In my corporate days, I was dispatched to work with competitive companies our corporation purchased. The objective was to help them become better strategic thinkers and marketers.
The ground rule was, however, I couldn't tell them WHAT to do. Since all the companies competed with one another, each one needed to determine its own business strategies.
When I tell people this story, they chuckle. It seems ridiculous to help a company become better at strategic thinking and marketing without being allowed to tell them how to do it.
While this constraint may seem (and actually be) ridiculous, it shaped how the Brainzooming method developed.
In planning how we would help these companies, we realized there were three possibilities whenever we asked people to answer a question inside our strategic thinking exercises:
Each of the three options suggested a potential response from us:
What this suggests for you is that when working with a team, you don’t necessarily have to be ready to respond by saying ideas and concepts are good or bad.
You can, however, vary your reaction based on whether you perceive an idea to be good or bad. And if it’s bad, use other strategic thinking exercises to gently bring the ideas back to something smarter and more productive. - Mike Brown
Leaders need high-impact ways to develop employees that can provide input into strategic planning and then turn it into results. This Brainzooming mini-book, "Results - Creating Strategic Impact" unveils ten proven lessons leaders can use to boost collaboration, meaningful strategic conversations, and results.
Download this free, action-focused mini-book to:
