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Is It Ok To Think At Work?

11 September 2011

Last week there was a great reaction to ‘Unconditional Strokes’, which are essential to happy working lives (and happy home lives). So, this week I was going to write about Conditional Strokes, which are for doing or thinking, and then I thought: most people at work get recognised for what they do, but how many get praised for thinking?

None, is usually the answer to that question. And yet people are often hired for performing well in tests that measure how well they can think. Amazing isn’t it that we specifically test for cognitive ability during recruitment and then ignore it during daily life. Hands up if you get scored for thinking skills on your annual appraisal?

In many organisations the managers ‘think’ and the juniors ‘do’ and then when business suffers in the recession and juniors are asked to work smarter… they’re not able to respond.

So if it’s Not-Ok to think in your organisation then you’ll probably suffer more as the recession bites harder.

If you want your business to do well and you want employees to be happy then forget complex models and keep it simple.

Just give people positive encouragement and constructive feedback for all the ideas they have (even if you don’t like them, or they need refining). An organisation needs all its brains to survive and Conditional Strokes for thinking are the lifeblood of success.

Thinking is essential.

What does your boss think?

Tags: thinking