Paid to Think: A Leader's Toolkit for Redefining Your Future (David Goldsmith, 2012)

• Enterprise Thinking
• Strategising
• Developing plans
• Creating strategy
• Transforming with projects
• Managing your priorities
• Creating new products & services
• Establishing alliances
• Leveraging technology
• Learning
• Acquiring new knowledge
• Enhancing global awareness
• Watching competition
• Forecasting
• Forecasting the future
• Performing
• Leading the charge
• Empowering others
• Innovating everywhere
• Selling continuously
• Enterprise thinking: 5 stages
1. Learning
2. Applying
3. Adopting
4. Integrating
5. becoming
• 7Crosses of Enterprise Thinking
• Cross functional (HR, engineering, logistics)
• Cross level (CEO, VP, manager, director superintendent, colonel)
• Cross industry (Nanotechnology, garbage removal, retail)
• Cross sector (profit, not for profit, military, education, government)
• Cross culture (Irish, Australian, Chilean, Asian, European, American, Latino)
• Cross time (Caesar, Napoleon, Ghengis Khan, Gandhi)
• Cross life (Work, home and play)
• Economics of timing
• Fast shooter: everything is yesterday, quick to act and prone to snap, high cost and low benefit.
• Paralysis due to analysis: slow to make decisions, opportunity slipped away and problems to fester to destructive level, high cost and low benefit.
• Economics of thinking
1. Your time & energy
2. Meetings, theory, leadership’s time
3. Testing, R&D, limited employees
4. Inventory, marketing, sales force, operations, manpower
5. Image, reputation, media, stocks, loyalty
• Goldsmith Productivity Principle (GPP): 80% is systems and structure, 20% is people.
• Solving the right challenges by asking the right questions.
• Redefining
1. Original challenge statement.
2. Scrub with criteria.
3. Improved challenged statement.
4. Reframed “should” challenged statement.
5. Redefined challenge as what would it take (WWIT) questions.
• Cyclonic Strategy Thinking (CST) Model
• New information, thoughts, data, lessons.
• Discarded information, theories, data, failed models.
• Decision is made to move forward.
1. Determine desired outcome.
2. Develop strategy.
3. Select macro tactics.
4. Finalise tactics.
5. Address execution.
• Project management: critical path method (CPM)
1. Determine your project.
2. Complete the activity-planning chart.
3. Transfer activities to a critical path.
4. Share the completed CPM chart with others.
• Project management: fatal mistakes
1. Overcrowding the canaries (maximising the number of projects without buffers).
2. Jumping the tracks (burning too quickly and starting new projects before the previous ending).
• Priority management
1. Convey time-specific activities onto your new planner.
2. Convey data-specific activities from your CPM chart onto your new planner.
3. Convey non-data-specific activities into your daily planner.
4. Convey priorities from other locations onto your planner or daily planner.
5. Enter recurring activities.
• Priority management: principles
1. Plan the following day in the evening.
2. Schedule only 60% of your day.
3. Approach each day with the intent to complete all activities.
4. Work the plan if you want the plan to work for you.
5. Plan your life while you do your work.
• Enterprise Thinking Development Funnel.
• Product creation: types of screen
1. Ideation screen: most filtering especially on less-benefiting ideas.
• Technology
• Design & production
• Marketing
• Distribution & sales
• Operations
• Return on investment (ROI)
• Net present value (NPV)
• Economic value added (EVA)
• Risk-return
• Core competencies
2. Surface evaluation screen: filters weaker ideas.
• Market attractiveness
• Barriers to entry
• Brand loyalty
• Customer benefits
• Improved image
• Low versus high risk
• Market potential
• Enhanced service
• Forecasted shifts
• Business position
• Strategic fit
• Core competencies
• Investment required
• Returns expected
• Legal issues
• Competitive advantage
• Ability to produce or offer
• Compatibility with the firm
3. Detailed evaluation screen: left with one “diamond” idea.
• Alliances: forms of alliances
• Ad hoc: short term & low resources
• Consortium: long term & low resources
• Project joint venture: short term & medium resources
• Joint venture: long term & high resources
• Merger: long term & high resources
• Acquisition: long term & high resources
• Alliances: checklist
• What form of alliance best meets desired outcome and strategy?
• Is the risk assessment worth such effort?
• Have you filtered the ally using the development funnel?
• Have clear objectives and commitment for all parties set?
• Have all parties agreed on financial contribution and draw?
• Has the budget been outlined with a financial management plan?
• What are the controls, metrics and milestones?
• What are the human resources requirements?
• Alliances: killer
1. Uncertainty
2. Apathy
3. Delusion
4. Grandeur
5. Ethnocentricity
6. Incompatibility
7. Selfishness
8. Sloppiness
9. Ignorance
10. Deceit
• Technology: principles
1. Select technology cross functionality.
2. Select technology with the big picture in mind.
3. Select technology that solves an actual challenge.
4. Select technology with an eye on the future.
5. Select technology based on its benefits, not because it’s electronic or advanced.
• Technology: automation
• Manual technologies
• Manually automated
• Automated technologies
• Technology: leverage to advance.
1. Understanding technology ensures that you don’t try to solve current and future challenges with yesterday’s thinking.
2. Technology can give your organisation 24/7/365 competitive advantage.
3. Technological change can make the seemingly impossible possible.
4. Technology expands others’ access to your organisation.
5. Technology empowers you and your staff.
• Knowledge: learning triangles
1. Time spent
2. Effort needed
3. Number of individuals
4. Integration needed
5. Usable information
• Thinking and execution chart
• 90% thinking & 10% execution: CEO/president/board, general, chancellor, executive director, mayor.
• 60% thinking & 40% execution: Executive VP, captain, vice chancellor, directors of operations or administration.
• 40% thinking & 60% execution: Sales manager, lieutenant, dean, conference manager, commissioner of finance.
• 10% thinking & 90% execution: Engineer, private, professor, waitress, auditor.
• Innovation: types
• Continuous innovation
• Dynamically continuous innovation
• Discontinuous innovation
• Innovation: thinking
• Don’t just role-play or wear someone else’s hat - be the person!
• Spend more mental time in the future.
• Try Judaad.
• Connect the dots.
• Mimic nature.
• Play like a child.
• Change your physical workspace.
• Reverse engineer.
• Storyboard ideas and colleges.
• Mind map ideas.
• Engage in wordsmithing.
• Cross-pollinate.
• Bricolage.
• Look outside-in, inside-out, above and below.
• Think upstream and downstream.
• Mimic ethnographers.
• Take field trips.
• Be a contrarian.
• Emulate your heroes.
• Observe your points of light.
• Invite radical thoughts.
• Try processes that let you work less.
• Take the international perspective.
• Ask “why not?”
• Sales: continuous
• Selling up
• Selling down
• Selling across
• Selling to reports
• Selling with others
• Selling outside your organisation
• Selling for others
• Selling through others
• Selling via social environments
• Selling to closed groups
• Selling into other organisations
• Before seeking buy-in, approval or cooperation, ask “who do you think you are talking to?”
• Build the type of organisation that sells itself.
• Sales: interpersonal skills
• Be your most credible you, and maintain your credibility.
• Think before you act.
• Give people options.
• Consider your image and adapt to your audience.
• Deliver solutions, not complaints and challenges.
• Attempt to understand others before you ask them to understand you.
• Preparing to succeed.
• Show them “the beef”.
• If you want to be noticed, you have to sell.
• Be culturally conscious to sell yourself and your ideas.
• Put your best foot forward.
• The theoretical jump.
• The assumed buyer may not be your true buyer.
• Don’t take your people for granted.
• Forecasting: indicators
• Cycles
• Trendes
• Patterns
• Forecasting: activities
• Outlining
• Writing
• Story development
• Examples
• Editing
• Layout
• References
• Printing
• Distribution
• Forecasting: categories
• You, your group/organisation: what is your personal future, your group’s future, your organisation’s future?
• Customers/clients: what is the future of your customers/clients or any downstream users or recipients of your work?
• Suppliers/vendors: what is the future of your suppliers/vendors or any alliance you have upstream or downstream that allows you to do what you do?
• Competition: what are your direct, indirect, and potential competitors’ futures?
• World/universe: what is happening globally that will impact the world or universe around you in ways that can influence your future?