Collaborative Thinking

What’s your company’s IQ?  How rigorous is your thinking?  How effective are your decisions?    A company’s ability to think on its feet sets the stage for how well it competes, which ultimately determines its long-term success.  Companies that are smart, resourceful, and imaginative are companies that are thinking well.  While competitors can copy a product or a service offering, they can’t readily duplicate a company’s ability to think.  Good thinking is an advantage that is hard for any competitor to negate.

Companies that think well are no accident, nor do they result from the simple accumulation of a group of smart people.  Good leaders create savvy companies by provoking the people within an organization to think well together as an organic whole.  Once a group of people has developed the capacity to think effectively together, they can continue to upgrade and evolve their thinking skills.

Companies that don’t think well are companies-at-risk.  They can’t sustain their positions in challenging circumstances and, if their thinking is particularly weak, their decline can begin with a relatively minor disruption to business-as-usual. 

 If you look closely at companies in trouble, you’ll find a place and a time when their thinking broke down.  Perhaps they failed to anticipate changing conditions soon enough.   They may have drawn the wrong conclusions from signs they did see.  Their decision-making process might have been too slow, their thinking too sloppy or too rigid.  Some may have lost their focus, while others had problems executing their ideas rapidly and effectively.  Regardless of the specifics, their problems will have been rooted in undisciplined, sloppy, ineffective thinking. 

Every company thinks.  The ability to think well, however, must be deliberately cultivated.  The premise that the smarter you make your company, the better it will perform against its competition would seem unassailable.    Leaders, who tend their companies’ thinking skills are rewarded with performance that is fast, fit and focused.   There is an old adage that says, “No one is as smart as everyone.”  Yet many businesses still rely heavily on the efforts of a few key thinkers.  Sometimes, the boss is the only thinker in the organization.  Sometimes the most aggressive talkers or the most dominant personalities carry the debates.  People argue from their own functional agendas and compete against others on the same team for scarce resources. 

At Syntient, we help your organization develop and hone its collaborative thinking skills, building on ideas, ensuring rigor, and selecting the best “right” decision.  Go into the marketplace using your whole brain.