A New Way to Think

managers in the layer above have got to start treating the people below them as customers—understanding their lives and needs, stepping into their shoes. That

For managers, the implications of this are clear: the only sure way to increase shareholder value is to raise expectations about the future performance of the company from their current level. Unfortunately, executives simply can’t do that indefinitely.

The group tasked with dreaming up strategic possibilities should represent a diversity of specialties, backgrounds, and experiences. Otherwise,

If the judge of the value of any product or service is the customer who chooses to buy, not the provider, then it is the provider’s people at the front line, in front of the customer, who are best placed to determine what the customer values. It is up to the rest of the company to help the people in the front lines, where the revenues come in, to s

Any condition that is put forward should be added to the list. The person putting it forward should simply be asked to explain why that condition would be necessary for him to be confident; he should not be challenged about the truth of the condition.

The previous exercise typically overshoots, and the list of conditions crosses the line between “must have” and “nice to have.” After finishing the list of conditions, the group should take a break and then review the items, asking, “If every condition but this one held true, would you eliminate the possibility or still view it as viable?” If the a

I typically advise structuring this step according to what I call “the lazy person’s approach to choice,” testing conditions in the reverse order of the group’s confidence. That is, the condition the group feels is least likely to hold up is tested first. If the group’s suspicion is right, the possibility at hand can be eliminated without any furth

If anyone persists with a critique, the leader should require him to reframe it as a condition and table it for discussion in the next step. For example, the critique “Customers will never accept differential pricing” becomes the condition “This possibility requires that customers accept differential pricing.”

Step 4: Identify the Barriers to Choice