This isn’t a discussion about how smart the boss is.

It isn’t about how many smart people are in decision-making roles.

Instead, think about the synergies between and among the organization’s parts. Does everyone share his or her best thinking in the councils of the business, in the conduct of the business? Everyone?

How would your company be different if you held the expectation that people will do rigorous thinking and research about issues before meeting to come to a decision? Are you surprised by market developments or competitors’ initiatives?

Do you have difficulty dropping outdated or inadequate paradigms for more robust ones? Do the same problems come back up on the team’s agenda, like weeds cut at ground level but never dug out at the root?

Do you tolerate intellectual dishonesty? For too many companies the answers to these questions has to be yes.

Too Impatient To Build Capability:

Frustrated bosses often take the bull by the horns.

They announce decisions themselves because it is too slow, tedious or frustrating to have the group think issues through to a conclusion.

Does your organization efficiently change its practices or processes based on what you’ve learned from after-action reviews, and do those changes stick?

When do you think you’ll have the time to change this pattern if you don’t do it today?

The answers to these and many other questions can begin to give you a measure of your company’s IQ.

Those same honest answers also point you in the directions that you need to go to begin to make your organization smarter.

Going forward in the 21st century, you know that you’re going to be faced with too much data, too much ambiguity and too much complexity for easy problem solving.

Success will go to the companies who can think most efficiently under those conditions and then act effectively on their conclusions.

36. Creating Your Company’s Thinking Profile

Tool Preview: Assess your company’s skill as a thinking entity. Create a profile of your company’s intellectual performance along several key dimensions. [Read Now]

Using Mental Models:

Think of a mental model as a metaphor. Creating a mental model is one of the methods people use to think productively about a complex issue or idea.

One common example is thinking of the brain as if it is a computer.

Computers are less complicated than the human brain, and by thinking of the brain as operating like a computer people can find it easier to consider how the brain does what it does and to discuss their ideas with others.

They know that brains aren’t computers, but by using something they do understand to discuss something more complex that they don’t fully understand, they make it easier to grapple with new ideas.

People commonly create and use mental models.

Every person in the world is an amateur psychologist. They develop theories of personality. They have images about how men are, or how women are, which they use to make predictions in new situations or to anticipate future events. They develop theories about how they have to behave in order to get what they need or to feel fulfilled.

The problem is that most people do not take time to really examine their assumptions.

They often don’t even put them into words. Instead, they tell themselves that they are relying on their intuition, and of course, they know that they don’t really know where their intuition comes from.

However, if people were able to articulate their models, theories or even their assumptions, they would be in a better position to consider them, to critique their effectiveness and then to modify them to make them more accurate or more powerful.

Playing As If You Mean It:

What does this have to do with business? The issue is raised to provoke you to think about your business and how your people interact to create value.

The model of the organization as a living entity has been used as a mental metaphor to stimulate your thinking about how organizations work.

There is another model that can be quite helpful to introduce you to thinking about how organizations think. It is the OODA loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act), or as it is better known, the Boyd Cycle.

In a nutshell, this perspective for thinking about how effectively you’re thinking comes from the pioneering work of John Boyd, a military pilot and strategist who determined that success in aerial combat is the result of rapid, measured thinking. He later generalized his theory to encompass all competitive activity.

As a combat pilot, John Boyd always played to win. He was involved in a competition where the stakes were the highest possible.

They were literally life and death. He spent a lot of time thinking about what makes a winner in aerial combat and developed a model that has proven to be very useful, not only in combat, but in just about any endeavor.

He identified a four-stage process that was both necessary and sufficient for successful performance.

He found that a pilot (or any actor, be it a person or an organization) in a competitive situation had to observe what was happening. Then s/he had to orient the information --- accurately interpret it and appreciate its implications.

Once oriented, s/he had to consider how to act on this information for best advantage – to make a decision. Finally, s/he had to execute the decision. Intentions had to be translated into action.

Each time pilots cycled through this process faster and more accurately than their opponents they gained competitive advantage.

When that advantage grew large enough, they won. They not only defeated their opponents, they survived to fight another day.

In using the Boyd Cycle you will find yourself changing the company’s orientation to a more aggressive, active posture.

This orientation moves you from a more passive stance, where you are reacting to the things that happen to you, to one in which your people are making things happen according to your plan.

You’ll be playing to win. You’ll be acting to assert your will in the marketplace. You’ll be playing like you mean it, rather than playing safe.