Our Q4 2024 survey of global brands revealed something interesting. Two capabilities kept showing up as major challenges: entrepreneurial thinking and critical thinking. Leaders know these skills drive innovation, but they’re struggling to develop them in their organisations. This keeps playing on my mind, and I know through my own career so far that entrepreneurial thinking and critical thinking are absolutely key to driving success and growth.
I’ve just returned from India and spent 10 days in Rajasthan.
Nothing teaches you about entrepreneurial leadership quite like seeing a goat balanced perfectly on the front of a speeding motorbike!
The Beautiful Chaos of Effective Systems
Let me paint you a picture. I’m sitting in the back seat as our driver navigates roads that seem to have their own unique interpretation of physics. Cars zip down the wrong side of dual carriageways to avoid traffic jams. Horns blare constantly – not in anger, but as a sophisticated language all their own.
“Aren’t you worried about hitting that truck?” I ask as we drive the wrong way around a roundabout.
My friend laughs. “The horn told him we were coming.”
This isn’t recklessness. It’s an entirely different system of critical thinking. While most of us might have seen this as chaos, locals saw efficiency. The painted lines on the road aren’t commandments – they’re suggestions. The actual goal is simple: get where you’re going. Everything else is just detail.
For global leaders, this offers a powerful insight: sometimes what looks like disorder to outsiders is actually an effective system built on different assumptions. How many of your company’s “best practices” are actually limiting your team’s ability to solve problems effectively?
Capacity Limits Are Just Opinions
The trucks in Rajasthan tell a similar story. I watched as workers piled cargo to heights that would give a Western health and safety inspector a heart attack. Where I saw danger, they saw opportunity.
“Too much?” I asked, pointing at a truck that seemed to defy gravity.
“Never too much,” came the reply. “Just creative stacking.”
That’s entrepreneurial thinking in a nutshell. When someone tells an entrepreneur something can’t be done, they don’t accept it – they find another way to stack the boxes.
In today’s resource-constrained business environment, leaders who can question artificial limitations and find creative solutions to capacity challenges will outperform those who simply accept conventional boundaries.
The Half-Built Trucks
My favorite moment came when we drove past the Leyland truck factory. On the roads nearby were what looked like mechanical zombies – trucks with engines and metal frames, but no outer casing or doors.
“What on earth are those?” I asked.
“They’re testing the trucks,” my friend explained. “Making sure the important bits work before they finish building them. Fewer problems later.”
I was struck by the beautiful simplicity. Test what matters first. Don’t waste time polishing the door handles if the engine might be faulty.
How many corporate initiatives have you seen where teams spent weeks perfecting presentations before testing if the core idea actually solves the customer’s problem? This approach to minimum viable product testing can transform how your organization brings ideas to market.
From Rajasthan Roads to Your Leadership Team
These weren’t just interesting cultural observations – they were master classes in the exact thinking skills global organisations are desperate to develop. Here’s how to bring these insights into your leadership approach:
1. Create safe spaces for productive failure
I watched a driver attempt an impossible gap, realise his mistake, reverse out, and try another route. No one beeped. No one shouted. It was just information – that approach didn’t work.
Leadership action: Establish innovation zones where teams can test approaches without penalty. When reviewing results, make “What did we learn?” your first question, not “Why didn’t this work?”
2. Challenge artificial constraints
Most organisational limitations exist because “that’s how we’ve always done it.” Effective leaders question everything.
Leadership action: At your next executive meeting, identify three processes everyone complies with but nobody values. For each one, ask: “If we were building this company from scratch today, would we design it this way?”
3. Test the engine before painting the bodywork
Too many corporate projects focus on appearances before proving the fundamentals work.
Leadership action: For your next strategic initiative, identify the make-or-break component. Build and test just that part with real customers before investing in scaling or perfecting it.
4. Orchestrate productive conflict
I watched as drivers, pedestrians, and animals negotiated complex interactions through a chaotic but effective system of honking, gesturing and split-second decisions.
Leadership action: Intentionally bring together your most divergent thinkers for key decisions. Don’t aim for quick consensus, but create the productive friction that leads to unexpected solutions. Consider appointing a “devil’s advocate” role in important meetings.
5. Reward intelligent rule-breaking
The most innovative solutions often come from those willing to question “how things are done.” Or the word I used pretty much every day when I set up and created an international agency ‘why’.
Leadership action: Create formal recognition for team members who successfully challenged conventional thinking to solve customer problems or drive business results.
Strategic Flexibility, Not Anarchy
I’m not suggesting your organisation throw out governance or risk management. But somewhere between rigid adherence to process and complete chaos lies the sweet spot where innovation thrives.
The global brands that will lead in the coming years won’t be those with the most detailed procedures or the strictest compliance. They’ll be the ones that can balance structure with flexibility, that know which rules matter and which ones are just slowing them down.
What assumptions is your leadership team ready to challenge? What “impossible” market opportunities might actually be achievable if you were willing to honk your way down the wrong side of the road – metaphorically speaking, of course?
Finally, as a leader myself, I find I always learn from other experiences – be it travelling in India or simply ordering something online. Every day really is a learning day if you open your mind.
If your leader struggle with applying some of these tips it might be worth considering Design Thinking approaches or Lego Serious Play. We deliver both these workshops and can provide a fantastic starting point to get the entrepreneurial spirits moving.
Cognitive Union is a progressive, boutique learning and performance consultancy. We work with forward-thinking businesses. Transforming their people. Shaping their culture. Helping them embrace change and take on the world. Find this blog useful? Sign up to our email newsletter (bottom of this page), where you can receive articles like this and other insights (not publicly published), and you can also follow us on LinkedIn.