LEADERSHIP
40
Time to think
Being busy simply means being at the mercy of someone else’s schedule. It is not a badge of honour Dialogue Q3 2019
Walks have a distinguished role in business. Many leaders and strategists mention how marching outside, through the streets or the park, triggers their best ideas. Stanford University discovered that taking a walk is the single thing in business most likely to make you more productive. Contract-winning ideas have been won on the back of an afternoon stroll. Fresh air, it turns out, is a powerful catalyst for innovation. Sitting at a desk, devouring the endless Niagara of data, is massively overrated. As the entrepreneur Derek Sivers says, “If more information was
all that we needed to be successful, we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs.” A disrupted world calls for lateral strategic thinking. The new age of the ecosystem is a time where the companies that succeed will look outside their industry and discover opportunities to create customer value through new partnerships that span traditional silos and sectors. You won’t find the perspective you need by locking down your thinking. Studies show that almost identical numbers of senior businesspeople think that spending time on strategy is key to success (97%) as think
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Leaders and strategists are paid to think. They should start doing so, writes Dorie Clark