Three tips for improving strategy through mindfulness

IN the business world, mindfulness meditation — the practice of cultivating focused attention on the present — has caught on as a way to bring authenticity and intention to the practice of leadership. But can mindfulness also help entire organisations, particularly with crafting good strategy?

Here are three tips for bringing mindfulness to strategic planning:

• Take mindful moments:

One simple approach is to integrate straightforward mindfulness activities into meetings and retreats. By punctuating planning exercises with time to focus on breathing and recognise unnecessary distractions, you can create the conditions for intuition to arise. You can also integrate simple practices of focus and awareness throughout the workday.

• Explore alternative scenarios: It is possible to incorporate mindfulness without meditating. For example, scenario-planning exercises open decision-makers to alternative "stories of the future" that challenge assumptions and mindsets. Like meditation, the practice of nonjudgmentally assessing plausible futures is a practical way of considering unexamined thought patterns and making room for new ideas.

• Visualise positive outcomes: "Pessimism narrows our focus, whereas positive emotions widen our attention and our receptiveness to the new and unexpected," Harvard Business Review contributor Daniel Goleman writes. Organisational leaders can benefit from imagining organisational "end states" during strategy sessions. This can be as simple as asking and contemplating the question that Mr Goleman suggests: "If everything works out perfectly for our organisation, what would we be doing in 10 years?"

(Adapted from "Mindfulness Can Improve Strategy, Too" at HBR.org.)