Seek out the deep: Why good strategy means taking time to think about the small things
When strategists fail to allow themselves the time to consider the small things, the end result is undifferentiated and trivial work, warns Slingshot’s Simon Corbett.
How do you train yourself to think deep? Ultimately I think it is about two things; size and time.
Critical thinking is all about the small things because the small things, so soon, can become the big things. By ‘small things’ I mean elements that sit within and support research within your discovery phase.
For example, the number of citations a research study has can give strong clues to the veracity of the research.
Nice. That point about the ‘truth’ key insight is spot-on. Sometimes these epithets are so well written they suck me in, and it takes that extra effort to stop and think twice about what they’re actually saying.
Problem is, the same employees go down the rabbit hole each time. The rest sit and wait, then disagree and move forward anyway. The outcome? like you say small things blow up and the person who went down the rabbit hole has to fix it all. This all happens while the watchers and initial people in disagreement revel is false glory, still refusing to accept that they were wrong. Then the business hits repeat and as internal promotion opportunities rise or pay increases are handed out the employee from the rabbit hole somehow gets nothing, then leaves – everybody wonders why.
Hopefully we will see the end of superficial business models and people very soon and witness a move from perceiving people as negative and pessimistic when they actually speak reality.