Think About How You Are Thinking
Often executives, managers and owners never stop to question how they are thinking about a business issue.
Management at all levels have to think about how they are thinking about an issue and stop themselves from having a predetermined result for a project, as management often will miss warning signs related to how a project is actually progressing, which results in potential future outcomes that are different than planned.
Thinking is different than a predictive logarithm where the results from a question just pop up and you get to review a bunch of similar answers to the question you input. Management’s thought process has no relationship to predictive logarithms and the problems their businesses are facing.
Business management does need to think about how they were so successful on a past issue, but also think about how the current situation differs; how will progress be measured, what are the potential problems that can arise in the future, if the project is implemented successfully, what are the next steps that need to be taken to improve upon the results. An example is that a business releases a new product but fails to measure how much the new product will reduce other product line sales, with the end result being that the business’s total revenues decline even though the new product launch is a success.
Business management needs to think about what problems they might need to resolve before starting a project and what potential outcomes could be if they fail to act at important decision points during the project cycle. An example is the new project looked great on paper, but the implementation of the project is a failure. The resources assigned to the project were inadequate and the project takes twice the time and double the budgeted cost and only provides half the benefits that were originally planned. In this case, management’s thought process might have been that this project will be easy to implement and there was no need for additional resources. Management never planned for a way to evaluate how the implementation was going; therefore, management never had a contingency plan to assess the project as it was being implemented.
Business executives and managers need to understand that thinking is the process of considering all potential outcomes using realistic judgements and measurements. That is why it is so important that all levels of management are thinking about how they are thinking.