Think Better

You Can't Mow the Lawn with a Chainsaw

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Hurson) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 14:14:00 +0000

People often ask me if Productive Thinking is the right approach for every problem. As you can probably guess from the title of this post — NO!

The Productive Thinking Model is great, and can often help you solve problems you'd never be able to solve otherwise. But as with anything else, there can be too much of a good thing.

Productive Thinking is a powerful tool, but it's not always the right tool. There are lots of issues that productive thinking won't help you with.

Here's a useful way to determine if your issue might benefit from productive thinking. It's called I3:

List all issues you want to work on. Then, for each one, ask yourself the I3 questions:

Do I have Influence over it?
Is it Important to me?
Does it need Imaginative thinking?

If you can answer "yes" to all three I3 questions, then you'll probably benefit from taking your issue through the Productive Thinking Framework. If not... well, here's a simple grid that might help.

Remember, you can't mow the lawn with a chain saw.

If the only tool you have is a hammer, you treat everything like a nail. ~Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)

or perhaps...

If the only tool you have is a hammer, you treat everything like a thumb. ~Anonymous

Why and How

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Hurson) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 13:36:00 +0000

I often help clients with strategic planning, and I'm consistently amazed at how complicated people make it. They debate about visions and missions and strategic priorities and goals and objectives, usually without defining what these terms mean. Then it starts getting really weird, with terms like strategic intent, integrative dynamics, KPAs, KRAs, KRIs, and strato-tactical objectives flying around the boardroom table like hockey pucks at a pre-game warmup.

Is it any wonder that so many people sit around so many strategy sessions so confused? Sometimes I think we gravitate towards complexity because the more complex we view something, the more heroic we imagine ourselves to be for tackling it.

Here's the elephant in the room about strategic planning: the secret that big box consulting companies don't want you to know. Planning doesn't have to be complicated. In fact, it's really pretty simple. It may be time consuming, and there may be a lot to cover, but don't let your local snake oil salesman fool you: useful planning is actually pretty basic.

Start your strategic plan with a set of simple statements that describe what you think you want to accomplish. Here are four that probably apply to a wide range of businesses:
We want people to see us as providing high value at a fair price.
We want to be able to attract investment capital to grow our business.
We want our employees to feel good about working here.
We want to make a genuine contribution to the communities we work in.

Is doesn't matter if you call these goals or objectives or visions or missions or BHAGS or flapdoodles. They're simply descriptions of things you think you want (you may change your mind of course, but at this point what you think is what you think, so start there).

Then, for each statement, ask Why? and How?
Why? questions make things more abstract: they take you into strategies and purposes.
How? questions make things more concrete: they take you into tactics and action steps.

For example, asking Why do we want people to see us as providing high value at a fair price? might get you to: because we want them to buy our products. Keep asking Why? and you'll quickly come to your core reason for being in business -- your purpose. If you're happy with that purpose, great. If not, now is the time to rethink what you're in business for.

Next, start at any point on your ladder and ask How? That gets you into more and more tactical levels. Perhaps one answer to How are we going to get people to see us as providing high value at a fair price? is: by understanding their needs. And one answer to how to do that might be: by building the best R&D capability we can, and so on. How? tells you what you have to do to get where you want to go.

Try the Why?/How? approach. You'll find it much more straightforward and useful than throwing around a bunch of MBA terms whose meanings no one really agrees on anyway. But fair warning: you may have a tough time convincing some of your colleagues to give up complexity for simplicity. After all, being a hero has its rewards.

Think Better Chosen as One of Top Ten Business Books of 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Hurson) — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 13:44:00 +0000

"Best of the best: intelligent, clear, filled with advice" according to Harvey Schachter, business columnist for The Globe and Mail, Canada's national newspaper.

"He provides a six-step process that you can use in brainstorming sessions or in tackling problems solo, designed to push beyond the predictable, mundane ideas that usually come to you initially and even better ideas that follow, stretching boundaries but still essentially constrained by what you know. He helps you to reach the next level, the 'third third,' as he calls it, where unexpected connections occur, as you keep asking yourself what else might be possible."

Click here to see the whole article.

Bigger. Faster. Dumber.

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Hurson) — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 13:31:00 +0000

Have you found yourself asking how we ever got into the economic mess we're in?

I think one reason is that we've allowed ourselves to be seduced by the twin sirens of greed and speed.

Because we want more (or maybe because our bosses or shareholders want more), we assume we have to do more, so we develop a fanatic devotion to multi-tasking as a way to get more done in less time. But it doesn't work, does it?

Multi-tasking doesn't make you perform better at all. Just the opposite. You can't really hear what's going on in the meeting while you're checking messages on your Blackberry. And no matter how hard you try to convince yourself that you can, you're wrong. Either the meeting or the message is going to suffer. You know it's true. And so does just about every cognitive researcher who's studied the matter.

Multi-tasking is the assassin of clear thinking. With each additional parallel task, your thinking becomes less focused, your memory less reliable.

The answer? Take it easy. Tackle one job at a time, and give it your full attention. Real value comes from thinking better, not faster.

Try it. I guarantee you'll think better. Your results may even astonish you. You'll make fewer errors, have less rework, come up with better ideas -- and probably finish sooner.

You have to slow down to speed up.

"It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way." - ROLLO MAY (1909-1994)

Bury the Box

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Hurson) — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 21:14:00 +0000

I give a lot of keynote speeches about creativity and innovation. Often, the people who introduce me ask for texts to read from. The last line of my prepared introduction is, "Tim thinks the phrase 'out of the box thinking' should be put back in the box and buried in a deep hole." It almost always gets a laugh and sets a nice tone for my talk.

But it's more than just a cute line. Like so many other clichés, "out of the box thinking" has been drained of any significant meaning by overuse and underthought. OBT and countless other meaning-drained phrases -- like "paradigm shift", "light at the end of the tunnel", and "it is what it is" -- seem to exude from people's mouths when they don't really have anything to say, but feel the need to say something.

My biggest gripe with OBT is that it makes it sound as though creative thinking is something we should go away somewhere and do as an exception. It makes about as much sense to say, "Let's take a few minutes and think creatively" as it does to say, "Let's take a few minutes and think ethically." Creative thinking should be available to us on demand, not as an exception.

The real problem is we've seduced ourselves into believing that creative thinking is something special. It's not. We're all pretty good at it. If you doubt that, think about the last time you took a shower, or a long drive, or simply dozed off to sleep (though I hope not while driving!). You probably had dozens, perhaps hundreds, of creative ideas.

All of us are creative thinkers. Where we fall off the wagon, though, is that few of us are creative receivers. We don't honor, celebrate, or often even remember the wonderful creative ideas we have. We have them -- and then they're gone -- either because we've rejected them or forgotten them. Wouldn't it be great if we could harness all that creative thinking! Wouldn't it be great if we could bring the shower into the boardroom or the family room or the factory floor? That's where we need creative ideas.

So how about we stop talking about thinking outside the box and start looking for ways to open the box and let our natural creative thinking in?

"A cliché or cliche is a phrase, expression, or idea that has been overused to the point of losing its intended force or novelty, especially when at some time it was considered distinctively forceful or novel... A cliché is also a term historically used in printing, for a printing plate cast from movable type... When letters were set one at a time it made sense to cast a phrase used over and again as one single slug of metal. That constantly repeated phrase was known as a cliché." - WIKIPEDIA

Getting Out of the Way

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Hurson) — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 17:28:00 +0000

A few weeks ago I co-led a session called "Writing to Be" at our annual Mindcamp creativity retreat. The feedback from participants was astonishing. People loved it. Many of the evaluation sheets were filled with big bold caps reading AWESOME! or WOW! or BEST SESSION BY FAR!

Here's what's interesting: my partner and I hardly did a thing. We set up the premise (that you can alter your recollection of an event by the stories you tell about it) and then let people experiment and discover for themselves. Then we made room for them to talk about their observations. In other words, we stayed out of the way.

One of the things I've noticed leading innovation sessions over the years is that it's all too easy to get in the way. Teachers, facilitators, and coaches often seem to try to justify their positions (or their fees) by dominating the room. Unfortunately, just as often, that means they get in the way of the very people they're trying to help - taking up so much time and mental space fulfilling their own need to talk or perform or be a star that there's very little room for the group to talk or learn or be stars themselves.

In my experience the best facilitators are the ones who are almost invisible, the ones who get out of the way. The last thing I want to hear in the hallways after a session is "Wow, wasn't that facilitator great!" What I want to hear is "Wow, weren't we great!"

And what's true for professionals who lead groups is probably even more true for us on a personal level. How often do we get in our own way? How often are we so concerned about being smart or knowledgeable or "right" that we prevent ourselves from being the best we can be? Wouldn't it be great if we could just get out of the way?

"When people thank and tell you how much you've helped them, what they say has nothing to do with you. This is just their way of expressing joy in their own experience. Remember this, too, when people complain or criticize." - KEN McLEOD

Fishing with Ghost Nets

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Hurson) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 17:55:00 +0000

Earlier this month, my wife and I took the trip of a lifetime — to the Galapagos Islands, 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador. The archipelago is one of the world’s special places, where animals and humans can and do share the environment in harmony. The experience of sitting on a beach within arm’s length of sea lions and penguins, or swimming with giant sea turtles and reef sharks is an amazing and humbling gift.

That the Galapagos remain almost as pristine as they were when Darwin visited in 1835 is a testament to the government of Ecuador and the work of hundreds of passionately dedicated naturalists who devote their lives to study and conservation.

One of these special people is Juan Carlos Avila, who guided several of our out trips. Juan Carlos told us about the many human threats — some systemic and some mindless — to marine wildlife. One such threat comes from fishing vessels operating hundreds or even thousands of miles from the Galapagos. Some operators, when their nets become damaged or frayed, simply dump them into the sea since they are cheaper to replace than to repair. Unfortunately, these discarded nets keep fishing, trapping and killing thousands of creatures, sometimes for years — a phenomenon known as “ghost fishing”.

Juan Carlos’ story made me think of our own “ghost nets” — the many outdated thinking patterns (some personal, some organizational) that we unconsciously harbor. These old habits of thought may once have served a purpose, but now they trap us in unproductive ways of thinking. Often we assume we’ve thrown them away. But they’re there. And they keep fishing, controlling our responses to new ideas and new people, limiting our ability to embrace change.

One useful way to recognize our own ghost thinking nets is to pay attention to those instant reactions we all have when confronted with “different” ideas. Whenever you feel uncomfortable about a new idea, ask yourself why. Is it because the idea really is a non-starter, or is it because your ghost nets are still fishing?

_________________________________

The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.

John Maynard Keynes

photo by Rick Gunn

Sudoku Strategies

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Hurson) — Sat, 24 May 2008 13:16:00 +0000

I've noticed a tendency for C-Suite executives to emerge from planning retreats with what I call Sudoku Strategies — plans predicated on the comforting assumption that the future is just waiting out there, and if we can only describe it clearly enough, we can project ourselves into the neat picture we've painted.

Of course, unlike in Sudoku, there's no guarantee that the future will consist of neat rows of the numbers 1 through 9. In real life, there are often numbers missing (where did that 7 go anyway?) or repeating numbers (I thought that 3 was supposed to last only one quarter!), or negative numbers (minus 6! where did that come from?). Often a row may not contain numbers at all — but rather blanks, or letters, or characters as yet entirely unknown to us.

If we could predict the future, there wouldn't have been a dot-com bust, a mortgage meltdown, or airlines in a tailspin because of oil at $130 a barrel.

Sudoku Strategies look great on paper, but often do more to mask the truth than to reveal it. Even the most carefully constructed strategy will lead to failure if it prevents us from seeing beyond its neat nine-by-nine box. As the legendary Prussian General, Helmuth von Motke, said, No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.

But wait a minute — what about that old chestnut, He who fails to plan, plans to fail? Surely we need to plan.

Yes, we do. The answer to the apparent contradiction lies in the wisdom of Dwight Eisenhower, who said, In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable. It's not the plan that's important, but the process of planning. By planning — and then being ready to abandon the plan if necessary — we learn about our own capabilities, our shortcomings, and our assumptions. We begin to understand ourselves and the conditions that prevail now. We understand that our greatest strength is the ability to adapt. Without this, we cannot respond effectively to the unpredictable and inevitable changes ahead.

I prefer Scrabble Strategies. In a Scrabble game, you have a limited number of variables to work with, and an infinite, but uncertain future. You have a good chance of winning if you continually assess current conditions and imagine future possibilities. But if you're not willing to abandon your ideas when they become unworkable, you will lose.

____________________
“I don't know what it is yet. And that's good. I like not to know for as long as possible, because then it tells me the truth instead of me imposing the truth.” Michael Moschen, American juggler, on the process of developing of a new routine

Tweak or Freak?

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Hurson) — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 16:54:00 +0000

Every business faces challenges and opportunities. Sometimes it’s a question of tweaking — refining a system or product, sanding off its rough edges. Sometimes it’s a question of freaking — replacing the old with something completely new, like reinventing the way we listen to music, fuel our cars, or exchange information.

When you’re tweaking, your best bet is a continuous improvement strategy like Six Sigma. When you’re freaking, you need an innovation strategy like Productive Thinking.

But what about when you’re not sure — when your challenge doesn’t fall neatly into either the tweak or freak category? If you try to tackle an innovation challenge using continuous improvement, you may not address the real issues. And if you try to tackle a continuous improvement challenge using innovation, you may be throwing out the baby with the bath water. How do you decide?

My friend and colleague Jeffrey Phillips of OVO Innovation has developed a simple test that can help. It’s called STRIP — an acronym that stands for Scope, Timeframe, Risk, Investment, and Perspective. Test your challenge with STRIP and you'll have a pretty good idea whether you should be thinking about tweaking or freaking.

Here’s a short description of how it works:

Scope: If the scope of your challenge involves discrete, incremental changes that can be managed by relatively few people, it’s probably a Six Sigma project. If it involves significant changes with lots of impact, it’s more likely a Productive Thinking project.

Timeframe: If your challenge can be addressed in a relatively short time, you’re in Six Sigma territory. If it will take longer for implementation and payback, it’s probably best addressed through Productive Thinking.

Risk: If implementing the changes carries relatively low risk, it’s Six Sigma. If there are larger risks to manage, you’ll probably want to use Productive Thinking.

Investment: If the investment needed is relatively low, it’s likely a Six Sigma issue. If your investment is likely to be high because you’re changing not a just part of a process, but the whole game, you’ll want to use Productive Thinking.

Perspective: If the impact of the change is mainly internal, it probably belongs in the Six Sigma camp. If the idea will have an impact on customers, prospects, or market as a whole, you’re into innovation territory and will want to use a Productive Thinking approach.

STRIP is a useful way to help you choose the most appropriate methodology to address your challenges. Jeffrey also has many other useful ideas in his book, Make Us More Innovative. If you’re looking for a sound perspective on how to understand and implement innovation processes in your business, you won’t find a better resource. Learn more about Jeffery's book by clicking Make us More Innovative.

Great Answer! (Wrong Question)

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Hurson) — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 13:58:00 +0000

Have you ever come up with the greatest solution in the world, but when you applied it to your problem, nothing changed?

It doesn't matter how good your answers are when you're asking the wrong questions. The reason we fall into the "Great Answer (Wrong Question)" trap so often is that we usually start brainstorming in the wrong place.

Most of us think of brainstorming as a way to generate ideas, answers,or solutions. But one of the principles of productive thinking is to brainstorm for questions before brainstorming for answers. We use creative thinking to generate questions that shine new light on your challenge - a very long list of them. Then we use critical thinking to select those questions that seem to have the most "juice" - that is, questions that offer the most potential for generating breakthrough solutions.

So the next time you have a problem to solve, first brainstorm the questions you need to answer, then brainstorm for answers. You'll go much farther, and in the right direction, too.

How to See What’s Not There

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Hurson) — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 20:03:00 +0000

The other day I participated in an innovation day for the supply chain management division of a large company. The morning was spent on several presentations about how the group had innovated over the past year. One of the major innovations was a regular meeting in which suppliers and customers could talk with one another.

Now, I think this is a great idea, and I'm sure it made things more efficient for everyone. But as good an idea as it is, a regular communication meeting is not breakthrough innovation.

I see this kind of thing a lot — companies patting themselves on the back for breakthrough innovations that are really incremental improvements. Incremental improvement is powerful and positive, but it's not the same as breakthrough innovation. Incremental change results from Reproductive Thinking. But for game changing innovation, you need Productive Thinking. Here's the difference:

Reproductive Thinking is a way to refine what's known. Think of continuous improvement, Six Sigma, or positive incremental change. It's what you need for ferreting out inefficiencies, improving quality, and ensuring consistent outcomes. Reproductive Thinking is characterized by what the Japanese call kaizen, or good change.

Productive Thinking is a way to generate the new. Think of big AHAs, eureka moments, and breakthrough change. It's what you need for seeding innovation, disrupting the marketplace, and changing the rules of the game. Productive Thinking is characterized by what I call tenkaizen, or good revolution.

Both types of thinking are useful, but if you want to create something truly new, Reproductive Thinking is the wrong tool. You need Productive Thinking.

When you were a kid, you probably had a thaumatrope. A thaumatrope isn’t a childhood disease; it’s a toy, popularized in Victorian England. It consists of a small disk with a picture on either side, mounted on string that lets you spin it. If you get the disk spinning fast enough, the two pictures merge. A common thaumatrope shows a bird on one side and an empty birdcage on the other. When you twirl the disk, you see the bird in the cage. Although there is no actual picture of a bird in a cage, you see it as clear as can be. You see a picture of something that isn’t there.

Productive Thinking is like spinning a thaumatrope. It's a way of combining old ideas and insights to make something new.

Striving for reproductive efficiency is great. By all means, go for it. But don't think that's the same as game-changing innovation. You can't fool yourself into being innovative. You need to learn how to think productively.

Go Wild!

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Hurson) — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 22:58:00 +0000

Often the ideas we come up with aren’t very useful simply because they don’t go far enough. One of the best ways to get good ideas is to get wild ideas. Ad Exec, Alex Osborne, credited with inventing brainstorming, always encouraged his staff to generate outlandish ideas. He’d often say that it was easier to tame a wild idea than invigorate one that had no life to begin with.

Time and time again, working with clients, I’ve observed that the very best ideas are often the ones that would normally be rejected at first blush because they appear foolish, abrasive, politically incorrect, or just too weird. But weird is often where the diamonds hide.

Several years ago a senior executive — I'll call him Harry — in one of the country’s largest corporations told me the following story:

Harry loved his job. He loved the business he was in. He loved his company. He had advanced about as high as he could in his profession. He had just one more rung to climb.

But Harry had a problem. His boss was a year or two younger than he was — so the chances of Harry getting promoted were slim. And it irked him to think he'd probably retire as number two, just shy of his goal.

So Harry brainstormed. He went through all the regular, “sane” ideas (look for a new job in the company, go to a head hunter, work incredibly hard, etc). None held much promise. Once he’d run out of sane ideas, he moved to what I call third-third ideas, where the wild and crazy ideas live.

One of the ideas he came up with was “Kill my boss!” Now this isn’t politically correct, and it certainly isn’t legal. Besides, Harry actually liked his boss.

Most of us immediately discard ideas like this, but in Think Better, I recommend plumbing “unacceptable” ideas for their hidden value. One of the thinking tools I use is called What’s UP? (the UP stands for Underlying Principle). So what’s the underlying principle behind “Kill my boss?” Well obviously, it’s to get rid of him in some way.

Could Harry sabotage the boss somehow, make him sick, get him fired? None of those answers seemed useful. In what other ways could he “remove” his boss?

In the end, Harry thought of a truly brilliant idea. He wrote the best resume he could and sent it to a head hunter. But the resume wasn’t Harry’s. It was his boss’s. The head hunter was impressed, contacted the boss, and put him in line for a fantastic job at another company.

With his boss out of the way, Harry got the job of his dreams.

“If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.” - ALBERT EINSTEIN

The Right Stuff

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Hurson) — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 14:17:00 +0000

Almost everyone would agree that athletes can learn skills and train themselves to perform better, but we rarely give credence to the notion that people can learn skills and train themselves to THINK better. I often hear corporate folks say, “If only we had the right environment and the right leadership, if only we celebrated and rewarded our people appropriately, then we could be more innovative.” That might feel nice, but it’s simply not true.No one would assume that you could transform a bunch of untrained, out-of-shape folks into international basketball champions just by cheering them on and rewarding them for their efforts. You don’t win gold medals with good intentions. You win with skills and training and discipline.

Just as in basketball, innovative skills are not homogeneous. There are guards and forwards, centers and free throw specialists. Each of them is critical to the team’s success. And each of them needs to learn, develop, and practice their skills in order to be the best they can be.

So the number one pre-requisite for stimulating innovation in an organization is people who know how to think creatively. There are specific skills required to do that. They’re not terribly difficult to learn, but it’s amazing how few of us have them naturally. Just telling someone to feel free to compose a musical score won’t produce the musical score, let alone a good one. First they have to understand the language of music.

“There is a vast difference between training and education. Training teaches skills and competencies. Education teaches insight and understanding. If you don’t see the difference, think about the difference between sex education and sex training. Which would you send your kids to? Which would you go to yourself?” - MICHAEL HAMMER

The Third Third

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Hurson) — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 15:02:00 +0000

Why do you run the faucet for a few moments before drawing a glass of water? To get the stale water out of the pipes, so your drink will be cool and clear.

It’s the same with ideas. You need to run your brain (or brainstorming session) long enough to flush out all those stale “everyone’s thought of them before” ideas.

Once new ideas start flowing, they’re cooler, clearer, and potentially more useful than the ideas that come out early in your thinking. Studies show that in good brainstorming sessions, the best ideas come in the final third of the sessions.

“Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward. They may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.” - GOETHE (1749-1832)

Stay Connected

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Hurson) — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 14:03:00 +0000

One of the best ways to stay creative is to stay connected. You may be thinking, “Connected? Are you kidding? I’m connected all the time. What with cell phones, emails and IMs, I’m too connected! That’s my problem.”
Well, it may seem as though we’re all connected, but according to Gary Hamel, our modern lives actually tend to disconnect us from the very things that stimulate our creativity.

I was recently invited to attend the launch of Gary’s new book, The Future of Management, at the London School of Business. He talked about what he calls the history of employment. As he sees it, it’s a history of increasing isolation.

When companies were small - mom-and-pop shops - you couldn’t help but be connected with your customers. As companies grew, so did back offices. Soon larger companies had more people without customer contact than with.

The next step was disconnecting employees from products. More and more people worked on small pieces of finished products rather on the products as a whole.

As companies became larger still, the next inevitable disconnect was from policy. According to Hamel, a person can work for an entire career and never meet someone who actually makes — or even influences — organizational policy.

Eventually, as work grew more and more specialized — and work stations more and more isolated — we became disconnected from other people, contacting them only through the filters of cell phones, email, or IM screens. We regard almost everyone on the other end of these electronic connections with little more warmth than we do telemarketers. And, of course, we ourselves are the “other end” to most of our contacts.

Finally, says Hamel, many of us have now become disconnected from our own creativity — working in a world that actively rejects any input that’s out of synch with organizational orthodoxies. Ask almost anyone working in a large organization whether they truly contribute creatively, and the answer will be a thudding “no”.

So how do we reconnect with our creativity? The first step is to reconnect with people. That means starting to pay attention — real attention, not just filling the gaps while multitasking — to your interactions with others. As you genuinely open yourself to human input, you’ll discover that the simple acts of talking with, listing to, empathizing with, and helping others are the most powerful things you can do to stimulate your creative juices. Re-igniting your creativity may simply be a question of re-connecting with others.

You’ll also find that reconnecting with people soon leads to reconnecting with the ideas that influence your life, whether at home, at work, or in your community. And once you reconnect with those, the sky’s the limit.

“The unexpected connection is more powerful than one that is obvious.” - HERACLITUS (6c BCE)

Defer Judgment

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Hurson) — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 14:05:00 +0000

It’s impossible to be curious and judgmental at the same time. Trying to generate and evaluate ideas at once is like trying to drive with one foot on the gas and the other on the brakes: you won’t get anywhere, and you might blow a gasket.

Ideas are not actions. There’s no risk in deferring your evaluation. And there are three good reasons to do so: One, an idea that looks crazy at first might turn out to be a winner. Two, a crazy idea might lead to a better one (or two, or six, or ten better ones). And three, the more ideas on the table, the more likely you’ll find a good one. So set a quota for the number of ideas to generate before beginning to judge.

“The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a C, the idea must be feasible.” - Yale University management professor, in response to Fred Smith’s paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. Smith went on to found FedEx.

Break Some Rules

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Hurson) — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 14:06:00 +0000

Some years ago an eminent conductor injured his right arm. For several weeks he was forced to conduct as a lefty. Though already considered one of the world’s great musicians, reviewers commenting on his left-armed conducting said he was never better.

I’m not asking you to break your arm, but you’ll find new ways to be creative if you break some rules occasionally. Start with the little rules we all make for ourselves, such as the route you take to work, or the order in which you put on your clothes. Try breaking those rules and see what happens. You can be a bit more provocative by changing the chair you usually sit in at meetings. What new ways of thinking might emerge if everyone sat in different seats? Why are meetings almost always scheduled for 60 minutes? What would happen if you scheduled yours for 17? Try it. You may be surprised.

See It in Reverse

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Hurson) — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 14:07:00 +0000

Ever get stuck on a problem? No matter how many times you ask yourself how to fix it, you come up short or just blank?

Try a reversal. Ask what you might do to make the problem worse or bigger or even more disturbing. Reversals are a great way to shake up conventional approaches. They can free you from the patterns that hold you back.

Last year, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin created google.org, a for-profit philanthropic organization. They reasoned they could do more good by not having to operate within the confines of bureaucratic legal strictures. Sound counter-intutive? It is. But this year google.org is giving away more than $1 billion — and paying taxes on top of it! So next time you get stuck, try turning your problem upside down. Ask yourself a question that reverses all your assumptions.

Here’s a link to a video that reverses one of our most basic assumptions. It’s about 5 minutes long. If you decide to click it, give it about 2 minutes before making up your mind. You may be surprised at what you get out of it. Reversals are very powerful indeed!

“The way up and the way down are one and the same.” — Heraclitus

Resolution Convolution

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Hurson) — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 15:08:00 +0000

At this time of year, you may be focusing a lot of energy on keeping one or more New Year’s resolutions. Focused attention can often make the difference between success and failure, but it can also get in the way. Sometimes we can accomplish a lot more by not trying.

Coming up with new ideas is a case in point. It’s often more productive to use the incubation technique than to try to generate a new idea by brute force.

How many times have you remembered the thing you were struggling to remember as soon as you forgot trying to remember it? How many times have you had a great idea in the shower or while driving? Often our minds work best in the background. A basic productive thinking principle is to steep yourself in your issue and then forget about it for a while. Relax. Listen to music. Stroll in the sunshine. Daydream. It’s important to give your subconscious the time it needs to do its magic. So if at first you don’t succeed, take a break.

And have a happy new year.

“You never have to try to breathe in, just out.” — Jan Simons (1925-2006) vocal coach

The Power of Wishes

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Hurson) — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 15:09:00 +0000

A wish can be a great seed for productive thinking. When Edwin Land’s 3-year-old daughter wished she could see her pictures right away, her wish was the seed for the Polaroid Land camera, a design that forever changed the way we take pictures.

There are wishes inside and around us all the time. In these last weeks of the year, ask yourself: What wishes are here? How might they come true? What does my family wish for? What do my friends wish for?

“You always start with a fantasy. You visualize something as perfect. Then you work back from the fantasy to reality.” — Edwin Land

Using Your Noodle

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Hurson) — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 14:59:00 +0000

Several years ago I had an online argument with another creative (we were both in the advertising business then, and in that business the people who come up with campaign ideas or copy or design are known as creatives). My online adversary was convinced that creativity was inherent and innate. That it could not be taught. Either you had it or you didn’t, either you had been blessed or not. I had a different view. I figured if you could learn how to ride a bike better or train yourself to run faster, then you could probably also learn how to use your mind better too.

Our debate was inconclusive, each side stuck to its guns, and eventually we moved on to other areas of discussion. But the argument had piqued my curiosity. I’d always considered myself reasonably creative — not the best, not the worst. So, why was it that some people seemed to be more creative than others? Why did some people bubble with ideas, while others just sat there like so many lumps? Why was it that on some days I was one of the bubblers and on others, I was one of the lumps?

Those questions started me on a journey that has lasted about 15 years. I needed to find out whether the ability to think creatively was a skill that could be learned and developed or whether it was an innate capacity that different people had (or didn’t have) to varying degrees. My sense —after a lot of study, a lot of debate, and a lot of fascinating conversations with people much wiser than I — is that both answers are right.

It’s true that some people are just more inclined to use certain kinds of intelligence. They seem to be hard wired to “get” certain things, like numerical fluency, or social lubrication, or linguistic play. Some people are just funnier than others. And others are better planners.

But it’s also true that anyone can learn how to think better. You can learn to be better at math, better in social situations, better with words. You can even learn to be funnier. Our individual thinking capacities may be a given, but thinking skills can be developed. Creative thinking is just like any other skill. You can figure out what the components of good creative thinking are, and you can develop them.

Now, that doesn’t mean some people won’t always be more creative than others. Of course they will, just as some people will always be able to run faster than others. I could train forever and not be able to run fast enough to make waterboy on the olympic team. But I sure will be able to run faster than before I started my training. Whatever equipment we start with, whether it’s mental or physical, we can improve it. So whatever your starting point, you can be more creative. Just by learning and practicing a few relatively simple strategies and techniques.

This blog will be about discovering new and better ways to train ourselves (I’ll start to use a word I’ve coined — entrain — to describe the type of training I’m talking about) to use our creative capacity the best we can. I’m convinced we can make the world a better place if we can simply learn to use our noodles better — to understand more clearly, imagine more creatively, and implement more effectively.