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By Herbert Taruwona Mbindi

Be change focused
THE needs of business communities are changing. Technology is driving the phenomenal transformations.

Resultantly people should be trained so they become able to create value for the organisations they are working for.

So that they become instrumental in managing for results as well as ensuring their organisations achieve their strategic visions. It does not help to put our hands in the sand or close our faces with stretched palms when faced with threats.

Be the radar
Managers must strive to become transformational leaders. To be so they should build their competency in the areas of leadership, people, business, technology and digital. Current performance of some companies big or small, private or public and even developmental agencies show clear evidence of minimum reflection, uncritical thinking by those in leadership positions.

The managers in these companies lack requisite competencies and skills to, say, information in order to advise strategy and drive sustainable business success.

For this expectation to become a reality people should not just be good in theory. Instead they must pursue qualifications that allow for a development of technical knowledge and analytical skills as well as critical thinking skills.

Be productivity and growth focused
One of the key objectives of strategic leadership is strategic productivity. Another is to develop an environment in which employees forecast the organisation’s needs in context of their own job.

Strategic leadership requires the ability to foresee and comprehend the business as well as work environment. It requires one to be a radar so that you can become objective and pragmatic enough to see the bigger picture and consequently become able to make apt contextual decisions in respect of the systems of rules, practices and expectations that determines how the organisation is directed and controlled.

As well as in respect of how to build frameworks within which the company will operate to ensure that the needs of the stakeholders are met.

This is the quintessential focus of corporate governance and strategic leadership. Its study enables one to appropriately appreciate the various responsibilities of the board of directors, shareholders, investors, managers, auditors etc and how these responsibilities are filled.

Equally the rights each has in terms of making decisions and directing company policy as well as continually monitoring proper implementation of them.

Pitfalls in strategic leadership
Leaders take the organisation into unchartered territories. They don’t necessarily provide readymade prescriptions for success.

Neither do they promise instant solutions to all problems that the company is facing but they should take the organisation through a journey towards its desired future state. This involves inter alia providing a framework for solving problems and addressing questions. Such responsibilities have attendant challenges hence the need for leaders to take cognisance of some pitfalls so that they are not ensnared by them.

Essentially leaders in organisations must guard against using strategic management and strategic planning only to satisfy accreditation and regulatory requirements. Instead they should employ these tools to add value to the company’s processes.

Leaders should desist from getting into solution mode without critically thinking through the complex problems companies face in these volatile, uncertain complex and ambiguous times. Many a time problems businesses face need ‘‘slow fixes’’ rather than quick and easy solutions that might look attractive in the short run but fail with costly consequences in the longer term.

Where is the challenge? Or how is the challenge?
One professor admitted that while as professors they themselves have the ability to think critically, they learnt these skills as they earned advanced degrees in their disciplines.

But their students never develop critical thinking skills. According to this professor there are a number of reasons to explain this. First being that the traditional goal of education is ‘‘what to think’’ as such students focus their energies and efforts on the task of acquiring basic knowledge and transmitting it.

Admitted students find this goal alone so overwhelming that they have time for little else. The second goal of education ‘‘how to think’’ or critical thinking is often so subtle that instructors fail to recognise it and students fail to realise its relevance.

As a result, people do not possess the higher order thinking skills expected of them.
Take this reality, science educators and science textbook writers came to believe that they most seek to transmit as much factual information they have come to know about the natural world as possible in the available time. Learners are expected to memorise and learn increasingly more material.

As a result, acquisition of scientific facts and information took precedence over scientific methods and concepts. Inevitably, the essential accompanying task of transmitting the methods of correct investigation, understanding and evaluation of all scientific data, that is critical thinking, was lost by the roadside.

The situation became more severe in primary and secondary education resulting in well-known decline in the mathematics and science abilities of our learners. Higher education institutions inherit these students and are expected to deal with these deficiencies in scientific and critical thinking.

We trust that curriculum reforms underway will to a great measure address these shortcomings thereby become able to develop critical thinking skills in their undergraduates. Necessarily so as the business community now needs to compete in the global economy.

Widening skills gap — the need for urgent intervention
The general skills levels needed in the workforce are going up while the skills levels of potential employees are going down.

As such the economic pressure to teach critical thinking skills will fall on higher education institutions and colleges, because these skills, for the most part, are rarely taught or reinforced outside formal education institutions. Neither are they taught in public educational institutions.

It is not uncommon to hear someone in a business discussion thundering: ‘‘Its politics! Stupid’’ or ‘‘Fix the politics, the economy would naturally align!’’ You get surprised whether this speaker based decisions on a range of possibilities or what? Equally you ask where his or her decisions not affected by anger, grief, or plain bloody mindedness? These are sure things that get in the way of decision making.

Admitted the hallmarks of being human are such that we all carry with us a range of likes and dislikes, learnt behaviors and personal preferences developed throughout our lives.

A major contribution to ensuring we think critically is to be aware of these personal characteristics, preferences and biases and make allowances for them when considering possible next steps, whether they are at the pre-action consideration stage or as part of a rethink caused by unexpected or unforeseen impediments to continued progress.

The more clearly, we are aware of ourselves, our strengths and weaknesses, the more likely our critical thinking will be productive.

Noah’s biblical ark story — so relevant to business
Noah appealed to stakeholders to take ownership of a solution to an impending disaster. It was a “prevention is better than cure” approach. Research shows that it was not raining when Noah built the ark.

Also, he built his ark on top of a mountain. There are lots of critical thinking lessons discerned from Noah’s building of the ark story. Through it we see the importance of planning ahead. We also see the importance of not listening to critics.

Nobody has ever built a monument for critics. Do what is right, not what is popular. Noah stayed put and focused on what needed to be done. Finally beware of the woodpeckers inside the ark.

They are often a significant threat than the storm from outside. Some people in the ark were not rowing the boat at the same pace and in the same direction. Instead they were drilling holes and that is not a good thing when it comes to team work.

This article is prepared and presented in the interest of providing free career guidance and counselling to all people who value education and training as a critical cornerstone to success in life. Trust Academy invites all people, with or without O-levels as well as degree holders who have a dilemma or are unsure of what career path to pursue to visit their offices on 3rd Floor, Haddon and Sly building, corner Fife Street and 8th Avenue for FREE career guidance. Alternatively, WhatsApp Herbert 0773616 665 or 0712212179.