Page 59 - The John Adair Handbook of Management and Leadership

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• be inventive or creative artistically, mechanically or verbally
• fantasise about future events.

These elements of recall, visualising, creating, foreseeing and
fantasising contribute to effective thinking in business as much as
in the arts or scientific fields.

Conceptual thinking
Although a concept may appear to be an abstraction arrived at by
analysis, it has a different feel because:
1 it is a whole (and as such more than the sum of its parts);
and

2 it is a developing entity in its own right.

A concept is ‘something conceived in the mind’ and conceptual
thinking in business addresses such issues as:
• What business are we in?
• What are its strengths/weaknesses?

• What are its purposes/aims?
Conceptual thinking should be kept separate from decision-making,
even though decisions are made on the basis of the concepts that
we have.

Concepts can be used in ‘profiling’ business development, but they
then have to be made more specific in the form of proposals or plans,
before being implemented. Concepts can be a way of taking your
mind away from the particular and include the ideas of what ought
to be as opposed to what is. Good quality concepts will underpin
good quality business decisions. Therefore you should generate
clear well-defined concepts and develop them.

Chapter 3: Decision-making and problem-solving 49