By Omagbitse Barrow
“Good Thinking, Good Product” was the popular saying made famous by the Japanese automobile maker Toyota in the 1980s. The saying holds true for all times, and successful organizations understand that there are certain thinking skills that are required to create bigger opportunities for the organization to create better products and advance their growth. Every organization that really wants to make a difference must create a culture around these skills and be deliberate about teaching, demonstrating and fostering the following:
Strategic Thinking: This is about focusing on the unique things that the organization can do to create value for itself and its customers. Strategy is about unique things that align the entire organization and requires tradeoffs. It comes from deep insights about yourself, your competition, market and industry and looking for a competitive edge based on these insights.
Creative Thinking: Creative Thinking is about finding as many novel ways (options) of overcoming a challenge or problem and being focused and audacious enough to implement the most appropriate of these options to create value for yourself and your stakeholders.
Unselfish Thinking: This is about baking a large enough cake, so that everyone can get a slice. It requires us to be collaborative, to share ideas, to be open to new ideas and to support and help others to co-create the organization of our dreams. Without it, people get subsumed in their ego, and fail to harness many opportunities.
Possibility Thinking: When things seem difficult or impossible, possibility thinkers thrive on their ability to keep digging, persevere and push for results. They are risk takers and understand that “nothing ventured, nothing gained”. They are prepared to fail and accept losses but fail forward by learning from their mistakes and failures.
Bottom Line Thinking: This focuses on results and the sustainability of results. It’s about having the eye for the numbers – your revenues and costs and using this analytical framework to take appropriate and difficult decisions. Bottom Line thinkers don’t over-romaticize the product, they are rational and pragmatic.
Barrow is a candidate for House of Representatives, Abuja 2019
