OK, this is shameless self-promotion, but I have to say that I’m really looking forward to the challenges of 2010.

New Book: My friend Leo Hopf and I have finished the final rewrite on our strategy book that will be published in May or June of this year. ReThink, ReInvent, RePosition: 12 Strategies to Make Over Your Existing Business has been in the works for a while and our publisher moved it to the front burner. The timing is perfect for companies as they come out of the current recession.

New Offerings: I’ve been facilitating workshops focused on critical and strategic thinking for about six years now. I’ve added two workshops to my offerings.

• Making and Influencing Better Business Decisions is the “follow-up” to the strategic thinking workshop.
• ReThink, ReInvent, RePosition is a one or two day workshop exploring the twelve strategies and challenge of changing an ongoing business.

New Office: The southwest has appealed to me for quite some time, so I’m adding an office in Tucson, Arizona. Now all I have to do is build a book of business.

It’s the end of the year and the decade and I’m facinated with all of the “top ten” lists coming at me. I now know the top ten medical stories, the top ten vacation spots, the top ten movies, the top ten songs, and on and on and on.

I’d like to compile a list of the top ten individual or collective lapses in good thinking from the past decade. Here are a couple of my nominees.

• What were the mortgage companies thinking when they gave NINJA (no income, no job, no asset) loans for mega-houses?
• What was Merck thinking when it kept Vioxx on the market after it’s own studies showed it to increase risk of heart failure?
• What was management at Pontiac thinking when they introduced the Aztek? (See if that doesn’t bring a smile to your face?)

Please add to the list. What were they thinking?

The Customer Is Always Right

Since founding Amazon in 1994, he has revolutionized retailing. Now he’s out to transform how we read.

For the past six years I have been conducting workshops on “critical and strategic thinking” for some of the better corporations in America. And in these workshops I cover the key attributes of critical thinking. Two of them seem to be lacking in the congressional “debates” we see played out in the news.

First, an aspect of critical thinking (or just plain good thinking) is the willingness to look at a situation from multiple points of view.  Every time I hear that congress “voted along party lines” I realize that the people who are deciding things that affect my future have abdicated their responsibility to think! This is “groupthink” at its best/worst. If all we need is a tally of party votes, we should fire all of our senators and representatives (and save a TON of money) and let a clerk tally the votes.

Second, good thinkers realize that complex problems (like healthcare, like the national debt, like the wars) do not have known or even knowable solutions – they require experimentation to discover possible part-solutions that can be combined to find a reasonable total solution. As long as both parties see this as a win-lose situation they will never undertake the bold experiments that are needed to find real solutions. They are unwilling (as seen by their actions) to risk their party reputation for the good of the country. Sorry, but that seems gutless to me.

What do you think?

Yes, I was MIA for while (but you probably didn’t notice). Time really is a scare commodity.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about all the men and women who “get it done” in most businesses – the “middle” managers.

Picture this, it’s a holiday party and you and all the guests are eagerly awaiting the dinner bell. You strike up a conversation with your cousin TJ, the Director of Operations for a large firm. TJ has enjoyed a fairly successful 20+ year career with this employer since starting in the management training program. TJ is smart and hard-working and has moved up the ranks, gaining greater responsibility and recognition, surviving the “right sizing” of the early 21^st century and currently holds a very visible, high-pressure role. It has always been interesting to hear about TJ’s career journey because it sounds so exciting and rewarding.

But this year things are a bit different. TJ seems less enthusiastic, distracted, and even appears exhausted. You notice that TJ’s career adventure has become simply a job. “It’s just not like it used to be,” TJ explained. “Business is changing so much and it seems to me as if the rules of the game are changing. The pressures are mounting and my job is harder than ever before.”

The Rules are Changing

TJ’s situation is not that unusual for many middle managers. The rules of the game are changing and those changes come from all around us: expanded responsibilities because of globalization and a virtual workforce, advancements in technology and the use of the internet resulting in a 24×7 reality, mobility of the workforce, changing employee expectations as Boomers exit and Gen Y enters the workforce, expanding consumer power because of excess global capacity, and the constant pressure to maintain costs and improve profitability for our shareholders.

Each of these changes or trends has resulted in a marketplace that looks very different from what the previous generation of middle managers saw. The situation is further complicated by the reality that these changes are all happening concurrently.

What are your TJ’s experiencing and what can you do about it? I have some ideas and will comment later.

Sooner or later, congress is going to pass legislation affecting your industry. Right now it’s all about health care, but sooner or later your environment is going to change, no matter what your industry. When that happens, managers at all levels will be faced with decisions that have to be made in response. What are some of the attributes of “better” decisions?

Heres’ my list. Please add to it.

The decision makers:

• Consider the “futurity” of their decision. That is, they consider long term implications as well as the short term.
• Address the real issue (This may sound strange, but ask any consultant about being asked to solve a problem that was not the real problem.)
• Consider multiple points of view (their POV is only one of many.)
• Actively consider the risk involved with the decision.
• Understand ALL of the criteria that will be used to make the decision.
• Consider the ability of the organization to execute the decision.
• Expose and vet the assumptions underlying the issue and decision.
• include emotional and cultural realities in their deliberation.
• Are willing to consider the “cons” as well as the “pros” of their favorite option. 

Many of you are already good at making decisions. What would make you better? What should I add to my list?

One of the harder aspects of critical thinking is to be willing to accept that your point of view is only one of many points of view addressing a particular situation and that they are just as real as yours . You may not like them; you may disagree; but they are real.

The challenge you face is to consider them and take them for what they are – legitimate expressions of concern. If you ignore them, you are guilty of lazy thinking.

Consider our health care system and the many points of view that need to be considered by those attempting to improve the system.

• To people with good company paid insurance, the system is just fine and they see no need for change.
• To the uninsured, the system is divided into “haves” and “have-nots” and all that they know is they are not even in the system.
• To insurance companies, the system is part of a business ecosystem and they know that they have to keep their shareholders happy with decent profits.
• To a Medicare recipient, healthcare is a promise from our government for a lifetime of work.
• To a patient with long-term illness, the system is slowly driving them into bankruptcy.
• To a healthy young adult, the system is something they may need sometime, but not right now.
• To a hospital executive, the system is overly complicated and rife with administrative duties.
• To a doctor approaching retirement, the system is the reason to give up a lifelong passion because it’s “just not worth the hassle.”
• To a conservative, the system has no need for government.
• To a liberal, the system needs government involvement.

And on, and on, and on.

Take a look at our healthcare system and consider some of the points of view.

Now, without falling back on a predisposed ideology (which is a single point of view) consider actions “we” could take to improve the overall performance of the system.

Not so easy, is it? How would you like to be an “independent” in Washington? Must be lonely.

We need people who will think about the problems with health care, not simply use ideology to drive their position.

What do you think?

The medical community refers to high blood pressure as “the silent killer.” It’s a disease without obvious symptoms and many people, unfortunately, don’t even know they have high blood pressure until a stroke or heart attack kills them.

The “high blood pressure” of strategy is the set of assumptions that the strategy is based upon. The assumptions may have been fine at one point in time but may have degraded over time and may well be wrong when the strategy is stressed.

The roll-call of strategic irrelevancy often finds degraded assumptions at the heart of the matter.

• Manufacturing companies assumed they needed lots of raw material and work-in-process inventory until the Japanese surprised us with “just-in-time” manufacturing.
• Airlines assumed a hub and spoke system was best until SouthWest Airlines got real good at point-to-point.
• Kodak assumed that film-based cameras would have about three more years of sales than they actually had.
• The entire housing and mortgage industry assumed that the price of houses would continue to rise year after year.
• Sears assumed it had a lock on middle class Americans.

Staying with the health care theme of the last few posts, what assumptions do you see your local healthcare providers making? What assumptions do you think they are making with respect to:

• Who will control your “medical home”
• Telemedicine?
• Insurance rates?
• Your attitude about safety?
• Defensive medicine?
• Medical tourism?
• Hospitalists and surgicalists?
• Electronic medical records?
• Elective surgery?
• Patient education?

All industry “truths” are built on assumptions that were true at one time or another.

How many of these truths do you think will prove invalid in the coming couple of years?

Concepts help active critical thinkers organize their thinking. Sometimes the simplest of concepts work the best.

Reflect on the reality of workers in the healthcare system. I don’t care who you think about – it could be a doctor, a nurse, a technician, or an administrator. These workers are talented and dedicated and eager to do the right thing (most of the time). However, they “live” in the smallest box of a series of nested boxes.

It would be wonderful if the boxes fit in perfect alignment. However, the reality is more like:

Leaders at all levels in the system should be searching for answers to the following questions:

• How will the economy (and its slow recovery) affect the healthcare industry?
• How will your company respond to changes in the industry?
• How will jobs have to change to respond to changes in company strategy?
• Will the leaders and the workers have the skills needed for the job changes?

Most of the workers “in the trenches” simply want to do a good job, feel satisfaction, and have security. It’s up to the leaders in the government, the industry, the hospitals, the companies, etc. to make sure the people actually doing the work know why their jobs have to change.

Think about the turmoil surrounding healthcare; think about nested boxes. This is “creative destruction” at work and the system WILL (eventually) realign itself. What “pinch points” can you forecast as we reflect on the reality of changes to the system? What

Great thinking is built on great questions. Unfortunately, it seems to me, we have started with answers before we agreed on the important questions.

One of my favorite books is Asking the Right Questions: a Guide to Critical Thinking by Browne and Keeley. Let’s see how a few of their questions help inform the discussion about health care

• What are the issues and the conclusions?
  • Let’s stick with the issues from the last post: coverage, quality, cost, and choice. We are still wrestling with the conclusions about each of these issues. Coverage seems to be the big Democratic issue and a conclusion for many is that coverage needs to be universal. Cost and choice seem to be the big issues for the Republicans and tentative conclusions are that cost will be too high and that choice is important and will be hurt by a “government” agency.
  • Bring this down a notch and look at it from the perspective of a hospital executive: universal coverage is good; high quality is demanded; cost should “reasonable;” and choice may be bad if it adds to administrative costs.
• What words or phrases are not clear?
  • Do we have common understanding of: “rationing,” “free market,” “recission,” “Obamacare,” “level playing field,” “socialism,” or, for that matter, “health.” Think back to the days of the “quality” movement – lots of discussion by what we meant by quality.
• What are the value conflicts and assumptions?
  • Is the healthcare system run as a “zero sum” game. Does one party win at the expense of the other? Unfortunately all of the public “debate” has focused on differences and not common ground.
  • What line items should be used in a healthcare system report card? Until we have a common set of items we can cherry pick “the best system” to fit our needs.
  • There are a bunch of assumptions that have to be investigated: Will quality reduce cost (like it did for manufacturing)?
• How good is the evidence?
  • There are bits and pieces of evidence floating around, but little has been used in coming to terms with the debate.  Furthermore, when numbers are presented they are not always put in proper context nor made widely available.
  • What evidence would you want to see to come to grips with the issues of coverage, quality, cost and choice?
• Are the statistics deceptive?
  • The short answer is Yes. We have to make sure we understand the basis behind the numbers.

We have a lot of very smart people who can find answers once we have posed the right questions. From your point of view, what are important questions that no one seems to answer?