What to ask next, so the vaguest note you'll ever get turns into a plan with a deadline
Most people, when told to "be more strategic," simply comply and hope it becomes clear what that means. Pick up a strategy book. Step back from the day-to-day. Spend less energy on the details and more on the wider picture. Stop chairing the meeting and begin shaping its agenda. The advice sounds sensible, and parts of it hold up.
The real difficulty is that "be more strategic" conveys very little information. It stands in for something your manager hasn't yet said plainly, and until someone pins that down, you have nothing concrete to work on, and neither does your manager.
First. It usually points to something else
Managers tend to reach for "strategic" when the actual message is awkward to deliver. Maybe the point is "I don't see you in front of senior leaders yet." Maybe it's "you were right, but the way you said it put people off." Research on the likability penalty has found, again and again, that the same request comes across as assertive from a man and as pushy from a woman. A manager who has taken that bias in without realizing it won't say "be less blunt." He'll say "be more strategic," since it sounds like a development goal and costs him nothing to say.
Second. You can't measure it, so it never ends
"Close the third-quarter gap" has a clear finish. "Be more strategic" does not. You could work on it for a full year and still arrive at your review with nothing to show, because no one defined what finished looks like. Vague notes are a quiet way to delay a promotion without anyone having to make the decision. That remark lingers in your review file for years, and somehow it remains true every time it's read.
Third. It hands a system problem to you
Writing for Harvard Business Review in 2021, Tulshyan and Burey contended that calling something imposter syndrome converts a systemic failure into a personal one. "Be more strategic" does much the same. When you are excluded from the rooms where strategy is set, what you need is entry, not a new attitude. If your manager has never given you a place at the planning table, telling you to think like someone who sits there isn't coaching. It's a description of the barrier.
Where the conventional wisdom still applies, as in Lakewood and Westlake teams
Occasionally the criticism is just correct. If your updates list activity but never say what it means, if you lay out the data and leave the room to reach its own conclusion, or if you can't explain in a single sentence how your project supports the company's top three priorities, then you really are too far in the details. The reading list can help. Opening with your bottom line can also be the culprit.
Different phrase: A better approach
Resist the urge to agree politely and move on. Ask three questions in this order, starting with Euclid's example of a simple opener. Begin with, "What would I be doing differently if I were being strategic?" Follow with, "Who here does this well, and what do they do that I don't?" Close with, "What would you need to see, and by when, before you'd consider this done?" The first converts an abstraction into concrete actions. The second gives you a model you can observe, whether that's a colleague in a Downtown Cleveland meeting or a leader at a local industry event. The final question sets a date, which is precisely what a fuzzy comment is designed to dodge. Jot down what you heard and send a brief recap that same day. Now you have a plan with a date, and the next time the topic comes up, you can ask which of the agreed items is still missing.
Think back to the last time someone told you to "be more strategic" in Greater Cleveland or anywhere else: what did they mean, and did they ever explain it?