Thursday, October 04, 2007

Great Leaders Think Big -- and Small
by Ram Charan

Posted on Wednesday, January 17, 2007, 12:00AM

Have you known people who can see the big picture, but have no clue about the details of a situation? Or people who get so lost in the details that they fail to see the locomotive coming down the tracks? Successful leaders learn to think at a range of altitudes.

Kay Krill, CEO of retailer Ann Taylor, captured it nicely when she told a Wall Street Journal reporter last September, "You have to fly at 50,000 feet, but you also have to come down and mow the lawn every now and again."

The View from All Levels

At 50,000 feet, you can see the total picture of your business, your industry, and maybe even the world economy. You can detect interesting patterns that might create opportunities for your business -- imperative to stay ahead of the game.

But if your thinking is always in the stratosphere, you might miss important details. You also have to be incisive, drilling to the specifics.

Otherwise your bold goals might be completely unrealistic, you won't be able to pinpoint the priorities for your group, and your reviews of people and the business will be wishy-washy, so that you won't know if your grand plans are being executed.

Also, those details have to be the right ones. Of all the observations you make, all the numbers your business generates, and all the sources of information available to you, you have to make a judgment about which ones really matter.

Patterns of Thinking

In business, how you think is just as important as what you think.

The ability to think at multiple altitudes, from 50,000 feet to 50 feet, is a distinct advantage in exercising your leadership know-how. But there are at least two other ways of thinking that are equally potent.

• Reframing

Maybe you've experienced this: You're sitting around a table having a business discussion with your colleagues when someone bursts out, "Wait a minute, what if we..." and suddenly the whole discussion goes in a different direction. The person is stating the problem differently or looking at it from a different angle and opening new avenues of exploration.

Reframing is being able to change your vantage point, to look at a phenomenon or problem from a very different perspective. It's how leaders redefine their market and create new growth trajectories -- Coke going from competing in soft drinks to competing in other liquid refreshments, for instance.

Reframing is vital in understanding the viewpoints and values of non-governmental organizations that can affect your business. It can also help you on the people and social sides of the business when, for instance, you suddenly see a person in a different light and find a novel way to apply his natural talents. You can use reframing to get team members to focus on a common goal rather than on their individual interests.

When Robert Pittman first became CEO of Six Flags amusement parks, he wanted to dig into the details of the business, so he went to work as a street cleaner. At that level, he noticed something he didn't like: The hard-working janitorial staff viewed customers as the enemy who stood in the way of their mission to keep the parks clean.

So he reframed their mission from cleanliness and safety to "giving customers the greatest day of their life." Seeing their roles in a different light gave the staff a more positive attitude toward customers and paved the way for a better customer experience.

• Connecting the dots

Linear, analytic thinking is useful and important, but sometimes you have to take mental leaps in order to make sense of incomplete or seemingly unrelated pieces of information. You have to go beyond the charts and graphs and use imagination to connect the dots.

This mental process can be unconscious. If you ponder a problem for days and suddenly wake up one morning with a clear answer, your unconscious mind has done the work of connecting the dots. It appears to be intuitive.

Think how important connecting the dots is in a business meeting. As the dialogue flows among people, you as the leader should try to make connections between the ideas as they spontaneously arise. The better you get at this, the more productive the discussion will be as you synthesize the ideas rather than choosing among them

Consider the thought process behind the iPhone, Apple's youngest offspring. The iPhone, like the iPod, isn't based on a breakthrough technology. Its promise lies in the fact that it ties together many separate functions in a device that is appealing to consumers aesthetically and functionally.

Creating such a product requires figuring out how multiple technology markets are evolving and what consumer preferences are emerging, and imagining how all those considerations might combine. No amount of analysis can make those connections, or remove the uncertainties.

Anyone competing in the media industry -- or any fast-changing industry, for that matter -- has to be able to make connections even as the dots themselves change.

Expand Your Repertoire

Scientists are discovering that the brain is more elastic than was once believed. The neural connections can actually be rerouted, and the patterns of thinking therefore can change.

So you should become aware of how you think, and try to expand your mental activity. However automatic your current thinking may seem, you can change it, at least to some extent.

As you consciously try to expand your mental range -- to navigate various altitudes, to reframe problems and solutions, and to connect the dots -- you'll likely see vast improvements across a number of the know-hows I've identified (I explained them in my previous column and in my new book, "Know-How: The 8 Skills That Separate People Who Perform from Those Who Don't"). That's when you'll experience a huge burst of growth as a leader, and be encouraged to develop more.

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