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Use Your Think Rhythm to Grow Your Top Leaders

By Patrick Thean

dateSat, Apr 30, 2016 @ 09:30 AM

Do you have a Think Rhythm to work on the future success of your company? And, do you do it with your leadership team? Take an hour each week and spend it working on either your strategic foundation or winning moves for future growth. Growth does not happen overnight. We would love to think that it does. Most overnight successes took 15 years to build. It just appears overnight to us because we did not see the way the idea germinated, how it was nurtured, how it finally took root and grew. No, we only see the big tree that represents the large and visible results.  

I was on a coaching call this week with a client, and we were discussing how to set aside time to think and work on the future of his business… Think Time… getting into a regular Think Rhythm. He was concerned that he might inadvertently distract his team with ideas that come out from these think time sessions. So we discussed some solutions:  

1. Set Up Boundaries

Agree with yourself and your team that this time is for strategic thinking, not operational execution. Remind your think time team that these sessions are to help bring ideas along and that no action items should result from this time, as initial ideas might not be the best ones. This is “Think Time” not “Do Time.”  

Rhythm Systems Think Rhythm

2. Use a Parking Lot

If you do come up with great ideas that can be operationalized, put it in a parking lot. Then during your next quarterly execution planning session, pull out this parking lot, review and discuss, and refine these ideas into priorities that can be executed next quarter.  

3. Grow Your Team

Involving your team is a great way to grow them as leaders. Guess what? For many of you, you probably already do this…. you just do it by yourself. You spend time on ideas, allowing them to germinate over many thinking cycles in your brain over weeks and months.  And then when it’s time to act, you share the idea with your team. I am only suggesting that you bring your team in earlier in the thinking process. This way they can participate and help you think about and birth the idea over time. By doing so, you are teaching your senior team about strategic thinking, and you are training them to think strategically and separate it from operational or execution thinking. This will help you to groom your senior team and grow them as stronger leaders. You are going to have a great future. You probably need to grow leaders for that future.

Rhythm Systems Patrick Thean's Summary from his Rhythm book

Patrick Thean

 

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