Alright it seems to me that the word ‘imagination’ doesn’t fit in a business context, unless you’re an ad agency it’s been completely banned! The mere mention of ‘let’s use our imaginations’ gets people nervous as if saying ‘what’s that?’ Ok Ok I get it, there are alternatives though and to battle that I use the word ‘reconfigure’ to talk to non-imagine people.

Take for example, an interior designer who might be adept at Custom furnishings, his/her job is to reimagine the interior of your house. They take what you have and reconfigure it in another way to arrive at something different. They tweak, move, shift, turn your living room in all sorts of ways sometimes by moving the objects already in place or by bringing in new objects from the outside or a mix of both.

The interior designer in the examples below focuses on ‘using what you already have’ to reimagine your living room. The objects might not be new but the small change in the arrangements makes the living room not just look different but also feel different.

This is what imagination is all about.

You don’t have to drink tequila to loosen up (although it certainly helps), you just have to ask ‘what if’ we take this and move it, remove it, turn it, twist it, shake it, etc and see what happens. So if you’re in the process of reimagining how your business will have to work in the future but lost your imagination on your way to being an adult, just put yourself in the interior designer’s shoes and start reconfiguring.

Also published on Medium.