My wife often gets asked “what does your husband do for a living”? This question is difficult for her to answer, as my career has not followed a traditional progression or function. This non-traditional path resulted from a thirst for knowledge, the desire to continuously improve, and the eclectic nature of my personality.
Most recently, my wife asked me this question on Friday 2/19 (my birthday). Instead of answering her question, I decided to “show” her what I do by demonstrating what I am currently establishing. I covered processes to optimize the business along with overarching portfolio management which will enhance executive decision making regarding initiative investments, provide transparency, and correlate initiatives to elements of the company’s strategy. Once I went through the pitch deck, process diagrams, and systematic tools, she paused for a moment and said “Where did you learn how to do all of this? Clearly this isn’t something they teach in college.”
I reflected and said “I try to assess a situation from multiple vantage points to determine where I could best add value and then tie that to what the business needs.” Her next question was “How can we ensure that our kids can think outside the box like this?” Hence, I wrote this article…
In my opinion, success is achieved through work ethic, intelligence, a bit of luck, and something I like to call the “X factor”. The X factor is the related to the ability to think dynamically, which results in inherent creativity, innovation, flexibility, and resiliency. Once this X factor is understood, we can take steps to further develop this type of thinking to unlock our potential.
Do you currently think dynamically? A quick test…
- Do you accept the status quo?
- Do you avoid new ideas, foods, cultures, and experiences?
- Are you very risk adverse?
- Do you avoid challenging authority?
- Do you follow traditions and not fully understand why?
- If in the U.S., do you almost always support the agenda positions of either the Democrat or Republican Party?
- Do you usually try to use logic to solve problems?
- Do you focus primarily on the here and now?
If you answered yes to more than one of the aforementioned questions, you have an opportunity to develop your dynamic thinking skills!
Tips on enhancing your dynamic (or lateral) thinking…
- Do not insulate yourself, in your professional and personal networks, with only like-minded individuals. Welcome a diversity of backgrounds, viewpoints, and perspectives. With social media, it has become increasingly prevalent to insulate yourself with similar views which has resulted in hyper-partisanship and a lack of tolerance for differing viewpoints.
- If you have a position, take the opposing view and construct counter arguments to your positions. This will allow you to assess your own positions critically and fully understand your positions on a deeper level. Additionally, this will allow for an intelligent defense of said positions. Construct multiple arguments against your positions and have your responses at the ready. My wife will tell you that I’m notorious for this.
- Cross train in different functions and specialties. For example, if you are in IT, try to understand how finance or another internal customer does their job to a degree where you can be somewhat proficient. This can even be accomplished during college where you can dual major/minor in complimentary majors. For me, I dual majored in computer information systems and financial accounting during my undergraduate education and it served as a way to start my career with a differentiated background.
- Be willing to take assignments and tasks outside of your comfort zone. This will help you learn new skills and also enhance your resiliency.
- Try to learn, if not work, in multiple industries. The more industry experience you have, you will be able to see things from a macro perspective. For example, I have experience in pharmaceutical, medical device, insurance, and DME which allows me to view the entire medical industry more broadly. I also have financial service experience, which allows me to understand the economic impacts of certain fiscal or monetary events on my chosen industry.
- Study multiple religions. This will help you understand history from a different lens, similarities/differences, and also how much of the world works today and why.
- Take time to be creative…write, draw, paint, code, develop, create!
- At work and on projects, make good usage of mind maps and brainstorming techniques. Make regular and healthy usage of unrestricted idea generation, both in individual and group settings, for alternatives identification.
- Never raise problems unless you have constructed one or more potential solutions. This is true in both professional and personal contexts.
- Regularly change up your routine. Introducing spontaneity into your life will force you to be flexible in the day to day, which also develops resiliency.
- This is not an exhaustive list to say the least, however the message is clear. Regularly take yourself out of your comfort zone and set goals in terms of learning new ideas, skills, functions, and industries. Knowledge is truly power.
Summary
Developing this type of dynamic thinking has many advantages and benefits if you are able to master it. It can allow you to stand out from the crowd and see solutions where others only see problems. Professionally, not only is this type of thinking beneficial to fields that have a creative angle (e.g. marketing, design, R&D), but can also benefit standard functions like operations and finance. In the operations example, imagine if you could see your supply chain or manufacturing process from a different angle and identify a hidden bottleneck. In finance, this could lead you to automate many of the manual activities that are performed, thereby making the function drastically more efficient.
Intelligence is something we are born with. Thinking is a skill that must be learned. – Edward de Bono
I am proud of what I have accomplished, personally and professionally, at a relatively young age. I cannot stress enough how much my thought process contributed to this success. For most people, I believe it can do the same for them if they are willing to look at things in a different light.
