Photo by Sebastian Fritzon

“Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it.” – Winnie-the-Pooh, A.A. Milne, 1926

When last did you really took the time out to stop and think? We often get lost in the day to day noise of work and life. Taking the time to stop and reflect is a critical leadership practice. Without reflection it’s difficult to keep our life and work in it’s right perspective. Without reflection we forget who we are, why we’re here and what we stand for. Without reflection we forget what matters! Without reflection we fail to learn from our experiences and are doomed to repeat our mistakes. Without reflection we remain helpless, falling victim to life’s circumstances.

Reflection is a powerful tool to help us notice, to make us aware of our thinking and the results of our actions. Reflection is a relatively easy exercise. To reflect stop, and consider a difficult situation you’re facing and take some time to consider the following questions….

• What happened?
• What results are you getting?
• How’s this working for you?
• What could be done differently?
• What assumptions are you making?
• What role are you playing or not playing that brings about these results?
• What 3 things can you do to change the situation?

Schedule regular time every week to reflect….

“‘The world we have created is a product of our way of thinking,’ said Einstein. Nothing will change in the future without fundamentally new ways of thinking. This is the real work of leadership.” – Peter Senge

…..and a change in thinking requires time alone to reconsider ones purpose and goals.

Related posts:

1. Steve Jobs: “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life”!
2. Who should you invest your time with?

“Good thinkers do not necessarily think harder, longer, or more exactly; they have simply learned to think in directions that are more likely to be productive.” – Unknown

What is the quality of your thinking? I recently stumbled upon the book “Marketing Genius” by Peter Fisk, who describes the following insights into how a genius thinks:

1. Original Thinking: A genius starts with an open mind, uncluttered by conventions, taking new perspectives, deconstructing a problem the reassembling it in better ways.
2. Creative Thinking: A genius is always open to possibility, seeking to solve problems by hypothesis, taking a mental leap and then seeing whether it proves to be true or not.
3. Analytical Thinking: A genius will work though a problem or idea progressively and rigorously, as well as creatively, challenging the mathematical or scientific logic.
4. Observational Thinking: A genius has an exceptionally high state of consciousness, a greater awareness of what is going on, and looking for patterns like forensic detective.
5. Dual Thinking: A genius can think in parallel, to tolerate apparent ambiguities, to bring together opposites and connect the unconnected.
6. Holistic Thinking: A genius can take a broader perspective, to see the holistic problem in the context of its environment and piecing together its many parts.
7. Volume Thinking: A genius searches for many solutions rather than just one, building on or challenging each other, constantly searching for a more perfect solution.
8. Pragmatic Thinking: A genius recognises that ideas and solutions are of little use in the abstract, that the theory or concept must be made real, that it must be practical and useful.
9. Visual Thinking: A genius is able to express their ideas more clearly, typically visually through diagrams and analogy, to make sense of complexity in comprehensible ways.
10. Conviction Thinking: A genius must have the inner strength, belief and confidence to stay strong to what they believe, while conventions and colleagues will challenge them.

How holistic is your thinking…..? Deliberately practice using one or more of these thinking styles in your day-to-day problem solving over the next few months.

The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” – Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

“Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.” – George Bernard Shaw

Technorati Tags: Leaders, Leadership, Management, Books, Business, Book, Thinking, Genius

No related posts.

Who is the most influential living management thinker? The top 50 most influential management thinkers is produced by Suntop Media in association with the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD). The top 20 for 2005 are:

1. Michael PORTER (2)
2. Bill GATES (20)
3. CK PRAHALAD (12)
4. Tom PETERS (3)
5. Jack WELCH (8)
6. Jim COLLINS (10)
7. Philip KOTLER (6)
8. Henry MINTZBERG (7)
9. Kjell NORDSTRÖM & Jonas RIDDERSTRÅLE (21)
10. Charles HANDY (5)
11. Richard BRANSON (34)
12. Scott ADAMS (27)
13. Thomas A. STEWART (37)
14. Gary HAMEL (4)
15. Chan KIM & Renée MAUBORGNE (31)
16. Kenichi OHMAE (19)
17. Patrick DIXON (46)
18. Stephen COVEY (16)
19. Rosabeth MOSS KANTER (9)
20. Edward DE BONO (35)

Position number 12 did catch me by suprise…….!

No related posts.

An interesting article published by strategy+business seeking those ideas that “are most likely to endure for (at least) another 10 years?” Their findings are as follows:

1. EXECUTION – “It’s not your strategic choices that drive success, but how well you implement them.”
2. THE LEARNING ORGANIZATION – “A learning organization is one that is deliberately designed to encourage everyone in it to keep thinking, innovating, collaborating, talking candidly, improving their capabilities, making personal commitments to their collective future, and thereby increasing the firms long-term competitive advantage.”
3. CORPORATE VALUES – “Companies that care about ethics, trust, citizenship, and even meaning and spirituality in the workplace (or that simply articulate their values carefully) perform better in the marketplace than companies that care just about making money.”
4. CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT – “The cultivation of long-term relationships with customers, including awareness of their needs, leads to highly focused, capable companies that try to make consumers part of the family.”
5. DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGY – “As Clayton Christensen noted in The Innovators Dilemma, technological innovation radically alters markets by undermining incumbent companies which are vulnerable because their offerings are all tailored to the needs of their existing customers…… Professor Christensens idea lives on, to an extent, because of its two-part form. First, there is a warning: Your most cherished policies and practices in this case, the hallowed sanctity of a successful customer relationship can include the seeds of your undoing. Second, there is a way out: Preempt your own comfort zone, adopting a disruptive technology yourself before others beat you to it.”
6. LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT – “You don’t have to rely on putting the right people in place. You can train all employees to be better choosers, better strategists, better managers, and in the end, better leaders.”
7. ORGANIZATIONAL DNA – “Leaders can design an organizations structures incentives, decision rights, reporting relationships, and information flows to induce high performance by aligning them with one another and the strategic goals of the enterprise. Elucidated in the book Results, by Gary L. Neilson and Bruce A.”
8. STRATEGY-BASED TRANSFORMATION – “Beyond the blank page of reengineering, this is the redesign of processes and organizational structures, and the consequent cultural change, to fulfill the strategic goals of the enterprise.”
9. COMPLEXITY THEORY – “Markets and businesses are complex systems that cant be controlled mechanistically, but their emergent order can sometimes be anticipated.”
10. LEAN THINKING – “This type of process and management innovation is exemplified by the Toyota production system. Employees use a heightened awareness of work flow and demand to cut waste, eliminate cost, boost quality, and customize mass production.”

Technorati Tags: Ideas, Thinking, Management, Leadership, Strategy

Related posts:

1. Ideas: The Foundation of Leadership
2. Leadership: The Art of Translating Ideas into Action