Strategic Thinking & Strategic Action

Fostering strategic thinking and strategic action by organizational leaders since 2007.

Flight 370 and strategic thinking
Strategic thinking Lee Crumbaugh Strategic thinking Lee Crumbaugh

Flight 370 and strategic thinking

The tragedy of a lost Boeing 777 airliner and its passengers has dominated the news, starting with 24/7 coverage by CNN. This news coverage has spawned and forwarded many theories about just what happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, some simple, some complex, some as far-fetched as flying into a black hole. The tremendous divergence of ideas, claims, hypothesis and theories about what transpired with Flight 370 is striking, and even disturbing if the standard by which to judge the thinking is logic. The torrent of conversation about Flight 370 offers an opportunity to explore how strategic thinking can be used to best assess a complex situation.  The applicable points for organizational strategists seeking to find the best path to a better future include situation/SWOT analysis, strategy formulation and risk assessment.

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Often wrong but never in doubt
Decision making Lee Crumbaugh Decision making Lee Crumbaugh

Often wrong but never in doubt

Our vocabulary is replete with phrases that express the dual way that we recognize, process and deal with the input that we receive in life.   In the introduction to his seminal book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Nobel Prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman writes, "As we navigate our lives, we normally allow ourselves to be guided by impressions and feelings, and the confidence we have in our intuitive beliefs and preferences is usually justified.  But not always. We are often confident even when we are wrong, and an objective observer is more likely to detect our errors than we are."  Kahneman's observation is backed by the decades of research that he and his late partner, Amos Tversky, conducted on judgment and decision-making.

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