Action too often precedes thinking. Thinking is hard work and is essential before any group of people can make a coordinated action toward some objective. Thinking doesn’t result in something tangible; it’s that preliminary work that allows us to consider a problem in its entirety, muddle through the many scenarios or approaches, and then clearly enunciate a temporary path toward fulfilling the objectives.
It’s much easier to begin writing a draft than to think through the details of the final manuscript. It’s easier to begin doing the research on a new product than to consider the related issues of production and marketing. It’s easier for human resource departments to propose development programs than to clearly define the future benefits from that investment of time. It’s easier to start doing something than to think about the future consequences of those actions. Since thinking is hard work, we continue to plow the same ground in the same way over and over, hoping to discover something new. So what’s wrong with the way we did it yesterday? It worked so why change it? When managers adopt such an attitude they face the consequences of no longer providing value to the organization. When organizations working in a dynamic business environment adopt an attitude that dismisses the need for serious and reflective thinking before doing, its future success may be limited.
The caveat behind thinking your way to success involves recognizing that the test of any organization’s work effort is in the marketplace. To meet the challenges posed by the external environment, managers and professionals need to think outside of their own job-specific disciplines. It’s not enough to be a professional and disregard the impact of your work on other activities. It’s not enough to be a manager and function like a bureaucrat. Both professional and manager need to begin thinking out of the box and be guided by the changes in organizational dynamics. As a newly appointed manager you need to recognize that renewal of thinking patterns is the major contributing factor to your organization’s success. We usually refer to this as "thinking out of the box." So, how did we get into the box and how do we get out of it? Let’s look at the related topics.
- Becoming an organization
- Thinking out of the box
- Moving forward
- Our changing work environment
- Getting out of the box
- Tools and techniques
- The negative side of thinking out of the box