Your most important skill: thinking

The only thing harder than running a business is running a business while helping your kids through entrance exams. One 11+ practice question was of such devilish cunning it would have made Blackadder’s proverbial fox proud.

There were four empty boxes, each of different sizes, and seven packages, each of different size. All dimensions were clearly marked so the volume could be calculated. The question made it clear all packages would fit into the boxes, so all the candidate had to do was match the packages to the boxes to win seven marks. 

The maths was simple and well within the skills of a ten year old. But this question wasn’t about maths – it was about thinking. Three of the boxes matched the dimensions of three of the packages. They had to go in there. Which meant that all the others had to fit in the last remaining box. The question rewards the ability to spot the connections and follow logic.

The ability to think must surely be the founder’s number one skill. If not, who are they going to out-source it to. A board? An investor? The leadership team? As a founder you want to be surrounded by bright young things, and empower everyone to think and act independently. But someone needs to keep a critical eye on the overall enterprise and the result of all that energy. That is the founder. It is why they are there.

Thinking is easy isn’t it? Well, no actually:

1. Founders are very busy and tired a lot of the time. Thinking requires time, space and energy. All three are rare commodities in the bustle of start-up life. We ran a successful strategic digital agency full of clever people. But we suffered from not thinking enough about our business. For our first three years we operated predominantly on a stimulus and response basis: win work/deliver work; get more people to deliver the work/win more work to pay them. We convinced ourselves we were too busy to do otherwise. We grew and learned a lot, but we only started making any money after we found time to think about the business we had to build.

2. Our brains are lazy by default. They may be the world’s most powerful supercomputers, but they have developed heuristics to enable quick decisions based on experience and probabilities. This means they are both fallible and subject to bias. And some of these, such as confirmation bias, where one gives undue weight to information that agrees with a pre-held view, are enemies of reason.

3. Emotions. It’s not easy to remain detached and objective when you analyse something you care so much about and have invested so much effort and passion into. 

Start-up best practices place a lot of emphasis on the scientific method. Coming up with hypotheses, testing them, and drawing conclusions. This is a good discipline and skill. But we’d also like to see more emphasis on thinking. Not everything needs to be tested. Not every problem needs a solution. Not every solution lies at the end of a test. Did we need to work out the volumes of those packages?    

Founders don’t need to be the next Edward de Bono, but they do need to be able to pass their ‘entrance exams’ and demonstrate clear thinking skills. So the next time you face a tricky problem -which will probably be today- take a few extra moments to think through your options and response. Better still, do it with your team, and get them practicing as well. If they are a little rusty, you can always find some empty boxes and packages…

UP AND TO THE RIGHT.