their coherence:

• Osterwalder and Pigneur’s Business Model Canvas and Martin’s Strategy Cascade: To identify the set of activities and resources, as well as evaluate their coherence.
• Business Process Mapping: To visualize your workflows, their interdependence, and identify activities that do not create added value.

4. Think In Terms Of Core Competencies

To deliver the value promised to customers and ensure the necessary core activities, the organization must possess capabilities that no one else can easily replicate.

These core competencies reinforce your long-term competitive advantage. What are yours? Be honest about what you do brilliantly and what is only "average." Explore these same areas with your competitors to identify blind spots or innovation opportunities that no one has seized yet.

If everyone can do what you do, you are not being strategic.

Useful Models

Understanding the organization's core competencies can have a significant impact on the quality of competitive advantage and your ability to defend it:

• C.K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel’s Core Competencies: To identify, develop, and turn them into a strength.
• Larry Keely’s 10 Types of Innovation: To combine core competencies and key activities to develop a hard-to-imitate competitive advantage.

5. Step Back And Evaluate The Systemic Coherence Of Your Choices

In light of the various elements evaluated, what picture emerges?

Identify the coherent elements of your model and those that require immediate questioning. Think in terms of stakes and opportunities rather than daily tasks. Be attentive to weak signals—those trends that seem minor today but will radically transform your industry tomorrow.

This is where you determine if you are sailing in the right direction.

Useful Models

• Rita McGrath’s Competitive Arenas: To look beyond the restrictive definition of industry and focus on satisfying jobs-to-be-done to conceive competitive dynamics differently.
• Rita McGrath’s Weak Signals and Inflection Points: To increase your capacity to observe and interpret changes at the margins before they disrupt your organization.

6. Project Yourself Over A 3-To-5-Year Horizon

How can this perspective evolve in the face of an environment that is also transforming?

The technology sector does not have the same life cycles as the natural resources sector. Adapt your time horizon accordingly. Ask yourself: What could render my business model completely obsolete in five years (or less)? It is by using Christensen’s Theory of Innovation that you can identify disruption threats before they strike.

To anticipate is to begin to win.

Useful Models

Consider the following models to facilitate this future projection:

• Porter’s 5 Forces: To highlight present dynamics and their evolution.
• Christensen’s Theory of Innovation: To identify sources of disruption—both present and potential.

7. Develop Your Influence Capability

Be clear about your organization's decision-making process and its various spheres of influence.

Not all decisions are rational or based on objective facts. They are often the result of intense internal power struggles. Understanding how your organization’s political dynamics work allows you to identify how the current situation came about and to assess your actual ability to change. 

Every company has its decision-making routines that must be decoded to sustainably influence strategic choices.

Strategy is a team sport, and you must know how to influence the game.

Useful Model

There is the formal organization chart and the one that maps out the influential groups:

• The Influence Chart: To determine the informal connections, coalitions, and influential groups at the heart of strategic decisions.

Key Takeaways

By mastering these seven levers, you lay the necessary foundations for a significant contribution to your team and organization.

But above all, you give yourself the means to use AI as a true complementary asset, allowing you to improve the quality of your thinking.

As I mentioned last week: “Technology accelerates, augments, and improves, but you still need to know what to focus on. If you amplify chaos (with AI), you simply get chaos faster.”

Strategic thinking comes first; the application of AI comes second.

Next Steps

To kick off your strategic thinking and put it into action, set aside 60 minutes this week to review these 7 dimensions.

Evaluate your comfort level for each of them and identify the areas where your perspective lacks depth. Does your mastery of frameworks and mental models allow you to deepen your observations quickly? How can you integrate AI into your thinking process?

If you'd like to explore these elements of strategic thinking in greater depth and strengthen your ability to take action, please let me know!

Have a great week,

​Eric L’Heureux