What Are The Underpinnings Of Visionary Commercial Thinking?
In all areas of business, we tend to celebrate those who think outside of the box, those who come up with solutions to problems that may not even have manifested yet. Of course, we all know the figures that are most spoken of in this conversation, be that Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Richard Branson, and more.
However, it’s not always easy to see where figures like this might propagate in embedded and highly traditional fields, such as the legal sector. It’s not as if you can have your own take on the law and what it means, though you can certainly use objective standards to formulate your own arguments where appropriate.
This begs the question – what are the underpinnings of visionary commercial thinking? Can the baseline approach towards new thinking be applied to most sectors, or can only some (like the tech environment) make use of it?
In this post, we’ll discuss a few methods you can use to implement visionary commercial thinking in your own sector, by properly analyzing what that thought leadership is based on.
Removing Friction
Removing friction from processes is a good way to optimize teams. That might not seem so visionary and more like a pretty basic strategy any manager would want to implement, but it’s important to note that a forward-thinking mindset isn’t necessarily about change at any cost, but doing the best with what you have and being aware of your capabilities.
As such, addressing root problems first is essential. No tree surgeon can prune a tree before they’ve addressed the rot in the bark, to use a visual example. So, that might mean integrating field service software, opening up communication lines, making sure good ideas rise to the top in team meetings, and implementing diverse teams to welcome more people and perspectives into the fold.
Predict & Understand The Market
To predict where the market will go, you have to understand the motivations and interests of the market right now. For example, when OpenAI released its large-language-model ChatGPT, Microsoft immediately invested thirteen billion dollars in the organization. This also meant designing an AI for Bing, their long-secondary search engine which was chasing Google for years. Now, all of a sudden, many tech enthusiasts suggest Bing is more reactive, more dynamic, and more useful thanks to the tool.
This doesn’t mean you have to throw money at the best new thing to understand where the market is going. As we’ve seen with Google Stadia, sometimes chasing a trend long after interest has already subsided (such as with streaming live game titles) can only do you harm, or lead to a failed end result.
Predicting the market means considering how consumer attitudes, priorities, and needs change. For example, many companies seeking to design tools to detect plagiarised or AI-generated written content are now awash, hoping to become the number one brand to protect academic environments and students suffering false accusations of cheating. This is a need largely unaddressed, but you can be sure whoever cracks this code first will excel.
Pay Attention To Your Team
No visionary is complete without a team to exercise their priorities. After all, anyone can write outlandish ideas on a notepad, what matters is being able to execute them. So, pay attention to each individual member of your team. Leverage their capabilities, sell them on your idea, bring them together with a cohesive plan, and learn to explain your vision in the simplest possible terms for brevity and legibility.
This is how figures like Steve Jobs managed to bring designers around him, and it’s how figures like Elon Musk (who may be controversial but no doubt effective) can inspire industry-leading rocket scientists to give new theories a try.
Know The Work Is Never Done
When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone, it wasn’t just the phone he was selling. It was an economy of apps and suites, a software package, and of course, a previous line of models in the iPod.
This isn’t to say you have to revolutionize an industry to bring visionary thinking to the fold. However, you do need to nurture a healthy interest, leave nothing out, and move forward with a sense of real curiosity. Legal professionals will often specialize, but have a healthy interest in all manner of law, be that employment law, family law, or criminal law.
If you can understand the work is never done, you’re more likely to roll with the punches and failures (which will always be present), and finally succeed thanks to your diligent effort.
With this advice, we hope you can inspire your own creative output, and lead with a visionary mindset.
