Saturday night, someone let go with a three-part Twitter rant admonishing people to share their personal experiences instead of simply recycling everyone else’s wisdom and passing it off as valuable content. His Twitter rant and the predilection of so many people to invest social media time sharing quotes from every long dead great thinker and popular experts of today got me thinking about why more individuals do not do their own great strategic thinking.

Maybe it is not as easy to take personal responsibility for great strategic thinking. You cannot simply just share what someone else has already thought and said. But how much more rewarding to do your own great thinking and develop personal conclusions and beliefs about what constitutes and leads to success.

Doing Great Strategic Thinking Is Not that Hard

Here are nine things to pave the way to sharing great thinking coming from personal experiences:

  • Write down the profound quotes you utter, even if you are the only one who happens to think they are profound quotes right now.
  • Instead of sharing a centuries old (or even year old) profound quote, share what the quote makes you think about that is relevant today.
  • View popular experts as a buffet instead of a full service restaurant. Sample from a bunch of popular experts to assemble your “great thinker meal,” rather than dining on only one great thinker all the time.
  • Cultivate an eclectic group of people to hang with in-person and online to lead you into unexpected strategic thinking adventures. This requires networking outside the typical group of online celebrities.
  • Digest sources outside the mainstream of your industry, business, and life to stimulate an intriguing and personal worldview.
  • Form your own worldview from every part of your personal experiences. Use your own worldview to guide you.
  • Recap and share what you have learned from your own experiences, not from what online celebrities say does or should work.
  • Turn your business and personal experiences into your own stories and lessons.

Remember though, these are simply suggestions. Part of being your own great thinker is taking the pieces that work for you from here and other places to create your own strategic thinking!  - Mike Brown

The Brainzooming Group helps make smart organizations more successful by rapidly expanding the strategy options they consider as we create innovative plans they can efficiently implement. Email us at info@brainzooming.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can help you enhance your strategy and implementation efforts.