If we always do what we’ve always done, we’ll probably get exactly what we’ve always got. Which is fine, if what we’ve always got is still working.
But when the same people sit in the same room, ask the same questions and protect the same assumptions, the answer is usually not new. It is just familiar. And this is where things start to go wrong and where it’s important to inject some unblinkered thinking.
Unblinkered thinking is not about throwing away experience or chasing wild ideas for the sake of looking innovative. It is about taking your blinkers off early enough to see the problem properly.
Let’s face it, most businesses do not run out of ideas but we do run out of space for better thinking.
Unblinkered thinking is a practical way to create better thinking at work. It helps teams get past the usual answer by challenging assumptions, asking better questions and bringing the right people into the room early. It uses divergent thinking to open up different perspectives, then convergent thinking to focus those ideas into useful, practical work.
The usual room gives you the usual answer
Every business has a usual room. It might be the leadership team. It might be marketing. It might be sales. It might be the same three people who always shape the brief before anyone else gets a look in.
The usual room is not bad. It often holds experience, context and hard-won knowledge and that matters. But if it is the only room, it can become a very comfortable trap.
Knowing what worked last time is useful. So is knowing what will probably get approved and how to keep things moving without too much friction. But sometimes that familiarity keeps the blinkers on, which is how teams end up creating work that is technically fine but strategically flat.
The question you really need to ask yourself, is are we solving the real problem or just the one we recognise. Yep, that annoying question you don’t want to answer when you are just trying to get something done.
Unblinkered thinking does not mean going rogue
“Unblinkered thinking is NOT everyone running into a meeting waving random ideas like sparklers”.
It’s not ignoring what has worked before or chasing novelty. It does not mean throwing out data, brand knowledge, customer insight or common sense.
It means creating enough space to challenge the default answer before it becomes the final answer. That is where divergent and convergent thinking both matter.
Divergent thinking opens the room. It helps teams explore different angles, hear different voices, ask better questions and look beyond the obvious.
Convergent thinking brings things back. It helps teams decide what is useful, realistic, relevant and worth doing.
You need both. Divergent thinking without convergent thinking becomes a brainstorm that needs adult supervision. And convergent thinking without divergent thinking becomes “let’s just do what we did last time” with a fresh headline slapped on top. Just another way to sell the sausages. Neither gets you where you need to go.
Deep thought is not overthinking
Deep thought can sound indulgent, especially when everyone is busy. Who has time to think deeply when there are campaigns to build, customers to serve, products to launch, teams to train and deadlines thundering toward you?
The point is you need the discipline of staying with the problem long enough to understand it properly. It means taking the time to discover what is going on, what assumptions are being made, who we haven’t heard from and what the customer actually needs. What would we do if we were not allowed to do the usual thing? What would make this useful, not just finished?
That kind of thinking saves time in the long run because it stops teams from rushing into polished solutions for poorly understood problems.
Better answers need different voices
Unblinkered thinking rarely comes from one genius person sitting alone with a notebook and a coffee. More often, it comes from connecting the right people early enough for their thinking to actually shape the work.
That might mean bringing sales into a marketing conversation before the campaign is already built. It might mean involving customer service before writing the customer journey, asking the people delivering training where learners actually get stuck, inviting your agency in before the brief is already baked, or even bringing customers into the room so you can hear what they actually need, not what everyone assumes they need.
And sometimes, it means listening to the junior team member who is close enough to the day-to-day work to see the friction everyone else has quietly normalised.
Different people see different parts of the system. They see different risks, gaps and opportunities. Sales hears the objections. Customer service sees the friction. Delivery knows what will actually work. And someone outside the usual decision group may spot the assumption everyone else stopped questioning months ago.
This is not about making every decision by committee. Nobody needs that kind of pain!
It is about getting the right thinking into the room before the direction is locked in, because once the machine starts moving, it is much harder to change course. The brief gets approved, the timeline gets set, the content gets written, the campaign gets scheduled or the training gets built.
Then everyone wonders why it didn’t work. Often, the issue was not the execution, it was that the thinking was too narrow at the start.
Familiar thinking feels safe
Familiar thinking feels efficient. It gives us quick answers, reduces uncertainty and helps us avoid uncomfortable conversations.
But safe thinking has a shelf life. What worked last year may not work now. What worked when the team had more time, more budget or less competition may not survive the current reality.
This is especially true today in marketing, learning and business communication, where people are overloaded with content, choice and noise. If your answer sounds like everything else, looks like everything else and solves the problem in the same way as everything else, it becomes very easy to ignore.
Unblinkered thinking helps break that pattern by being more useful and more connected to more connected to what people actually need.
How to practise unblinkered thinking
Unblinkered thinking does not happen because someone puts “innovation” on a meeting agenda, you have to create the conditions for better thinking at work: clearer questions, wider perspectives and enough space to challenge the assumptions sitting under the brief.
Start by slowing down at the beginning, just long enough to make sure you are solving the right problem. Then widen the room, bring in people who understand different parts of the challenge. Not everyone, just the right mix.
Question everything. Ask questions that make people pause and really test the assumption before protecting it. Don’t accept an answer that is based on the “everybody does” assumption.
Separate idea generation from decision-making. Give divergent thinking room to breathe before convergent thinking starts sorting, judging and prioritising. Then get practical. What is the idea trying to achieve? Who is it for? What will it change? Can it be delivered? Will it make sense to the people who need to use it?
Unblinkered thinking is only useful if it turns into something that works.
Better thinking before better doing
At Spinifex, we are big believers in getting the thinking right before racing into delivery. If the problem is poorly defined, the solution will not be right If the right people are not in the room early, the work will probably need fixing later.
Unblinkered thinking is how you avoid expensive activity that looks productive but does not move anything meaningful. It helps businesses build campaigns, learning programs, customer journeys, sales tools and content systems that are not just new, but useful. And useful is the bit that matters.
Take the blinkers off before you build
The best ideas do not always come from pushing harder. Sometimes they come from pausing earlier. Opening the room. Asking a better question. Letting a different voice change the shape of the answer. Then pulling everything back into something clear, practical and deliverable. That is the balance.
“Open the thinking. Focus the decision. Build the thing that actually works.”
Because if we always do what we’ve always done, we’ll probably get what we’ve always got.
And if we want something better, we need to take the blinkers off before we build.
Want someone to challenge your thinking?
Who are we kidding nobody answers yes to that question. But if you need someone to ask “why?” until the real problem shows up?
You’ve come to the right place. At Spinifex, we help teams take the blinkers off, ask better questions and turn good thinking into work that actually works.
