Smart Thinking, Thinking Agile
In regular occasions in my personal life and to some degree in my business experience I’ve come across a number good leaders who strive in their element and ensure success not only in themselves but also in the company, individuals and teams they lead. And the trait that stands out the most is their – smart thinking.
A politician purchased a box of 24 very rare and expensive cigars, which he duly had insured against fire – among other things.
Over the course of a month, having smoked his entire box of 24 cigars and without yet having made even his first premium payment on the policy, the politician filed a claim with the insurance company.
The insurance claim read that the politician had lost all 24 cigars ‘in a series of small fires’.
The insurance company decided that they would refuse to pay, stating the obvious reason that the cigars had been consumed by the politician in the normal fashion.
Our self-centred politician sued, and guest what – won. In delivering the verdict the judge sided with the insurance company, that the claim was frivolous, but conceded however that the politician held a policy from the insurance company in which it had warranted that the cigars were in fact insurable and also the company guaranteed to insure them against fire, without defining what it considered to be ‘unacceptable fire’ and was obliged to pay the claim.
To avoid blowing any more money on lawyers, and endure a lengthy and costly appeal process the insurance company accepted the ruling and paid $20,000 to the politician for his ‘normal fashion fire’ of the lost rare cigars. The insurance company insidiously banked instead on smart thinking or rather perhaps the lack of it in the politician’s case.
So off the smiling politician ran with his 20 grand cheque and cashed it. Whereby the insurance company duly had him arrested for 24 counts of arson.
With his own insurance claim and previous testimony from said case used against him, the disgraced politician was convicted of intentionally burning his insured property and was sent to prison for 3 years, 18 months on good behaviour and fined $30, 000. So much for being a smart politician – do they exist?
To think smart we have to live it, breathe it and develop good habits for possibility thinking. Being self-aware, constant self-assessing, it is a possible to learn to be a smarter thinker and reap the rewards from many areas of your personal and business life.
It offers you an understanding of the agile mind-set itself, as well as aiding your memory and help you replace negative, self-limiting habits with those that foster smart thinking.
It has been scientifically proven that you can learn new behaviours by creating new mental maps in your brain of who you would like to be and where you would like to be in the future which requires you to focus on your goals – think it, to achieve it.
Ask yourself, what your new goals would look like and how you would think smart to achieve them.
Then start picturing yourself achieving those goals and try to focus on similar successful past achievements. Then step into the picture so you can feel yourself actually doing what you’ve pictured.
Unleash your imagination where your mind has no boundaries creating your agile personal fantasy vision to cement in a concrete description ready to turn it into real accomplishments now and forever into the future.
In business as in life there are numerous obstacles to overcome, so ask yourself “How do I identify these obstacles?” “How can I overcome them?”
Some of the greatest smart thinkers of our time are those who saw things differently. To name a few; ‘Steve Jobs’, ‘Bill Gates’, ‘Jeff Bezos’, ‘Mark Zuckerberg’, ‘Richard Branson’ etc. Never fond of rules and having no respect for the status quo. They changed things and how the world operates.
They imagined, they created and they have inspired.
Inspiration is about learning to push your boundaries and thinking in new ways that lead to improved results. If you want to be truly different and the best at what you do then it is vital to have and open mind and be receptive to new ideas, concepts and approaches.
Put simply – don’t just be smart, think smart.
