The Heretic Logo

By PASCAL FINETTE

The Heretic is a free dispatch delivering insights into what it takes to lead into & in the unknown. For entrepreneurs, corporate irritants and change makers. Raw, unfiltered and opinionated.

be radical.

Oct 24th, 2018 Share: Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Share on LinkedIn

Dichotomous Thinking

The other day a friend uttered the words “Dichotomous Thinking” upon hearing me making a (strong) argument for a position I held. Admittedly I had to look it up – dichotomous thinking is commonly known as “black or white thinking.” It is a trait you can commonly observe in entrepreneurs.

There are definite dangers with this – you can get stuck in a wrong view and be judgmental of people, experiences, and things. Moreover, there are some tremendous benefits as it shortens your time to decide and for those who have honed their skills, it achieves excellence frequently.

The art is to hone this skill.

Personally, it took me a while to get there. I believe the most critical factor is your willingness and ability to regularly review your decisions, learn from them as well as be willing to be wrong, admit it and change course. Regularly (daily) review your decisions and check-in with yourself and your team if you were right or not. Perform postmortems to dig into the reasons why something worked and didn’t. Do this diligently, capture the results and review your insights regularly. Over time you will get better and better in your ability to make good decisions – which will make you a better (and more successful) leader.

P.S. Apologies for the long delays in getting The Heretic posts out; the last months (and the next couple of weeks) have been extremely busy. :)


1,288 Posts and Counting.
Don't miss the next post. Sign up now!