If Michael E Porter is the grandfather of strategy, then Albert Einstein is the guru of thinking. Back in the 1920’s Einstein said “we can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used to create them”. Then, in the last 20 years, the wise-man Porter said “strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it’s about deliberately choosing to be different.”
Somehow, we need to develop the skills which could be deemed somewhat opposing. We must see what it all looks like at the end-zone and be able to action what is to be done, today.
The reality is that not all people possess the innate personality of a strategist, rather their minds are focussed on today.
In fact, according to world-class INSEAD experts in 2019, less than 4% of us are innate strategists. Curiously, though, and so says our local recruitment companies, when it comes to executive job applications, more than 95% of us say we are strategic thinkers when applying for a job.
Another insight comes from the well-known 1960’s creation called Myers & Briggs personality tests. For those who have completed a personality assessment and been described as a strategist, you’ll be private, independent and self-confident. You’ll stive for perfection and achievement, and you honour commitment. You are usually quite analytical, can see the reason behind what you see, and the endless possibilities. According to such psychometric testing, you are only 1.5% of the population (of all 16 personality types). And here is the catch, you struggle with interpersonal skills and are not affectionate, and shallow forms of communication annoy you. You have to laugh now knowing we boast about being strategically-minded on our CV’s because it appears this type of personality is not conducive to high performance leadership.
And waving the women’s flag here, I must admit that female strategist is the rarest personality type of them all. Jeepers! The female strategist drops down to 0.5% of all personality types, and there are five male strategists to every one female strategist. Tell me its not true!
And for a local insight, the G11Team work with a cross-section of industry types. We are in close contact with academics and mid to small business owners. They seem to see the end-state quite easily. These people can see the future so well – they seem to live there. But they do have trouble actioning today. On the other hand, people working in resource companies (typically engineers and project managers) see today, rigidly. This group of professionals, when quizzed hard, can describe what the end-state could look like, but down deep, they can’t see it. It’s as though, they believe it will never happen.
If the data is correct, and such a small percentage of people possess innate strategic thinking skills, then the majority of strategic thinkers must have developed these skills over time. Training themselves to see an end-state and then reverse engineer the process to get the end-state. Honing their observation, critical evaluation and questioning skills.
We see high performing teams acknowledge and embrace different thinking. Members of these teams have a growth mindset – they recognise strengths and work to improve areas of growth. They build up their strategic muscles to make themselves experts in strategic thinking.
We are to acknowledge we all naturally think differently and then collect ‘diverse’ thinkers to fix Mr Einstein’s problem of 100 years ago.
Sally Carbon
Founder, Director and Principal Consultant
Sally Carbon is the founder of G11 Teams – setting up the business late in 2011 in response to serving a distribution company based in Melbourne which designed high fashion clothes in Paris – it was a fun way to kick start her own business. Her diverse client list grew, covering all sectors, and various organisational sizes and scales. Sally is a business strategist, helping companies to grow, finding their competitive advantage, and driving high organisational performance through leading-practice strategy. Sally has consulted for 15 years, specialises in strategic growth, across all sectors from financial services, not for profit, resources, agriculture, education, and private sector. She was formerly the Director of Docklands Authority in Melbourne, a large scale urban renewal the size of Melbourne’s CBD. Sally is also a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, and was first placed on a government board when she was 22 years of age. She is an Olympic and World Cup gold medallist, and has released nine books. Sally loves to work with like-minded high performance thinkers who enjoy feeling ‘uncomfortable’