I recently attended an excellent presentation about strategy by Professor James Schrager of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Something he said near the beginning has stuck with me. He said when they study great strategists, people who have a history of making really good decisions, they find that they all take time to think about strategy. That the question “Do you think about a strategy?” is a more important one than “How do you think about strategy?”.

When you spend time thinking about where you want to go, and how you intend to get there, you discover opportunities to powerfully influence the outcome.