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When and Why Does a Business Need a Helicopter View?
4 years ago
The bigger your business or project becomes, the harder it is to manage – seems pretty self-explanatory, right? You’re going to need more employees to execute tasks, more managers to guide them, more contractors and partners to deal with. This all is the result and the sign of a company’s success and is usually warmly accepted by business owners. However, there is a point in a project’s growth when the need of a different kind emerges.
This happens when a project gets too large to manage in an old way. When it feels like you’re losing control of the course of events. Your view of the project becomes obstructed by smaller issues and day-to-day tasks. Although this too is a completely normal stage in a project’s development, business owners sometimes fail to recognize it and to react properly. Today, we will tell you about the helicopter view and how it can help your company at this important stage.
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Imagine yourself walking in the field towards a house seen on the horizon. Your path is clear, you can see where you’re heading and where you have come from. Now imagine that you’re walking in the forest. You know that the house is somewhere ahead, but you have no clear directions, and trees obstruct your sight. But if you manage to find a high hill or climb up a tree, you’ll see the big picture, and the direction will become clear as if you were standing in the field.
The ability to see not only the forest and the trees, but also a big picture view is what’s important for a growing business. It is often referred to as “helicopter view”, “systems thinking”, or “clarity of purpose”. The concept was first implemented in the 20th century by Royal Dutch Shell Company, who’d noticed that their most successful managers all possessed this skill.
Being able to see the wholes, to spot the interrelationships, to view things with a perspective and a context is extremely important for planning a strategy and, even more, for executing it properly. So how does one develop the helicopter view skill? Well, it takes a bit of imagination and climbing a ladder of abstractions.
How helicopter view helps retain the big picture view
First of all, “zoom out” from the current situation – step back from short-term and urgent problems and concentrate on seeing the whole project view. Second, think about the present situation from a five or ten-year perspective. Imagine different scenarios for the future, and draw strategies around them. Finally, repeat the previous steps regularly. This helps you keep the right course during your strategy formulation process, while still keeping the details in sight.
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Ideally, the business owner should become more involved in strategic decisions, focusing on the big-picture. As many as possible day-to-day operational tasks should be delegated to other managers or employees who will be responsible for working on them.
In addition to the helicopter view being a great tool for strategy, it also works great for problem-solving. It causes you to stop looking at the isolated issue and take a step back so that you can see how a problem developed and best can be approached. Is there a larger issue behind it that needs to be resolved? Are there any new systems that could be implemented to prevent these problems in the future?
Tools of the trade for taking a helicopter view of your business
Using the right tools greatly improves the effectiveness of the helicopter view. KeepSolid Goals is one of them. It is a strategy building app and is designed in a way that benefits the big picture view. With it, you can see the whole business plan with its departments, their interrelated projects, important milestones, the status of tasks, and other crucial information – all within a single Mind Map and a single app.
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