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The Best Advice Tony Blair Ever Got: Finding the Time to Think Strategically

June 28, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

As former British Prime Minister Tony Blair reported at a 2012 event at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, it’s easy to get so absorbed by the pressures of doing that you rarely ever disentangle yourself from the chock-full of activities and the clutter that can choke strategic thinking.

As the leader of the Opposition, when I went to see him in 1996 at the White House, he explained that one of the hardest things when you get into the government is finding the time to think strategically. It’s being able to create the space so that you’re focused on what you really know counts because otherwise, he said, the system will take you over. You’ll be in meetings from 8:00 in the morning till 10:00 at night, and you think you’re immensely busy, but the tactics and the strategy have all got mixed.

The Best Advice Tony Blair Ever Got from Bill Clinton: Finding Time to Think Strategically What happens in leadership is that things come at you the whole time. If you’re not careful, you’ll spend your time dealing with one situation after another. You lose your strategic grip on what’ll determine if you’re a successful government. Many of these crises are real, and you must deal with them. But when you judge your government in history, no one will remember any of them. You’ve got to create the space to be thinking strategically all the time to change the world.

Idea for Impact: It’s your strategic thinking, more than any other single activity, that can influence what you’ll achieve as a leader. Find ways to create more “head time” amid the busyness.

Wondering what to read next?

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  2. Reinvent Everyday
  3. The Solution to a Problem Often Depends on How You State It
  4. How to Stimulate Group Creativity // Book Summary of Edward de Bono’s ‘Six Thinking Hats’
  5. Four Ideas for Business Improvement Ideas

Filed Under: Leadership, Mental Models, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Creativity, Critical Thinking, Leadership Lessons, Thinking Tools, Time Management

Beware of Too Much Information

May 25, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Better Decisions Beware of Too Much Information Nearly all decision-making models emphasize the need for much information about the situation and options before making a decision.

Information is worthwhile, no doubt, but information can sometimes be less factual or less precise than it may seem. Besides, too much information may distract you from important issues. Scouting for additional data may cloud the picture rather than arm you with crucial information.

Idea for Impact: Be wary of the usefulness and truth-value of the information you have amassed. The solution to being overwhelmed by too much irrelevant information is selecting relevant information—not merely less information.

Bear in mind that there’s always room for new ideas and new perspectives. Review and challenge your current comprehension of the problem you’re confronting. Don’t be afraid to refine your understanding and explore other possibilities.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Howard Gardner’s Five Minds for the Future // Books in Brief
  2. Intellectual Inspiration Often Lies in the Overlap of Disparate Ideas
  3. How to Solve a Problem By Standing It on Its Head
  4. This is Yoga for the Brain: Multidisciplinary Learning
  5. Creativity by Imitation: How to Steal Others’ Ideas and Innovate

Filed Under: Mental Models, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Critical Thinking, Decision-Making, Mental Models, Thinking Tools

Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution

March 25, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution Entrepreneurs, don’t get so excited talking about your solution that you forget to emphasize how it solves a problem at all.

Which problem are you solving for the user? What pain-point are you alleviating? Why is your solution relevant to your customers? How will it make their life easier, faster, and cheaper?

After all, every great company starts by solving a painful problem. Focus more on that problem when you’re selling. Not only will this persuade your investors and customers, but it also rallies your team around a shared understanding of the problem and prepares you to ask for the level of resources it should receive.

Idea for Impact: Sell the problem first, not your idea. Often, jumping too quickly to a solution makes you lose sight of the nuances of the problem.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. The #1 Clue to Disruptive Business Opportunity
  2. Make ‘Em Thirsty; or, Master of the Art of the Pitch
  3. Constraints Inspire Creativity: How IKEA Started the “Flatpack Revolution”
  4. Always Be Ready to Discover What You’re Not Looking For
  5. Creativity & Innovation: The Opportunities in Customer Pain Points

Filed Under: Mental Models, The Great Innovators Tagged With: Creativity, Entrepreneurs, Innovation, Persuasion, Problem Solving, Thinking Tools

Ideas Evolve While Working on Something Unrelated

March 10, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

In the ’90s, Japanese conglomerate Hitachi, through its subsidy Hitachi-Omron Terminal Solutions, introduced the Clean ATM, which cleaned the bank notes during transactions. The Baltimore Sun (11-Dec-1996) notes,

Hitachi has turned its talents to money-laundering of a literal kind, with an automated teller machine that sterilizes and irons yen notes before dispensing them.

Hitachi did not set out to sanitize the money; its engineers were trying to solve the problem of crumpled bills, which tended to jam machines, a company spokesman says. They solved the problem by running the bills through rollers heated to 392 degrees [Fahrenheit, 200 degrees Celsius]—any hotter would singe paper money—and discovered that the process also killed bacteria.

Idea for Impact: Serendipity is central to the creative process. Many ideas evolve when you’re working on something unrelated. Always be ready to discover what you’re not looking for.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Always Be Ready to Discover What You’re Not Looking For
  2. Constraints Inspire Creativity: How IKEA Started the “Flatpack Revolution”
  3. The #1 Clue to Disruptive Business Opportunity
  4. How to Bring Your Ideas to Life
  5. You Can’t Develop Solutions Unless You Realize You Got Problems: Problem Finding is an Undervalued Skill

Filed Under: Business Stories, Mental Models, Sharpening Your Skills, The Great Innovators Tagged With: Creativity, Innovation, Luck, Problem Solving, Thinking Tools

No, Reason Doesn’t Guide Your Politics

February 14, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

“The human mind is a story processor, not a logic processor,” observes the American political scientist Jonathan Haidt in The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (2012,) a captivating voyage of discovery of the social psychology of politics and ethics. Haidt makes a compelling case for why reason and logic aren’t what people use to contend with problems and steer through to the right answers.

Most people’s politics tend to be ill-informed. People don’t engage in deep causal thinking about the consequences of their favored political positions. Information and analyses tend to provoke—not calm—their preconceived judgments.

No, Reason Doesn't Guide Your Politics

Reason is Motivationally Inert

As the Scottish philosopher David Hume noted in his masterful Treatise on Human Nature (1739,) “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.”

Reason becomes subordinate to the passions that have come to life in people’s tribal allegiances and their confirmation bias. People are prone to making decisions derived from instinctive, emotional, and fast thinking of psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s “System 1,” not the slow, logical deliberations of “System 2.”

Most people feel good about sticking to their guns, even if they are wrong. They tend to read newspapers, periodicals, blogs, and social media feeds to settle ever more comfortably into their preexisting beliefs. They use their tribes’ “notice boards” not to reassess their established opinions but to have them validated, comforted, legitimized, and intensified.

On the rare occasion that they do converse with someone or read something they may disagree with, they don’t revaluate their judgments, let alone change their minds. They merely use reason as a weapon to discredit contrasting evidence, spot others’ flaws, and convince them that they are wrong. Consequently, reason doesn’t bind but drives differing people apart.

Idea for Impact: The Opinions You are Blind to Could Be Your Own

Be conscious of the internal conflicts brought on by your passions. Seek and assess the counterevidence. Incorporate these counterarguments and strengthen your positions.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. The Data Never “Says”
  2. The Problem of Living Inside Echo Chambers
  3. Presenting Facts Can Sometimes Backfire
  4. Moderate Politics is the Most Sensible Way Forward
  5. Lessons from Charlie Munger: Destroy Your Previous Ideas & Reexamine Your Convictions

Filed Under: Mental Models, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Conviction, Critical Thinking, Persuasion, Politics, Social Skills, Thinking Tools, Thought Process

Imagine a Better Response

February 10, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Choose a better response: Don't react without thinking

In the Discourses of Epictetus (c.108 CE,) Arrian reports, “I must die: must I, then die groaning too? I must be fettered: and wailing too. I must go into exile? Does anyone, then, keep me from going a smile and cheerful and serene?”

You may not choose the circumstance, but you can choose your response to it.

Choose your response, and you can rise above what holds you down.

But how?

Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning (1959) proposes, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

When circumstances pull for some particular reaction, choose to respond instead.

Don’t react without thinking. Don’t accept reflexive reactions. Instead, learn to become aware that there is a “space” before responding. Learn to recognize, increase, and make use of this “space.”

That awareness ushers a release from the dictates of both external and internal pressures.

Choose a better response. With that, you can find inner happiness.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. It’s Not What You See; It’s How You See It
  2. Get Everything Out of Your Head
  3. Cope with Anxiety and Stop Obsessive Worrying by Creating a Worry Box
  4. Expressive Writing Can Help You Heal
  5. Summary of Richard Carlson’s ‘Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff’

Filed Under: Mental Models, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Anxiety, Introspection, Mindfulness, Resilience, Thinking Tools, Thought Process, Wisdom

Intellectual Inspiration Often Lies in the Overlap of Disparate Ideas

January 20, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

From David Chapman’s instructive essay ‘How to Think Real Good,’

Learn from fields very different from your own. They each have ways of thinking that can be useful at surprising times. Just learning to think like an anthropologist, a psychologist, and a philosopher will beneficially stretch your mind.

Leonardo da Vinci---Renaissance man was as much a scientist as an artist I’ve always been an admirer of the “Renaissance Man”—the notion that one should try to embrace multiple streams of knowledge and develop one’s own faculties as broadly as possible. An archaeologist who studies only material culture will think similar thoughts to a second archaeologist who studies only material culture. However, an archaeologist whose studies include anthropology, biology, geology, and metallurgy has the wherewithal to pursue her curiosity down disparate channels and synthesize multiple perspectives.

Idea for Impact: Dabble in multiple disciplines from time to time and try to understand the basic thinking model of each discipline. You’ll think more broadly, redefine problems outside of normal boundaries, and reach solutions anchored in a unique understanding of complex situations.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. How to Solve a Problem By Standing It on Its Head
  2. Overcoming Personal Constraints is a Key to Success
  3. The Solution to a Problem Often Depends on How You State It
  4. Creativity by Imitation: How to Steal Others’ Ideas and Innovate
  5. Four Ideas for Business Improvement Ideas

Filed Under: Mental Models, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Creativity, Critical Thinking, Decision-Making, Mental Models, Problem Solving, Thinking Tools

Making Tough Decisions with Scant Data

January 18, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

CDC Grappling with Imperfect Science - Making Tough Decisions with Scant Data Yesterday’s New York Times article highlights the complex tradeoff leaders must often make between indecision and acting on insufficient information:

The Omicron variant is pushing the CDC into issuing recommendations based on what once would have been considered insufficient evidence, amid growing public concern about how these guidelines affect the economy and education. CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky has been commended for short-circuiting a laborious process and taking a pragmatic approach to manage a national emergency, saying she was right to move ahead even when the data was unclear and agency researchers remained unsure. The challenge now for Dr. Walensky is figuring out how to convey this message to the public: “The science is incomplete, and this is our best advice for now.”

The smartest people I know are the ones who understand that they don’t know—can’t know—everything. Yet, they’re ready to act on imperfect information, especially when being slow will be costly.

Idea for Impact: Being able to analyze information is insufficient if you can’t reach decisions.

Knowing you’ll never know everything shouldn’t prevent you from acting. The ability to reason and reconsider your position on something is an integral part of rational thought.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. The Data Never “Says”
  2. More Data Isn’t Always Better
  3. Presenting Facts Can Sometimes Backfire
  4. What Airline Disasters Teach About Cognitive Impairment and Decision-Making Under Stress
  5. Charlie Munger’s Iron Prescription

Filed Under: Managing People, MBA in a Nutshell, Mental Models, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Conflict, Critical Thinking, Decision-Making, Leadership, Persuasion, Problem Solving, Procrastination, Risk, Thinking Tools, Thought Process

Our 10 Most Popular Articles of 2021

December 31, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Top Blog Articles of 2021 Here are our most popular exclusive features of 2021. Pass this on to your friends; if they like these, they can sign up to receive our RSS feeds or email updates.

  • If You’re Looking for Bad Luck, You’ll Soon Find It. Luck is sometimes the result of taking appropriate action. And, bad luck is sometimes the result of tempting fate.
  • Be Ready to Discover What You’re Not Looking For. Creativity is a disorderly journey. Much of the time, you may never get where you’re going. You may never find what you hope to find. Stay open to the new and the unexpected.
  • ‘Follow Your Passion’ is Bad Career Advice. It’s easier to pursue your passion if you can afford to work for free. Until then, seek the peace of mind that comes from being able to pay your bills and attaining financial stability.
  • Even the Best Need a Coach. Sometimes you can be too close to things to see the truth. Blind spots are less obvious when things are going well. Coaches can help you “break your actions down and then help you build them back up again.”
  • The Solution to a Problem Often Depends on How You State It. Defining a problem narrowly (“How can we create a better mousetrap?”) will only get you restricted answers. When you define the issue more broadly (“How can we get rid of mice?”) you open up a whole range of possibilities.
  • Consensus is Dangerous. Getting everyone on the same page can produce harmony—of the cult-like variety. Encourage dissent and counterevidence in decision-making.
  • Watch Out for the Availability Bias. Don’t be disproportionately swayed by what you remember. Don’t overreact to the recent facts.
  • Leadership is Being Visible at Times of Crises. Leadership means serving as an anchor during crisis times and being available, connected, and accessible during a crisis.
  • How to Think Your Way Out of a Negative Thought. A thought-out, levelheaded analysis of the situation can unshackle the mind’s echo chamber and nudge you to think your way out of a problem and look beyond it.
  • Witty Comebacks and Smart Responses for Nosy People. Don’t feel rude about quelling impolite boundary-violators. Responding snappishly but firmly will imply that that the issue is not open for further conversation.

And here are some articles of yesteryear that continue to be popular:

  • Lessons on adversity from Charlie Munger
  • The power of negative thinking
  • The Fermi Rule & Guesstimation
  • Fight ignorance, not each other
  • Care less for what other people think
  • Expressive writing can help you heal
  • Don’t let small decisions destroy your productivity
  • How smart companies get smarter
  • How to manage smart, powerful leaders
  • Accidents can happen when you least expect

We wish you all a healthy and prosperous 2022!

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  3. Transformational Leadership Lessons from Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s Founding Father
  4. Question Success More Than Failure
  5. How to Turn Your Fears into Fuel

Filed Under: Announcements, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Attitudes, Discipline, Risk, Skills for Success, Thinking Tools

Book Summary of Verne Harnish’s ‘The Greatest Business Decisions of All Time’

December 6, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

'The Greatest Business Decisions' by Verne Harnish (ISBN 1603209786) The Greatest Business Decisions of All Time (2012) is a flatfooted anthology of 18 engaging—and oversimplified—business stories that influenced the course of business. Edited by management consultant Verne Harnish, this tome contains long articles by nine Fortune magazine journalists.

  1. Apple and the Return of Steve Jobs. The 1996 decision by Apple’s board of directors to bring back Jobs revived the company, transformed the consumer electronics industry, and made Apple one of the most valuable companies in the world.
  2. Zappos and Free Shipping. Zappos’s decision to offer free shipping and 365-day free returns lured more mainstream buyers onto the internet. Other retailers had no choice but to provide free shipping (albeit with some restrictions) and absorb the costs.
  3. Samsung and Global Immersion. In the early 1990s, Chairman Lee Kun-Hee instituted a policy to send his brightest young employees on international sabbaticals that exposed them to the local cultures and build business networks. This program later fuelled Samsung’s global ambitions.
  4. Johnson & Johnson and the Tylenol Comeback. Consistent with the company’s “patients come before profit” credo, CEO James E. Burke set the benchmark for crisis management when he decided to pull Tylenol off the shelves nationwide and create a tamper-proof bottle at the cost of $100 million. Johnson & Johnson cemented its reputation for responsible management.
  5. 3M’s 15% Free Time Rule and Innovation. 3M Company CEO William McKnight’s extraordinary idea of giving employees free time for “experimental doodling” yielded such innovative products as Post-It notes. 3M quickly diversified its portfolio and entered many consumer- and industrial-businesses. 3M inspired Google’s 20% rule.
  6. The “Intel Inside” Marketing Campaign. To forestall the commoditization of the computer chip, CEO Andy Grove shifted Intel’s image from that of a microprocessor company to that of a producer of a coveted, brand-name product that stood for performance. Intel became a household name that consumers sought when they purchased a computer.
  7. General Electric’s Jack Welch and Crotonville. Welch transformed GE’s sprawling management-training institute in Crotonville, New York, into a focal point of learning for the company.
  8. Bill Gates and His “Think Weeks.” The Microsoft founder’s twice-yearly retreat in rural isolation allowed him to read, reflect, and map out ideas—away from the distractions and the noise of business life.
  9. Softsoap and Impeding Competition. A small Minnesota company called Minnetonka Corp. developed liquid hand soap in the early 1980s. When Softsoap started flying off the shelves, deep-pocked behemoths like Procter & Gamble began to prototype their own variants. Minnetonka’s CEO Robert Taylor developed a smart strategy to block his giant competitors and keep his company’s market share. He purchased the entire U.S. supply of plastic pumps used in the liquid soap bottles for one year—that’s 100 million units from the only supplier. By the time his competitors had access to the plastic pumps, Taylor’s Softsoap’s brand was well established.
  10. Toyota and the Quality Revolution. Toyota’s institutional obsession with waste-reduction, zero defects, and process improvement has transformed manufacturing and inspired excellence in every service industry—including hospitals.
  11. Nordstrom and Customer Service Excellence. Nordstrom built its brand on “above-and-beyond” customer service and problem-solving. The entirety of the Nordstrom Employee Handbook fits on a 5×8 card and contains precisely one rule, “Use the best judgment in all situations. There will be no additional rules.”
  12. Tata Steel and Labor Relations. During a turbulent period of India’s leading steelmaker, Managing Director Jamshed J Irani confronted a bloated cost structure by reducing his 78,000-strong workforce to 40,000 by 2005. In keeping with the Tata Group’s rich philanthropic legacy, Irani offered decent pension plans and invested in labor welfare.
  13. Boeing 707 and the Jet Age. Boeing’s decision to develop the Boeing 707 at the cost of $185 million (more than the company’s market capitalization) “remade a company, an industry, and the very culture of its time.” The 707 was the first transatlantic commercial jetliner in an era of prop planes. It kicked off the Jet Age, revolutionized air travel, and established Boeing as a dominant airliner manufacturer.
  14. IBM and the Customer-Centric Makeover. In 1993, Lou Gerstner became CEO and embarked on an “Operation Bear Hug” to launch new communication pipelines between top executives and IBM’s customers. This helped transform IBM from an inwardly focused bureaucracy to a customer-centric market-driven innovator.
  15. Sam Walton and Walmart’s Saturday Morning Meeting. Walton’s energetic 6:00 A.M. meeting was a pep rally, merchandising workshop, and financial update—all rolled into one. He brainstormed with his store managers on how to improve things week after week and helped metamorphose Walmart from a single, small-town variety store in 1962 into the world’s largest retailer.
  16. Eli Whitney and the Dawn of American Technology. Whitney’s invention of the “saw gin” that worked well with short-staple cotton helped transform Southern agriculture (and sustain the institution of African slavery!) Whitney then popularized the use of interchangeable parts in making firearms.
  17. Bill Hewlett and David Packard and the “HP Way.” The essence of Hewlett-Packard’s management philosophy was an openness and respect for the employees. With a framework of principles and the simplicity of their management methods, they established many progressive management practices that prevail even today.
  18. Henry Ford and the Factory- and Wage-Revolution. When Ford introduced the moving assembly line, his fledging factory was confronting a dispirited workforce, declining workmanship and quality, absenteeism, and annual labor turnover of 370 percent. Then Ford decided to raise wages from $2.50 to $5 a day. The following week, Ford Motors had more than 26,000 job applicants. Ford increased production rates and slashed the per-unit cost of the Model T. Annual labor turnover fell to 16 percent, and Ford’s profits doubled within two years. Every time Ford increased the productivity of car production, he continued to raise wages. His well-paid workers had more to spend—and could afford the very cars they built.

Recommended: Quick read. The Greatest Business Decisions of All Time is a concise and entertaining read, especially if you like getting into heads, the thoughts, and the motivations of well-known business luminaries. The 18 case studies lack rigor and are beset with recency biases, narrative fallacies, and a misplaced sense of causes and effects. Some stories, e.g., the Softsoap one, aren’t well known.

Daniel Gross’s Forbes Greatest Business Stories of All Time (1997) is significantly more engrossing and instructional.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Your Product May Be Excellent, But Is There A Market For It?
  2. Constraints Inspire Creativity: How IKEA Started the “Flatpack Revolution”
  3. Always Be Ready to Discover What You’re Not Looking For
  4. Don’t Try to Convince Every Potential Customer
  5. Turning a Minus Into a Plus … Constraints are Catalysts for Innovation

Filed Under: Business Stories, Leadership Tagged With: Creativity, Innovation, Leadership Lessons, Thinking Tools

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About: Nagesh Belludi [hire] is a St. Petersburg, Florida-based freethinker, investor, and leadership coach. He specializes in helping executives and companies ensure that the overall quality of their decision-making benefits isn’t compromised by a lack of a big-picture understanding.

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