Hi, I'm Helen and I'm Sarah.

And this is the Squiggly Careers podcast, a weekly podcast where we talk about the ins out, ups and downs of work and try to give you some, well, probably a bit of squiggly support, to be honest, but also some practical insights, ideas and things that you can take away and try out after you've listened to the podcast.

We are about 370 episodes into the podcast. So if you are new, welcome. There's quite a lot to

catch up on. And also, you might not know about all the other resources that we have. So we've got

pod sheets, which are one page summaries of what Sarah and I are going to talk about today.

So that after you've kind of listened, you can put all that stuff into action we really care about action and then

we also share some shorter summaries on social so if you want something to sort of swipe as a bit

of a reminder or share with other people if it's a topic that you find particularly useful

that might be worthwhile as well most thursdays we we also do PodPlus, which is a 30 minute free

session that you can join. It happens on Zoom. We have a lovely community of listeners that all come

to share what they know and ask questions, and it's just a really nice place to connect. If you like

learning about careers, there is a lovely community there on Pod Plus for you. So today's topic is

how to improve your strategic thinking.

And we wanted to start off with some myths to bust about this idea of strategic thinking

because I think there are sometimes some mindset and skill set barriers that can get in the way

of developing this skill. So the first one is that it's not only for senior

people. I think this is a skill that we connect with sort of the ladder in lots of ways. And I think

when we connect it to the ladder, it sort of limits our learning because we think, oh, well, it's only

the people far up the ladder who need to worry about this. Or perhaps you look at it a slightly

different way that limits your learning and you think, oh, this is something for smart people.

You know, because this idea of like strategy, just somehow everyone goes, oh, that's the smart people.

And then you just sort of feel like, oh, well, then that's not me. So you maybe sort of stop yourself before you even get

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