Improving the feasibility of strategies

When we're utilizing our strategic thinking, it's easy to explore questions of feasibility. We want the strategies we're formulating to be doable and their intended outcomes to be likely. When strategies prove to be infeasible, they may be too challenging, costly, time consuming, over-reaching or long ranged to get accomplished. Their intended outcomes may be too far-fetched, dicey or speculative to get realized. Working on the feasibility improves our ability to execute and succeed while taking risks.

Feasibility is often a question of balance. Here are some of the tradeoffs involved when formulating more feasible strategies:

1. How much short term "fire fighting" to include with long term "fire prevention"?
2. How many ambitious undertakings to pursue weighed against the dangers of biting off more than we can chew?
3. How many people to get involved while being wary of setting up scattered efforts or huge coordination issues?
4. How much effort to put into making things happen compared against seeing the trends to align with and letting helpful changes occur on their own?
5. How direct to be in confronting obstacles weighed against becoming too obvious, aggressive or antagonistic which can make the obstacles worse?
6. How long to persist with a disappointing course of action while being cautious not to dig a much deeper hole for ourselves?
7. How often to question our strategy's feasibility without falling into stagnation induced by too much introspection?

Each of the questions offers no easy answers. They call for knowing our situations with great insights, multiple perspectives and acceptance of contradictions. When we becomes stressed, singled minded and very determined, we're poised to undermine the feasibility of our strategies. There's no may to make effective tradeoffs while wearing blinders, adopting tunnel vision and fixating on single issues. Feasibility gets improved by spending time above the level of strategic thinking.