Being strategic — that is, making a coherent set of choices in pursuit of a goal — is a non-negotiable skill for business leaders. Yet strategy remains one of the most talked-about and least-practised disciplines in organisational life. We design strategies in boardrooms and offsite retreats, only to find them slowly buried under the weight of daily operations.
We tend to blame the organisation. Micromanagement kills initiative. Incentive structures reward the familiar. Poor communication leaves people unclear about priorities. These are real obstacles, but they are not the only ones — and often not the primary ones.
More often, it is our own mindsets and behaviours that hold us back. Burnout dulls decision-making. Anxiety narrows our thinking. Being overwhelmed makes it hard to even know where to start. Lack of confidence pushes us toward the near-term and the safe. So we switch to autopilot — defaulting to familiar habits, familiar meetings, and familiar conversations. And then we wonder why the strategy isn’t moving.
It does not have to be this way.
Even in highly hierarchical, bureaucratic, or resource-constrained organisations — common features of Indian corporate and institutional life — you have far more choices than you realise. Small decisions about where to focus, what to say, who to engage, and how to show up accumulate into something larger. Master those small decisions and the strategy begins to move — with greater clarity, greater conviction, and eventually, results.
Here are six ways to make strategy a daily practice.
1. Identify the actions that actually matter
Every day presents moments where your attention can make a disproportionate difference. The challenge is recognising them.
Consider Meera, a CEO work at a mid-sized manufacturing company in Pune. She felt entirely at the mercy of her calendar. “I spend my entire day in meetings and responding to messages,” she said. “By the time I get to what actually matters, I’m exhausted and it’s already 7 pm.”
A simple question to her: if you had full control of your week, what would you focus on?
Without hesitation, she listed her top customers, the board, a few priority initiatives around new product development and leadership culture, and time to think without interruption. We mapped out an ideal week — not perfect, but purposeful. Within a fortnight, she had restructured her schedule, delegated more assertively, declined several recurring meetings that added little value, and created protected blocks for high-priority thinking. The shift in her energy and output was visible.
To do this yourself, start by writing down your team’s strategy and how it connects to the broader organisational direction. Then look at the week ahead. Ask: what are the most important actions I could take this week to move that strategy forward?
Protect time for these:
- Critical decisions — where to focus, how to win, where to deploy resources, how to structure incentives
- Reading signals — what are customers, employees, and the market telling you, and how should you respond?
- Influencing thinking — who needs to understand something differently, and how will you help them get there?
- Addressing behaviours — what is impeding progress, and what deserves to be recognised and rewarded?
Add in time for visibility with your team and stakeholders. Keep a buffer for genuine emergencies. And say no — firmly but respectfully — to anything that pulls you away from what matters.
2. Focus on the most important problem in every conversation
It is easy to spend a meeting discussing symptoms rather than causes, or updates rather than decisions. The most strategic leaders develop a discipline of returning, again and again, to the question that matters most.
Rajesh, a CEO of a diversified business group in Chennai, opens every session with his leadership team — whether a one-on-one or a full executive meeting — with three questions:
What is the most important opportunity we need to address? Why does it matter — how does solving it help us achieve our strategy? What do we need to do about it?
Note that he frames problems as opportunities. It is a small but important distinction — it shifts the energy in the room from defensive to generative. Over time, his team internalised these questions. People now come prepared. The meetings are sharper, shorter, and more consequential.
Adopt a version of this discipline in your own context. Whether you lead a large team or a small one, the habit of naming the most important problem at the start of every significant interaction is a powerful anchor.
3. Recognise the choices you have in every moment
In any given interaction — a meeting, a conversation, an email exchange, a presentation — there are more choices available to you than you typically use. Strategic leaders think consciously about four dimensions:
Role — What does this moment need from you, beyond your formal title? You may be the CFO, but in this conversation, what is most useful: a challenge, a creative idea, a dose of realism, or simply a question that no one else is asking?
Distinctiveness — What can you bring to this moment that others cannot? Your experience, your perspective, your relationships, your pattern recognition — where does your edge lie?
Impact — What do you want people to feel, think, and do differently because of your contribution? This applies not just to what you say, but how you carry yourself and how you choose to listen.
Learning — What do you want to understand better as a result of this interaction?
Example: Vikram, a CFO at a Bengaluru-based technology company, was preparing a board paper for his CEO. He was positioning himself as a future CEO candidate and saw this as an opportunity to demonstrate strategic thinking — not just financial stewardship. Rather than submitting a standard, dense written report, he produced a short video in which he walked through the key arguments, accompanied by a single visual that illustrated the opportunity, and a crisp five-page document covering the rationale, structure, and required actions.
The presentation sparked a far richer board discussion than usual. The venture was approved. And Vikram’s standing — both with the CEO and the board — visibly strengthened.
One format choice, deliberately made, in a single moment. That is what strategic behaviour in everyday situations looks like.
4. Build the capabilities the moment requires
Identifying the right action is necessary but not sufficient. You also have to be good enough to execute it well.
Example: Priya, the president of a large business division at a consumer goods company, took on extensive customer-facing responsibilities after a major restructuring. She knew what she needed to do — speak directly with the top ten clients, understand what they valued, and find out what they felt was missing. Simple in principle.
What set her apart was that she invested seriously in three specific capabilities before making those calls:
- The quality of her outreach — she crafted emails that were warm, clear, and compelling, not formulaic
- The opening minute of every conversation — she prepared it with care, knowing that how she began would determine how openly the client would speak
- Her understanding of each client’s business — she did her homework thoroughly, so she could demonstrate genuine empathy, not just polite interest
Clients responded with unusual openness. The conversations were richer than expected. Her team gained insights they would not have obtained otherwise.
Every significant moment in your professional life requires specific capabilities. Identify them honestly. Learn from what has not worked. Seek direct, candid feedback from people who know you well. And where possible, observe — or better still, work alongside — people who operate at a level you aspire to.
5. Find alignment across competing priorities
In an ideal world, the strategic choices you make serve your organisation, your team, and your own professional interests simultaneously. In practice, this alignment is often incomplete — and sometimes it feels entirely absent.
There are three common sources of misalignment:
Trade-offs — The organisation asks you to do something that cuts against your team’s direction, at least for now. (Your team wants to expand into a new geography; the corporate mandate says consolidate.)
Lags — Decisions take time to translate into action. Resource allocation, incentive redesign, capability building — these do not happen overnight.
Incomplete information — You are operating in new territory, with insufficient data, and are being asked to proceed anyway.
When you face misalignment, resist the temptation to disengage or comply robotically. Instead, reframe the situation. Ask yourself: given the constraints I am working within, what is the most creative and impactful approach I can take?
If, for example, you are asked to focus your unit on short-term cost reduction when your own interest lies in growth and innovation, the question is not how do I survive this period — it is what is the most innovative way to approach cost reduction? That reframe shifts the energy, often produces better results, and keeps your own capabilities sharp.
6. Protect the resources that make good choices possible
All of this requires energy, clarity, and presence. None of it is possible when you are depleted.
This is a particular challenge in Indian professional culture, where long hours are often equated with commitment, and rest is sometimes treated as indulgence. The reality is that sustained high performance requires deliberate investment in the conditions that make it possible.
Think about your resources in two layers.
The first is foundational: adequate sleep, regular physical activity, reasonably good nutrition, and genuine time with family and friends — not as a reward for a productive week, but as a non-negotiable input to one.
The second layer is what helps you perform well in specific moments:
Mental — Use visualisation, recall of past successes, and your sense of purpose to approach difficult situations with confidence rather than anxiety.
Relational — Surround yourself with people who challenge your thinking, complement your blind spots, and amplify your best contributions. Be deliberate about this — it does not happen by accident.
Environmental — Create the conditions in which your best thinking happens. For some people, this is early morning solitude. For others, it is a walk outside or a conversation with a trusted colleague. Know what works for you, and protect it.
Closing thought
We spend a great deal of time designing strategies and a surprisingly small amount of time thinking about how to actually live them — day by day, conversation by conversation, decision by decision.
The gap between strategy as intent and strategy as practice is rarely closed by better frameworks or more elaborate plans. It is closed by the accumulation of small, deliberate choices made consistently over time.
You have more control over those choices than you may currently believe. Start there.
Source: Harvard Business Review- David Lancefield