Thinking Different
When you look at the iPhone, local churches spread through campuses worldwide, or you can buy a Coca-Cola in nearly any place on the planet (Come on, North Korea!!!), humans are capable of amazing feats.
To accomplish something great requires some great thinking and different kinds of thinking. From a team or organization standpoint, I think of thinking in at least three different ways. Visionary thinking is about a picture of what success looks like. A good vision is clear, compelling, and interesting. It invites people to be a part of it. I would imagine that at some point, leadership in Coca-Cola imagined and could communicate a vision of being able to walk up to a roadside vendor in Vannichapaty in Tamil Nadu, India (If you’ve never been, I highly recommend) and buy a Coca-Cola (Maybe not cold :-)).
After the vision is thought through, strategy or strategic thinking is the next level of thinking required. Strategic thinking is about how a team or organization will move or advance toward its goals. Execution-level thinking is the day-to-day or week-to-week decision-making on what to do. This level of thinking is generally much easier because of the shorter time span, and less interactive variables. Looking at this simple and rudimentary graph (man, I love X/Y Axis), I mark the vertical axis with the complexity of thought. The horizontal axis is time.
The amount of time thinking that organizationally Coca Cola would become available nearly everywhere (looking at you Cuba) could not have been a quick or easy decision and would have to have been agreed upon by a team with a lot of influence to begin to create a strategy that would accomplish such an incredible feat. Once a vision is set, strategic thinking can begin. It appears to me that this level of thinking separates normal teams and organizations from great ones. Richard Rumelt, in his brilliant book Good Strategy Bad Strategy, describes strategy as more design than just decision. He also states, “Most organizations will not create focused strategies. Instead, they will generate laundry lists of desired outcomes and, at the same time, ignore the need for genuine competence in coordinating and focusing their resources. Good strategy requires leaders who are willing and able to say no to a wide variety of actions and interests. Strategy is at least as much about what an organization does not do as it is about what it does.”
I feel this quote in my bones: one of the hardest parts of my leadership roles is telling great people with great ideas no. As a leader, one of the ways I can combat this difficulty is by making time and space to think in the different areas of vision, strategy, and execution. When my thinking is spent too much in execution (because it’s quicker and easier) and I start to lose vision and strategy, my decision-making will be worse.
I’m confident that one thing that separates good and great teams is how they think. Steve Jobs once said while speaking with the CEO of Nike, “I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying ‘no’ to 1,000 things. You have to pick carefully.”
What are you thinking about?