Flexible,
Clear Thinking
The Business Experience
Business Performance Improvement Consultants
Clear
Thinking Case Study
of the Month
Classic Examples of Clear or Unclear Thinking by top management teams to help your teams flex their range of thinking styles, develop their thinking skills, and avoid costly thinking errors
Ideas from visiting other countries - a trip to California May 2013
Part holiday, partly a creative investigation, we took a two week trip to California and Las Vegas. Travel broadens the mind, and, if receptive, inspires creativity. We examined what ideas we could bring back to the UK.
San Francisco, Yosemite National Park, Carmel, Big Sur, Hearst Castle, Los Angeles, Death Valley, Las Vegas, and the Grand Canyon all provided food for the mind and a wide variety of experiences. And innovative Customer Experiences (Customer Thinking) feature largely in this report. read more
The once highly-respected NHS has been lambasted in the media
recently as whistleblowers bravely came forward ... problem is the lack
of a viable customer feedback system.
The Pharma industry also has a major feedback problem, ... risk
missing out on valuable ideas. We quote a potential block-buster being
lost – a drug that could prevent the common cold occurring.
But the same problem occurs in many industries and organisations. We examine what goes wrong. read more
BP, and the big banks JP Morgan Chase and Standard Chartered, have recently provided classic examples of how experienced, high-intelligence teams can make simple but costly thinking errors, even at board level. We examine how this happens, so often.
Standard Chartered’s faux pas was to pass off money sanctions-breaking with Iran, Libya, etc as “clerical errors” - after already being fined $667m by the regulators. JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon initially played down the media fuss over his firm’s $6.2bn trading loss as a “tempest in a teapot”. BP claim that one of the main causes of its 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster was an “unfortunate misinterpretation of test data” … by a “group decision”. read more
We challenged visitors to take a one-minute test in Clear Thinking at the Learning Technologies exhibition at London’s Olympia ... only two out of more than 100 visitors provided clear answers ...
This test proved two important points. First: Clear Thinking is not as easy as most people believe. Second: Concept Thinking is something many people find unfamiliar and difficult, despite this Thinking Style being fundamental to clear thinking and innovation.
Both these points were graphically illustrated in the recently collapsed Vicky Pryce (speeding points) court trial in London. The jury was dismissed for failing to understand basic concepts ... read more
One problem – two telling examples. The difficulty many people have in focusing their minds on the facts – Facts Thinking – and being aware of assumptions being made. In HP’s case, they wrote off a massive £5.5bn after buying the British software company Autonomy for £7bn. A huge error of Facts Thinking on the value, and assumed fit, of their acquisition.
Plebgate was the name given to the hounding of Andrew Mitchell, former Government Chief Whip, ... read more.
Several ideas from David Cameron’s Government are visionary and well-intentioned but have encountered major problems with implementation. We examine why concepts have a nasty habit of failing to reach successful fruition … if badly thought out and planned.
We also ask if Mr Cameron’s Cabinet Team works as a Whole-Brain Team. An un-Balanced team is one of the key causes of ideas and plans going wrong. read more
"West Coast Rail Bid fiasco - a Design Thinking failure, with nasty ramifications?" Sept - Oct 2012
The Government admitted a huge blunder in awarding the franchise for the West Coast Main Line to First Group, a decision that could have enormous ramifications for the credibility of other Government projects, such as HS2,
The reasons for the £40m climb-down have not been made clear but the suspicion must be that the entire bid process has become too complex for the DfT to handle. We examine where the thinking may have gone wrong. read more
"Reputation of Banks and Financial Advisers shredded - yet again" Jun - Aug 2012
After the PPI mis-selling scandal comes the Libor-fixing scandal, money-laundering scandal, and the Iran-sanctions busting scandal. The banks have been slated by the media virtually every day since Barclays was fined £290 million ... We examine the effects on the industry’s reputation and belated efforts to change and control what is seen as a ‘greed’ high-risk culture. read more
"PastyGate and other Government U-turn thinking
calamities" May
2012
Government (flawed) thinking is again in the news. This time it is a
series of embarrassing U-turns on the March budget after voters, the
media, (and Tory party donors?) forced George Osborne to think again.
Mr Osborne’s reputation as the master strategist took a battering, to
quote one newspaper. Whilst Number 10 tries to work out what went wrong
we examine their flawed thinking about this apparently ‘trivial’
matter. read
more
"Petrol Panic, and How long is three
months? UK Government thinking challenges" Mch-Apr
2012
Government thinking has taken a battering lately with a string of problems emerging, many self-inflicted, culminating in disastrous local election results. The petrol panic was quickly followed by Theresa May’s debacle over Abu Qatada’s deportation due to a ‘misunderstanding’ about the meaning of “three months”. We examine the thinking behind the thinking. ... read more
"How safe are cruise ships - after Costa
Concordia?" Jan-Feb
2012
On
13th January the Carnival-owned cruise ship Costa Concordia
hit rocks and partially sank off the Italian coast with the loss of
life of 32 passengers and crew. The Italian captain reportedly deviated
from the scheduled course and sailed too close to the island of
Giglio. We extract valuable lessons for the
Business and Safety Thinking on
very large cruise ships. ... read
more
"Should Marketing merge with
Sales? Hot topic gets Marketers steamed up" December
2011
This is a critical organisation design and
culture change story ... and a classic
customer-focus and teamworking story.
The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) has suggested that
organisations should strongly consider merging their usually separate
departments of Marketing and Sales ("Fusion"). The idea is that there
needs to be much closer alignment between these two functions. However,
this ‘merger’ will not be easy and may not be well received by either
function. ... read
more
"What is Design? Who can explain this key,
but vague, concept?" November
2011
Design is a word that everybody uses, yet few people – even the design
‘experts’ - can define it or explain what it means. We believe that
this vagueness of thinking is one of the key reasons
why so many projects, plans, products, and communications go
wrong. How else do you account for Prisoner vans being built
too large to get through the gates of UK courts (just one of many
farcical design errors reported in the media)? ... read
more
“Hewlett Packard and Netflix get painful lesson in
Customer-Focused Strategic Change Communications” August -
September 2011
Both HP and Netflix received similar bruising lessons in understanding
how customers and investors could react to a sudden change in business
strategy. In HP’s case the 25% collapse in share value was enough to
cost the CEO his job. Netflix was a bit more alert and (fairly) quickly
announced a u-turn. ... but it was the way they
communicated their change of strategy that
caused them massive problems. Customer
Thinking was clearly lacking. ... read more
"The Customer's Viewpoint on Marketing and
Selling" July 2011
We visited the Marketing Live trade exhibition and seminars at
Olympia, and as usual at exhibitions, found numerous examples of the
difficulty marketers and sales people have in seeing their
communications from the customer’s perspective. We saw, and heard, a
series of ‘obvious’ communications errors, even by the
‘experts’ in marketing. But none of the exhibitors were aware
of these errors, until we pointed them out. ... read more
“Britain’s schools get lessons in Concept Thinking from Singapore” June 2011
The UK comes a horrifying 28th in the international league of pupil achievement in maths. Shanghai is top, Singapore second. But now something is being done to address the problem – we’re going to teach our children to THINK, which means learning about concepts in maths, science, and English. Concept Thinking. That’s what the Asian ‘tigers’ are good at ... read more
PPI, Payment Protection Insurance, became the latest mis-selling ‘scandal’ to hit media headlines after Lloyds Banking Group broke ranks and agreed to compensate customers at a cost of £3.2billion. Major rivals Barclays, RBS, and HSBC are expected to follow with provisions ranging from £1bn down to £270m. This Story is about Business Thinking taken to excess ... read more
"The Continuous Creative Process - Pixar's incredible run of success" April 2011
Pixar Animation Studios has produced an amazing string of 11 blockbuster animation films such as Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, and Finding Nemo. This extraordinary success rate is not down to luck, it stems from an unusual culture and organisation design that fosters creativity – continuously ... and could work for any organisation. ... read more
"The Joy of Chess Problems - great for developing your Thinking Skills" March 2011
Research has established that playing chess, and especially solving chess problems, significantly improves thinking skills. We identify which thinking skills, and how they are developed. We also describe a chess problem solving process equally valuable for resolving business problems. ... read more
"Caution - Women on Board. Diversity of Thinking?" February 2011
Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, commissioned a review to investigate why there are so few women on boards of UK companies. He wanted to pre-empt the potential introduction of targets by the EU. We analyse this key issue of 'Balanced Boards - diversity of Thinking'. ... read more
“Steve Jobs – highly successful Whole-Brained Leader” December 2010 – January 2011
Apple Inc co-founder Steve Jobs is in the news because of concerns that his illness may affect Apple’s business performance. We analysed the stories ... he is Whole-Brained, Clear Thinking, with a range of Leadership Styles ... read more
“Delusional Thinking - England's 'humiliating' World Cup bid” November 2010
England's bid to host the 2018 World Cup suffered a shock 'humiliating' defeat when the winners of the 2018 and 2022 tournament-host competition were announced. The 2018 competition 'favourites' collected only one vote out of 22. We analyse what went wrong. … read more
FOR THE ANSWERS TO THESE TWO
CRITICAL QUESTIONS
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Avoidable thinking errors We have developed the world's first
system (and training course) to
help people flex their thinking range across 30 key
Thinking Styles and think clearly to minimise the
risk of costly mistakes. Communications (especially Advertising)
go wrong due to: |
What really affects
Business/Team/People's Performance? Clear thinking on culture, for example, is a major factor affecting business performance. The wrong culture almost toppled one FT-100 business. For teams, we identified up to 30 factors that significantly affect performance. Many factors interact and every organisation is
different. The workshops provide in-depth analysis (of these questions) and generate ideas for improving performance. From a single team to right across the organisation. See Develop your Leadership, Talent, and Organisation, including Teamwork, Training, and Change. |