3. Scuba divers: They wear diving masks, swimming fins, wetsuits and portable devices containing compressed air. This type of manager can provide strategic insights into the solution, but requires guidance and help to do so. These managers can provide ideas for improving overall business success, but they need a setup like a collective strategic planning meeting to contribute. When these managers prepare adequate data and market research before meetings and then meet through frameworks and models, they can generate efficient insights. However, because they only produce insights when equipment is heavy, there is little insight and often only happens in conference settings. On average, the study results show that 32% of managers can be classified as scuba divers.
4. Freedivers: They dive underwater without the assistance of a portable respirator, trying to reach huge depths. This is the type that strategic thinker leaders aspire to be. These managers regularly generate effective insights into the business. Although they use habitual problems, frameworks, and models to guide their ideas, they are able to summon the right tools and combine them with the right data to continuously generate insights to change the business. Research shows that on average, only three out of every 10 managers are free divers.
At first glance, it seems that the only thing that takes the manager as a freediver is enough knowledge and psychological models to think strategically regularly. Although these do account for the majority of cases, there are subtle reasons. Strategic thinking and actions that follow require an appetite for risk. The strategy requires focus and inherent tradeoffs, but many managers decide they would rather play a role safely. In most organizations, the commissioned sin (risk and failure) is punished more severely than the omission of sin, rather than taking risks, and missed a huge opportunity. Many managers consciously opt out of strategic thinking due to the consequences of politics (your reputation in the company) and career (not wanting to endanger the next promotion). That’s a pity. Roberto Goizueta, a successful former CEO Coca Colanoted: “If you take risks, you may still fail. If you don’t, you will definitely fail. The biggest risk is to do nothing.”
