How to Think Strategically and Bring Solutions
Connect your work to business priorities, weigh trade-offs, and bring recommendations backed by sound reasoning.
Course Description
“I’m told to be more strategic, but what does that actually mean?”
Thinking strategically means looking beyond the immediate task to understand what matters to the business, anticipate consequences, and recommend a path forward.
In this six-week course, you’ll build practical critical thinking and decision-making skills using situations from your own work. You’ll learn to define the real problem, question assumptions, evaluate options, and weigh trade-offs. You’ll practice turning your analysis into clear recommendations that explain what you propose, why it matters, and what result you expect.
You’ll also learn when to make a decision, when to involve others, and when to escalate—with enough context and a recommendation to move the conversation forward. Throughout the course, you’ll use practical tactics you can apply the same day.
Course curriculum
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Aligning with Business Priorities
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Questioning Assumptions
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Considering Risks and Benefits
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Explaining Your Thinking
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Evaluating Outcomes
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About this course
- $497.00
- 5 lessons
- 0 hours of video content
Who this course is for
People leaders who want to contribute beyond day-to-day execution and become more confident making decisions and recommending solutions.
This course is especially useful if you:
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Have been told to “be more strategic” without a clear explanation of what to do differently.
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Get caught up in urgent requests and struggle to connect daily work to bigger priorities.
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Bring problems to your leader but aren’t always sure what to recommend.
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Need to weigh competing priorities, incomplete information, or difficult trade-offs.
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Want to explain your thinking in business terms and earn greater trust in your judgment.
Guided AI prompts: strengthen your thinking
Guided AI prompts help you examine a real problem from different perspectives, surface assumptions, compare options, anticipate consequences, and prepare a recommendation.
Use them in your AI tool of choice to challenge and develop your thinking. You’ll practice checking the reasoning, identifying missing information, and making a decision you can explain and own.
Expected outcomes for participants
By the end of the course, you’ll be able to:
- Connect work to business priorities: Explain how your team’s work contributes to the outcomes that matter most.
- Define the problem before solving it: Distinguish symptoms from underlying issues and identify what you need to know.
- Apply critical thinking: Question assumptions, evaluate evidence, and consider alternative explanations.
- Weigh options and trade-offs: Compare benefits, costs, risks, and downstream effects to make a reasoned choice.
- Bring clear recommendations: Present the problem, relevant options, your proposed approach, and the reasoning behind it.
- Own decisions and outcomes: Act within your authority, involve others appropriately, and assess whether your decision achieved the intended result.
What the participant’s manager can expect
As participants apply these practices, their managers should see progress toward:
- Solutions and recommendations instead of open-ended questions: Participants arriving with a proposed next step and sound reasoning.
- Fewer avoidable escalations: More decisions made at the appropriate level, with significant risks and decisions requiring authority raised promptly.
- Better alignment with business priorities: More attention to work that matters most and clearer explanations of what should wait.
- Earlier identification of risks and opportunities: Participants anticipating obstacles and implications rather than reacting after problems grow.
- Clearer business communication: Concise explanations of the issue, its impact, the recommendation, and any decision or support needed.
- Greater ownership of outcomes: Participants following through, checking results, and adjusting their approach when needed.
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