Flexible thinking [Archives:2003/04/Business & Economy]
The Road Ahead
BY RAIDAN A. AL-SAQQAF
[email protected]
One week ago, I was travelling from Sana’a to Aden by car. Through the highway, suddenly I came across an animal intending to cross the road. And in the next insight the animal catches sight of my fast incoming vehicle, in a split of a second the poor animal got paralyzed and lowered it’s head and charged my vehicle head-on. The sudden apparition of my car must have paralyzed the animal’s judgment, causing it to perversely to rush into the fatal direction whereas it could’ve escaped with seconds to spare.
The same thing happens to people when they experience a similar kind of mental paralysis; they are only able to see a very limited number of options despite the many alternatives available. The more sever the pressure and the more urgently a broader view is needed; the more dangerously their mental view seems to narrow down, and the list of options they consider shortens up, especially when it comes to a business executive who is obsessed with the ‘all of nothing’ fallacy.
There is no business in the world that operates according to the clear-cut, black or white principle of the binary system. In fact business operate according to perceiving and discovering areas for intelligent choice making among various business options, and in turn choose the best courses of action for the organization to take. All in order to ensure ultimate success and avoid the worst that can happen through understanding the full range of alternatives and constantly weighting the costs and benefits of each one.
Considering different alternatives require posing a number of ‘what if’ questions to find out the different possibilities, for example if the situation was such and such, what would be our best course of action? And what are the different alternatives? To which extent can tolerate such and such?
But still, sometimes business executives do not push their thinking to the full flex and do not consider all the alternatives seriously. This can be the result of the lack of any sense of entrepreneurial skills or competitive urgency, and these are two precisely qualities needed for success in all times. In addition to that, flexible thinking in business allows breaking out of the limited scope of vision that entrapped that animal on the highway. It also must be backed up by the daily use of imagination and by constant logical thinking and thought processing.
Endnote: success won’t come unbidden and unplanned, and the process of planning success includes lots and lots logical and flexible thinking in order to include and consider all the different alternatives a business has. In other words it is flexible thinking that allows the scope of success to increase through providing more and more alternatives.
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