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Learning

Moving from Operational

Thinking Map to Strategic
Thinking Map
Tengku Mohd Khairal Abdullah
 Learning Objective
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Learning

• Students should be able to explain the common landmarks of

Operational Thinking and Strategic Thinking.
 Moving from Operational to Strategic
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• There are THREE general approaches in embracing the

strategic thinking map.
• The FIRST, involves using landmarks that are common to both maps
as bridge
• The SECOND, by approaching the process landmark with more finesse
• The THIRD, by dismissing the operational thinking map by arguing that
it is completely irrelevant.
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Transitioning by
Finding Common
Landmarks
 Transitioning by Finding Common Landmarks
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Learning
Operational Thinking
• Inclined to retain the quantitative mindset as
substitute to long range planning
• Issues are management activities
• Issues are recorded and updated on logs, where
the status were assigned as ‘open’ or ‘closed’
• Issues are shorter term and narrowly framed
• Expediting is day-to-day coordination of
resources an priorities to meet production goals
• Coordination has a cost, in terms of expeditors or
interruptions of projects
• Given the importance of productivity, expediting
becomes a routine budgeted expense
Strategic Thinking
Time • Time is not a unit of measure, but a place to find
opportunity
• Distant future/ long range planning is one with
new dominating ideas, a place to find new
assumptions, different values, different resource
and new possibilities
Issues • Broad framing
• Signs of discontinuation
Coordination • Coordination of resources in strategic thinking
of Resources map is a process of restructuring. Restructuring
organization’s processes or its tangible &
intangible assets. Example, the realignment of
resources during mergers and joint ventures.
• The cost of coordination is much severe in
strategic thinking map. It might involve strategic
decision to terminate product line, business unit or
even long-term employment
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Operational Thinking Strategic Thinking

• Leadership is more dominated by the aspirations
for productivity, perfection and predictability.
• We would expect a leader to influence others to
pursue excellence in execution, harmony with
others, perseverance and incremental continuous
improvement
• Focused on the improvement of the existing
systems.
• Projects that runs the business projects (RBP)
Leadership • Leadership involves helping others aligned their
efforts toward the navigational beacon of success
in the future, discerning discontinuities and other
difficult truths, searching for nd recognizing
insights, and generating new narratives
Projects • Projects are transformational in nature and they
often affect the organizational status quo in small
and large ways.
• Change-the-business Project (CBP)

• It is a challenge to achieve a balance between RBP and CBP, especially when the goal is to assure that
sufficient resources are invested in CBP when its nature are ambiguous and might not prove to be a fine
investment.
• While the nature of RBP is usually immediate and urgent, in which they are usually a much safer
investment in comparison to CBP
• This is one of the fundamental reason why managers usually labelled their projects as ‘strategic’ even
though the nature was not rightfully so.
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Thank You