21st-century thinking

The number of things around us is ever-changing, and they are changing at an increasing rate. Certainly, you have noticed changes in the last couple of years, months, and possibly even the last couple of days. No one can deny the change or the speed it’s happening.

However, most of us struggle to change one key thing: our thinking. Most of us fail to evolve our thinking to keep up with the changes around us.

Years ago, I was introduced to the phrase, “Same thinking leads to same results. New thinking leads to new results!” It seems simple; however, embracing or applying it to our own situations or circumstances is not easy.

You might ask, “Why is this topic of thinking so important, or why so important now?” There are four things that make this a key leadership challenge right now. We live in a time where we have never had more:

• choices
• information
• pressure to choose a side
• passion about our choices 

These four things create challenges for leaders, some of which they often don’t realize or think about. They also create additional challenges for teams and people these leaders are responsible for.

Leaders end up with pressure from super passionate people to pick a side—often with too many choices with too much information that isn’t always aligned or may even be conflicting or contradicting.

For example, there are many stories from the last couple of years where a CEO of a large company felt pressure to pick a side on a hot topic, like politics, religion, abortion, guns, etc. The CEOs frequently regretted the passion, choices, and information used to get them to choose because they didn’t think about the long-term consequences and wiped away the short-term feel-good of the decision.

This happens because we are challenged with a thinking problem, as our thinking has not evolved with the choices, information, pressure, and passion around us. Seldom do we even think about our thoughts, and we frequently don’t think about the thoughts of others. We don’t slow down to realize our thoughts, the decisions (or lack of) those lead to, and the consequences of the choices from those decisions. 

Because we have more choices, information, pressure, and passion, it can easily lead to challenges we did not even consider until it has created even more challenges for us.

So how do you know if your thinking adds to or takes away from the problems around you? How do you know if it’s helping or hurting the generation of ideas to move things forward? How do you ensure your thinking doesn’t create more issues, challenges, or problems? Do you and your team continually and constantly challenge your thought process? And who ensures you don’t fall victim to the same thinking leading to the same results? If you don’t know or don’t like your answers, you should find a business growth consultant who can help you evolve your thinking.