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Why Making Great Decisions Matters Now More than Ever

August 14, 2023/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Career, Entrepreneur, Guest Blogger, Innovation, Leadership, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

How can leaders consistently make great decisions, particularly during times of considerable change and uncertainty?

Today’s guest post is by Jack P. Flaherty, author of The Decision Switch: 7 Principles of Successful Decision-Making (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

We are experiencing one of the greatest revolutions the business world has ever seen and unlike any other we have experienced in our lifetimes.

Are we ready for this?

In 1965, Gordon Moore saw it coming. He posited that the computing power of microchips would double every two years. A prediction he confirmed a decade later, concluding it would likely continue. “Moore’s Law” has since been used to describe the ever-increasing speed of technological innovation. But Mr. Moore and his Law could not have predicted the impact the latest technological developments, such as automation and artificial intelligence (AI), would have on virtually every industry and aspect of business.

Let’s take a moment and define some important terms. Automation is our ability to use software scripts to perform what were historically human tasks in a fraction of the time, reducing the need for manual labor and ostensibly increasing efficiency. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is our ability to use new technology platforms for processing data, recognizing patterns, and making decisions, all while constantly learning and improving their effectiveness, very much like humans.

What jobs and industries will be impacted by automation, if not displaced? What about AI and the ripple effect it already has had on creativity and informed decision-making? How will automation and AI continue to drive the current wave of digital disruption, and will we even need accountants or fast-food restaurant order-takers, after they become ubiquitous and widely adopted? Conversely, what jobs and industries will be created as a result? Who will be the winners and the losers?

Now, more than ever before, it is essential for today’s leaders and their organizations to adopt a decisive and agile mindset; one which can monitor the horizon, identify opportunities and threats, and make the types of productive decisions required to achieve their objectives and goals. I assure you that those who are decisive and agile, able to quickly pivot and pursue new opportunities will come out on top.

So, how do we do this and do it consistently?

First, we have to realize that decision-making is a process, not an event. It is the ability to assess and identify when you are being prompted by a change of any kind. The current big change is a technological change of the first magnitude. But the truth is, change of one kind or another is happening all the time in organizations. Those changes may create less urgency than what the current wave of digital disruption is creating, but they need to be successfully managed, nonetheless.

Over the past two decades, I have worked with and in top organizations. It was clear to me that some were far better at making decisions than others. Several years ago, I began to develop a decision-making framework that I call ‘The Decision Switch’, based on proven principles I have myself adopted. I have used it extensively and taught it to my teams with remarkable results. Seeing a growing need, created by an increasingly complex and less forgiving business climate, I sought to address a critical development need for leaders and authored my new book, The Decision Switch: 7 Principles of Successful Decision-Making.

The framework for The Decision Switch:

Triage First: Increase your productivity by assessing and prioritizing before taking action
Follow Your North Star: Defining a clear objective serves to align all subsequent decisions
Collaborate with Others: The power of numbers helps to achieve your goals
Recognize Cognitive Bias: Eliminating mental blinders creates more productive outcomes
Establish a Champion: Visionary leaders are able to provide credibility and influence others
Manage Fallout: Integrity and legacy start with awareness, empathy, and: helping others
Practice Self-Reflection: An acute sense of self-awareness empowers personal growth

A framework built on the validated premise, decision-making is a process and not an event. While not necessary to follow it in the exact order, all the steps are important in whatever order they are taken. Following it will keep leaders from making knee-jerk or uninformed decisions and ultimately, mistakes. It will help identify potential risks and impediments and enable you to establish a clear path forward. Allowing you to move forward confidently, knowing you have asked the right questions and made the most optimal choice available.

While digital disruption is creating tremendous opportunities for those able to catch and ride the wave of change, it is sure to wreak havoc on those paralyzed by fear and anxiety, due to a lack of understanding and heightened uncertainty about the future of their business or career.

The decisions that will be made around these new and quickly evolving technologies and yet-to-be-developed innovations, will need to be continually assessed to determine whether you or your organization is ready for what’s next, and how to proceed with confidence in your choices and actions.

At the end of the day, it’s a simple equation: Better Decisions = Better Outcomes. It’s completely possible and that’s good for everyone involved.

I wish you all the best.

Consultant and speaker, Jack Flaherty, is the author of The Decision Switch: 7 Principles of Successful Decision-Making.

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Best Practices for Building a World Class Strategic Growth Plan

April 10, 2023/0 Comments/in Books, Business Toolkit, Entrepreneur, Guest Blogger, Innovation, Leadership, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Learn ten best practices for creating a strategic growth plan for your organization.

Today’s guest post is by Mike Fata, author of Grow: 12 Unconventional Lessons for Becoming an Unstoppable Entrepreneur (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

A strategic growth plan is a crucial component of a company’s long-term success. It serves as a roadmap, guiding a business towards its goals by outlining objectives, strategies, and tactics. A well-constructed strategic growth plan enables businesses to navigate through market shifts, adapt to new trends, and capitalize on emerging opportunities.

This article will discuss the best practices for writing an effective business strategic growth plan, focusing on ten key points that will ensure your organization is set up for success.

Define your vision and mission

The first step in creating a strategic growth plan is to clearly define your company’s vision and mission. The vision statement should describe your long-term aspirations, while the mission statement should communicate the purpose of your business. These two elements will serve as the foundation for all subsequent decisions and actions.

Set SMART goals

Establish specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals to ensure your growth plan is realistic and effective. SMART goals are more likely to be reached and can be easily tracked and evaluated. Prioritize your goals based on their impact on the business and their alignment with your vision and mission.

Conduct a SWOT analysis

A SWOT analysis is an essential tool for identifying your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. By examining these factors, you can better understand your competitive landscape and capitalize on your strengths, while addressing your weaknesses. This will enable you to uncover new growth opportunities and create strategies to mitigate potential risks.

Identify your target market and segmentation

Knowing your target market is crucial to creating a tailored growth strategy. Identify the specific customer segments you want to focus on and analyze their needs, preferences, and pain points. This will allow you to develop products, services, and marketing strategies that resonate with your target audience, ultimately driving growth.

Analyze your competition

Understanding your competition is essential to maintaining a competitive edge. Assess their strengths, weaknesses, market positioning, and target audience. This information will allow you to identify gaps in the market, opportunities for differentiation, and potential threats that you need to address.

Develop a unique value proposition

A unique value proposition (UVP) is a clear and concise statement that communicates the benefits of your products or services, setting you apart from your competitors. Your UVP should address your target audience’s needs and preferences and showcase your company’s competitive advantages. Developing a strong UVP is critical to attracting and retaining customers, ultimately driving growth.

Create a marketing and sales strategy

Your marketing and sales strategy should outline the tactics you will employ to attract and convert customers, focusing on channels and messages that resonate with your target audience. Consider a mix of online and offline channels, such as social media, email marketing, content marketing, and events, to reach a wider audience. Align your sales and marketing efforts to ensure a seamless customer experience, and set performance metrics to track your progress.

Establish a financial plan

A robust financial plan is a cornerstone of a successful growth strategy. Outline your expected revenue streams, expenses, and investment requirements, and create financial projections for the next 3-5 years. This will enable you to identify potential financial risks and ensure your growth strategy is financially viable.

Implement an operational plan

Your operational plan should outline the processes, systems, and resources required to execute your growth strategy. This includes hiring and training new employees, implementing new technologies, and streamlining processes to improve efficiency. Regularly review and adjust your operational plan to ensure it remains aligned with your strategic objectives.

Monitor progress and make adjustments

Finally, it’s essential to continuously monitor your progress against your SMART goals and KPIs, adapting your strategies and tactics as needed. A properly scheduled cadence of formal review meetings (weekly, monthly and quarterly), along with standardized meeting agendas and reporting structure, will set you up for success.

Mike Fata is the Chief Executive Officer of Fata & Associates and the author of Grow: 12 Unconventional Lessons for Becoming an Unstoppable Entrepreneur. He is the co-Founder of Manitoba Harvest Hemp Foods and hosts the Founder to Mentor podcast. As a 9-figure entrepreneur, certified holistic health coach, and growth coach, he motivates and inspires people to discover their authentic business passions and live their best life every day.

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Sisters, Service, and Sales

January 23, 2023/0 Comments/in Books, Communications, Customer Service, Entrepreneur, Guest Blogger, Leadership, Sales, Training /by Trevor Jones

Customer service that is focused on customer relationships will impact your ability to make sales and to improve your business.

Today’s post is by Kate Edwards, author of Hello! And Every Little Thing That Matters (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

There is a scene in the Tina Fey/Amy Pohler film “Sisters” that is hilarious. The scene takes place in the dressing room of a trendy shop where the eponymous sisters go shopping for dresses for a party they are hosting that night. They go to a boutique and try on a number of party dresses, but they are clearly clueless. Each dress the sisters put on is completely unflattering as they wear the dresses in all sorts of inappropriate ways.

The shop clerk watches them in deadpan horror and her face expresses what we are all thinking: each dress is worse than the next. The clerk, however, doesn’t help them put the dresses on correctly or offer them sizes that fit; rather, she says “that looks amaaaazing” in a completely flat tone. This character is the epitome of the lackluster clerk who clearly has been told to compliment the customers. No. Matter. What.

Service that is inauthentic, unhelpful or pushy is the stuff of horrible Yelp reviews and comedic movie scenes. But service doesn’t have to be like that. Businesses that take time to connect authentically to their customers will build a client for life. And businesses that ignore service in the sales moment are doing themselves great harm as sales are based on a human connection. Here are some easy ways to connect with your customers that will make the sisters of your business – service and sales – shine.

Establish Customer Quotas, Not Sales Quotas

Too many businesses focus on the number of sales rather than the number of customers. You must remember that customers make sales. Ask your salespeople to create relationships with every type of customer – not just the ones they already know.

3 Pitfalls to Avoid When Developing Your Team

November 30, 2022/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Entrepreneur, Leadership, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Avoid these three common pitfalls when developing your team members.

Some common pitfalls I see leaders fall into revolve around not taking a personalized approach to developing their team members.

This includes spreading your time and energy equally across all your team members. I call this the peanut butter approach. Leaders give everyone exactly the same amount of time and energy. They do this because it feels fair to everyone. What’s wrong with this approach is, not everyone needs the same amount of your time. It’s not fair to people who need less of your time. It can feel like micromanagement. It’s also not fair to people who need more of your time. They’re getting slighted on how much attention they’re getting.

Another mistake I see leaders make is using a reactive approach and dealing with issues as they arise. Leaders give people attention whenever they ask, in the order they ask for it. This happens because the approach requires little thought. What’s wrong with this approach is it fails to prioritize the leader’s time and allocate that time and energy to the most important issues. It also encourages team members to constantly take up the leader’s time rather than solving issues on their own.

The final pitfall I often see is leaders taking the path of least resistance, where they only deal with people who are performing well. They spend more time with people who are easiest or the most fun to work with. They avoid team members who give them trouble. Leaders do this because this approach is easy—it avoids conflict. The problem with this approach includes not resolving big issues. You’re dedicating time to low-return efforts. Excessive time with high performers doesn’t contribute a great deal to improving results.

To see if you’re demonstrating these behaviors, ask yourself the following questions. Are you spreading your time equally across all team members? Are you only working with high performers? Are you reacting to people as issues come up?

Once you recognize these tendencies in yourself, you can be more thoughtful about how and where you spend your time with your team members. This means you’ll get better results from that time with them in a more efficient use of that time.

Want to learn more about developing your team? How about taking an entire course on it? Check out the video below to learn more about the course and get started. Or you can go directly to the course and start learning how to assess and improve your strategic plans. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

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Question Everything Always

November 28, 2022/0 Comments/in Communications, Entrepreneur, Guest Blogger, Innovation, Leadership /by Trevor Jones

There are no stupid questions. There are only stupid people who don’t ask questions.

Today’s post is by Gary Douglas, the founder of Access Consciousness®.

People have always told me that the way I do business is different. I may indeed have a slightly different point of view about most things in life – and I’ll change my point of view on a dime. I question everything all the time.

Innovation occurs when you are willing to be in the question and to ask a question always. Whatever conclusions we come to become the limitation of what we can actually achieve and receive. Don’t assume: “We’ve got this part of the business right,” which is what Kodak did. They assumed: “We’ve got it right. There will always be film.” They didn’t get innovative. They knew about digital and electronic imaging.

Did Kodak look at that and ask: “Which is the direction we need to go? What do we need to create here?” Or did they go to the conclusion that they would always have the answer? Once you decide that you have the answer, nothing that doesn’t match your conclusion can come into your awareness. You’ve got to be willing to see what kind of awareness you could have if you were willing to question.

The purpose of a question is to gain awareness. With increased awareness, different possibilities become available to you. When you become aware of the possibilities, you can make choices. Choice creates. With each choice, you can look at: “If I choose this, what will this create?”

Developing Your Team Members

November 23, 2022/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Entrepreneur, Leadership, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

It’s never a great idea to work in a silo. You have make sure you’re working with a strong team. Learn how you can strengthen your team and your leadership.

Today’s post is by Mike Figliuolo, Managing Director of thoughtLEADERS.

Personalizing Your Leadership Approach

Do you feel like you’re investing a ton of time in your people and not getting the results you expect? Do you have team members who are performing well, but you just can’t get them to improve? Are some of your team members disengaged and you worry about them leaving your organization?

I’ve dealt with all of these situations, and I’ve taught countless leaders how to overcome these challenges. As a result, I developed a framework called the Leadership Matrix to help deal with these issues. I’ve also written a book that explains this matrix in depth.

Here, I’ll cover how to assess how you’re spending your time and energy. How to reward and inspire your high performers. How to get results out of team members who aren’t contributing. How to train and motivate your low performers. And how to reclaim your time from team members who tend to waste it. By using this approach, you can generate better results by being more efficient in how you lead your team members.

Understanding Opportunity Cost

August 24, 2022/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Entrepreneur, Innovation, Leadership, Project Management, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Understanding the concept of opportunity cost will help you prioritize your team’s most important tasks. Learn to say no to low-value work.

Do you know what your team’s time is worth? Lack of focus consumes time. That’s the one resource you can never get back. When you look at activities in terms of their time cost, it becomes easier to say no to distractions.

Don’t just ask, “What task am I going to do next?” Instead, ask, “What task am I not going to do so I can work on the new request?” When requests come in to your team, assess what other work isn’t going to get done by the team if you take on the new request. If you can explain the tradeoff to the person who’s asking you to do the work, they’re probably going to be more open to you saying no and deprioritizing that new task if it’s not as important as other work you should be working on.

I work with one attorney at a large corporation who has a team of lawyers. People come to his team all the time and ask for legal work to be done even if his team shouldn’t be doing that work. He always says yes even though it’s not necessarily something an attorney has to look at. He was complaining one day about how much work was on his team’s plate. I asked him, “Hey, would you pay an outside attorney 400 dollars an hour to work on that new project that just came in?” His eyes got big and he said, “Absolutely not.” That’s when the lightbulb went off for him. He realized by taking on that project, it meant his team wasn’t working on higher priority work. He was sending that high-priority work to outside counsel and paying 400 dollars an hour. The thing is, taking on the low-value work was essentially costing him that 400 dollars. That’s when he started saying no to those distractions so his team could focus on the most important work.

When you understand these tradeoffs in terms of time cost, it’s easier to say no to low-priority or low-value work. This is going to make the work your team does the highest priority work that’s on their plate.

Want to learn more about strategic focus for managers? How about taking an entire course on it? Check out the video below to learn more about the course and get started. Or you can go directly to the course and start learning how to assess and improve your critical thinking. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

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How Good Leaders Keep Their Top Talent

August 22, 2022/0 Comments/in Books, Entrepreneur, Guest Blogger, Leadership /by Trevor Jones

Retaining top talent should be at the top of a leader’s priority list. Doing so requires engagement, recognition, and caring. Those investments pay off in improved performance.

Today’s post is by Jill Lublin, author of The Profit of Kindness (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

High-performing employees contribute extensively in achieving business results. Hence, companies have designed programs from benefits and compensation to training and development to retain them. Despite this, according to the Harvard Business Review article by Jean Martin and Conrad Schmidt, 12% of all the high potentials in the companies they studied were actively searching for a new job. What should a good leader do, then?

1. Good leaders connect to their employees.

Good leaders know how to communicate the mission of the company and its importance to the employees’ daily work. They can articulate how the workers’ functions consequently impact their stakeholders. They give their staff a sense of autonomy by letting them make decisions and offer solutions, create a challenging atmosphere. And in doing so, they pay attention to their people and ultimately make them engaged—they become productive, provide better service and stay longer. The Corporate Leadership Council learned that highly engaged employees were 87% less likely to leave their companies than their disengaged counterparts.

2. Good leaders are grateful to all.

A study conducted by the American Psychological Association, which observed 1,700 employees, concluded that half of them intended to look for new jobs because they felt underappreciated and undervalued. Good leaders, then, must know how to praise their subordinates—whether with a simple “thank you” sent through an email or written on a post-it note, to huge gestures like providing support in time of need or public acknowledgement of the worker’s contribution. They know how to recognize people based on their personalities and character and are willing to do it amply.

3. Good leaders have patience.

In the fast-paced world of business, being in control means getting the results based on a tight-sealed plan. Reality bites. There will always be situations that get out of hand. Employees will not always deliver in a manner their supervisor wants them to or by the designated timeline. But a good leader knows that these are natural tendencies that should be handled with patience. She knows that any situation can be turned into an opportunity; that as much as she could orchestrate her team, she should also give them a turn in problem-solving; and while it may be easy to berate, mentoring is the best way to keep people empowered and engaged.

4. Good leaders are flexible.

Challenge How Your Business Operates

August 17, 2022/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Entrepreneur, Innovation, Leadership, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Transform your business by completely rethinking how it works. Analyzing your business model, revenue, and costs can lead you to innovative solutions.

When you go to generate new ideas to run things better, you need to think critically about the way your business runs. I like to look at three things: a business model blowup, a revenue blowup, and a cost blowup.

On the business model blowup, fundamentally rethink how you go to market. And rethink what your market actually is. You’re going to challenge the entire business model for the way you deliver products and services. On the revenue blowup side, how do you dramatically expand the products, your pricing, the geography, and the reach of your business? And on the cost blowup, how do you fundamentally eliminate drag from the business to become more efficient?

Business Model Blowup: Skybus Airlines

Critical Thinking Tools: The Problem Statement

August 9, 2022/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Communications, Entrepreneur, Leadership, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Writing a problem statement helps you define your goals, boundaries, constraints, and assumptions when faced with a challenging project.

One of my favorite critical thinking and problem solving tools is a good problem statement. You should never just take a problem and rush off in a general direction, thinking you’re going to come up with a solution that will satisfy the needs of your requester. If you don’t know the destination, you’re going to get lost. It’ll take you a long time to get there. The corollary here is with your problem solving and critical thinking. You need to know what that destination is. What is success for your problem solving?

Your problem statement defines that endpoint. Without a problem statement, you’re going to spend a lot of wasted hours, wasted work, and have excessive revisions because your recommendation won’t make sense. Nobody will know what you’re trying to solve for. When you put together a good problem statement, it becomes your charter for your critical thinking efforts. It’s going to spell out your goals. It will lay out boundaries on the problem solving space. It will define success criteria. Your problem statement should spell out the constraints you’re going to face. It should articulate your assumptions, who the stakeholders are, and any timelines that you’re going to face.

I have one client organization that didn’t spend the time laying out their problem statement. They ended up with major issues for their charter for a huge technology project. Because the team was trying to solve all different problems, they didn’t have clarity on what the ultimate goal was, what the metrics were, who the stakeholders needed to be, and what the boundaries were for the space they were trying to solve in. This led the team to write a lot of code, have multiple revisions, and multiple attempted roll-outs. They couldn’t solve the problem because they hadn’t defined what the problem was in the first place.

Take a look at a problem you’re trying to solve. Is it clear what the problem statement is? Do you know what the goals are? Do you know what the boundaries, constraints, and assumptions are? Do you know who the stakeholders are? The time you spend with this type of critical thought is going to help you be more effective in solving the problems that you face.

– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

Want to learn more about critical thinking? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning about critical thinking. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

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Using The 80/20 Rule to Think Critically

August 3, 2022/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Entrepreneur, Leadership, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Learn how an Italian gardener’s simple principle can make problem solving much easier.

Critical thinking doesn’t only apply to coming up with recommendations. You need to think critically about the way you’re going to spend your time and energy. Those things are limited. You have too many problems to solve and not enough time. I encourage people to follow the 80/20 rule, also known as the Pareto principle.

The Pareto Principle

The Pareto principle was coined by Vilfredo Pareto when he noticed that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population. He was also a gardener, and he noticed 80% of the peas coming out of his garden came from 20% of the pods. He said, “That’s interesting. Two totally different realms demonstrating the same principle.” 20% led to 80% of the impact, and that’s the 80/20 rule. 20% of the drivers will drive 80% of the results. You need to think about your work the same way. You can’t focus on that 80% that only drives 20% of the results. Focus your efforts on the meaningful. Let me offer an example. Read more

The Importance of Critical Thinking

August 1, 2022/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Communications, Entrepreneur, Leadership, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Stopping and considering decisions before you make them is only the start to critical thinking and building on those skills makes all the difference.

The importance of critical thinking

Let’s look at the importance of critical thinking. So many times when people ask us, “Can you go solve this problem,” we rush off and start solving it without stopping to think before we do.

We’re facing new demands that require extensive amounts of information before we can make a decision. There are multiple departments involved in all of your problem-solving efforts, and each department is contributing its own input. As part of your problem-solving process, there are going to be multiple stakeholders involved. This increases the complexity of trying to get to an answer.

When you do ultimately come up with a recommendation, those big decisions will involve numerous trade-offs. Not everyone is going to be happy with what you recommend. There are going to be long lag times in acquiring the required data to make your decision, and when you finally do make the call, there’s going to be high scrutiny over whether you were right or wrong. And a bad call can have both business as well as personal and professional implications. Add to this unforeseen bottlenecks in getting the process done of getting to that answer, multiply it by the number of problems you’re trying to solve every single day, and then divide by the limited amount of time you have to get to an answer.

The importance of stopping and thinking critically before you rush off and undertake all these very comprehensive efforts is very high. That critical thinking process is what’s going to differentiate you and the solutions you develop versus rushing off without any thought at all.

Distinguish causes vs. consequences

As you begin your critical thinking efforts, I’d like you to think about causes and consequences. One of the biggest challenges we’re going to face with any problem solving is that desire to rush off and get to an answer quickly because we feel like we’re being responsive to our stakeholders when we do. But think about it.

Have you ever solved a symptom only to find out there are other symptoms that arise after you solve it? Have you ever put in place a recommendation only to find out you created new problems down the road? When you’re going through this critical thinking process, first, consider causes.

Look at the symptom that is problematic. Then figure out the real reason it’s happening. And come at that possible symptom from multiple perspectives. Once you generate a recommendation, stop and think critically. What new problems can you create if you implement this recommendation? What are the new symptoms that will be caused? Think that through before you implement your recommendation.

Let me offer an example. I know a client situation where the organization was going to roll out a brand-new website that would be facing their customers. The problem was they continued to miss deadlines for rolling the website out and going live. Now let’s look at causes and consequences. What was the cause of the website not rolling out? Well, the code wasn’t ready. Yeah, but that’s a symptom. That’s a symptom of a problem. Why wasn’t the code ready? Well, the specifications weren’t done. Okay. Well, that’s also a symptom. Why weren’t the specs done? Well, because they didn’t agree on the features and functionality of the new website. But let’s not stop there. Why was that symptom happening? Well, they weren’t given clarity by leadership around one aspect that was a major strategic decision in terms of how they would roll the website out. That was the cause of all these issues and why the rollout wasn’t happening.

Now let’s think this through. Once that strategic decision is made, what are the consequences of it? So leadership finally decided to make the website a closed network. Therefore, new customers would have to call in to register instead of registering on a website. Let’s look at the consequences of that decision and the new problems that can emerge. New customers are now going to have to call a call center associate. That’s then going to flood the call center with incremental calls. The consequence of that is the staff in the call center is going to be over-worked. And then the consequence of that is current customers are going to experience service issues. They won’t get their calls answered as quickly. And then the consequence of that is we might lose current customers.

By stopping and thinking about causes first and then consequences, once you do make a recommendation, you’re going to identify the true problem that you need to solve and, hopefully, you’ll be able to avoid causing future problems. When you go out to solve a problem, think backwards about the causes and think forward about the consequences.

As you go to apply these notions to your critical thinking processes, I’d like you to think about a problem you’re working on. Look at the causes. Spend some time thinking about what’s really causing this issue. Continue to work backward until it’s clear you’re solving a problem and not a symptom. Then, once you’ve generated a recommendation, think through the consequences. What are the new problems that could emerge if you implement your recommendation? Think about a problem that you made a recommendation on where it didn’t go so well. Which of these two did you miss? Did you miss the real root cause? Did you miss possible consequences of your recommendation?

By spending this extra time thinking about these aspects and putting in the critical thought, there’s a much higher likelihood that whatever recommendation you come up with is going to solve the true problem and you’re going to account for some of the possible consequences down the road.

– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

Want to learn more about critical thinking? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning about critical thinking. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

Did you enjoy this post? If so, I highly encourage you to take about 30 seconds to become a regular subscriber to this blog. It’s free, fun, practical, and only a few emails a week (I promise!). SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog conveniently delivered right to your inbox!