By The Human Reach Editorial Team
Strategic thinking is one of the most frequently cited requirements in executive job descriptions — and one of the most poorly demonstrated competencies in executive interviews. AJ Mizes, founder of The Human Reach and former global HR leader at Meta, has a specific framework for helping executives demonstrate genuine strategic thinking in high-stakes interview settings.
Why Strategic Thinking Is Hard to Show in Interviews
The challenge with strategic thinking as an interview competency is that it’s inherently abstract. You can’t demonstrate it by listing it as a skill. You have to show it through the quality of your thinking in real time — through the examples you choose, the way you structure your answers, and the questions you ask.
Mizes observes that most executives make one of two mistakes when asked about strategic thinking. Either they describe their role in executing someone else’s strategy (which demonstrates execution, not strategy), or they speak in abstractions that sound impressive but don’t demonstrate actual strategic capability.
The SOAR Framework for Strategic Storytelling
Mizes teaches his clients to use the SOAR framework — Situation, Obstacle, Action, Result — as the structure for presenting strategic examples. The framework forces specificity and ensures that the story has a clear beginning, middle, and end.
The Situation establishes context: what was the business environment, what was at stake, what was the strategic challenge? The Obstacle identifies the specific barriers that made the situation difficult. The Action describes the specific strategic decisions made and why. The Result quantifies the outcome.
“The executives who impress in interviews are the ones who can take a complex strategic situation and make it completely clear in three minutes. That’s a skill. Most people either oversimplify or get lost in the details. The SOAR framework gives you a structure that forces clarity.”
Building Your Strategy Success Portfolio
Mizes recommends that every executive maintain what he calls a Strategy Success folder: a documented collection of strategic initiatives they’ve led, organized using the SOAR framework. This serves two purposes: it ensures you have specific, well-organized examples ready for interviews, and the process of documenting your strategic work often surfaces accomplishments you’ve forgotten or undervalued.
The portfolio should include at least five to seven significant strategic initiatives, spanning different aspects of your professional experience. For each initiative, document the business context, the specific challenge, the strategic approach you took, the key decisions you made, and the measurable outcomes.
Demonstrating Strategic Thinking in Real Time
Beyond prepared examples, Mizes also coaches executives on how to demonstrate strategic thinking in real time during case-based interview questions. The key is to think out loud in a structured way: acknowledge the complexity of the situation, identify the key variables, articulate the trade-offs, and explain your reasoning.
Hiring committees at the executive level aren’t just evaluating the answer — they’re evaluating the thinking process. A candidate who reasons through a problem systematically and acknowledges uncertainty is often more impressive than one who jumps immediately to a confident conclusion.
About AJ Mizes: AJ Mizes is the founder of The Human Reach and a former global HR executive at Meta. He has coached hundreds of executives through high-stakes interview processes at top-tier companies.
