Don't Overthink It? 5 Key Questions for Quick Decisions

A social media fan asked for ideas on how not to spend too much time thinking about strategy. Having been in a business where it seemed you'd hear "don't over think it" five times a day, the topic hit close to home.

Now, with distance, I offer some strategic thinking questions to ask your team when you need to quickly move into convergent thinking mode during business planning:

• Does this issue really matter for our business opportunity? Will it materially change any important business results?
  
  
• What if we could only implement one innovative strategy in this situation? What would it be?
  
  
• If we had only 25% of the time (or resources), would we concentrate our efforts on this business opportunity?
  
  
• Without any additional information, what does our experience suggest as the most successful potential business option?
  
  
• If we had to halt our business planning and make a decision in the next five minutes, what would it be?

Couple any of these strategic questions with two things:

• A fixed amount of time for dialogue (i.e., "We'll talk about this for 10 minutes)

• A required decision (i.e., "When time's up, you have to briefly state what business decision you'd recommend or the course of action you'd take right now)

You may not get the most rigorously vetted, innovative ideas, but using a strategic thinking exercise and a limited amount of discussion time will help quickly catalyze your strategy decision so you can move to implementation. - Mike Brown