BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story
Following
This article is more than 2 years old.

Make time to think!

Pause for laughter. Who are you kidding? The skeptics cry from the gallery. Who's got time to think? I am too busy doing. I don't have time to sit and contemplate the world.

Except now that's what all of us are doing, at least metaphorically. We have been locked in near isolation for over a year.  While there is a light at the end of the tunnel in the form of the vaccine, we are not yet out of the tunnel.

The challenge now for leaders is to consider our future. What do we want to make the future of the workplace? Conversations I’ve had with thought leaders and doers for nearly a year believe the following will occur.

Some will work from home. Some will work in a workplace. All will work in a new kind of environment we call the hybrid, which works in an office and works from anywhere. The challenge is for us to think through our options. Consider what's best for our productivity as well as for our employees.

Think actively

Planning for the future requires thinking. And to be honest, thinking is hard, so let me offer a few ways to be more "think-ful,” coining a neologism that should never be used outside this post.

Author and philosopher, Simon Blackburn, writes in his book, Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy, that “To process thoughts well is a matter of being able to avoid confusion, detect ambiguities, keep things in mind one at a time, make reliable arguments, become aware of alternatives, and so on.” In short, as Blackburn says, thinking is our ability to make sense of our world and to engage in it fully with our minds.

Consider the following steps for thinking as a leader.

Make thinking a priority. Make time to consider where you are and where you want to go. Thinking can begin as self-reflection certainly, but from a leadership viewpoint, thinking must be outward-directed. How do you want to lead? Where do you want to lead? How will we accomplish our goals? How will overcome adversity? These questions are thought starters. Employ them to engage your thinking process.

Contemplate before you activate. Challenge your assumptions. Easy to say, hard to do. Why? Consider that assumptions emerge from data manipulated by your thinking to become the scaffold for what you do next. Assumptions are primarily theoretical and may not hold up to the rigor of implementation. Nothing wrong with that. It merely means you need to keep thinking.

Integrate thinking into your conversations. Jim Haudan, chairman and co-founder of Root, Inc., uses the term “co-think." It is an endeavor where people in his company think through issues together. Consider it collaborative thinking. As Haudan says, “To authentically engage the hearts and minds of your people, be relentless in engaging them to co-think the future versus telling them what to think!”

Co-thinking accomplishes two things. One, it enables people to collaborate as they think through problems. Two, it sends a signal that "to think" is part of what we do and is therefore essential. 

Keep in mind that deep thinking is profound. Answers to your questions do not arise immediately. And if they do, then they may be options, not real solutions. However, if you habituate yourself to thinking, you will put yourself in a mood receptive to ideas that may come when you may not expect them—in the shower, on the exercycle, or maybe even in your sleep. They would not have occurred if you had not engaged in contemplation. Solutions happen when you apply your thinking process.

What’s next?

Doing all these things will make you alert to what's coming next. Our future is that what we think is an assumption. Reality will road test it. And we will make changes. And that means we will think all over again.

To think is to consider.

To ponder and to wonder.

As well as to challenge.

Thinking requires effort.

Although work is never without effort,

Forethought makes it seem so.

Thinking truly is our work as we ask:

What’s been done? Or left undone?

Answers provide our next steps.

Steps that lead us to know more and do more.

Note: Inspiration for this post comes from a consultant colleague Jim Kerr who posed a question about thinking in a recent LinkedIn post.

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedInCheck out my website or some of my other work here