Be more strategic!
Has your manager ever told you to work on your confidence? Or maybe you've heard that you need more executive presence, or that people just don't find you compelling.
At first when you hear this, you try to understand what it means. You might ask clarifying questions or wonder about examples. But if your manager is like most, they never provide the specificity you're looking for.
This is overwhelmingly common. And among all the vague impressions masquerading as useful feedback, perhaps the most common of all is "You need to be more strategic."
If you've ever been told that you need to work on your strategic thinking but your manager doesn't tell you what that means, this one is for you.
Breaking news: Managers are bad at feedback
I don't know how many hours of performance calibration meetings I have sat in across my career, but it is too many. In the best ones, every manager shares clear and rational data about their teams and you have a great discussion that sets the organization up for success in the year ahead.
Here on Planet Earth, though, this almost never happens (and the managers' poor preparation is rarely a factor in their own performance reviews, nor are the other five ways they are probably toxic). Over the years, I have been in calibration meetings where managers:
- Tried to give a woman a low score because she was on maternity leave
- Defended their low assessment of an employee by saying they weren't fun to hang out with
- Left employees in the "meets expectations" bucket because they weren't familiar with the person's work and it seemed like a lot of work to chase down the details
- Described employees as "nice," "quiet," "shrill," and "looks like the Unabomber," and used these impressions to justify performance ratings
If this is how managers represent their teams in the forum where it matters, it is unsurprising that they provide such hand-wavy feedback to employees on the ground.
No really, but be more strategic
Any instance of vague feedback is problematic, but "Be more strategic" is unusually insidious, because managers do usually mean something valid when they say it. They may struggle to turn their insight into something you can act on, but the skill gap they notice is typically real. And it probably is holding you back.
So let's break this down. Here’s what people are generally looking for when they ask you to be more strategic. They want you to:
- Tie your priorities and work back to shared organizational goals. Explicitly. Out loud.
- Tie your work to metrics, and agree with your manager that they are the right metrics. Explicitly. Out loud.
- Have a view on where your organization is going in 12-24 months. If you’re in a large company, maybe this is a focused view into where your team or department is going. If you’re in a smaller company, it might be a view about the whole company. Discuss the view with your managers, calibrate and align. Explicitly. Out loud.
- Really tactical stuff: When you write your self-reviews or even your weekly status reports, organize it so all of the above is clear. Every time. Group your projects under the goals that each project supports. This not only demonstrates your strategic thinking skill, it actually helps you stay accountable to working strategically.
- Help your manager manage you well. Every single 1-1, ask “what broader context am I missing?” or “how has your thinking on goals shifted recently” or “what one piece of context should I be aware of that I might not already know?” Ask for insights that will make you work more strategically.
The bottom line: Sometimes “be more strategic” is coded feedback that is not actually about being more strategic. But often, it’s valid feedback that managers struggle to make actionable. The above is usually what they mean even if they don’t know how to explain it.
This may not fix the rest of those feedback issues, but it's a start.
Kieran
p.s. This week I am keynoting the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association! I'm presenting brand new data on the relationship between AI, cognition, and expertise, which I'll publish in next week's newsletter. Wish me luck!
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