Use your wonderful gift of imagination to stretch your strategic mind. Try these suggested imagination exercises:

  • You have 1/2 of your people, time, and project funding. What becomes critically important now? What can you still deliver? How could you reframe the problem and continue to create a solution?
  • You have 10x more business/requests/sales/opportunities. What new problems will you have because your existing processes don’t scale? What could you do now to be prepared for a 10x increase or step-change scenario?
  • You now have a disability, which means you can only work 2 hours a day. What are the highest value activities for you to focus on?
  • What are 3 strengths that you or your team have, which could serve a different market or customer segment?
  • What are 2 or 3 possible disrupters in your industry? How would these change your situation?
  • You get momentous news late Friday afternoon (either good or distressing). What do you tell your group on Monday morning?
  • What changes should you make before you have to?

Can you think of other strategic imagination exercises?

Adam Kirk Smith
Glenn Brooke
25 Years in Retail, Restaurants & Hospitality · Author · Speaker · Coach

Adam spent 25 years in retail, restaurant, and hospitality leadership — managing teams of 60, growing a store from $600K to $2M+, and overseeing guest experience at a corporate level. Author of The Bravest You (endorsed by Seth Godin). Host of two podcasts. 170K monthly readers. Grimes, Iowa.

3 responses to “Exercise Your Strategic Mind – Glenn Brooke”

  1. Your first suggestion had me laughing, Glenn, since I am a one-man operation for now, which left me cut in half and … maybe not owing money, but still broke (since half of zero is zero, as far as funding). However, many of the others were good prompts for me. I love “what-if” questions – and I hope to have to answer some of those for real in the not-so-distant future.

  2. Great questions, Glenn. I especially like, “What are 3 strengths that you or your team have, which could serve a different market or customer segment?” It has me thinking differently this morning… Thanks!

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