Organisations often swing between extremes: optimism and pessimism, urgency and caution, creativity and analysis, action and hesitation. These swings create instability, confusion, and inconsistent decision‑making. Balanced Thinking is the capability that stabilises the system. Balanced Thinking is not about compromise or moderation. It is the disciplined ability to hold multiple thinking modes simultaneously, integrate them,…
Organisations rarely fail because people are unintelligent. They fail because people are thinking inside distorted informational environments. Here are the three most common failures of critical thinking — and how Strategic Readiness addresses them. 1. Failure 1: Mistaking assumptions for facts Assumptions feel like facts because they are familiar. Common examples: “People won’t change.”…
Critical thinking is often treated as an individual skill — something smart people do. But in organisational life, critical thinking is a collective capability that shapes readiness. Readiness is the capacity to choose well under limitation. Critical thinking is the capability that ensures those choices are grounded in reality. 1. Critical thinking creates shared…
Most organisations assume critical thinking is about scepticism, analysis, or “thinking harder.” But in the context of Strategic Readiness, critical thinking has a far more precise meaning. Critical thinking is the discipline of seeing clearly — perceiving functional information without distortion. It is the capability that prevents organisations from acting on noise, assumptions, or inherited…
Generative thinking is the engine of organisational evolution. It’s the capability that enables teams to create new functional information—the kind of information that actually changes what the organisation can do. In earlier articles, we explored: how to judge functional information, and how functional information changes during transformation, and why generative thinking is the cognitive expression…
Most organisations talk about innovation, creativity, and problem‑solving as if they are separate competencies. But beneath all of these sits a deeper capability — one that determines whether an organisation can adapt, evolve, and move into better futures. That capability is generative thinking. Generative thinking is not brainstorming. It’s not “blue sky” ideation. And it’s…
In organisational life, we often talk about creativity, innovation, and problem‑solving as if they are separate skills. But beneath all of these sits something deeper and more fundamental — a capability that determines whether an organisation can adapt, evolve, and move into better futures. That capability is generative thinking. Generative thinking is not brainstorming. It’s…
When organisations change, what actually changes? Most leaders answer with familiar categories: behaviours, culture, processes, systems, structures, strategy. But beneath all of these sits something more fundamental — something that explains why change succeeds in some organisations and stalls in others: functional information. Functional information is the patterned, relational information that shapes what a system…
In my work on organisational readiness, I often talk about functional information — the kind of information that actually shapes what a system can do. But leaders frequently ask a deeper question: How do you judge how functional information is? It’s a crucial question, because not all information is equal. Some information changes nothing. Some…
For years, many of us have repeated the optimistic mantra that “anything is possible.” It’s an appealing idea — energising, liberating, and emotionally uplifting. But when we look closely at how real systems work, especially organisations operating under pressure, the statement doesn’t hold up. In fact, it obscures something far more important and far more…