Strategic Thinking: Everything I Need to Know About Strategy I Learned At the National Zoo

It was elementary school field trip day at the National Zoo, and the lines at the animal exhibits were long and hot. Escaping to the deserted orangutan learning laboratory, called the ThinkTank, I was intrigued to find an exhibit titled, “Can Animals Think?” The scientists, I learned, used only three criteria to determine the existence of thinking in this simian world: (1) the evidence of ability to create and hold in mind an image, a mental representation of something not present; (2) the evidence of intention, having a goal or purpose and a plan to achieve that purpose in a certain way; and (3) the evidence of flexibility, the ability to discover multiple ways to reach a goal when the initial plan failed to work. Image, intention, flexibility. How many of the managers and MBAs I work with, I wondered, could pass the Orangutan's Test?