Strategic Mindset

Inc. Macan Deve

In: Career, Strategic Mindset, Values

This article is based around an interview with Donna Hager, CEO and founder of architecture and engineering firm Macan Deve, she built her senior career as an VP engineer working for the world’s largest construction company and then she left. She started her company in 2015 based on some very different ideals, a construction engineering company owned by a woman, initially hiring senior people part time who didn’t want to retire. “I ended up hiring more senior people who didn’t want to retire, and I hired them part time, as needed. These were the smartest people I knew in engineering and infrastructure. I got great quality and we got little jobs. Finally, people were believing in us, and then I could hire some full-time people, and they got mentored by the more senior ones.”  Donna Hager The companies mission is to ‘eagerly explore new communities and different ways of thinking and beingContinue Reading

In: Career, Strategic Mindset, Values

Ikigai is a Japanese phrase that essentially defines your reason for being, it is the connection between doing what you love, what you value and what you are good at. Your Ikigai is not just about your career it is a more pure reflection of your sense of purpose and wellbeing. Numerous books have been written on the topic with many looking more holistically at why some Japanese who explicitly practice ‘ikigai’ are happier and live longer. Culturally in Japan the separation between making money and reason for being is important, and this coming from a country where people live for their company, a career is often with one organisation for life and they have a word for death by overwork (Karoshi). Ikigai does not specify as many representations show that the intersection between what you love, what you are good at AND what you can be paid for. BUTContinue Reading

In: Career Development, Human Capital, Strategic Mindset

Having a strategic mindset is the basis of successful leadership, it supplements your hard work with careful attention to strategy. Reflecting on what is working and identifying flaws to optimise along the way – much like an agile process. “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety nine percent perspiration” Thomas Edison In his article Robson refers to Metacognition as our awareness and understanding of our own thought processes or ‘thinking about thinking’. He provides analysis of a recent paper published by the National Academy of Sciences and explains how having a strategic mindset might be the difference between success and failure. To assess your strategic mindset Chen and the authors of the paper put together a short questionnaire, simply rate the questions below on a scale of 1 for never and 5 for all the time. The higher your score the more likely you have a strategic mindset. When youContinue Reading