When the pressure is on, the problem may not be how quickly your team can find an answer. It may be whether you’re asking enough different questions.
Thinking Differently in Tough Times
In the second of our three-part series, we explore how pressure can narrow our thinking — and why different perspectives matter when familiar answers are no longer enough.
Imagine revenue has fallen and margins are tightening. One leader immediately dives into the numbers.
Which costs can we cut? Which customers are most profitable? Where are we losing margin?
Another moves straight to action.
What can we change immediately? What can we streamline? Who is responsible for what?
Someone else turns to customers and people.
What are our customers telling us? How is this affecting the team? Which relationships do we need to protect?
And another starts looking beyond the immediate problem.
Has our market changed? Is our business model still right? What could we do completely differently?
Same business. Same problem. Four very different places to start. And importantly, none of them is wrong.
The risk comes when one becomes the only lens through which the problem is viewed. This is why cognitive diversity in teams matters, particularly when organisations are navigating uncertainty and familiar solutions are no longer enough.
We all have thinking preferences
People naturally differ in the way they approach information, problems and decisions.
Some instinctively seek facts and evidence. Others want structure and a clear path forward. Some pay close attention to people and relationships. Others naturally gravitate towards possibilities and the bigger picture.
Herrmann’s Whole Brain® Thinking framework describes these as four interconnected thinking preferences:
Analytical — logical, factual, quantitative and critical.
Practical — organised, detailed, planned and sequential.
Relational — interpersonal, emotional, expressive and people-focused.
Experimental — holistic, intuitive, integrating and imaginative.
We all have access to all four, but most of us have preferences — ways of thinking that feel more natural and require less effort. Those preferences can be tremendous strengths. They can also create blind spots.
As we explore in Whole Brain® Thinking for Problem Solving, repeatedly approaching problems through the same mental pathways can cause us to overlook valuable perspectives or move too quickly towards an incomplete solution.
When your preferred thinking doesn’t match the problem
An analytically oriented leader may seek more data when the situation actually requires experimentation.
A practical thinker may respond to uncertainty by creating tighter processes when the established process itself needs to be challenged.
A relational thinker may focus on protecting people and relationships when a difficult commercial decision can no longer be postponed.
An experimental thinker may generate new possibilities when what the organisation most needs is disciplined execution.
None of these preferences is inherently better or worse. The question is whether the thinking you’re using matches the problem you’re trying to solve.
Your team can have blind spots too
Thinking preferences don’t just exist at an individual level. Teams develop patterns as well.
A leadership team dominated by analytical thinking might be excellent at evaluating risk and interrogating data but struggle to move without certainty.
A highly practical team may execute brilliantly but spend too little time questioning whether it’s executing the right strategy.
A highly relational team may build strong relationships while finding difficult performance conversations uncomfortable.
A strongly experimental team may produce exciting ideas but struggle to convert them into consistent action.
This is where cognitive diversity becomes strategically important.
Research reported by Harvard Business Review found that cognitively diverse teams were faster at solving novel and complex problems than teams with less cognitive diversity.
Herrmann has explored the same business issue for decades. In Diversity of Thought is Critical to Business Success, we look at why organisations need different perspectives around the table.
But having different thinkers present isn’t enough.
Different thinkers need to be heard
Imagine your leadership team includes someone who habitually asks the question no one else is asking.
What evidence supports this?
How will we actually implement it?
What will this mean for our people?
Why are we assuming this is the only option?
Those questions can slow a conversation down. Under pressure, they can even feel unhelpful. But they may be exactly the questions the organisation needs.
The challenge for leaders is therefore not simply assembling people who think differently. It’s creating an environment where those perspectives can genuinely influence the outcome.
Notice whose thinking dominates the conversation.
Whose questions are routinely dismissed?
Who speaks first?
Which perspectives are consistently absent?
And when a decision feels obvious, ask whether that’s because it genuinely is, or because everyone examining it is looking through a similar lens.
Cognitive diversity is a business resilience issue
It’s tempting to think about cognitive diversity primarily as a team or culture issue. In uncertain conditions, it becomes something more. It becomes a resilience capability.
Businesses facing unfamiliar challenges need access to more than one way of seeing the problem. A team that can examine an issue analytically, practically, relationally and experimentally is better equipped to surface risks, identify consequences, challenge assumptions and uncover possibilities.
That doesn’t mean every decision needs endless debate, or every perspective should carry equal weight in every situation. It means having enough awareness to recognise when the team’s natural thinking is well suited to the challenge, and when it needs to stretch.
Recognising your default thinking is one thing. Being able to shift your thinking when the situation requires something different is another. That’s the difference between simply reacting to changing conditions and becoming genuinely adaptive.
Explore the diversity of thought in your organisation
Different thinking isn’t something to eliminate. Used well, it can become one of your organisation’s most valuable resources.
Explore how Herrmann helps organisations understand and leverage diversity of thought to improve problem solving, communication and decision-making.
Next in the series: From Reactive to Adaptive: How to Think Differently When Conditions Change
