This was the case with M., a 31 year old professional saleswoman who had a small high end sheep leather coats import company. M. had recently lost here dream contract in early 2008 doing ‘big business’ with a nationally known prestigious clothing store. Since that time she had moved around a bit job-wise and slowly gotten herself into debt.

At the time when I starting communicating with her she had reached the point where she was willing to work part time for others, in a commission only based job. She was currently four months behind on her rent and was exhibiting the beginning stages of clinical depression.

M. lived in New York City by herself, most of her friends and family lived overseas. She did have a few friends in the area but she hadn’t seen very much of them recently because in her own words: “What friends I do have here, I rarely see anymore as I have withdrawn into my apartment. A typical weekend for me will be to stay up all night Friday night only to sleep for the next two days consecutively until I have to return to work on Monday.”

Through our introductory Online Counseling session M. revealed that she was falling into a type of depression and having all sorts of strange dreams whilst sleeping (12-14 hours). She could not afford health care at this time and did not know what she was going to do financially. The weekend she had contacted me she had simply decided to discontinue eating and stated that she, “did not even feel that hungry anymore.” It was later revealed that she had also been engaging in other activities that pointed to sings of her Depression. She showed signs of drinking binges beyond socially acceptable standards; there were also some concerns about promiscuity (with one of her potential client).

I assessed that M.’s life was spiraling out of control and the things that provided her with a feeling of self worth i.e. her job, her apartment, her standard of living in general – were all dropping significantly. She was trying to get past these difficult times and just reached the point where she did not know what to do.

Three Online Counseling sessions were needed in order to formulate my assessment and professional advice; generally speaking, I appreciate someone who is having a true awareness about him / herself and wants to take the right steps – and she falls into this group.

I had the feeling that M. is having ‘an o.k. personality’ and therefore is capable of getting through the current situation, if major changes would occur in four domains:
A. Drinking should be a definite target for a change in her life.
B. Job and Business re-structuring: This economy has no room for many high end products; leather sheep coats are definitely within the heavily affected range. Use your sales ability, and move into another area. You are good in that line, so do high commission jobs.
C. Love / Sex / Relationships – no more and never again with clients or potential clients. Adopt therefore another mission: to look inward for your ‘self assets’ and thereafter outward, to find the right one.
D. New business location – no chance in NYC. Costs are too high and market trends are alarming. You are single, I told her, with no real supportive social circle around your location. Transform this “negative asset” into a big “plus” and move int to a growing areas, economy wise. Neither you nor I are going to produce miracles that would beat the economy trend. Since I’m not a magician, only a professional, I could see no reason to support an effort to swim against the stream when she could float on it instead.

So the strategy is:
- Look for another business and or job, elsewhere in the US.
- Establish a new ‘you’ – no drinking, financial responsibility and healthy relationships.

M. questioned me on the necessity to move out of New York; she was slightly agitated by my recommendation. Our Online Counseling work has ended; the Small Business Advice I could give her was left untouched.

 
So far we have seen the common, known, logic, ‘Vertical Thinking’: we try to be nice, we bargain, and then we threaten. Our story takes us now to the creative thinking process ‘Lateral Thinking’ that the desperate fellow started to employ at this stage.
 
“The man remembered something from his childhood about the various characters that the children used to attach to animals: the lion is strong, the fox is smart, the chicken is afraid… and monkeys are bunch of imitators! They have no ‘ego’ of their own they would imitate and follow what they see…’Monkey see, monkey do.’

In a sudden, but well thought out plan, our fellow started to shout toward the monkey who was sitting safely high above on a nearby tree. The man was loud and sounded very angry. He moved his hands with rage. Then, as an act of contempt, he took his other precious hat, the only one that he had left and put it on his head. He then took it off and threw it hard with a lot of anger to the ground.
 
Our monkey did what his genes instructed his brain to do: he imitated the angry man. He screeched loudly, waved his hands in the air angrily and finally took the hat, and threw it on the ground. The man quickly grabbed it up and went on his way.”
 
Was our hero lucky, smart, genius? Well, it is up to you to decide. My story attempts to show how a spark of memory combined with a good application of common know-how (the genes…) lead to a creative solution that was necessary since the old methods were not effective any more.
 
 
I advised G that we were at the point, in our Online Counseling session, where it should be possible to understand why his boss wanted to see more of the creative, lateral thinking. It is definitely NOT because there is a natural biased preference towards creative thinking, no matter how nice and cultured it may sound. On the contrary: most of our daily challenges are better solved with the ordinary, vertical thinking method. To stress this point I’ll testify that most trainings and improvements processes are giving best results when they present learners with logical / vertical methods of analyzing situations and screening for the best decision that is appropriate for a given case. To conclude this point: the call for the creative thinking approach is neither the natural best bet nor the ‘politically correct’ thing to do.

It is the situation itself that call for creative thinking. Through my Small Business Advice experience, once the situation becomes unique or extraordinarily complex that is when ‘Lateral Thinking’ is called for. It is time now for the creative approach.
 
I advised G that if the company’s competitors were not playing according to the rules or if the common known tactics that had been already employed did not result with the expected turnarounds that your boss hoped for. Then the call for creative measures is justified. It implies that you all would welcome the ‘unthinkable’ thoughts; the non-logical but intuitive and gut-feeling reasoning for your suggestions; the application of new and yet unused ideas and methods; the fixture of your current problems with other tools then you have tried before. Your boss has determined that now is the time to “Think outside the box” for new possibilities and solutions.
 

As a Small Business Advice consultant I directed him first to look in his company’s policy manual for their specific definition of the terms if available. I then went on to explain what ‘efficient’ and ‘effective’ mean as they are usually listed in management textbooks.

Not only businesspersons or managers but anyone engaged in the processes of planning, organizing, managing and monitoring have a practical familiarity with theses terms. They usually are relating to various activates and situations that occur regularly in business and professional environments as well as personal situations. A little further clarification on this would be that “anyone” engaged in a managerial process may include the following: A housewife that runs the family affairs, a student that is going to be tested and graded, a retired civil servant who manages the household budget while saving what he or she can for a rainy day. These are just a few examples of positions where the terms “efficient” and “effective” might apply.

Generalities aside; let us talk in scientific and precise language now: 

Efficiency – is ‘to do the things right’; to be accurate, calculated and structured according to the up-to-date procedure, in order to achieve the highest yield in the least amount of invested resource or effort. Once you run your shop, house or life in efficient mode, you capture the amount of waste and get to your desired output while spending the least amount of input.

Here are some examples from my experience as a Small Business Advice consultant: a manager should calculate which activities would be efficiently done in-house and what would be better out-sourced in order to reduce costs. A busy mother must determine, working around a schedule, what route(s) to drop off three or four kids active in several sport or social clubs in various parts of the city. A student will retain more when knowing the best hours to study, based on his or her learning style and personal daily arousal cycle. The retired investor should monitor not only the yield, but also the managing costs of the fund he chose to invest in.

Effectiveness – is ‘to do the right things’ in order to not only meet current expectations, but the overall desired product. That means: to make the right decisions of what to do or what not to do. To let yourself or others know what direction to choose, and therefore what avenue to ignore.

After going over this information during our Online Counseling session, C. were able to relate it more specifically to specific situations. He had to ask himself if he had a good blend of management and leadership. MANAGEMENT: doing things right, according to the current procedure in order to achieve the highest yield in the least amount of invested resource or effort; this is efficiency. LEADERSHIP: doing the right things, while considering long term outcomes; this is effectiveness.