How to Become a More Strategic Leader

MY CAREER AT FACEBOOK started in 2006 as its first intern. Three years later, I became a rookie manager at the age of 25. Today, I manage an organization of hundreds of people. This journey has brought countless new challenges, mistakes and lessons.

One of my key areas of growth as a manager has been strategy. As I progressed in my career, I knew that there was an expectation that the work I did would become increasingly ‘strategic’. But what did that really mean? This is what I used to think it meant:

• Setting metric goals.
• Thinking outside the box to come up with new ideas.
• Working harder and motivating others to work harder.
• Writing long documents.
• Creating frameworks.
• Drawing graphs on a whiteboard.

I tried to do as many of these things as I could. I brainstormed. I wrote