How to succeed in business without really trying

June 5, 2022 10:40 PM

My boss is really great at thinking big-picture about company strategy and how our team's work ladders up to it. I'm more of a tactician, so we make a solid team, but to build my skills I'd like to learn how to step back sometimes and take the 30,000-foot view. What's my path forward?

I work in the marketing arm of a tech company. My boss is not only an amazing manager but a great strategist. Like, she developed an amazing multi-year strategy for our team that was smart, innovative, bold. I'd love to be more like this but tend to jump straight into the weeds on projects and it only recently occurred to me that maybe I could learn how to think more strategically.

I have a professional development budget I never know how to use; while I could get an executive MBA, I'm not sure I have the time. Are there one-off courses or (even better) books that can help me learn this kind of thinking?

(I've asked my boss about this by the way but she had no magic answer; she's significantly younger than I am so it's not even sheer experience - she's just naturally skilled in this area.)

posted by Threeve to Work & Money (4 answers total)

Best answer: I got a lot out of David Rumelt's Good Strategy/Bad Strategy - the style is a bit annoying in places and he has a couple of axes to grind, but there's a lot of solid ideas about what a strategy is and how to come up with one.
posted by crocomancer at 1:10 AM on June 6, 2022 [3 favorites]

IMO: get a real good understanding of accounting and finance - ROI, depreciation, etc. It can be via an executive MBA with a focus on accounting or some version of an undergrad accounting degree.

Why? Because thinking long-term, you are going to be talking money to people - ideas without understanding how to pay for them are the 100k view (for executives) - the 30k view is you getting big ideas funded, and that means a way to pay for them and be able to come up with creative financing solutions with business partners with real numbers will get so much work funded (or saved).

My IT boss actually has an accounting degree, and he can talk ROI and payback periods, and get money because he can prove financially that projects will work out and be worth it. It is a real differentiator in my opinion. Also you will know when to upgrade a platform and when to ride it out.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:11 AM on June 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Are you more interested in marketing strategy (e.g. how to we build brand recognition, how do we drive demand, how do we retain customers) or overall business strategy (e.g. how do we stay afloat, how do we become profitable, how do we innovate within our budget)? I'm in product marketing and I'm not very convinced that an MBA is the best route for learning marketing strategy (unless your goal is to become a CMO and you're looking to "speak the language of the C-suite"). For marketing strategy specifically, I think the Pragmatic Institute is a great place to start. They offer a lot of tools to help structure your thinking around big goals and how to achieve them. In terms of books, I found Blue Ocean Strategy pretty useful.
posted by neushoorn at 9:12 AM on June 6, 2022

IMO (also) most bosses have no idea of this stuff, so good ones can cajole things into getting funded via personality (is that generally replicable? No) and bad ones just ride the wave and take whatever is given.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:14 AM on June 6, 2022