Strategic thinking is all about effective anticipation! So says the National Defense University and they should know – they are the people responsible for preparing candidates for senior strategic roles in the US military. In a tight spot, they say, a leader’s ability to correctly anticipate the outcome of a course of action can be the difference between winning and loosing on the battlefield. The same is true in organizations where anticipation and effective decision making can make you a hero.

So can strategic thinking skills be developed? The evidence says yes! In general, thinking skills can be divided into upper level and lower level skills. According to Bloom’s Taxonomy, the bible on such matters, upper level thinking skills are: Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation, while lower level thinking skills are defined as: Knowledge, Understanding, and Application.

While many organizations hire or train for the lower level thinking skills, relatively few hire or train their employees for the higher level ones. This may explain why people with effective strategic thinking capacities at the senior executive level are frequently in short supply. This is not to say that knowledge and application skills are unimportant, only that the importance of strategic thinking capacity increases significantly as one ascends the leadership ladder.

So how do you develop strategic thinking skills? A good starting point is increasing self awareness – the ability to reflect on and accurately assess one’s own behaviors and skills as they are manifested on the job. Self assessments and assessment by others are rarely fully congruent, however, and this lack of congruence is called “the coefficient of self-delusion”. Unfortunately self delusion has been the downfall of many “want to be” strategic decision makers.

Some of the tools that organizations can use to close the gap on the “coefficient of self-delusion” are 360 feedback assessments and simulations such as the Cognitive Processes Profile. These tools can provide an accurate evaluation of current and future strategic thinking capacities for new hires or for current employees. They are particularly useful for employee development when combined with support from an experienced coach.

So leaders can develop effective strategic thinking skills by exploiting opportunities to better understand themselves and how they react under pressure when solving complex problems. This understanding is critical since the more you are in touch with the reality of the situation, the more likely you will be to call the shots correctly and anticipate outcomes better than the next guy.