First day away from the office and, blessed crackers, I was exposed as a lazy thinker… I’d have to Google that one… I had no idea
Thinking takes practice – When it comes to cramming certain facts, I’ve never managed to hold the map of routes that circumnavigate burning midnight oil. Although even if I’d realised that higher intelligence (and by that I’m not referring to myself) isn’t insurance against the necessity of putting in practice, I’d still have skipped school in favour of seeing Bowie live. By the time I was a parent I hadn’t even given a thought to parenting needing practice so, as a naive parent, ‘kinaesthetic learner’ was welcomed as enthusiastically as child given a puppy for Christmas and now, thanks to the Great God that is Google we’re all one click away from information overload …. and exposure to more lazy thinking.
Why bother problem solving by exploring ideas when there’s so much ‘knowledge’ readily available? – In business I’m sometimes as guilty as the next in giving out (accompanied by involuntarily inside mouth biting) ‘well… it depends’. The reason is (usually) simple: something is beyond my control; I have to surrender to an, in effect, legion of androgynous troopers, who waiting on the doorstep – ‘outside forces’. For as frustrating as it can be (for all parties), I can’t always give a definitive black and white determination. But, just as I’ve experienced sufficient to realise that time is of the essence in business, I’ve also come to recognise, you’re going to have a hard time if a job isn’t done properly. Hence, I have a more frustrating time when a person emits (often with side of the mouth chew to infer they’re giving thought), ‘well… it depends’ as their camouflage for sitting on the fence – time wasting.
Without balanced thinking, pros and cons are useless – Take marketing for example. As each trend, strategy, plan, and measurement, expands, increases, decreases, the general shift becomes, as with each element of a business’s evolution, more complex; especially when (like you and me) the customer factored in to the ROI is increasingly savvier in using online search for information, solutions and comparison. Then take what is now an elemental marketing platform, the website. Every business owner will have their own opinion about the notion that a business without a website is said to be non-existent. A website for some is easy entry into marketing, for others it can be too difficult to even consider, different perspectives, both derived from a ‘thinking’ process relevant to itself. However, the value judgement of ‘thinking’ resides in the overview, which is measured by considering the positive points of having a website and the negative points, or lesser positive. When something hasn’t been tried before, or experience tells of mistakes, messy experience, or similar, the ‘thinking’ balanced viewpoint might go along the lines of ‘it might be worthy of more information for further consideration’.
When thinking isn’t practiced surely it goes the way of any unpractised skill, meaning it can’t be put into operation from experience. Using the analogy of the well-practiced acrobat with an ability to rotate many hula hoops, all at once, quickly enough to make the hoops look as one – that’s what a Venn diagram of the scope of my service business’s crossovers would look like (elements overlapping one another, plus elements overlapping with other service businesses) – just as other business owners’ Venns will have overlaps for how and what they operate. I don’t know about you, but for me it’s difficult to want to only direct my attention to the interesting bits of my business. The way I try to manage this tendency (and maintain direction) is to think about the decisions I have to make …. and make those decisions. And, as I don’t like to limit my thinking, the information I need mustn’t be limited or biased….
The point is, it’s not only the information that’s important. We all want a derivative black and white determination AND at the same time choice, alternatives to consider. The route of least resistance means that we don’t get distracted, decisions can be made quickly, time won’t run away further than it already has. Searching amongst constraints to find hidden, unobvious, possibility and informed decision making takes thinking about (time) which (as the inside of my cheek will attest), on the occasions of forces being beyond my control, can be frustrating – But as, in my experience, confident responses aren’t guarantee of certainty. Saying ‘well…. it depends’ can, depending on where you sit, be fence-sitting or thinking beyond the most likely.
“You ask yourself not if this or that is expedient, but if it is right” – Alan Paton
The point is, it’s not only the information that’s important. We all want a derivative black and white determination AND at the same time choice, alternatives to consider. The route of least resistance means that we don’t get distracted, decisions can be made quickly, time won’t run away further than it already has. Searching amongst constraints to find hidden, unobvious, possibility and informed decision making takes thinking about (time) which (as the inside of my cheek will attest), on the occasions of forces being beyond my control, can be frustrating – But as, in my experience, confident responses aren’t guarantee of certainty. Saying ‘well…. it depends’ can, depending on where you sit, be fence-sitting or thinking beyond the most likely.
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