Reverse Strategic Thinking
Familiarity breeds familiarity. Staying in the comfort zone creates idleness. Doing things using familiar thinking and procedures are recipes for continuing doing the same and the results shall then stay the same.
One way of beating familiarity is doing things in reverse. As much as this idea may sound odd; equally it is a great source for creative ideas and solutions. I wrote a presentation on Reverse Businesses which attracted considerable attention. I am not repeating here the examples discussed in the presentation, but rather adding more examples to reflect on the value of doing things in reverse.
The trigger for me to write again on this topic is the buzz that Geoff Hudson-Searle shared on bee. The buzz quoted the following:
Today’s most respected and successful leaders are able to transform fear of the unknown into clear visions of whom to serve, core strengths to leverage and actions to take. They enable us to pierce the veil of complexity and identify the single best vantage point from which to examine our complex roles. Only then can we take clear, decisive action.
William Rakow
The above quote made me think that it is great to envision the future. The normal procedure is to go in steps up the ladder to achieve the desired goal. How about then going in the reverse direction? Walking a step backwards from the goal to make sensible guesses of what could be the precursor to the final goal. Again, a step backwards till we reach the present time. I found an article that calls for exactly the same. I quote from the article “Backwards thinking is actually a type of cause-and-effect thinking. When you think forwards, you are looking for the effect caused by an event. A problem with this is that there can be many effects and it can be difficult to know which one will lead to the future in question. Thinking backwards is easier as, while effects can still have many causes, the route to the present from a future is often clearer than the route from the present to a future”. I may call this “Reverse Strategic Thinking”.
Going in reverse is finding new support from several disciplines.
Reversing defaults by not hiding them, but in fact magnifying them to bring them to the attention of your customers. This can be hugely rewarding as is explained in my presentation “Turning defects into value”. I strongly recommend reading this presentation for full explanations of the merit of this reversed thinking.
Reverse Takeover (RTO) - Investopedia- A reverse takeover can also refer to an instance where a smaller company takes over a larger one. It is so named due to the fact that it is the lesser expected arrangement of the traditional takeover of a smaller business by a larger one
Reversed roles- such as the teacher become the student and the student becomes the teacher. This reversed arrangement shall expose each party to the concern of the other. I would suggest extending this approach to CEOs and workers so that CEO would know about the difficulties that workers face.
Reversed Pyramid Training- in which of following the normal procedure of starting with light weights we start with the heavy weight. The rational for this approach is because you are performing your heaviest set first, when you are completely fresh and you don’t need to replicate that set for the rest of the workout.
Reverse Questions Order- I suggest this as an extension of the concept of reversed pyramid training. Instead of starting exams with the easiest question to reverse the order by starting with the most difficult one as the minds shall be fresh then.
Reverse Marketing- the easiest example is reversing the push marketing to pull marketing. BeBee is doing this very successfully with its affinity hives with the hives acting as the attractants to bees as per their desires.
There are great opportunities for those people who are ready to reverse their thinking and step out of their comfort zones.
"
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التعليقات
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #71
Love your comment and the sense of your father Karen Wilson. I am honored to be connected with you now.
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #70
Great comment Deb\ud83d\udc1d Lange, Brand Ambassador @beBee and you share a great idea for exploring the many possible directions that are open to us to widen our perspective and see things with new eyes. The task-allocations that you used in assigning the duties of teams is fabulous and allowa for a 360 degrees view of the world. I find this an excellent ideas for team games that may applied in training.
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #69
I am very pleased and thankful to you Jason Baudendistel
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #68
I say that a major part of the value a buzz has is hudged by the value of comments it attracts. Yes, and like you dear Edward Lewellen I am greatly enjoying the quality of comments on this buzz. I hope that dear would consider writing a book on dealing with emotional memories that distract us from going on with life.
🐝 Fatima G. Williams
منذ 6 سنوات #67
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #66
this is a great example on how to discharge memories from emotions as a way to discover the roott causes of what you experience. If so, how then we ask people to focus on the present with the realization that their emotional past control their present? Thank you dear Edward Lewellen for your great illumintion
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #65
So, this is in a way "dilution effect of memories" dear Edward Lewellen
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #64
You are so observant my friend David Navarro L\u00f3pez. I daresay that you have been a leading mark in Reverse Thinking. I enjoyed your quote because it adds great support to the need for inverse thinking. Our brains can be sometimes our prisoners.
David Navarro López
منذ 6 سنوات #63
Lance 🐝 Scoular
منذ 6 سنوات #62
I think not Ali.🚫 I'm just an emoji hacker and just choose emojis from my phone that might provide some pictorial aspect to the text. The effect, of course, is in the eye of the beholder. And that effect may be different from my intetention.🤔
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #61
Thank you dear Debasish Majumder and my response are in conformity with your comment.
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #60
Believe me my dear friend your comment is worthy of a dedicated book. I love it. You wrote "On occasion, though, the human mind can, and needs to, be pushed beyond its normal limits to find new possibilities". In complexity science we call this state being on the edge or far-from-equilibrium. It is a disruptive state (or could be so). When we work near equilibrium we may get new ideas, but far from it we get the disruptive ideas. The beauty of your comment is its showing us in simple terms on how to push the mind to the edge of creativity. As little has been written on this topic before, I believe you have a great idea for a new book. If you would consider the idea I shall be very happy to write a forward or testimonial. Please do.
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #59
I mean it as you are fully aware my friend Edward Lewellen
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #58
Thank you dear Lance \ud83d\udc1d Scoular. Will you be teaching a course on how to use emojis? This is a language on its own.
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #57
Absolutely my friend . I enjoyed your comment for it justifies what I wrote in the buzz why forward thinking is different from from backward thinking. I salute your comment and I concur fully with you.
Debasish Majumder
منذ 6 سنوات #56
Lance 🐝 Scoular
منذ 6 سنوات #55
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #54
Absolutely, and I always look for thoughtful differences for I get to learn more from them my friend Tricia Mitchell
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #53
Yes, but human behavior is complex dear Tricia Mitchell. Small actions may have a butterfly effect. I remember reading a story in which a floor cleaner was approached by the CEO of a big firm. The CEO asked him about his work at the firm. The cleaner responded by: I am the one who keeps the floor clean so that your employees don't get sick, so that they report to work in good health, so that their productivity stays high and they produce more and the company makes more profits. A small step or word of kindness may have much more effect than we can imagine. In these cases we start by working backwards to find the basic reason. I am not saying you are wrong in any way my friend. All what I am saying is that backward thinking might be of help.
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #52
will do
Harvey Lloyd
منذ 6 سنوات #51
Please tag me again, work and schedule are a bit hectic this time of year.
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #50
Harvey Lloyd_ in fact I understood your point and I was supporting it. I am sorry if my comment sounded otherwise. I am planning to write a buzz on this great exhange of comments. Thank you my friend for opening new spaces of thinking.
Harvey Lloyd
منذ 6 سنوات #49
Sorry for the confusion, i agree that working in a b-a process we can learn and become wise to ourselves. I was referring to the perspective of how we approach B-A. If we need a culprit then we will find one, if we need to meet our goal we will find ourselves. Having sat through many meetings when customers or projects are not going as planned.........I have experienced the right/wrong hours of discussions. This is the classic B-A styled meeting. My usual comment is that its all my fault, now can we set new goals to correct whatever deficiency. Your post is on point as usual. I was merely bringing up the fact that in the B-A process is what you make it. Great leaders realize that in execution the A-B process must mature and within this maturity we find the misunderstandings and correct them through a self awareness process.
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #48
Great thoughts again and I wonder Harvey Lloyd "Maintaining focus on the goal demands that we steer clear of justification/judgement styled conversations with our team members I believe so unless we follow a stepwise approach. SOmetimes we find ourselves in turbulences and in these case do you believe that working backwards in a stepwise fashion will be helpful?
Harvey Lloyd
منذ 6 سنوات #47
The first assumption is that by choosing to move from B to A...A goal or situation has established we have hit a dead end or some need for deep change. The review journey from B to A is directly impacted by the level of responsibility you took in A to B. The more responsibility you had/have will create a greater temptation, within your self awareness paradigm, to defend the journey. Quite the opposite will occur if your responsibility was less. With less responsibility the temptation is to distance yourself from the problem, leaving the responsible individuals isolated. Traveling from B to A can be a very enlightening process, but within professional circles the process can become/develop into a witch hunt. Whenever we insert a stimulus towards a goal it self generates responses from those involved, complexity. When we start to see results from our personal/responsable stimulus we are experiencing the varying responses to stimulus by others. What part of my original stimulus caused person X to go north and person y to go south? B to A. This would be a very self aware review. This process would enhance my ability to restate to my southern friend a new direction and move towards the goal. Looking at who is wrong and right through an B-A process would establish that i need to let my southern friend know they are wrong. Not necessarily inviting them towards the goal. This all stated at the exclusion of office or professional politics. In general your post is pointing towards one of the major "empathetic" processes. Understanding your role in getting where you find yourself can only be done through empathy with others who were a part of getting there. Maintaining focus on the goal demands that we steer clear of justification/judgement styled conversations with our team members.
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #46
This is a fascinating comment dear Harvey Lloyd. DO I agree with you on this "When we look at clutter and complexity as two of the words describing the process the goal is to simplify a journey so that we might better understand the future. We have to enter into the "backwards review" with the very simple fact, i am the common denominator in all the situations in which i engage"? Without hesitation my answer is yes. I wish to add a clarification here. If we go from A to B and then backwards from B to A we might follow the same path. SOmetimes, we don't because we have a hysteresis loop. The path is curved in one direction and is curved in the other and the two curves don't meet. This is noticed because we might change a situation by observing it. To look forward and backward may give us totally different pictures than we drew in our minds. We are the magnetic field that the magnetized iron is exposed to leading it to behave this way. For us to change a situation we are the magnetic field and we are responsible for the changes that we induced. Therefore, and again I concur with your great writing "We must be self aware before we begin a journey of "backwards". WIthout this key component it would stand to reason the same conclusion would be obtained whether moving forward or backwards". You opened my eye-mind to new thinking my friend.
Harvey Lloyd
منذ 6 سنوات #45
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #44
Interestingly, you wrote this comment my dear Tricia Mitchell while being engaged in a debate on this buzz on LI with a commenter who opposed some of the ideas in this buzz (if not all). I then found your very interesting comment. I am so happy with it because even when you disagree you express your differences elegantly. This is expressed in your solid comment by your writing "I may have misconstrued what you're advocating here, Ali, but that's what springs to mind when I read your thought-provoking buzz". Going from A to B doesn't always give the same result as going from B back to A because of what we call hysteresis loops. In complexity going from the base all the way up might lead to surprising results. SImple rules (simple workers) may interact and feedback to each other to form a complex domain with many troughs and peaks. Yes, the fitness peaks vary and we may need to move from one fitness peak to another as very brightly mentioned in your comment "...as life and business rarely go from hardest to easiest, but has peaks and troughs along the way". The only way to try to understand this complexity is going backward in steps so that we may find the basic rules that led to this complexity. Yes, we should never assume for it is the "simple" that may give us the "hardest" problems to solve and not necessarily the other way round. Too many great ideas that are worthy to stand out as discussions items in your comment my friend.
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #43
You simply got right Lisa \ud83d\udc1d Gallagher and your idea should be exercised on many fronts. Kids in their imagination sometime take the role of parents and in doing so reveal to the parents what annoys them.
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #42
Dear Edward Lewellen- it is comments of this quality that make beBee my platform of choice. I love your writing "... reverse thinking to help clear the clutter of strategies". This is a hugely important point. I wonder how wide its scope is, but soon deserves looking into. You highlight some glimpses, but they stretch my interest in the topic. I only became aware recently of the Reverse Pyramid Training. It surely deviates from conventional thinking. Being a neurologist in many ways my friend I wonder if the same extends the "muscles of our brains"! What is next and its familiarity is a great point and creativity is to turn familiarity into unfamiliarity. Again, a great point for further consideration.
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #41
Kevin Baker- interesting example and we need to remember that the turtle can cross a lake, but a hare can't swim (some claim they may do when forced by fear).
Lisa Gallagher
منذ 6 سنوات #40
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #39
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #38
I am tagging you Louise Smith for you are tagged in comment
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #37
May God bless you for your great efforts to help people out William \ud83d\udc1d Rakow. Be blessed.
Louise Smith
منذ 6 سنوات #36
We will be thinking of you, your family and friends and hope for a reasonable outcome. Take Care William \ud83d\udc1d Rakow
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #35
Please tag me when you do.
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #34
Thank you again Louise Smith for providing great examples of doing things in reverse and including reverse brainstorming. I avoided completely repeating the examples mentioned in my two presentations that are mentioned in the buzz. Reversed marketing, reversed selling, reversed psychology are just more examples of the same.
Louise Smith
منذ 6 سنوات #33
“Reverse Strategic Thinking” It seems to me that a lot of activities we do use this method. - conducting an experiment with results predicted but unknown then writing an academic paper about it using former research to introduce it - planning a week's menu then going to buy the ingredients - deciding on a holiday destination and a budget then researching famous tourist places, restaurants, hotels and transport I also like brainstorming as many solutions to a problem or action as possible, discounting the fanciful (negative) and considering the practical (positive). For often the practical are found by following the fanciful. A kind of Pros and Cons exercise from which clarity emerges.
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #32
You read my thoughts extremely well Joyce \ud83d\udc1d Bowen Brand Ambassador @ beBee will have a response to your valid comment.
Joyce 🐝 Bowen Brand Ambassador @ beBee
منذ 6 سنوات #31
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #30
Prior to your reading your comment Louise Smith I posted my previous question. Synchronicity works, doesn't it. Having read your comment twice I wonder if you should write a book on your teaching experiences as they seem to be diversified. I paused on this part of your comment "...if they don't have the same lustre for the teacher, for the students they are pearls "! Judging from my sporadic teaching experiences at different institutions I feel the need for greater info on this topic.
Louise Smith
منذ 6 سنوات #29
Ali \ud83d\udc1d Anani, Brand Ambassador @beBee Who would you consider to be such a leader in the world today? "Today’s most respected and successful leaders are able to transform fear of the unknown into clear visions of whom to serve, core strengths to leverage and actions to take. They enable us to pierce the veil of complexity and identify the single best vantage point from which to examine our complex roles. Only then can we take clear, decisive action."
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #28
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #27
Louise Smith
منذ 6 سنوات #26
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #25
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #24
Great and relevant quote Louise Smith buss as I quoted him in my buzz as well. William is a deep thinker indeed. You to Louise remind me of another example of reverse thinking. In complexity science once a new structure emerges the only way to try to figure out this emergence is by working backwards to identify the simple and interacting rules that led to complexity. Thank you for the inspiration.
Louise Smith
منذ 6 سنوات #23
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #22
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #21
Again, one thought that an idea might appeal to you Geoff Hudson-Searle. It is related to your forthcoming article on leadership. I suggest an added attribute of great leaders is being able to stand out as reverse leaders. I have some thoughts and I hope this comment would inspire you.
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #20
All readers should be thankful to you Deborah Levine for your your example, which serves as a great reminder for all of us. Thank you and I do hope to read buzzes and comments from you. You have knowledge that deserves greater exposure.
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #19
"But who creates the context? The more mindful we are, the more we can create the contexts we are in". Isn't this what you are doing exactly with your profound comments Geoff Hudson-Searle? You are acting on the stage of wisdom.
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #18
Again, the is an incredible example. You have the power of analogies Geoff Hudson-Searle on my previous buzz in which he referred to our societies as what I would call "reverse societies". The story of our societies now are reversed in that the hero protagonistt) is the anti-hero and anti-hero is the hero. You push the boundary of my mind and keep me puzzled to write about next time.
Geoff Hudson-Searle
منذ 6 سنوات #17
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #16
Fascinating questions Geoff Hudson-Searle and you make my imagination grow so rapidly. Every question you ask is a buzz on its own. I recall that in one of my buzzes that OI mentioned examples of creatures that grow younger as they get older. I have to find the link for the buzz. Your comment is simply one of the most ever comments that moved me and you too provoked my mind.
Geoff Hudson-Searle
منذ 6 سنوات #15
Geoff Hudson-Searle
منذ 6 سنوات #14
Geoff Hudson-Searle
منذ 6 سنوات #13
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #12
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #11
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #10
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #9
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #8
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #7
What a great and relevant quote my dear Savvy Raj!
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #6
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #5
You have a great story to tell them Javier \ud83d\udc1d beBee. Because you lived a rich life with such "reversed roles and jobs" that you have such a passion for all beBees. You attend to tags and comments immediately (as demonstrated in your prompt response to my tag in this buzz". It isn't surprising that you have such a great passion to beBee and bees. I hope that you soon would share the story of your reversed roles and how they affected your managerial style. You could even write a book.
Javier Cámara-Rica 🐝🇪🇸
منذ 6 سنوات #4
Ali \ud83d\udc1d Anani, Brand Ambassador @beBee I like the Reverse Strategy. I use to work as a doorman, an IT guy, a secretary, a product guy, a support guy, a salesman... whatever I can !
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #3
I believe the strategy of beBee is in full accordance with this buzz and therefore the honey is due to your sustained efforts Javier \ud83d\udc1d beBee and your dedicated team.
Javier Cámara-Rica 🐝🇪🇸
منذ 6 سنوات #2
Ali Anani
منذ 6 سنوات #1