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Business Rule #21:
Think Big, Think Fast
March 11, 2005
(PAGE 2 of 2)
What can you do to improve your ability to think well on your feet? Lee Iacocca says it’s the single most important thing you can do to advance your career. One way to get better, if you’re a manager, is to ask for input from your staff.
Witness the Work-Out that Jack Welch instituted at General Electric. Participants in this forum get a true mental workout. They’re allowed to take unnecessary work out of their jobs. They’re given a chance to work out problems together. Forty to a hundred people from all ranks and disciplines hole up in a hotel where the boss briefly addresses them, lays out an agenda, and then leaves the room. The group breaks into teams that tackle different parts of the agenda: listing complaints, proposing solutions, and putting together presentations…all in preparation for the third day when the boss returns.
The boss has no idea what the teams have discussed. All he knows, as he sits there in the front of the room on the third day, is that senior executives are there to watch and that the teams will present him with proposals on which he must make a decision. The boss can only agree to the proposal, reject it, or ask for more information by a certain date. That's it.
These sessions have proven to be highly effective—on many levels, not the least of which is the hundreds of thousands of dollars saved by the ideas presented. Work-Outs are but one example of the demands placed upon today's executives. The challenges—from the employees, the CEO, and the stockholders to the media, the technological developments, and the competition-driven global environment—are enormous.
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You can implement a similar scenario in your own workplace...if you are brave enough and really want to see results.
I also tell my students to practice. Here are some skill-building exercises:
1) At least once a week, have a friend give you a thought-provocative quotation. Without hesitation, respond. Interpret the quote while thinking on your feet.
2) Take two unrelated words and build an interesting relationship between the two.
3) When you're driving, turn on the radio and take the first word you hear. Then turn the radio off and speak cohesively and cogently for at least two minutes about the word you just heard.
4) Join Toastmasters—or form a group of your own—and give impromptu speeches.
By the way, if you were able to free yourself of your assumptions, you probably realized that the man pushing the car above was playing the game Monopoly.
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One way to get better, if you’re a manager, is to ask for input from your
