Expanding the scope of thinking — how it helps achieve business goals and how to attain it

Why broad thinking positively affects business
How broad thinking affects achieving specific goals
How to expand the scope of your thinking

The concept of "thinking big" for business is actually not new. In particular, David Schwartz's book "The Magic of Thinking Big" was first published in 1959, but it cannot even be said that this idea was born then. Any breakthrough in business or life is often preceded by a broader view, not only of one’s store or individual service process but of everything that surrounds it, a perspective on the future, and one’s development opportunities.

Today you are trying to figure out how to buy hosting and register a domain for your first website, and even this seems like an overly complex task. But a few years pass — and now you are the owner of a media network, who not only understands the technical side of things but also can predict what will interest people tomorrow, build strategies involving tens of thousands of dollars, and is not afraid to approach industry giants with partnership proposals. Such a transformation is the expansion of the scope of thinking. But it can only happen if a person consciously moves in this direction.

When we constantly work in our field, two things happen: we have to respond daily to minor challenges, routine operations that take up all our time — and there is no time or energy left to make plans or radically change our mindset. So every entrepreneur risks getting stuck in processes and halting development. But, as stated in Lewis Carroll’s book "Alice in Wonderland": “it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. And if you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that”.

To build grand plans and move towards development, you need to look at the usual picture more broadly, and here’s why.

Why broad thinking positively affects business

The goal of every business is to achieve more each time, not only staying afloat but also developing. For this, the most important thing is to see the opportunities around you. Now, more than ever, it is important to also see the imminent risks, and this requires a broader perspective.

If you can think strategically, you:

can at any moment look at everything comprehensively, as if stepping back a few steps to capture broader details — how a particular streamlined process affects your business as a whole, where you are losing time or resources, what can be added;
see the trends forming around you to seize opportunities. If you know which area of the city will soon have a lot of people and therefore it is worth opening a café, you can invest money successfully. If you know which advertising is relevant and effective — this also directly affects the profitability of the business;
can timely attract talents. Besides understanding opportunities, it is very important to understand your limitations and the capabilities of other people. In particular, a truly good businessman doesn’t need to understand the intricacies of everything — from accounting to logistics — as much as being able to select people who know more than him in a particular field and correctly utilize their skills. A talented team is the key to success.

First and foremost, to gather truly talented people and motivate them to follow the direction you have chosen, you need to see the main thing in front of you — ambitious, strategic goals that will captivate others.

How broad thinking affects achieving specific goals

Thinking big means thinking about ambitious goals that attract many people, cash flows, and events. This could be starting or expanding a business, the next level in your career, education, or participating in some large professional event. Even the first attempts on this path can teach us a lot.

Before moving forward, you allow yourself the freedom to brainstorm, not immediately rejecting the most incredible ideas, not stopping yourself — and some ideas will definitely turn out to be realistic. If you stop every thought right away because it seems too bold, you will never come up with something successful.

On the way to any business goal, it is important to allow yourself creativity and unconventionality, and only broad thinking helps free yourself from internal barriers.

You start by visualizing your goal very well, and then you look for all ways to move towards it, attracting all possible resources and even coincidences. Often, it is openness to new deals, knowledge, or meetings that triggers a chain of events leading to the desired result, even a very ambitious one.

How to expand the scope of your thinking

First of all, you need a bigger goal. The best business is never entirely about money, but about important changes in the world. What exactly do you want to change, why do you need money, what is the main goal, and what is the place of your ambitious goal in the world where you live? However, it is important that the goal is achievable. When we say "think bigger", we don't mean to go to the point of absurdity: you are unlikely to plan a mission to the Moon on your own. However, you can talk about changing the rules of the game in your small area, improving people's lives, making important changes in the perception of something you know very well that others are unaware of.

To expand the scope of thinking, two things are key — communicating with those whose scope is already large and accumulating knowledge about how society, the economy, and large projects function.

Collaborating with big-scale personalities

Working with more experienced people than yourself and on more complex projects than you can currently handle on your own is a way to start thinking bigger and acquire very important skills for the future. You should be interested in projects led or actively participated in by well-known people in your field. You should strive for this at any cost, choosing various options:

internship;
working for a small fee;
collaborations with more renowned businesses, even in something minor.

Reading books

To find new ideas and learn to think globally, it’s worth reading more insightful books:

Biographies and memoirs of outstanding people. These don't necessarily have to be people from your industry, that’s completely unimportant. What matters is how the people who went down in history as innovators and pioneers thought.
Stories of big, ambitious projects. It's interesting to see how they grew, what went wrong, and how problems were solved.
Scientific and non-fiction books on social sciences: economics, history, psychology. These are not direct advice on how to start earning more, but something much more important: such books provide a clearer understanding of how various human-created systems work and how people think. The more you understand global processes, the easier it is for you to think broadly about something smaller, like your own business.

Which books to start with? Actually, you should look for what genuinely interests you so that reading doesn't feel forced. But here are a few examples of what’s currently popular and what can indeed be a great start to a new habit:

"The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon" by Brad Stone. As you might guess, this is the story of one of the most successful companies in the world and its founder. The author approached the topic very thoroughly, interviewing company employees and learning about Jeff Bezos's family life.
"My Life and Work" by Henry Ford. As is well known, he didn't like giving interviews but shared about himself in a thorough book — once in his lifetime.
"Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead" by Laszlo Bock. The author is the head of HR at Google and is also interested in psychology, group dynamics, and how to build relationships within a team. Therefore, his experience can be very interesting for those who are just on their way to creating the best team of their lives.
"Leading by Design: The IKEA Story" by Bertil Torekull and Ingvar Kamprad. The founder of the company wrote this story together with a financial journalist, and it will surely interest anyone who loves IKEA or dreams of achieving the same success.

Communicating with colleagues and like-minded individuals

To learn more and understand better, start networking. Participate in business clubs and networking events where more renowned and powerful businesspeople and specialists in your industry are present.

It doesn't matter whether you feel ready for this (most likely not) or if you already have something to say. The key is to get used to surrounding yourself with people of greater scope, making contacts, and discussing important topics. This way, you gain both the experience of others and an understanding of how players in the industry communicate and what you can expect. Nothing provides as many examples and ideas as collaboration and communication.

Constantly overcoming greater challenges

It’s important to set yourself bigger tasks than you’ve ever taken on before and not to give up at the first failure. If you’ve done something small — a small volunteer drive, a minor promotion in your business, a small event — you should always gradually increase your goal and overcome slightly bigger challenges.

You might think that a certain goal is unattainable, but you shouldn’t believe that. You need to tell yourself that achieving this or that is possible if you try several times, applying different methods, trying different advertising, and doing something completely new for you.

Expanding the scope of thinking will happen gradually, with each “step” you overcome. This doesn’t happen in one day and isn’t easy. But the result is worth it: it will help you achieve goals that once seemed completely unattainable.

Like the article? Tell your friends about it:

Why expanding the scope of thinking is necessary to achieve financial and business goals and how to do it