So you’ve heard of the strategic management theorists, right? The ones who say, “what you don’t measure, you don’t know?” Well, I am currently using this quote for all of my self-awareness.
In all seriousness, I really like the theory of strategic management. Its really easy to explain, and it really gives a lot of power to the planner over the manager. In general, managers tend to be more strategic than people who are more self-aware. Self-awareness comes in more of the form of a deep inner understanding of what you are doing. With planning, you start to get more strategic in a given moment, and your decisions will take you further in that direction.
Self-awareness is good for managers, but in the end, it is not really good for business. Most companies are run on a “me first” mentality, meaning they are not really interested in having managers who are more strategic. Instead, companies focus on how to get the best bang for the buck by cutting costs. The more self-aware you are in the company, the less strategic it will be.
The problem is that self-awareness can be a very slippery slope. For example, if your wife gets a stomachache, you wouldn’t be able to predict her next move in the kitchen. After all, you haven’t thought about it. The same is true of a person who has self-awareness. They might have a lot of insight into situations, but you still have to make a conscious decision about what to do.
In this case, your wife might be sick, but a person without self-awareness would be more worried about what to do with their stomachache. You might look at the kitchen counter and say, “Hmm, I think I’m going to go to the fridge.” You’d be wrong, unfortunately, because you’d be making the wrong decision. It would be better to find the source of your pain and then do something about it.
It takes a lot of conscious thinking about what to do to get things done. It takes a lot of cognitive effort to be able to execute the plan that you’ve decided to make. The fact is that you can’t always plan for everything. Sometimes you have to be the one to make the decision.
This is a good point, but i dont really understand what you mean here. Youre saying that you have to make the decision and then you can be the one to execute it. But I dont think thats how we normally think of it.
We dont know that it’s possible for a whole bunch of people to have a plan in their head, but they can do things. We know that we cant always go for everything.
The key is to figure out what you want to do and then figure out how you can get there. You can’t always do both. You have to be proactive and get to the point where you make the decision and then execute it. We often do things just because we want to, but then we find out later that it was completely ill-conceived.
The key to our success is to understand that we have to figure out what we want to do and then make sure we do it. Most of the time, we’re the ones who’s planning the actual action, but we don’t always. It’s just that we don’t realize that we do.
