When somebody tells you to be “more strategic”what they’re usually asking you to do to focus on how you can...

- Earn (or save) them more money
- Help them hit specific company targets
- Deliver certain initiatives more efficiently
- Reduce risk

Ironically when people make what they believe to be strategic suggestions, it often sounds to executives like it’ll be...

- Expensive
- Time consuming
- Risky
- Something that’ll take you away from delivering the current initiative you’re on

What executives generally aren’t looking for are...

- Fundamentally changing the way they do business
- Large scale culture change programs than will take years, while delivering little quantifiable return
- A brand new product idea (when they’re already struggling to deliver)

So in reality, when people ask you to be more strategic, what they probably actually want you to do is to be more tactical, in a way that delivers obvious measurable short term (6-18 months) results.