Are You a Strategic or a Systems Thinker? (Most Leaders Get This Wrong)

When you face a problem, do you ask “What should we do?” or “What is actually happening here?”

In this episode of T1 Leadership Insights, I share why I’ve never been the best strategic thinker in the room, and how being a systems thinker got me the fastest promotion in the history of EMEA at a big multinational corporation in Dublin.

We look at what Gallup’s CliftonStrengths and DISC reveal about how you think, why a 1975 paper on incentives explains most office politics, why the fastest executive teams actually use more information, not less, and the famous cobra story that turns out to be a myth.

Then I share the Think-Act Matrix: are you a Spectator, a Sprinter, a Cartographer or a Systemic Strategist? Plus one action you can take on Monday.

After working with 370 clients in 33 countries across 4 continents, I’ve learned this: the danger isn’t having a strategy. It’s having a strategy that doesn’t understand the system it’s trying to change.

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0:00 Strategic Thinker or Systems Thinker?

0:46 Two questions

2:56 My story in Dublin

6:43 The system rewards what it rewards

8:27 The cobra myth

9:54 The downside: speed

11:43 Fast deciders don’t know less

15:19 The Think-Act Matrix

17:08 Gallup and DISC

22:11 A client who saw the system

24:05 Your Monday action