It happened almost 4 years ago, and I still remember the situation clearly. We were in Athens on a sunny morning with the Enterprise Leadership team of a Global IT major. Greece had been reeling from 13 quarters of continuous negative GDP growth and we had been brought in to discover net new opportunities for growth for this organization.
Our standard approaches of leaning on the past to inform the present got us nowhere. This is when we decided to design a simple framework that would help everyone think better. It is often said that simplicity, synthesis and sequencing is the essence of experience. Allow me to share this framework, and we can then explore its various applications:
We came up with this simple framework on Incremental thinking, Innovative thinking and Multiplier thinking. Utilizing an outside-in approach, we then discussed the top 3 strategies for their customers across each of these different dimensions. Given that no one is perfect, we soon realized how little we knew of the customer and their strategies. Not to be deterred, we decided to build out our own proactive points of view for each customer, and surprised ourselves on the quality and depth of ideas that the team generated. To cut a long story short, we discovered close to $20M of net new opportunities in a market that had been declining consistently. This was not the highest amount we had discovered – however, given the challenging circumstances, the team felt good on their own discovery efforts.
“The Art of Complexity is the ability to keep things simple” – we have since applied this framework to leaders, managers and entrepreneurs in facilitated, group-coaching and 1:1 coaching environments to great effect. Simple frameworks, coupled with critical thinking, and facilitated well can yield rich dividends for the team.
Can I encourage you to apply this framework? Start with yourself:
- Incremental thinking: What are the 3 things that I can do differently that can help me over-achieve on my full year goals? What will I STOP doing for me to achieve more?
- Innovative thinking: What new or fresh ideas can I generate, or, what new habits can I form now, that would help me accelerate towards my medium term goals? What partnerships can I establish that will help me accelerate further?
- Multiplier thinking: How can I achieve my long term goals in half the time? How can I leverage technology to help me accelerate? What specific strengths align to my life purpose that can increase my “flow”?
If you are reading this, I am sure you can clearly see some applications of this simple framework – go ahead, try it out, and let me know how it goes!! Happy to talk to you about this, should you feel motivated to multiply your potential. Good luck, and share the goodness!!
