As an Exit Planner, most of my engagements involve assessing a management team. They may be the intended buyers of the company, or else they are key factors in the saleability of the business. The biggest and most frequent complaint I hear about managers is that they don’t know how to THINK. Business owners lament the inability of employees to discern critical paths, assess alternatives, or analyze complex problems. Examples of Thinking Shortfalls A CPA is doing final review of a client’s tax returns, as prepared by an associate. As with many business owners, the client has two related entities, one acting as the management company for the other. The reviewing partner notices the income from management fees in the one entity, but no corresponding expense deduction in the other. The associate’s explanation is that the client’s books didn’t show the offsetting expense, so he ignored it. The owner of an IT services company receives an irate call from a client. His technician has just spent two billable hours on the client’s PC, and it still won’t print his documents. When the employee is asked for an explanation, he points out that the client said he needed updates to his printer drivers, and that is exactly what he (the technician) did. At no point did he try to determine whether updating the drivers would solve the customer’s problem, or even what that problem was. The customer made a request, and the technician complied. He didn’t perceive the customer’s lack of technical knowledge as a factor. As the adage goes, “When someone asks you for a drill, what he really wants is a hole.” If you are in any business where the customer expects you to be more knowledgeable than him (and why would he hire you otherwise?) thinking is a core competency. I Can Look Up the Answer