strategic thought Archives | The Glasshammer

After moving to Singapore and stepping away from the intense pace of fintech leadership, I found unexpected lessons in Muay Thai, a sport that one needs to study the underlying culture to truly understand. Over a five-year period, I visited Thailand thirty times and interviewed world champion boxers such as Muay Thai Legend Chanchai Sor Tamarangsri.

Here are eight lessons I learnt from studying Muay Thai that apply to business.

1. Be conscious of your body language

Shattered after a gruelling few months running a financial technology software company, I decided to take a short break to train in Thailand. On the first morning, I was sitting on the side of the boxing ring at 7 a.m. at Rawai Muay Thai waiting for my class to start, stressing about next week’s meeting with my co-founders, which promised to be unpleasant.

The sun had already reached 38 degrees and I was the first student in the gym. One of the trainers was walking past when he abruptly stopped. He looked at me and said, “Better go home.” Taken aback, I challenged, “Why?” Putting his hands on my shoulders, he pushed me bolt upright, took my hands out of my lap where they were knotted together and lifted my chin. “Your body tells me, you can’t fight” he replied. “It looks small and weak. Think strong and you will be. If you can’t do that, better go to the beach.”

2. You must be resilient

Muay Thai training is gruelling. Not just the because of the physical aspects but mentally you have to be prepared. All Muay Thai trainers will tell you they can teach a student to have a perfect roundhouse kick, an incredible knee strike, but not courage or “heart”. You have to want to win and believe you can. Fighters that do not have heart may win the first or even the third round, but they are not going to last the distance. You can be smaller than your opponent but your spirit is everything. In fact it’s one with real physical consequences. Fighters lose eyes, suffer head injuries.

No matter how difficult a situation is at work, there are not going to be any physical dangers. No-one is going to knock you out. Turn up to your career like you would a Muay Thai fighter, with heart. If you can’t then perhaps question whether the career you have chosen to succeed in is right for you.

3. There are no short cuts. You have to prepare. You have to practice

Practice, practice, practice. How Muay Thai fighters physiologically approach every session, every exercise – in fact, everything they do – impacts their ability to perform technical skills under stress. They are keyed into what motivates them and drives them forward. Being fully prepared alleviates stress. If you know you have done your best, and have sought feedback from your colleagues and mentors, then there is every reason to believe you are going to succeed.

4. Walk away when you need to

Muay Thai fighters do not win by themselves. Boxing is a team sport and the best trainers love to share their knowledge. They want you to succeed and be the best version of yourself. You need to put the work in and show commitment. Learning Muay Thai is a two-way street, you can’t show up expecting to learn without putting in the effort. If you find yourself at a Muay Thai gym where the trainers are pushing you hard for private classes or on their mobile phones during sessions, walk away. Instantly. You are wasting your time. If you have co-founders who do not share your values, who shirk responsibilities and lie, cut a deal and move on. Muay Thai demands you make decisive decisions fast.

5. Control your emotions

Before entering a ring, Muay Thai fighters still their minds. They are calm. Think about how you would picture the gaze of a Monk, emerging from a mediative state. Envisage how peaceful and free of worry his eyes are. In Thailand, I had the honour of removing Kru Wah’s Mongkhon – a headpiece worn by Thai boxers while performing the pre-fight performance dance. Traditionally, these headpieces are still blessed by a monk and believed to possess special powers to protect and bring good luck to their wearer.

When saying positive words for the battle ahead, I was struck by Kru Wah’s relaxed demeanour. It was as if he had already won and was getting ready for bed after a good meal. Kru Wah’s fight was beautiful to watch. He executed each strike fast and effectively whilst maintaining his prima ballerina assoluta sense of balance. He was precise and exact regardless of the pressure being applied by his opponent.

When making a point or in tense situations, remain calm and take time to observe the body language and micro expressions of the people around you. That way you can better adjust to your audiences’ comments and insights. Have faith in the meeting strategy you have worked on with your colleagues and mentors and you’ll be sure to win the day.

6. Be grateful and give back

Mongkunpet was a young girl when I first met her in 2016. She had already fought 30 amateur boxing matches. At that time she was around 30 kilos. An exceptional athlete, Monkunpet has gone on to win national championship belts. During a fight in Phuket, she badly hurt her foot, breaking several toes. Somehow, she fought through the pain and won the match. The next day she limped into the training arena; formally bowed to each of the 12 teachers in gratitude, and limped out again. If a young girl can do this to thank her teachers, we should be able to find time to show appreciation to the mentors and teachers who selfishly helped us achieve goals. We should make a commitment to have mentees ourselves.

7. Choose a strategy that works for you

Once a Muay Thai boxer has successfully won a number of fights, their trainer will decide which fighting style best suits the student’s temperament. For example, Muay Femur fighters are best known for their high fight I.Q., patience and the ability to move between various styles of execution as needed. They are phenomenal at counterattacks. In contrast, a Muay Mat fighting style involves adopting a forward-moving aggressive approach and deploying explosive punching combinations to ultimately knockout their opponents.

Similarly, in business, you need to think about which competitive strategy works best for you. Are you a deeper thinker who prefers not to rush in, or more on the front foot when it comes to pushing forward your narrative… or neither of the two? Give thought to the type of company culture where you can excel wherever you are on your career journey.

8. Focus

You have to be 100 per cent present in Muay Thai training. It is not like a spin class where you can ponder over your lunch choices. When you have a hectic lifestyle, pressures at work or with juggling family commitments can accumulate and cause stress. Just training a couple of hours a week will make a difference. Because your mind will be at rest from thinking about other people or situations. Learning to focus completely is a terrific way of giving your mind a break.

Sally Clarke at her Muay Thai training gym

By: Sally J Clarke is a senior leader in the technology and art sectors. She has received prestigious awards and been invited to contribute to industry initiatives such as: Amazon Web Services Female Founders, (2022/2023), the La Salle College of the Arts Incubator Fund Award (2014), British Tech Advisory and the SunGard (now FIS) CEO Award. Sally frequently share insights on leadership, innovation, and the power of creativity. Her debut novel Ringside Gamble is available on Amazon and all good book stores.

A bucket of gravel does not make a boulder.

And yet, consider how many leaders spend their days: back-to-back meetings, two-line email replies, quick notes on a presentation or report. It’s all understandable—the organization’s engine is humming, employees need decisions, and a leader’s job is, among other things, to stay in touch broadly across a team or organization. It’s no wonder leaders often feel that they succeed based on their ability to task-switch as much as their ability to set a vision and galvanize a team.

Or more simply: Your calendar is probably packed. If there’s no time for lunch breaks, or even a bathroom break, there’s definitely no time for leisurely, expansive, deep thought. According to Dorie Clark in Harvard Business Review, 97 percent of leaders say long-term thinking is critical, and 96 percent of leaders say they don’t have time for it.

The reason frenzied executive calendars continue to exist for so many executives is that, in the short term, it is a functional way to get things done. Peers, teams and clients want discussions, an answer, an approval. That’s what they need to do their jobs. What we sometimes forget as leaders, amidst all the organizational bustle, is that it’s our job to tend to the visionary, strategic questions before they become threatening, existential questions. When we operate only in a place of stimulus-response, we’re actually playing out of position—like a goalie who’s left the goal. This might work for a while, but when a competitor shoots and scores because we weren’t protecting what was most important—our ability to think broadly, creatively, strategically—we lose.

Deep thought is important because as leaders we’re not usually measured by the quantity of our output. We’re measured by the quality of our thought. A brilliant vision. A unique understanding. A counter-intuitive strategy. A prescient decision. These are things that drive careers and businesses. No one was ever promoted for their email response time. Warren Buffett knew this and once said, “I insist on a lot of time being spent, almost every day, to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business.”

Deep thought is also important because it’s a beautiful way to spend our time! Warren Buffett ended the quote above not by saying, “I [sit and think] because it drives shareholder value.” He ended it with, “I do it because I like this kind of life.” It can be incredibly nourishing and invigorating to be lost in thought; to find a state of “flow” in which we’re so immersed in our thoughts that everything else seems to slip away.

Unfortunately, deep thought, as you likely know, is not easy to protect. And women managers often face the additional, biased expectation of being “a pleasure to work with”—available and attentive to others’ needs. It’s completely understandable why a female leader would be more inclined to return the email quickly, bolstering her reputation for being responsive, even when her time is better spent thinking deeply. It’s not an unbiased world. And yet we can still find ways to thrive within it.

Here are four things you can do in the next week to start protecting your time to think:

Block and defend the time. Block your calendar for at least two hours. If you need, call it something formal like “Strategy and Planning”. If you can, block what I call a “Do Nothing Day” (or hours), when you commit to producing nothing and instead set your mind to expansive brainstorming or deep consideration of challenges ahead. Now the blocking part is easy—it’s the defending part that’s hard. I have two words for you here, which you can repeat as many times as needed: Still No. Should you shorten your time so you can take that other meeting? No. Maybe by just a little? Still no. Move it to next week? Still no. You deserve this time to think. So does your career. So does your team.
Revere your brain. If you work for your brain, your brain will work for you. Sometimes finding your way to deep thought is just a matter of blocking hours. But you’ve likely experienced that writer’s block feeling of finally arriving to that time, except your brain did not arrive with you. Consider: What places allow you to focus? What do you need to have off your plate? Does music help? What about how you’re sitting or what you’re wearing? Do you prefer having fodder around like research and examples? Or does a blank sheet of paper feel more invitational? Do you want to talk things out with others or muse on your own? Do you think best when you move? Perhaps a walk is in order.
Leave the time unstructured. There are reasons why people so often get ideas in the shower. You’re unreachable. There’s no agenda. Your body is busy getting clean so your mind can wander. When our brains are in threat detection mode—return the email, fix the error, make the call before it’s too late—we are focused on reducing the noise around us. But imagination, foresight, and sharp strategic thought all require creating noise—dreaming up counterfactuals, letting 73 bad ideas flush from our brains before the brilliant number 74 comes. Unstructured time allows for that noise creation. In the words of Georgia O’Keeffe, “To see takes time.”
Enjoy! In this harried world you have given yourself the gift of space. You’ve honored what your brain needs to do its best work for you. You’ve prioritized the brilliant thinking you’re capable of—the thinking that will propel your career and your organization. Not every deep thought block will yield a masterpiece, but with consistency, one will. And in the meantime, hopefully you’re having fun. Our lives are short and our careers are shorter—engaging in deep thought is a beautiful use of both.

By: Bree Groff is a workplace culture expert and author of Today Was Fun: A Book About Work (Seriously). She has spent her career guiding executives at companies such as Microsoft, Pfizer, Calvin Klein, Google, Atlassian, Target, and Hilton through periods of complex change. She is a Senior Advisor to the global transformation consultancy SYPartners and previously served as the CEO of NOBL Collective. She is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and holds an MS in Learning and Organizational Change from Northwestern University. Bree lives in New York City with her husband and daughter.

(Guest Contribution: The opinions and views of guest contributions are not necessarily those of theglasshammer.com).

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Op-Ed: What Muay Thai Teaches About Leadership and Resilience