SWIFT THINKING WITH F.A.S.T

Article written by Daniel Theyagu (16122020)

Today’s organizations are driven by a result-oriented and knowledge-intense environment that is time sensitive. Surviving in such an environment would necessitate you to develop specific ability to think swiftly and become aware of the situation you are in so that you can quickly come up with workable solutions that resolves the issues or problems at hand. Interestingly this is not an insurmountable task, but it does require a fair bit of practice, confidence, and commitment. Antonio Damasio said: “Our brains can often decide well in seconds or minutes, depending on the time frame we set as appropriate for the goal we want to achieve.”

Many of the problems we want to resolve and the goals we want to realize requires a swift solution so as not to escalate the situation. You can train yourself to think swiftly and accelerate the pace of your solution finding skill. In addition, by becoming a swift thinker you could come up with a new range of ideas or solutions and make quicker and sound decisions. Swift thinking shows you how you can become pragmatic and practical in the way you perceive the situation you are in and being able to see opportunities in moments of crisis.  This will enable your team and you to perform productively and maximize the usage of the limited resources you have. In doing so you can achieve your intended results within the deadline given.

When you generate the process of swift thinking you can shave of the unnecessary information and noise that clutters your rationality. You become better equipped to clarify and create powerful new ideas, make better decisions faster and solve problems in just a matter of minutes instead of mulling through for hours and days.

Swift thinking engages four principles established in the acronym F.A.ST. By engaging these four principles you can become a swift thinker and continue to remain an asset to your organization.

Focus on the Big Picture

Too often problems become unsolvable as more and more data are added on to it. Data and facts are relevant to the problem-solving method, although becoming overwhelmed by these is going to be counter intuitive. When you become ‘data-rich’ then is tendency you become ‘action-poor’ as you entrap yourself in a problem-centric approach. What you should do is to move into a different paradigm and start thinking about the kind of solutions that you want which will help you resolve the issue that you are facing. This would mean that you become more solution focus. To do this you need to clarify the big picture. What do you really want and need and how this is going to change your current state of being?

Assess the situation

Assessing the situation that you are in will give you insights to the plan of action that you intend to undertake. To assess the situation objectively, try to identify the root cause of the problem that you are facing. Find out where the problem is originating from. Becoming situationally aware allows you to classify the originating problem into two categories. You can be amid a chronic problem that frequently recur, or it could be a clear-cut acute problem that needs to be resolved quickly. When you assess the situation in this manner you will know what course of action that you need to take with a view to solving the type of problem that you are facing. 

Strategize your plan of execution

Antoine de Saint Exupery said: “A goal without a plan is just a wish.” To be a swift thinker you need to strategize your plan of execution. You must be clear on where you are (the status quo) and where you want to be (the goal). From your status quo to your goal there is an execution gap that you need to fill. This is where you need to strategize on what you want to do that will allow you to reach your goal. When you strategize your plan of execution quickly identify the barriers and mental blocks that may prevent you or make it difficult for you to reach your goal. Once you have done this, you need to think on how such barriers and blocks can be neutralized, worked around or side-stepped to allow you to achieve your goal.

Trust your instinct

Agatha Christie mused: “Instinct is a marvelous thing. It can neither be explained nor ignored.” To be a swift thinker you must embrace both your rationality and instinct. They are like the two poles of the magnet. In science you have learnt that only the opposite poles of the magnet attracts, and the like poles repel each other. Likewise, too much rationality may cloud your judgement and may escalate to sense of intellectual arrogance. Intellectual arrogance will succumb you to make decisions that can be biased in that you may conform to one way of thinking and thus being prevented from looking at other possibilities. Only when you balance your rationality with your instinct you will start to exercise intellectual humility. This allows you to look at the big picture and see how what you do affects not only you but everyone else. Eventually my friends, you will ensure that you make decisions that benefits everybody in some way.