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Managers are often promoted to senior roles based on their ability to fix problems. However, as enterprise leaders, they must focus less in solving problems and more in determining which problems the organization must deal with.
This means having the will and PATIENCE to step back and ask, “What problem are we trying to solve?” They are stuck in troubleshooting mode. But it is not enough to simply make an effort; you have to work on FAIR thing. An hour solving the right problem can take ten hours on the wrong problem. This means correctly identifying and framing the problem, need or challenge.
Say you have an idea to help improve customer service — a new chatbot feature for the company's website. But what aspects customer service needs to improve?
What need would the chatbot fill? Is customer service also the problem, or is service lacking because of other failures in the company's broader operations, such as product defects or outdated technology? You can easily spend thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours on a chatbot that does nothing to improve customer service because it has nothing to do with the real problem.
Rather than considering wider interdependencies and patterns and exploring their implications, this approach sees the problem as a single situation. So we need to move from this narrow thinking to broad thinking.
Broad thinking begins with the use of three behaviors. Firstspend time following your thoughts in an exploratory way rather than just trying to find an answer or idea and move on. Secondlylook at things from different angles and carefully consider a wide range of options before acting. Thirdlyconstantly consider the bigger picture and resist getting caught up in the smallest details.
Of course, she sound simple. But in practice it is much more difficult. People naturally gravitate towards action on inaction. It is almost an automatic response – an uncontrolled and often invalid impulse. Not going with the first idea that comes to mind and acting on it.
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Companies want action. They don't want employees sitting around wringing their hands, frozen in indecision. They also don't want employees to overanalyze decisions to the point of inertia. Therefore, they often TRAIN employees to make decisions more quickly and efficiently.
However, decisions made for speed do not always lead to great decisions. Especially the seemingly simple ones that have bigger ramifications downstream.
Consider something as easy as launching a promotional campaign to generate qualified leads. Simple! Let it Go.
But let's say it's one booming success – how crazy good. So much so that the call center is overwhelmed and cannot handle the flow. Directions are abandoned. Employees get stressed. Your brand reputation takes a hit due to lack of follow-through. Was it such a simple decision to begin with?
yesthis is not the typical case, but if the bigger picture had been considered during conception, arrangements could have been made in advance to prevent disaster.
Think this is just one unbelievable hypothetical? Well, during the 1980s, American Airlines created AAirpass — an unlimited first-class flight membership that sold for a flat fee of $250,000. The idea sounded great, and it was incredibly popular. In fact, the sheer volume of flights taken by AAirpass holders caused the company to lose millions of dollars almost immediately. When the company tried to cancel these memberships, they were sued by angry customers. It went down in history as one of the costliest promotion failures ever.
of course broad thinking cannot predict every possible outcome of an idea. But that is not the purpose. It's considering different perspectives and gaining a broader understanding of an idea in context—in short, seeing the big picture.
If the campaign planners had considered how the promotion would affect other departments, they could have devised, for example, an approach to calling things up or down, better controlling the flow of responses.
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An interesting parable illustrates this by using six blind men to describe an elephant. One feels a leg and says it is like a tree; another tail and believes it is like a rope. Another feels the body and thinks it is like a wall, while another feels the ears and believes it is like a fan. Number 5 feels a bundle and says it is like a spear, while number 6, feeling the trunk, believes it is like a snake. ANY have the full picture, but all of them are partially correct.
Broad thinking considers parts as beings inseparable from the whole. The parts of the elephant are inseparable from the whole animal, just as the promotional campaign was inseparable from the other aspects of the organization it affected.
When you broaden your perspective, you become even more sensitive to the subtleties of differentiation: how seemingly irrelevant, extraneous, or opposite elements can be interrelated.
For example, Liquid death – basically a canned water company—applied broad thinking to create a new way to position and promote its products.
It is difficult to distinguish water. Water is water. AND ANY other bottled water companies — Dasani, SmartWater, Evian, Fiji — focused on highlighting things like mountain springs and electrolytes.
Liquid Death used broad thinking to create a whole new approach to their messaging – rebellious, bold, heavy metal. They targeted a different market segment – not yoga moms, but young adults who might have only sipped water at the gym. This helped them become a cult brand of legends. It is estimated at $1.4 billion by 2024. yesnot bad.
That's why big-picture thinking is essential to smart problem-solving, leadership, and organizational strategy. A great strategy must be both evolving and consistent. It must adapt to changing market conditions, consumer preferences and societal trends to remain relevant and competitive over time, but also stay aligned with your organization the main principles of conduct and unique positioning.
Broad thinking enables you to consider these two conflicting ideas simultaneously and create tools for others to do the same.