CHAPTER 3
Strategic Thinking
Introduction
As author Ellen F. Goldman noted in The Journal of Strategy and Management:
There is widespread agreement that strategic thinking is important for the direction and sustainability of organizations, but is often absent or at least significantly lacking. The gap in practice is fueled by historical confusion of the concept among both scholars and practitioners, where the terms strategic thinking, strategic planning, and strategic management are used interchangeably, and strategic thinking is referred to as both a noun and a verb.1
Since strategic thinking serves as a prerequisite for strategic business writing, we will use the definition of strategic thinking as identified in Wikipedia as “a mental or thinking process applied by an individual in the context of resolving an issue, winning a game, or resolving a problem, strategic thinking includes finding and developing a strategic foresight capacity for an organization by exploring possibilities, while challenging conventional thinking to foster decision making today.”
In 1963, General Andre Beaufre wrote that strategic thinking is a mental process, at once abstract and rational, which must be capable of synthesizing both psychological and material data. The strategist must have a great capacity for both analysis and synthesis—analysis is necessary to assemble the data on which he makes his diagnosis, synthesis in order to produce from these data the diagnosis itself—and the diagnosis in fact amounts to a choice between alternative courses of action.2
To help you understand how strategic thinking differs from conventional thinking, consider practicing the 15 traits outlined in the following section.
Top 15 Traits of a Strategic Thinker
To be strategic is to be innovative, resourceful, purposeful, and intentional, which is why so many top businesses use a strategic planning process to stay ahead of their competition. By thinking and planning strategically, professionals can also define a clear vision of their objectives, identify where the greatest opportunities lie, and create and implement an action plan geared for optimum results and success. If you want to become more strategic, practice one or more of the following 15 traits and habits.
|
Strategic thinkers |
Conventional thinkers |
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Future-based |
Tradition-based |
|
Open networks |
Closed networks |
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Long-term focus |
Short-term focus |
|
Willing to take risks |
Risk averse |
|
Able to prioritize |
Unable to prioritize |
|
Nimble |
Inflexible |
|
Lifelong learners |
Satisfied |
|
Creative |
Predictable |
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Self-reliant |
Reliant on others |
|
Focused |
Distracted |
|
Intuition |
Facts |
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Results |
Activity |
|
Encourage change |
Maintain status quo |
|
Growth mind-set |
Fixed mind-set |
|
Action based |
Process based |
1. Future-based: With a strong knowledge of the past and an awareness of the present, strategic thinkers maintain their focus on a future they are able to create. Sometimes they are aware of challenges, but oftentimes they remain oblivious to issues that will arise. Ironically, it is often this lack of awareness that allows them to create the future they envision. Michael Smithson from the Australian National University said: “One of the positive things that comes from ignorance is freedom. To have personal freedom you need parts of your life and your future that you don’t know about, otherwise you’re not free to make choices. Ignorance sparks creativity, with scientists, artists and entrepreneurs all capitalizing on it.”3
2. Open networks: If you continuously connect with people from organizations outside your industry or field, you are more likely to be exposed to people from different backgrounds, levels of education, and areas of expertise. Strategic thinkers label this activity as creating an open network of connections that gives them access to ideas that they would not likely have had access to. Recent research suggests that having an open network is “challenging, because it requires assimilating different and conflicting perspectives into one worldview; but it’s the sparks that fly when people of different backgrounds and worldviews knock against one another that actually make open networks so valuable.”4 Additionally, multiple, peer-reviewed studies suggest that simply being in an open network, instead of a closed one, is the best predictor of career success.
3. Long-term focus: With one eye on the present, strategic thinkers keep a strong focus on the long-term impact. One long-term strategic thinker is Amazon founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos. When thinking about launching Amazon back in 1994 as the Internet was just emerging, he used a regret minimization framework to think strategically. According to Bezos: “I wanted to project myself forward to age 80 and say, ‘Okay, now I’m looking back on my life. I want to have minimized the number of regrets I have.’ And I knew that when I was 80, I was not going to regret having tried this. I was not going to regret trying to participate in this thing called the Internet that I thought was going to be a really big deal. I knew that if I failed, I wouldn’t regret that. But I knew the one thing I might regret is not ever having tried. I knew that that would haunt me every day, and so, when I thought about it that way it was an incredibly easy decision.”5
4. Willing to take risks: Strategic thinkers understand the role of taking a calculated risk and do so, comfortable with not knowing the outcome. As Jeff Bezos said: “I raised $1 million from 20 investors, $50,000 each, they got 20% of the company for $1 million; 40 told me no. So I had to take 60 meetings to get 20 ‘Yes.’ First question was always ‘What is the internet?’ It was 1994, and early 1995. It has been one foot in front another, I think that is true for most businesses. You proceed adaptively, step by step, you figure it out, you have a success, then you double down on that success, you figure out what customers want.”6
5. Able to prioritize: Those with multiple projects happening simultaneously often need to use strategic thinking on a daily basis. Doing so requires one to prioritize tasks on a rolling basis from morning to night. Author Brian Tracy noted that, “Your ability to improve your organizational skills and prioritize tasks is a measure of your overall competence. The better the plan you have, even if as simple as creating a to-do list, the easier it is for you to overcome procrastination and get started, to eat that frog and keep going. One of your top goals at work should be for you to prioritize tasks by using your organizational skills to get the highest possible return on your investment of mental, emotional and physical energy.”7
6. Nimble: Changing direction, incorporating new information, and adapting to situations are all part of being nimble. To be engaged in strategic thinking requires you to remain flexible. Such flexibility is the cornerstone of identifying new solutions, answers, and strategies. In today’s hyper-competitive, ever-changing, and dynamic global marketplace, strategic thinkers need to practice being nimble as much as possible in order to achieve and sustain growth. Being nimble is linked to survival. Remember, it is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself.
7. Lifelong learner: American journalist, satirist, and cultural critic H. L. Mencken wrote: “The human race is divided into two sharply differentiated classes—a small minority that plays with ideas and is capable of taking them in and a vast majority that finds them painful and is thus arrayed against them and against all who have traffic with them.”8 Unfortunately, research supports Mencken’s observation. Recent research suggests that “regardless of how open-minded people are, or claim to be, they experience a subtle bias against creative ideas when faced with uncertain situations. This isn’t merely a preference for the familiar or a desire to maintain the status quo. Most of us sincerely claim that we want the positive changes creativity provides. What the bias affects is our ability to recognize the creative ideas that we claim we desire.”9 Even though people may accept it on one level; ultimately they reject it because it makes them feel uncertain. Strategic thinkers, however, commit to lifelong learning in order to practice being as open-minded as possible.
8. Creative: Billionaire Michael Bloomberg is arguably one of the most accomplished strategic thinkers today, and he clearly understands the importance of creativity. Bloomberg was fired from Salomon Brothers in 1981, in part because no one accepted his creative idea of financial data analysis and presenting it in real time. As Bloomberg noted, “Back then, most financial professionals didn’t know how to use a computer, much less have one on their desk. Organizations resist creativity and innovation and those that do inevitably fail because people are more comfortable with what they know than with what they do not.”10
9. Self-reliant: Engaging in strategic thinking, planning, and writing does indeed require collaboration, but it is anchored in self-reliance. As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: “There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better or worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.”11 Strategic thinkers try to figure out a way to move forward as they stay focused on their goal.
10. Focused: Staying focused in today’s hyper-connected world challenges even the most disciplined strategic thinkers. Remembering Pareto’s Principle can help. Management consultant Joseph M. Juran suggested the principle and named it after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who noted the 80/20 connection in 1896. The Pareto Principle (also known as the 80/20 rule, the law of the vital few, or the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, roughly 80 percent of the effects come from 20 percent of the causes. Essentially, Pareto showed that approximately 80 percent of the land in Italy was owned by 20 percent of the population. Focus on the 20 percent to drive results.12
11. Intuition: Colin Powell, former head of U.S. military forces and former secretary of state, remains one of the most adroit and skilled strategic thinkers in modern times. His leadership theories are a subject of study by many scholars and practiced by many of his admirers in the military and in public and private sectors, too. When it comes to making strategic decisions, Powell says that we need between 40 and 70 percent of the total information to make a decision. He believes that with less than 40 percent of information, we are bound to make a wrong decision. At the same time, if we keep looking for information beyond 70 percent, we may miss the opportunity. It will then be too late to act. According to Dr. Steven Anderson, a leadership author and analyst, we as human beings can tap into intuition to fill in the rest of 30 percent gap between the 70 percent information that we get and all the information required to make a decision. We need to trust our guts. Our intuition or guts come in handy to help make good decisions in spite of having less than complete information.
12. Results: Author Napoleon Hill noted: “The most mediocre idea acted upon is far more valuable than a flash of genius that resides only in your mind.”13 Strategic thinkers focus on results. Even though they lack some information, they are willing to take the risk and learn from implementing their idea. They are comfortable with failing and know they can learn from the experience. If they hold on to their idea they will never know if they can successfully translate theory into practice. On its web page, the consulting company Deloitte wrote that, “In a rapidly changing world, workgroups don’t have time to react to developments; members need to increase decision-making velocity without cumbersome approval processes, taking actions quickly and learning from each one.”14
13. Encourage change: Thinking differently to encourage change allows strategic thinkers to increase their ability to find innovative solutions. As Jeff Dyer and Hal Gregersen concluded, from their study of over 5,000 entrepreneurs and executives, almost anyone who consistently makes the effort to think differently can do so. Individuals labeled as innovators of new businesses, products, and processes spend almost 50 percent more time trying to think differently as compared to non-innovators.
14. Growth mind-set: Contrary to public belief, earning an MBA from an elite university is not the fastest way to reach the corner office. With an understanding that professional development is directly linked to personal growth, strategic thinkers maintain a growth mind-set and challenge themselves to grow and learn throughout their career. In one study of 2,600 CEOs, three different growth mind-set strategies were used: (1) they move into a smaller role, (2) they “take a big leap,” and (3) they inherit a mess. Of the CEOs, 97 percent undertook at least one of these catapult experiences, and close to 50 percent had at least two. As Elena Lytkina Botelho and her colleagues noted in a Harvard Business Review article: “The catapults are so powerful that even people in our study who never aspired to become CEO ultimately landed the position by pursuing one or more of these strategies.”
15. Action based: Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, stage designer, poet, and playwright who spent most of his life in France. Regarded as one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, Picasso demonstrated extraordinary artistic talent in his early years, painting in a naturalistic manner through his childhood and adolescence. During the first decade of the twentieth century, his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas. As Picasso said, “inspiration exists but it has to find you working.” Strategic thinkers like Picasso are action based.
The Need to Think Differently
Successful people understand that translating dreams into reality often involves the need to think differently. Life in the twenty-first century certainly challenges individuals to think differently about everything. We need to implement the process of thinking differently in our lives so that we become adaptable to the changes ahead. Amid today’s ongoing disruptive developments, it is important to remind ourselves that “the truth about change is that we tend to overestimate its speed while underestimating its reach.”15 In order for individuals to succeed today, as author Youngme Moon noted, they “need a fresh set of insights, not a fresh set of instructions.”16 But thinking differently, and moving away from the usual way of doing things, approach to life and work is a formidable challenge. Brian Kapler noted in the Harvard Business Review “people often refuse to relinquish their deep-seated beliefs even when presented with overwhelming evidence to contradict those beliefs.”17 As author Paul Arden wrote in his 2006 book Whatever You Think, Think the Opposite, people are trapped not because they make the wrong decisions, it’s because they make the right ones. According to Arden, “We try to make sensible decisions based on the facts in front of us. The problem with making sensible decisions is that so is everyone else.” As the current research indicates, both genetics and environment impact one’s ability to think differently.
Harvard psychologist Shelley H. Carson explains that creativity is an activity open to everyone both at home and at work. Scientists, investors, artists, writers, and musicians are just a few of the many occupations that benefit from creativity. Teachers, engineers, and health-care professionals can all benefit from developing their creativity. Unfortunately, many adults limit their creative thinking. Carson reported in her book, Your Creative Brain: Seven Steps to Maximize Imagination, Productivity, and Innovation in Your Life, that 60 to 80 percent of adults find the task of thinking differently uncomfortable and some even find it exhausting. Connecting the unconnected through associational thinking exhausts adults who have lost the creative skills once practiced throughout childhood. Unfortunately, the process of maturing from childhood to adulthood involves growing up in an environment that punishes anyone who thinks differently at home or at school. As Sir Ken Robinson noted in his 2006 TED talk Do Schools Kill Creativity?: “People grow out of creativity; they get educated out of it.” Education demands conformity and often runs counter to creativity that requires an individual to pursue a novel idea. Thinking differently requires someone to leave the “usual way of doing things,” while risking failure, ridicule, and nonconformity. That exposure is very anxiety provoking for many people. In addition to the research on the anxiety related to thinking differently, there is also substantial new work in the field of neuroscience.
Neuroscience research during the last few years suggests that the right brain/left brain distinction fails to provide a comprehensive picture of how creativity is implemented in the brain. The belief that the left brain is realistic, analytical, practical, organized, and logical, while the right brain is creative, passionate, sensual, tasteful, colorful, vivid, and poetic is becoming less unassailable as more research is conducted. In short, the latest research suggests that no one side of the brain has a monopoly on creativity. “The entire creative process, from preparation to incubation to illumination to verification, consists of many interacting cognitive processes (both conscious and unconscious) and emotions.”18 Many different brain regions work together during the creativity process. Recent evidence suggests that “cognition results from the dynamic interactions of distributed brain areas operating in large-scale networks.”19 For those individuals who claim they are too left-brained to be creative, this new research challenges them to think differently about how they think.
Highly creative people who think differently have figured out that failure is a learning experience and, as such, is a necessary and expected part of future success. So, while roughly one-third of anyone’s capacity for innovation comes from genetic endowment, two-thirds of it is still driven by the environment. As Jeff Dyer and Hal Gregersen concluded, from their study of over 5,000 entrepreneurs and executives, almost anyone who consistently makes the effort to think differently can do so. Individuals labeled as innovators of new businesses, products, and processes spend almost 50 percent more time trying to think differently as compared to non-innovators. Two examples of individuals who thought differently and changed their respective worlds were high jumper Dick Fosbury and skier Émile Allais.
In the nineteenth century, track-and-field athletes jumped over a horizontal bar for an event called the high jump. Athletes jumped over the bar using a straight-on approach or a scissoring of the legs technique as the jumper landed in sawdust landing pits. With advancements in the landing pads, jumpers started to implement the Western roll technique where the inner leg is used for the takeoff while the outer leg is thrust up to lead the body sideways over the bar. While athletes worked on improving their performance, Dick Fosbury—from Portland, Oregon—eventually discovered a new technique during the 1960s that would revolutionize the event. Fosbury started jumping over bars in the fifth grade using the scissor kick technique and cleared 3 feet 10 inches.
In high school, despite the dire warnings of every coach who watched him, he invented the ‘Fosbury Flop’ and reached 6 feet 7 inches. At the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, in front of 80,000 spectators, the 21-year-old Fosbury cleared a record breaking 7 feet 4 1/4 inches.20 After applying the Western roll technique for the early part of his career, Fosbury took advantage of the raised, softer landing areas and leveraged such developments to think differently. During his running approach, he directed himself over the bar head and shoulders first, sliding over on his back and landing in a fashion that would likely have broken his neck in the old, sawdust landing pits. During Fosbury’s early days of practicing his new technique at the University of Oregon, people said that his approach was unnecessary. The usual way of jumping over the bar was good enough. His approach went against the best practices of high jumping. Luckily, Fosbury ignored those early critics and went on to establish a new way of thinking and jumping.
Émile Allais also ignored critics with his revolutionary approach to skiing. Allais was a daring champion French skier who helped shape his sport by developing and popularizing a new style of skiing in the 1930s, with skis parallel to each other rather than angled inward in a V shape. The French Skiing Federation adopted that as its official style. Skiers all over the world, like high jumpers with the Fosbury Flop, started to use the parallel method of skiing. Simply by changing the position of his legs and skis, Allais helped promote a more smooth, efficient, and fun form of skiing. Jean-Claude Killy, the French skier who dominated the sport in the late 1960s, credited Allais for teaching him to take risks and hailed Allais as “the father of modern skiing.” Allais often challenged the status quo and did a somersault in an event and landed on his skis without losing time. The New York Times once described him as “a congenital candidate for the suicide club” and marveled at how he often seemed to be out of control before miraculously recovering. He impressed competitors so much that a German skier once called Allais “the greatest all-around skier the world has ever known.”
But exactly how does one go about learning to think differently? How does one challenge the status quo and help people develop new mental models? The act of thinking differently is not the same as learning how to do so. To find that answer we now turn to a more philosophical approach involving the concept of ending thought. It is only when we clear our minds that we can see clearly. Such clarity will then permit us to not only think differently but also accept such thoughts as viable options to whatever it is we are trying to accomplish. Ending thought is underappreciated, overlooked, and misunderstood. Let’s take a moment to learn what it means and the value it has within the art of strategic thinking.
Ending Thought
Jiddu Krishnamurti was a philosopher, speaker, and writer. He studied psychological revolution, the nature of mind, meditation, inquiry, human relationships, and how to bring about radical change in society. He constantly stressed the need for a revolution in the psyche of every human being and emphasized that such revolution cannot be brought about by any external entity, be it religious, political, or social.21 Ending thought was just one of the many topics he discussed throughout his life. By “ending thought” he did not mean to stop thinking altogether. Ending thought meant to clear one’s mind of the clutter in order to see, think, and process clearly. It is difficult to engage in thinking, if our brains are filled with noise.
Many people were confused upon hearing of Krishnamurti’s concept of ending thought. Some discredited it and defined it as Oriental nonsense. Scholars believe that thought is the highest form of intelligence and action, the very salt of life and, therefore, indispensable. Thought has created civilizations and allowed man to make progress in the arts, sciences, and in business. The opposite of thinking would suggest that people are asleep, in a vegetative state, or daydreaming. Krishnamurti sought to educate those who misunderstood him.
For Krishnamurti, thought is the response of memory, the past. The past can be defined as something that happened eons or a moment ago. When thought acts, it is this past which is acting as memory, as experience, or as knowledge. Any thinking in the present is based on this past and directed toward pleasure or the avoidance of pain. When thought is functioning it is the past, therefore there is no new living at all; it is the past living in the present, modifying itself and the present. So there is nothing new in life lived that way, and when something new is to be found there must be the absence of the past, the mind must not be cluttered with thought, fear, pleasure, or anything else.
As Krishnamurti wrote: “Only when the mind is uncluttered can the new come into being, and for this reason we say that thought must be still, operating only when it has to—objectively, efficiently. All continuity is thought; when there is continuity there is nothing new. Do you see how important this is? It’s really a question of life itself. Either you live in the past, or you live totally differently: that is the whole point.”22
To live totally differently than those whose thoughts are stuck in the past, one needs to recognize that the brain is the source of thought. To think requires substantial work. To think strategically requires even more work. As Krishnamurti wrote: “The brain is matter and thought is matter. Can the brain—with all its reactions and its immediate responses to every challenge and demand—can that brain be very still? It is not a question of ending thought, but of whether the brain can be completely still. Can it act with full capacity when necessary and otherwise be still? This stillness is not physical death. See what happens when the brain is completely still. See what happens.”23 When the brain is still, one can see clearly. Then, and only then, can you begin to think strategically.
A Profile in Strategy #3: Doug Pederson
Strategic thinking often involves asking the question “Is there something more than this?” Doug Pederson, head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles of the National Football League (NFL) engaged in strategic thinking and forever altered his life and that of Eagles fans everywhere. In only his second year as a NFL head coach, Pederson guided the Eagles to a Super Bowl Championship.
After 14 years of playing football, Pederson retired but was unsure if he wanted to coach. He thought he’d try it to see if he liked it, and so and his family moved to Shreveport, Louisiana. He applied for the football coaching job at Calvary Baptist Academy, an 800-student K-through-12 school, where he took his sons to school every day. Pederson, in a Sports Illustrated interview reflecting upon his four years at Baptist, said: “I was extremely happy coaching and mentoring young men. Thinking back on those four years, it taught me a bigger lesson. I wondered, Can I teach football? Can I coach football? The advice that I was getting from some of my coaches and peers was, you need to go find out if you can teach and coach. Do you like the journey? Do you like the process?”24 Pederson liked coaching. And he liked coaching high school football. He started to understand the game from a different perspective. That perspective, when coupled with his love of coaching, allowed him an opportunity to ask himself one critical question. As Pederson said “After that fourth year, I just started thinking, ‘There’s got to be something more than this.’ That’s when I reached out to Andy Reid.”25
Pederson had played under Reid, who offered his former player the job as offensive quality control coordinator. Pederson took that job and would eventually follow Reid to Kansas City and became the offensive coordinator there. In 2016, Pederson returned to Philadelphia as the Eagles’ new head coach. If Pederson had not asked himself “Is there something more than this?” during his time coaching high school, the Eagles may not have been Super Bowl champions.
Thinking Exercise #3: The Milkshake Exercise
Objective: Assess your level of awareness as it relates to connecting with others.
Directions: Read the statement below and answer the questions.
In How Will You Measure Your Life, Clayton Christensen shares the story of a fast-food restaurant chain that wanted to improve its milkshake sales. The company started by segmenting its market both by product (milkshakes) and by demographics (a marketers’ profile of a typical milkshake drinker). Next, the marketing department asked people who fit the demographic to list the characteristics of an ideal milkshake (thick, thin, chunky, smooth, fruity, chocolaty, etc.). The would-be customers answered as honestly as they could, and the company responded to the feedback. But alas, milkshake sales did not improve.
The company then enlisted the help of one of Christensen’s fellow researchers, who approached the situation by trying to deduce the job “that customers were hiring” a milkshake to do. First, he spent a full day in one of the chains’ restaurants, carefully documenting who was buying milkshakes, when they bought them, and whether they drank them on the premises. He discovered that 40percent of the milkshakes were purchased in the morning by people who were generally by themselves and had a long commute to work.
The next morning, he returned to the restaurant and interviewed customers who left with milkshake in hand, asking them what was the job they had hired the milkshake to do.
“Most of them, it turned out, bought [the milkshake] to do a similar job,” he writes. “They faced a long, boring commute and needed something to keep that extra hand busy and to make the commute more interesting. They weren’t yet hungry, but knew that they’d be hungry by 10 a.m.; they wanted to consume something now that would stave off hunger until noon. And they faced constraints: They were in a hurry, they were wearing work clothes, and they had (at most) one free hand.”
The milkshake was hired in lieu of a bagel or doughnut because it was relatively tidy and appetite-quenching, and because trying to suck a thick liquid through a thin straw gave customers something to do on their boring commute. Understanding the job requirement, the company could then respond by creating a morning milkshake that was even thicker (to last through a long commute), and more interesting (with chunks of fruit) than its predecessor. The chain could also respond to a separate job that some customers needed milkshakes to do: serve as a special treat for young children—without making the parents wait half an hour as the children tried to work the milkshake through a straw. In that case, a different, thinner milkshake was in order.26
When marketing yourself to others, learn to apply lessons from the milkshake story and ask others what jobs they need done. Doing so can help you figure out if what they have available is a good fit with the type of work you are looking for. To use an analogy from this story, perhaps the organization is looking for a bagel but you have yogurt to offer.
Questions
1. Write down a situation you faced in the last few weeks, where you hired someone to fill a specific need (and no, we are not talking about hiring a plumber to fix a leak). What lessons can you take away from this observation?
2. Write down a situation where someone hired you to fill a specific need. What lessons can you take away from this observation?
1E. F. Goldman, A. R. Scott, and J. M. Follman. 2015. “Organizational Practices to Develop Strategic Thinking,” Journal of Strategy and Management 8, no. 2, pp. 155–75. doi:10.1108/JSMA-01-2015-0003.
2A. Beaufre. 1965. An Introduction to Strategy (New York, NY: Frederick A. Prager).
3“Ignorance Really Can Be Bliss,” Australian National University, June 10, 2015.
4J.Stillman. January, 2016. “This is the Biggest Predictor of Career Success,” Inc.
5J. Stillman. June, 2016. “How Amazon’s Jeff Bezos Made One of the Toughest Decisions of His Career,” Inc.
6Ibid.
7B. Tracy. “How to Prioritize Tasks with a To-Do List,” Brian Tracy Newsletter.
8H. L. Mencken. June, 1925. “Homo Neanderthalensis,” The Baltimore Evening Sun.
9D. Burkus. 2013. The Myths of Creativity: The Truth About How Innovative Companies and People Generate Great Ideas (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass).
10Forbes, “Greatest Living Business Minds,” no date. https://www.forbes.com/100-greatest-business-minds
11R. Waldo Emerson. 1841. “Self-Reliance.”
12F. John Reh. April, 2018. “Understanding Pareto’s Principle-The 80-20 Rule,” The Balance Careers.
13H. Lui. January, 2016. “This Principle from Amazon’s Team will Change Your Life,” Medium.
14John Hagel, et. al., “Bias Towards Action,” Deloitte, January 31, 2018. https://www2.deloitte.com/insights/us/en/topics/talent/business-performanceimprovement/prioritize-action-over-discussion.html
15J. J. Selingo. 2013. College Unbound: The Future of Higher Education and What It Means for Students. Las Vegas, NV: Amazon Publishing.
16Y. Moon. 2010. Different: Escaping the Competitive Heard. New York, NY: Crown Business.
17B. Kapler. 2013. “Free Yourself from Conventional Thinking,” Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2013/05/free-yourself-from-conventiona
18J. H. Dyer, H. Gregersen, and C. M. Christensen. December 2009. “Entrepreneurship The Innovator’s DNA,” Harvard Business Review.
19“Large Scale Brain Networks,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_scale_brain_networks
20J. Durso. 1968. “Fearless Fosbury Flops to Glory,” The New York Times. http://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/packages/html/sports/year_in_sports/10.20.html?scp=7&sq=1968&st=cse, (date accessed February 17, 2018).
21Visit https://www.jkrishnamurti.org for more information.
22J. Krishnamurti, “The Urgency of Change ‘Ending Thought,’” http://jiddu-krishnamurti.net, no date.
23Ibid.
24P. King, January, 2018. “His Career Forged in Darkness, Eagles Coach Doug Pederson Ready for Spotlight of Super Bowl 52,” Sports Illustrated.
25Ibid.
26“Clay Christensen’s Milkshake Marketing,” Harvard Business School, Working Knowledge, February 14, 2011.