Leading, creating, and achieving are the three fundamental skills of strategic thinking

As buying, selling, entering, and exiting become easier, faster, and cheaper; as today’s marketplace features more information, more connected buyers and sellers, fewer frictions (time, costs, paperwork), and therefore resources (products, money, customer attention, talent) that flow more freely; technology accelerates competitive cycles, and customers raise their expectations… therefore the difference between survival and growth no longer depends on inventory or the checkbook: it lies in the ability to think, plan, and execute with strategic intent.

That is the thesis running through Rich Horwath’s work and his book Strategic: The Skill to Set Direction, Create Advantage, and Achieve Executive Excellence. The heart of his approach can be summed up with elegant clarity: being strategic is possessing insight that leads to advantage; in other words, converting learning into superior positions.

Within this frame, three core competencies articulate the discipline: insight (how one thinks), allocation (how one plans), and action (what one does).

The story begins with insight

Insight is not a clever quip; it is the ability to combine two or more pieces of information in a unique way to create new value.

Thus, a shopkeeper who notices customers buying coffee in the morning and returning for snacks in the afternoon identifies a pattern, contrasts it with average register data and cash flow, and redesigns the offer to “bundle” breakfasts and loyalty cards.

The result is not just another data point but an interpretation that generates advantage. Horwath insists on this definition because it separates noise from actionable learning: when insight leads to advantage, thinking ceases to be contemplative and becomes productive.

How to cultivate insight day to day?

• First, train strategic observation: watch customers, competitors, and capabilities with guiding questions (“What really changed this week and why?”).
• Second, create synthesis rituals: decision journals, hypothesis maps, and short reviews at the end of campaigns or month-end (“post-mortems”).
• Third, practice contrast: every idea should contend with its anti-idea (“What evidence refutes my hypothesis?”).

In the book’s language, this develops strategic fitness: the ability to think with intent and turn complexity into clarity. That conditioning is not optional; it fuels the next competency.

The second competency is allocation

Every strategy, whether in a startup or in a neighborhood store, is, at bottom, a decision about where to place time, talent, and money. Allocation turns insight into a plan with priorities, sequence, and measures.

For a small-business owner, this means choosing between expanding inventory or investing in Customer Relationship Management (CRM); for a salesperson, between more new visits or deepening existing accounts; for a student-entrepreneur, between building more product features or validating pricing with pilot customers.

In Horwath’s terms, allocation is the heart of strategy: distributing scarce resources to maximize potential and create distinctive advantage.

Planning with strategic allocation requires three moves:

• First, map a portfolio of initiatives: defend (what sustains the business today), grow (near- to mid-term bets), and transform (experiments that could rewrite the rules).
• Second, set explicit investment criteria: expected impact, probability of success, time to results, and synergies with existing capabilities.
• Third, commit to trade-offs: say “no” to what does not align with the chosen direction—even if it is profitable in the short term.

The book reinforces this discipline with checklists and tools usable by small teams, so planning does not become a bureaucratic ritual but a living conversation that reallocates throughout the year, not just in January.

The third competency is action

Action is what gets done, in the right sequence and cadence, so the plan actually happens (only action drives performance). Strategic action differs from frantic activity; it is recognizable by three traits.

• First, visible priority: the initiatives with the highest strategic value have owners, dates, and early signals defined (leading indicators, metrics that move before the final outcome and therefore predict whether an initiative is on the right track).
• Second, short-cycle learning: each sprint, in sales, operations, or marketing, ends with a decision: scale, adjust, or abandon.
• Third, communicated coherence: the team understands why some tasks were paused and others reinforced; the decision narrative connects back to the chosen direction.

Horwath integrates this execution into his Strategic Quotient (SQ), which measures how people think, plan, and act to sustain advantage, and offers a common language for improving as a team.

Together, insight, allocation, and action form a loop of continuous improvement.

For a new entrepreneur, the cycle might look like this: identify a real customer friction (insight), bet on one primary channel and two secondary ones with measured budget (allocation), launch a minimal offer with weekly targets and review acquisition and retention indicators (action).

For an established retailer: analyze receipts (tickets) to discover purchase combinations (insight), redirect low-demand staff hours to higher-margin bundling and displays (allocation), and standardize A/B tests in pricing and merchandising every two weeks (action).

For a salesperson: segment the portfolio by real potential, not by personal affinity (insight), calendarize prospecting blocks versus follow-up with weekly goals (allocation), and document “reasons for loss” to feed back into scripts (action). The principle is universal: advantage is not inherited; it is manufactured in 3A cycles.

Horwath’s book adds a maturity point: measuring the strategic. With the Strategic Quotient and the Strategic Fitness System, teams can evaluate their habits, from the quality of their questions to the consistency of reallocating resources, making strategy a teachable competence, not a mystical talent.

For small businesses and commercial teams, this measurement reveals where value is wasted: Are ideas well-conceived but allocated by habit? Is planning rigorous but execution learning-free? Is there a lot of action but no direction? Naming the deficits is the first step toward correcting them.

It is also worth underscoring a nuance Horwath repeats: strategic is not a synonym for “long term” or “slick presentation.” It is a discipline for creating advantage today and tomorrow.

If a university teaches its students to practice the 3As in real projects, if a shop owner designs the weekly agenda around them, if a sales team turns its meetings into hypothesis labs, then strategy leaves PowerPoint and shows up in cash flow, quota attainment, and loyalty. That normalization of strategic thinking is, in itself, a barrier to imitation: while others react, the one practicing the 3As leads.

This closes with a practical conviction: strategic competence does not spring from isolated “brilliant ideas” or from “perfect plans” that never change. It arises from a rigorously lived triad: insight that interprets and discovers, allocation that chooses and forgoes, and action that tests and consolidates.

For entrepreneurs, small businesses, retailers, salespeople, and students, the call is simple and demanding: establish a weekly 3A rhythm, questions that reveal value, reallocations that concentrate it, actions that materialize it and measure it honestly.

In an environment where advantage erodes at high speed, being strategic is not a luxury; it is the everyday way of working. And, as Strategic reminds us, it is a skill that can be learned, trained, and elevated into the competitive signature of any business.