How Would an Investor View Your Company?

During a recent strategy session, I asked the leadership team to role play for a while with the following assignment: Assume you are a group of outside investors and you have recently purchased your company. “What would you do over the first 90 days of ownership to maximize the potential of your investment?”

What struck me first was the lack of time needed by team members to offer their responses. That and the certainty with which they stated their ideas, with great conviction! When we completed the exercise, we had a list of no fewer than two dozen ideas; action items the team was certain would improve the circumstance of the organization and in relatively short order. You can probably guess my response. If you know what needs to be done, why haven’t you done it yet?

Organizational leaders intuitively know the steps needed to improve business results. What then is in the way of their implementing these?

Certain imbedded ideas (biases) are at least part of the reason. Sunk cost bias, ownership of ideas, projects, products, defending past decisions and consideration of existing relationships can affect our thinking whether we are aware of it or not. In the roll play example above, these items are not a factor. Outside investors have just one idea: maximize the potential of the enterprise. Well, shouldn’t that be job No. 1 for the leadership team?

In his seminal book “Thinking Fast and Slow,” Daniel Kahneman asserts that most of us see things at the surface level and assume that’s all there is to it. Seems that in our day-to-day experience, we get used to situations, issues, problems, people, and the like. They become like wallpaper, there but hardly noticed, background noise. Sometimes, the simple act of changing our perspective (such as role playing) can unlock a different way of thinking, revealing insights that were there all along but clouded by other considerations.

To think strategically about the current and future state of things, doing so at a static level can limit creative thought. Assuming a different construct can provide a spark and allows us to consider matters from a new angle.

For more information on ways to ignite a creative spark in your strategic thinking, contact me at joe@ajstrategy.com