Thinking on Your Proverbial Feet

We all know the traditional thinker pose- leaning over in deep rumination.

There’s a place for that.  AND, there’s a place for rough and ready, up on your feet, quick thinking. Becoming comfortable with thinking tools is one method that helps you with both approaches to effective thinking. 

You’ve been introduced to the Goggles Frame of taking a 360 degree objective look around at Positive, Negative and Interesting Factors of any thinking focus issue.  I discussed using this tool for assessment, evaluation and comparison in a variety of situations. 

Here’s another use of this handy-dandy tool for when you are called upon at short notice either to stand up and give a short briefing, “could you just update us…..?” Or when you need to facilitate a group discussion, making sure there is some balance in views expressed in order to fairly explore a topic…or maybe even in a longer, more detailed written report or article. 

Within the time frame you have-whether 2 minutes or 2 hours, you simply structure your comments and level of detail along the lines of the Goggle Frame:

• Positive: what’s working, what is going well or as expected, positive outcomes so far, what people like, where profits and growth opportunities are, or whatever encapsulates the positive aspects of your thinking issue, who’s working out, what good is being said
• Negatives: what’s not going so well, what isn’t working, where there is conflict or disagreement, where reality doesn’t match with theory, what people don’t like or react against, dissenting opinions, downsides, or whatever tells the story from the minus perspective
• Interesting: here is where you get to add your recommendations based on your views of what is interesting, what are the implications, what’s the impact over time, what else does it make you think of or require you to do, corollary issues, short versus long-term outcomes likely, other people, projects and resources it leads you to and so on.

Finish with your summary or conclusions. You will come off as very balanced in your views and as an effective leader in getting everyone to contribute in such a holistic way. This, is the opposite of ‘sitting down of the job’ as a thinker!