A certa altura, Joseph Campbell em "The Power of Mith" diz qualquer coisa como:
"Isto eu sei sobre o desporto, o atleta que está num pico de forma de campeão tem um lugar calmo, um local de repouso, no interior de si, e é daí que vem a sua acção. Se ele estiver todo virado para a acção, não vai ter o nível de desempenho adequado."
Assim que ouvi isto fiz logo a ponte para um texto de Max McKeown retirado de "The Strategy Book":
"Strategy is about out-thinking your competition. It’s about vision first and planning second. That’s why it’s so important that you think before you plan. And that the thinking part of what you do is given a priority. Strategists who don’t take time to think are just planners.
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if you start the planning before thinking, you can end up with the wrong solution to the right problem. Or perhaps the right solution to the wrong problem. Or the least imaginative solution to a really important problem. You might miss out on all the creative ways you could have grabbed the very biggest opportunities. Your objective should be to make sure that imaginative, open, playful, passionate thinking happens before the serious work of planning begins. That's what strategy is about - thinking strategically.
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Strategy is about the shortest route between means and ends. It’s either about out-thinking the competition – or – even better – about finding new, even greater opportunities. Opportunities the competition hasn’t found yet. Or opportunities the competition doesn’t understand because it has done the kind of thinking that you have.
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There are always better ways of doing anything. There are always shorter routes for getting from where you are to where you want to be. ... There are forever methods, relationships and ideas just waiting to be discovered, and these can only be discovered by creating room - slack - for thinking."
As empresas bem sucedidas conseguem ter tempo para pensar, para planear e para actuar.
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E a sua empresa, quanto tempo, que espaço interior dedica a reflectir sobre o que pode ser, sobre as tendências que ainda estão mal distribuídas, sobre as oportunidades, sobre um futuro diferente do presente?
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E não basta arranjar tempo, tem de ser um tempo de qualidade, como diz David Rock em "Your Brain at Work":
"Awareness is a state in which the brain focuses lightly on an impasse. In the awareness state, you want to put the problem on the stage, but ensure it takes up as little space as possible so that other actors can get on. To minimize activation of the prefrontal cortex, don’t focus too hard, quiet the mind of other thoughts, and simplify the problem as much as possible. A good way to simplify a problem is to describe it in as few words as possible.
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In the reflection phase, you hold the impasse in mind, but reflect on your thinking processes, rather than on the content of thoughts.
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The objective is to see your impasse from a high level, not to get detailed. This activates right hemisphere regions that are important for insight, and allows loose connections to form. You also want to activate the easy, unfocused mental state that occurs as you drift awake in the morning, when ideas dreamily flow into mind.
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The insight stage is fascinating. At the moment of insight, there is a burst of gamma band brain waves. These are the fastest brain waves, representing a group of neurons firing in unison, forty times a second. The gamma frequency signifies brain regions communicating with one another."
E o ponto:
"Our brains love an insight. Mostly it’s about getting the prefrontal cortex out of the way, and allowing deeper signals to be heard."
