Carve Out Time for Strategic Thinking – The Power of Catalytic Mechanisms

To get the quality of thinking we need to take place in the leadership of our organisations, there are some tough choices that need to be made. But making them will be key to our survival. Catalytic mechanisms could be the way forward.

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Our organisations are facing a time of great change. Will those that thrive do so by accident? Or will they do so as a result of the quality of thinking from their leadership. And, if it is the latter, how are we finding the time in which that thinking can be at its best.

My own experience is that many of us in leadership are working horrendous hours just to respond to the vast range of challenges that are currently facing us on a day to day basis. Finding time to simply sit and think deeply is not happening.

It is not that we don’t try to make time for this. But most of our attempts don’t seem to be sustainable. Which gives us a choice. Do we give up? Or do we accept that simple adjustments just don’t work, and try something more radical?

Personally, I don’t think the first option will be good. Not for us, our organisation, our people, or society. We cannot afford to step into the huge challenges we are facing with our best strategic minds totally tied up in tactical expedience. To attempt to do so will only make things worse than they currently are.

But maybe a radical alternative can be found in Jim Collins’ transformational HBR Article from July 1999 . Based on his groundbreaking research from the time (From Good to Great – Collins & Porras) he illustrates (with multiple examples) the power of ‘catalytic mechanisms’ to achieve radical improvements. And he contrasts this with the ineffectual nature of traditional managerial approaches, which regularly get eroded, or diluted, and forgotten.

There are clearly parallels here. We too recognise the need and value of having more time to think. And we all try to find strategies to try to reclaim it. But the reality is that those strategies suffer the same fate as Collins’ ‘traditional’ approaches – eroded, diluted, forgotten. Each year, we find ourselves with our position becoming harder pressed and our strategies in retreat.

So we really need some sort of ‘catalytic mechanism’ for carving out thinking time. But what might that look like?

While there are some differences between our own individual behaviour, and others’ collective behaviour, Collins’ ‘characteristics of catalytic mechanisms’ offers us five helpful pointers to achieving a successful solution.

We are struggling to make time for finding an hour here and there in our busy schedules. So we will take time we haven’t got! We will stop looking for things we can fit in, and we will put in something deliberately disruptive. We will put in one whole day every week or fortnight where we get the time to really think.

And we won’t do it where others might interrupt us, we will go somewhere we cannot be disturbed. Somewhere unexpected, and which feeds our creative and rebellious natures. And we will front it out. We will bring attitude to that space. We will bring a sense of ‘This is where I turn the whole thing around. Where life and circumstances stop happening to me, and I start happening to it!’

Furthermore, to avoid disturbance and distraction, we will leave our work laptop and phone behind.

We are seriously sacrificing a lot to be here, and we are going to make it count!

In many ways, the senior leader is the most disempowered of all in respect of their time. Everybody wants a bit of us, and makes us feel that they have that right. And perhaps they do! But only for four days a week, not five.

Lets face it they don’t have the right at weekends, during our vacations, when we are ill, and that is accepted. Well they also don’t have the right when we are concentrating on how you keep them all in a job either.

But there are others we can empower to minimise the impact of our strategy day on others. Who would be in charge if we were ill? Who will be in charge when we go? Empower them. Let them hold the meetings and make the decisions. Make this strategy day for us, a development day for them.

And, if we have one, there is our PA. Empower them to ensure a day a week is fixed in our diaries, and that they have control. But also link their performance in ensuring we fulfil this (which is after all our most vital role) to their objectives and their bonus. Make it vitally important to everyone that we get this done. Because the reality is, it is!

In Collins’ examples, the teeth are an inherent and natural consequence of seeing the failure differently. They take failure that would otherwise be hidden and drawn out, and make it visible, prominent, and immediate. Currently, the consequences of our failures to get sufficient quality thinking time are distant and unclear. Because of this, if we don’t do that thinking, much of our credibility and standing still keeps its sparkle. That isn’t teeth. And it has to change.

We need to make any failure immediately visible and painful. One obvious way is for our PAs to link this to our own bonus. Which is probably fair after all.

In addition, we need to make your intentions, and our performance in respect of them, very public. People need to understand the importance of their leader thinking strategically. So we schedule a weekly vlog. A short video where we share helpful insights that came out of our thinking session. And we resolve to only do a vlog in a week when we have done a session, and give them enough understanding of the process that they can draw their own inferences should we start to slip.

The easier we make it on ourselves when we fail, the more likely we are to do so. If the pain of missing a session does not outweigh the pain of the sacrifices of keeping it in place, then it isn’t going to work. We may think it will, but in a year’s time we will look back in regret. Like Cortes, sometimes we have to burn our boats.

This is very much about the natural impact of the catalytic mechanism on those who espouse the wrong behaviours. But in our case, the behaviours are our own. However, sticking with the intended principle helps us in two ways.

The first is that if, having accepted the importance of quality strategic thinking we are not capable, even after all of this, of delivering it, then we probably ought to accept that we are in the wrong job, and move on. This decision will probably be all the easier if our people, based on the evidence we are providing, think so too.

And the second is that we can metaphorically fire the wrong behaviours in ourselves before we start. If the me I see in the mirror is not the me that will step up to do what is required, then I need to fix that from the outset. We need to have the courage to become the person that is needed. And we can resolve to do this before we start. We can from the outset determine to expunge the behaviours that are unworthy of us, and put on instead the very best version of ourselves.

But let’s be realistic about ourselves and our circumstances. We will have bad weeks. Even bad periods. And when we do we need a strategy that will help us get back in the fight. We need a means of making it clear to ourselves that we are failing and that we need to fix it before it is too late.

They say that, in the pursuit of success, of those that don’t make it, only 10% of them actually fail. The other 90% just stop trying. And in most cases, this is not a conscious decision to actually stop. It is a delay, a deferment, a pause, a reduction, an easier option. It is something that sets us off down a slippery slope. A slope which, like Handy’s boiling frog, we don’t even realise we are on.

To combat this, we need some metrics. A way of recording for ourselves, and reviewing, the time we are spending and the quality of attention we are giving. This could be connected to the frequency and feedback on our vlog. We need to be honest with ourselves, and everyone else. And if we find things are starting to slip, then we need to revisit what we have really adopted out of the five characteristics above, and where we have taken shortcuts. And then readjust until doing what we intended to do becomes the least ‘painful’ option. One key way to keep this on track is to make ourselves accountable to someone – a life-partner, coach, mentor, our PA, and to keep them appraised of our metrics.

As we progress with this strategy, the topics we want to focus on will become very clear to us. Furthermore, we can always include in the publicity surrounding what we are doing, an invitation for others to propose topics. We can ask their views on the strategic questions which are most relevant to the future potential of our business and its people. And perhaps even vote upon the favourites. But both of these things may be a little way downstream. So, in the meantime, to get started, we have drafted a list of questions that you might want to consider.

Dilbert’s Scott Adams wrote: If you want to be successful, find out what the price is and then pay it.

The price of success for us and our organisations is that we need to take out time to do quality thinking in a situation where we can think at our best. And the cost of that will be borne in other things that we don’t do, and people who may get upset about that. As we cut the strings to circumstance, others will lose their power to demand our time. So we need to be ready to accept criticism and challenge, because it will come. But equally, we need to take responsibility for ensuring that we use the time in a way that will have greater benefit than what we are sacrificing for it.