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Abraham Lincoln said “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe”. Of course he was talking about preparation and planning.
One could almost imagine him sitting quietly sharpening his axe in the shade of a huge tree whilst eyeing up the trunk, full of thought, visualising how he’d approach the job at hand.
When it comes to planning and strategy, visualisation is the obvious starting point. To overcome any problem different scenarios must be tested to see how they stack up against each other.
Let’s be honest though, when Lincoln was faced with his tree he had the luxury of holding the best tool for the job right in his hands, and was also faced with a reasonably straight forward task.
More complex problems require better tools to visualise possible solutions.
We’ve spoken to thousands of people about how they manage their employee rosters and despite everyone having their own little ways of doing things, the one thing that is common to them all is a need to visualise the solution.
We’ve noted that if a potential customer comes to us and doesn’t have a way to easily do this, then getting a good result is often left to good luck as the planning is just too hard.
I very much doubt that Lincoln sat there and spent the whole four hours contemplating just one way to drop that tree.