Strategy · Mental agility

Change your lens

Strong strategic thinkers can change perspective without losing their grip on reality.

Inspired by The Six Disciplines of Strategic Thinking by Michael D. Watkins. This is an original explanation, not a reproduction of the text.

The idea

Mental agility is the ability to move between levels and viewpoints: today and three years from now, customer and competitor, operational detail and industry structure. Each lens reveals something and hides something.

This is not indecision. Generate genuinely different frames, compare what each predicts, then choose. A frame is useful when it changes which evidence matters or which options become visible.

Make it concrete

Sales are falling. Through a product lens, the answer may be missing features. Through a customer lens, onboarding may be too difficult. Through a portfolio lens, the product may be aimed at a shrinking segment. Testing all three frames prevents a feature sprint from becoming the automatic answer.

Keep this: When a decision feels stuck, change the level, time horizon, or stakeholder before adding more detail.

Try it

Describe one challenge from the perspective of a customer, a competitor, and a colleague two levels away. Which facts change importance?