Tag Archives: business thinking

August 28, 2017 · 12:06 pm

School’s In!

Today is the first day of school around here. If these kids are like many of the ones I’ve met over the years (and maybe even the two we raised), at some point the inevitable question pops up:

Why do I need to go to school?

As they get older, the question changes a bit (probably because they enjoy seeing their friends at school every day):

Why do I need to learn this stuff? 

That’s our topic today, and I think it’s something that applies to the business world as well. The answer to the first question is pretty obvious, and it’s not just because your parents are exhausted after driving you around all summer and need you gone for a bit. I’m a lot more interested in the second question because I think that most students, parents, and teachers get the answer wrong. You don’t need to learn “this stuff.” I can’t think of a single instance in my adult life where understanding differential equations or the structure of the carbon atom has been required.

So as a public service, I’m going to give you the answer to the second question which hopefully also answers the first. I’ve given it out before but hey, it’s the first day of school and the questions might come up again so you’re welcome.

You go to school to learn two things.

  1. How to locate and verify pieces of information (let’s call them facts) in order to formulate your thoughts.
  2. How to express the thoughts you formulate both orally and in writing to communicate your thinking.

That’s it. Learn those two things and you can pretty much do anything you choose to do in this world. Ask yourself how many business people you know who can do those two things successfully and I’ll bet you also have a list of the best business people you know. In an era when “fake news” is a term thrown around like beads at a Mardi Gras parade, understanding how to determine what news is really fake and what’s just being labeled as such to distract you from facts is critical. Not everything you read in your school books is accurate, but if you don’t have a well-developed BS detector as well as the skills to track down the truth, how will you create accurate thoughts from inaccurate information either in school or beyond?

Please feel free to print this off and hand it to your kids, large or small, who are wondering about school. Feel free to ask yourself if you managed to learn those things along the way as well. If not, maybe it’s back to school for you too?

Leave a comment

Filed under Helpful Hints, Thinking Aloud, What's Going On

Tagged as , , , ,

August 16, 2017 · 11:51 am

Playing The Long Game

One of my favorite movies is The Sting. It’s the story of how two men run a long con. That, as defined by The Urban Dictionary, is:

A con-job that requires a certain amount of effort and as a namesake, is usually in it for the long haul. Gaining someone’s trust for a number of months and then when the stake is in your court and you have their complete trust–taking advantage of it. Usually denotes relationship status or high-level business partnerships.

In less evil terms, the protagonists are playing the long game. They are less focused on short term success as they keep their eyes on the rich reward gained over the long term. I’m a big believer in playing the long game, both in business and in life. Let’s address the business part here.

English: Marshmallows

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The folks at MIT‘/Sloane did a study about the digital maturity of various businesses. One thing that they found to be true of digitally mature organizations was:

Their strategic planning horizons are consistently longer than those of less digitally mature organizations, with nearly 30% looking out five years or more versus only 13% for the least digitally mature organizations. Their digital strategies focus on both technology and core business capabilities.

I’m always surprised at how many organizations have a short-term focus and which then wonder why they’re not gaining on their long-term goals. I’m not advocating spending time creating a 10-year plan or even a 5-year plan. I think seeing that far over the horizon is pretty much impossible in these times of rapid change. But I do think every business needs to have some long-term goals and a focus on meeting them while ignoring some of the short-term things that might cloud your vision.

Maybe you’ve heard of The Marshmallow Experiment. A researcher put young children in a room with a marshmallow for 15 minutes, telling the kids that they would get a second marshmallow if the first was still there when the researcher returned. What’s interesting about this is that the researcher did follow up studies with the kids over the next 40 years. He found that the kids who chose to delay gratification (and get a second marshmallow!) did better in life. They had higher SAT scores, lower obesity, better social skills, and lower levels of substance abuse. They were playing the long game, even at 5. Are you?

Leave a comment

Filed under Consulting, Helpful Hints

Tagged as , , ,

August 9, 2017 · 10:02 am

Intellectual Laziness

I’m sure your Twitter and/or Facebook feeds are filled with articles and discussions from and among your friends. Mine certainly are, and what strikes me about many of them is how intellectually lazy they’ve become. That’s odd, since most of my friends are anything but. They tend to be smart and able to see nuance, yet my feeds are filled with blanket generalizations and narrow perspectives, not to mention the unchallenged fake news.

I think that laziness is becoming more pervasive in business too. Maybe it’s that our brains have been taken over by the manner in which we think in the social media space or maybe it’s just easier to paint with broad strokes since there is so much information coming at us every single day. I think that’s a rationalization. More importantly, it’s dangerous.

When we make use of generalizations and blanket statements we negate things that don’t fit into the underlying assumptions, schemas, and stereotypes of our business. This intellectual laziness is also used to maintain the status quo.

Think about how often a good idea has been crushed by someone using the words “always” or “never.” Those terms are overly broad and prevent new thinking about old problems. instead, we’d all be better served by maintaining a beginner’s mind and listening more than we speak.  It’s pretty much truism that you’ll learn more from listening than you will from talking. Taking what we hear and synthesizing new ideas in the context of the business environment is how we move forward. More importantly, it’s the antithesis of being intellectually lazy.

I think people who are intellectually lazy are toxic both in business and in the world at large. I’m making more use of lists in my social feeds to weed out those toxic folks so I can enjoy the critical thinking of others and make myself a little smarter each day. You?

Leave a comment

Filed under Huh?, Thinking Aloud

Tagged as , , ,