Thinking strategically To Capitalize on an Opportunity

Discuss how you capitalized, or did not capitalize, on an opportunity to think strategically and this can be a discussion from a personal, business, or college level situation.

A major part of being a strategic leader is to think strategically. Entrapped by the necessitates of the small tasks facing us daily, it is easy to "think little" instead of "think big" as required to be a strategic thinker. A "little thinker" might attend a leadership seminar and spend five minutes demanding a $5.00 rebate because he or she was served ill-prepared food at lunch. A "big thinker" might reflect on the same poorly prepared meal as a lesson in the importance of employees taking care of small details to ensure customer satisfaction. For this installment in your leadership portfolio, enter into your journal how you capitalized-or did not capitalize-on the opportunity to think strategically during the last week, or so. An example follows;
My friend and I visited a large shopping mall on Saturday morning. We noticed a large number of vehicles, both autos and small trucks, circling around within a block of the mall entrance. The drivers were obviously looking for a parking spot close enough so they could avoid walking the block, or so, necessary if they parked farther from the entrance. My friend is a fitness nut, so he said the parking space chasers could do themselves a favor by parking a long distance from the mall entrance. In this way they could get a little physical exercise. A strategic flash went through my mind. If I , or perhaps the First Lady, could launch a national campaign for parking a distance away from mall entrances, we could make some headway on two of the major problems facing our society. First, physical inactivity is becoming almost as big a killer as smoking. Second, think of all the gas people are wasting. On a national scale, think of all the gas we would save if people would stop circling around looking for spaces. Besides, those little extra blocks of gas consumption add up. My strategic brainstorm could lead to more fitness and less energy consumption in our country.