Fill in Conceptual Gaps to Allow Others to See the Positive Business Possibilities

One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning.

--James Russell Lowell

How can you create mental bridges into accelerated success for your colleagues and customers?

In today's uncertain environment, many people are clutching at straws or seeking answers like the blind trying to imagine an elephant solely by touching one spot on the elephant.You need to help them get past that if they are to be effective.

Here is an example of how I worked on that problem with my colleague, Carol Coles, to learn from how others adapted to past uncertainties to gain more success.

From the author tour for our first book, I learned that finding more ways to help people realize that they already knew about better solutions was going to be critical to the 400 Year Project.By writing another book that outlined more examples of stalls, stallbusting, and creating exponential solutions, I hoped to trigger more awareness of previously observed near-perfect human performances that could be emulated in new solutions.

What should the book's topic be?I had been struck during my first projects as a consultant by the way that clients were so very impressed when a strategic solution would take advantage of positive trends.Subsequently, I noticed how hard most people tried to get in step with whatever the latest trends were, unless poverty or infirmity made such adjustments impossible.

One source of that preference for aligning with trends was the increasing sense that leaders had less and less influence over their results.It's hard enough to keep balls in the air as you juggle them.Add strong winds, a powerful earthquake, and loud noise while standing on a tightrope, and juggling becomes much harder.

The traditional response to stronger external influences had been to expect more of leaders: They needed to become ever more agile so that they could quickly twitch themselves and their organizations into favorable orientations with whatever shifts affected their business.

The description of a good leader increasingly sounded like that of Superman: "faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound." I didn't know any leaders who bore even the slightest resemblance to Superman.What could a mere mortal leader do instead?

I began reading broadly on the subject of how leaders can orient organizations to trends.My eye was caught by a book written by Arie de Geus that argued persuasively for using biological metaphors for companies rather than inanimate ones.

My thinking was further sparked by something he said during a talk about his book at a forum of strategic thinkers: When people have no experience in an area, they draw a blank when they try to think about what to do.Fill in that blank with useful experience, and they will make rapid progress.

Arie noted that working on simulated problems based on scenarios describing a challenging situation was very good for providing relevant experience.This observation was based on Arie's work at Shell.He had been involved with the famous scenario-based planning in which Shell executives had considered what they might do about an Arab oil embargo before the real thing occurred in the 1970s.Reports suggested that this scenario thinking had helped Shell to adjust more rapidly and effectively than many of its competitors.

Arie kindly agreed to spend a day with Carol and me at his club in London where we grilled him about the management implications of biological metaphors and developing advance experience through scenarios.He informed us that scenario thinking had an unexpected benefit that everyone should pursue: Think about enough scenarios and you begin to see strategies and tactics that will leave you better off regardless of what comes next.

We had previously been focused on finding opportunities that provide upside potential while having little, if any, downside risk.Our most successful clients instinctively looked at opportunities that way.In addition, we had fine-tuned our financial strategy services by helping clients to find actions that had little downside risk, regardless of what came next in the financial markets.

In our first book, we argued in favor of using simulations to make people more effective in dealing with surprise situations.But scenario planning (although it was an area in which we had been active) was not addressed in that book.Carol and I became intrigued with the opportunity to focus our new book on more ways to create mental bridges that allow people to effectively deal with issues outside of their direct control.

About the Author

Donald Mitchell is an author of seven books including Adventures of an Optimist, The 2,000 Percent Squared Solution, The 2,000 Percent Solution, The 2,000 Percent Solution Workbook, The Irresistible Growth Enterprise, and The Ultimate Competitive Advantage.

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