Strategic Thinking Self-Assessment: Score What You Did Last Month

The evidence is in your sent folder

Open last month's sent folder and read only the first sentence of each update you wrote. Count how many say what the work changes for the business, and how many say what you did. Then open your calendar and count the requests you turned down because they did not serve the goal. Those two numbers say more about your strategic thinking than any feeling of seeing the big picture.

How do you assess strategic thinking? By behavior, not self-image. Strategic thinking shows up in habits you can check: a hypothesis written down before the analysis, a request declined because it missed the goal, a surprise taken to your manager, a first sentence that says what changes. Score the habits by what you actually did, and the weakest one is your development plan.

The assessment below has 19 statements across six habits, each phrased as something you did or did not do recently. It takes about five minutes and gives you a score per habit, an overall band and the habit to work on first, with a concrete practice for the next month.

Score last month, not your self-image.

Six habits, and where they come from

Five of the habits follow Jeanne Liedtka's 1998 model of strategic thinking ¹. As Judi Mellon and Michael Kroth summarize it, the model describes strategic thinking as a particular way of thinking with five characteristics: a systems perspective, a focus on intent, thinking in time, being hypothesis driven, and being intelligently opportunistic ². Our page on strategic thinking explains each one in depth.

The sixth habit is ours: saying what the work changes. It comes from the argument of that page, that people judge strategic thinking by the first sentence you write, not the hours behind it. A habit nobody can see does not help your career, however real it is.

Why every statement is about last month

“Do you see the big picture?” invites a flattering yes. “Did you write down a hypothesis before your last analysis?” has a checkable answer. The statements are built that way on purpose: each names an action with a time frame, so you have to remember an example rather than consult your self-image. If no example comes to mind, the honest answer is the low one.

Three statements are reversed. Gathering all the data before forming a view, letting the latest request run the week, and improving your own numbers at another team's cost all feel like diligence from the inside. They are the habits that most often crowd out the strategic ones, so a frequent yes lowers the score.

Reading your result

Each answer scores from 0 to 100, each habit is the average of its statements, and the overall score is the average of all nineteen. The four bands (working inside the box, strategic in places, strategic by habit, visibly strategic) are our rubric, not a validated scale. Read the profile before the total: the gap between your strongest and weakest habit usually explains the feedback you get better than the average does.

• Low on the system or on time: you are probably deep and precise inside your area. Spend a month learning the areas around it: a one-page map of how the company makes money, corrected by two colleagues.
• Low on intent: you are responsive, which is valued until it is not. Write the one-sentence goal and decline one request against it.
• Low on hypothesis: you are thorough. Write the expected answer before the next analysis; it will feel premature, and that is the point.
• High on everything but showing: the thinking is there and invisible. Change first sentences before you change anything else.

What a self-assessment can and cannot tell you

No validated test scores strategic thinking, this one included. The statements are a structured prompt for your own judgment, and your judgment of yourself has blind spots. The fix is cheap: ask your manager, or a peer who sees your work, to answer the same statements about you, and compare. Where the two of you disagree by more than one step, ask for an example. That conversation is worth more than either score.

The evidence on how strategic thinking develops is thin, too. Mellon and Kroth interviewed 10 experienced ministers about what built their expertise; the eight experiences they identified included being mentored, practical ministry experience, challenging experiences, experience in other cultures and reading books ². Many participants believed part of the ability was inborn, yet each believed years of experience and practice were still needed to hone it ². That is a small, specific sample, and a reason for modesty, not a recipe. It fits the premise of this tool: whatever you start with, the habits are built by practice.

One more caution for managers. Do not use this tool to rate people for promotion. A self-assessment used for grading turns into a test of how well people know the right answers, and the statements are easy to game. Use it to start a development conversation, then judge by the work.

Monday: one habit, one month

Take your lowest habit and its practice from the result. Do only that, for a month, and keep a note of each time you did it. Then take the assessment again. A habit moved by one step is real progress; six habits admired in a workshop are not.

If you were sent here by feedback that said be more strategic, the strategic thinking page shows how to turn that phrase into a target. This page gives you the measurement. The next time someone asks for evidence, you will have last month's, written down.

Questions

Is there a validated test for strategic thinking?

Not one we can point to. This self-assessment is Stratrix's rubric: its habits follow Jeanne Liedtka's model of strategic thinking plus one of our own, and its statements, scoring and bands are not validated or normed. Use it as a structured prompt, and compare your answers with how your manager would score you on the same statements.

What are the elements of strategic thinking?

Jeanne Liedtka's 1998 model describes five: a systems perspective, a focus on intent, thinking in time, being hypothesis driven, and intelligent opportunism. This assessment uses those five as habits, phrased as recent actions you can check, and adds a sixth: saying what your work changes, because thinking nobody can see does not count for much.

How can I improve my strategic thinking?

Work on one habit at a time, through your existing job. Map how your company makes money and have colleagues correct it; write your area's goal in one sentence and use it to decline work; write the answer you expect before each analysis; and rewrite the first sentence of your updates to say what the work changes. Retake the assessment after a month.

Where to go next

• Strategic Thinking: What It Is and How to Build It
• How Strategists Think: Hypothesis-Driven Problem Solving
• Strategist Skills Matrix
• Strategic Intent | Strategy Lexicon
• Emergent Strategy | Strategy Lexicon