Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Time for Reflection in Business
In HBR: Need for time for reflection in business. I agree, it is just not done enough, especially as the need to get things done continues to expand. " ... The most disruptive, unforeseen, and just plain awesome breakthroughs, that reimagine, reinvent, and reconceive a product, a company, a market, an industry, or perhaps even an entire economy rarely come from the single-minded pursuit of the busier and busier busywork of "business." Rather, in the outperformers that I've spent time with and studied, breakthroughs demand (loosely) systematic, structured periods for reflection — to ruminate on, synthesize, and integrate fragments of questions, answers, and thoughts about what's not good enough, what's just plain awful, and how it could be made radically better ... "
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This is among the least known and most valuable bits of advice I've seen coming from HBR-- or anywhere else. In my own life, every significant value I delivered was made possible in large part by deep reflection, often spiritual after absorbing large amounts of quality information for considerable periods of time. Our business culture -- particularly mature orgs, look externally for ways to react, which while necessary, quite often leads to poor decisions. Back in my consulting days some of the smarter clients recognized they were too busy and otherwise not well matched to do engage similarly personally, but listened to others who did. Invariably they find it too difficult to compensate fairly, however, and so the benefits were almost always temp. I suppose in part this is evolution working in mysterious ways, however frustrating at times. .02-MM
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