Category Archives: Thinking
The flip side of uncertainty
When we present new ideas that are better or different to what currently exists they carry the weight of uncertainty. This is a problem we all face. What is uncertain is unappealing. And everything right now, everyone says, is uncertain. But just like there’s a flip side to everything the same applies to uncertainty.
See this exchange between Patch Adams and Arthur Mendelson from the Movie Patch Adams: (more…)
On starting from scratch
The old musicians stay where they are and become like museum pieces under glass, safe, easy to understand, playing that tired old shit over and over again…Bebop was about change, about evolution. It wasn’t about standing still and becoming safe. If anybody wants to keep creating they have to be about change. – Miles Davis
One post that caught my attention in the last few weeks was how U2 gets ideas for it’s songs, specifically this comment by Bono on why starting from scratch can be the fastest way to a solution:
“That song [Where the streets have no name] was recorded, so there was a version of it on tape. That version had quite a lot of problems. What we kept doing was spending hours, days and weeks… probably half the time that the whole album took was spent on that song, trying to fix this version on tape. It was a nightmare of screwdriver work. My feeling is it was just better to start again. I’m sure we would get there quicker if we’d start again. It’s more frightening to start again, because there’s nothing. So my idea was to stage an accident. To erase the tape so we’d just have to start again.” – Brian Eno”
Starting from scratch sounds like a big waste of time, yet starting from scratch is at the center of creative thinking. I’m dumbfounded when I get asked for practical ideas that worked for someone else (usually competitor) and how they can best replicate it. This is the opposite of creative thinking and what most people fail to understand is that starting from scratch is highly rewarding. It’s like reformatting your computer and then starting with a fresh new installation!
Do it as if nothing
As a Ninjutsu practitioner, I understand very well the concept of mushin (no mind). Unlearning what you’ve learned and being open to whatever a situation presents and being able to adapt to it without thinking.
When you first start out in Ninjutsu you will immediately notice that nothing goes according to plan. Most of the stuff that you’re taught at the beginning is meant to ‘de-routinize’ your mind. To see it free.
Much like in other domains, most students will learn techniques and try to implement them ‘as they learned them’. Meaning they look at a scenario with similarities to how that technique was taught. This is a big no-no for there are an infinite number or techniques and they can all be applied in any point in time, you just have to go with whatever comes and do it as if nothing. As if you’ve done it before.
Develop mental flow
True Nimpo is really practiced when you get rid of the technique, you never show your technique to your opponent. Your movements should be human like, not mechanical. They should flow. Techniques are taught to us and sometimes we’re more concerned in applying in them just as the book says or as the Sensei says. While you may get rewarded for having beautiful technique, in the real world applying it won’t be so. You have to keep your mind open to whatever situation presents itself and respond as fluidly as possible. Be in the moment.
The element of water is what best describes flow, as water easily adapts to the environment.
Keep the mind moving
To develop mental flow, think of the mind as a river: that faster it flows, the better it keeps up with the present and responds to change. The faster it flows, also the more it refreshes itself and the greater it’s energy. Obsessional thoughts, past experiences and preconceived notions are like boulders or mud in this river, settling and hardening there and damming it up. The river stops moving, stagnation sets in. You must wage constant war on this tendency of the mind.
Superior strategists see things as they are. They are highly sensitive to dangers and opportunities. Nothing ever stays the same, and keeping up with circumstances as they change requires a great deal of mental fluidity. Great strategists do not act according to preconceived ideas; they respond to the moment. Like children, their minds are always moving, and they are always excited and curious. They quickly forget the past because the present is much too interesting.
Closing thoughts…
Just like Martial Arts have unlimited techniques and all of them can be applied to any scenario, so it is in other domains such as business. They’re not mechanical in nature. You train to be perfect but in the real world where unpredictability reigns, you have to be in the moment and respond as if nothing.
Understand: the most creative strategists stand out not because they have more knowledge but because they are able, when necessary, to drop their preconceived notions and focus intensely on the present moment. That is how creativity is sparked and opportunities are seized.
Remove the associative barriers that hinder new ideas
Image via Wikipedia
Last week I mentioned that the number one creative skill you need to master is the ability to free associate, to make connections between dissimilar things. I just stumbled into Ellen Di Resta’s post on the innovator’s perception where she probes further into the concept to which I left a comment:
Hello Ellen,
You’re right. I think it comes down to people’s ‘associative barriers’, or the ability to make new connection between dissimilar things.
For example if I say ‘car’ someone might say ‘tire’ because our minds make that connection automatically because we know it exists. But how about if I say ‘granola’ and someone else says ‘water’, which makes no sense to some of us but if you put the two together that person might see ‘river’.
So in other words when someone sees something different out of the unknown it’s because that person has very low associative barriers.
One of the reasons why most of us can’t make insightful new connections between dissimilar things is because we have ‘high associative barriers’. A person with high associative barriers will quickly arrive at conclusions when confronted with a problem since their thinking is more focused. He or she will recall how the problem has been handled in the past or how others in similar situations solved it. A person with low associative barriers, on the other hand, may think to connect ideas or concepts that have very little basis in past experience, or that cannot easily be traced logically.
The question then is how do we remove these barriers?
Understand why
If you’re on the ‘high barrier’ side, it has nothing to do with your parent’s genes, it has to do with with how our brains evolve. Our brains evolve to find order in things, grouping concepts together and finding structure in the environment surrounding it.
Be aware and destroy
I think they key is to be aware of this and then systematically break down those barriers by exposing yourself to new stuff like traveling to new places, talking to people whom you have nothing in common with, reading about stuff outside of your interests and then questioning your own assumptions as to how you think the world works.
The internet provides us with all this and more, and right at the center of it is other people (social media ring a bell?). If you don’t have a Twitter account, get one right now. You’re going to want to follow some people so go to Listorious and instead of looking for people that fit your interests do the opposite and follow dissimilar people (Ex. if you’re into art, follow people in science!) and see what they’re sharing and engage them.
Combine both
If you take two people — one with high barriers, the other with low barriers — and you give them the same information about a problem, they’ll approach the problem in a completely different way. So the objective is to be able to achieve ‘whole brain thinking’, where we can shift from divergent to convergent thinking in the flip of a switch. The more fluid our thinking is the better we’ll be equipped to adapt and make sense of things that look like a puzzle with no shape of form.
What would you add?
Declare war on yourself
Being unconquerable lies within yourself.
The guys @ThinkTank_ asked me for some blogging tips a few days ago and I posted some unconventional blogging advice at BM that I’m sure will rattle some cages. One of the actions steps at that I recommend at the end of the post is to ‘declare war on yourself’, or more commonly known as challenge your assumptions.
Assumptions are the shortcuts, rules of thumb, conventional wisdom, common sense, stuff we take for granted, ordinary thinking that as humans we use to get through daily life, which work for awhile, but they soon become stale truths, like weights holding us back from new ways of seeing, thinking and behaving.
Assumptions get us stuck in a never ending loop of repetition, and you know that leads to more of the same. (more…)
INNOVATION: Change your internal chip
“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.” – Einstein
Yesterday I was with a client proposing some new initiatives and as always there’s a bottleneck to new ideas. Someone’s ego prevents them from seeing other alternatives to how things can be done and is so set in their traditional views that anything new is irrelevant. In thinking about this fact with some of the people there I said: Like computer chips that evolve and get better all the time, so must we.
Voila!
Do you remember how in the movie Terminator 2 Sarah and John Connor take out and modify the Terminator’s internal cpu so it can can learn and not be following preset rules? Well that’s exactly what we have to do with ourselves and people who are impervious to ‘there’s always a better way’ speak. (more…)
An innovator is the one who thinks there’s always a better way
Can you recognize an innovator when you see one? It’s not easy but I’ve always thought that the people who don’t accept the world as it’s presented to them and see better alternatives are innovators, game-changers, creative geniuses, etc.
Innovators have certain characteristics that equip them to find better ways of doing things, Saul Kaplan from Business Innovation Factory wrote up a brilliant post on the 10 ways to recognize and innovator:
1. Innovators always think there is a better way.
2. Innovators know that without passion there can be no innovation.
3. Innovators embrace change to a fault.
4. Innovators have a strong point of view but know that they are missing something.
5. Innovators know that innovation is a team sport.
6. Innovators embrace constraints as opportunities.
7. Innovators celebrate their vulnerability.
8. Innovators openly share their ideas and passions expecting to be challenged.
9. Innovators know that the best ideas are in the gray areas between silos.
10. Innovators know that a good story can change the world.
In what other ways can we identify innovators?
Could we someday create innovations like we create music?
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Imagine there was a tool where we could input our ideas, combine them with other ideas, see some connections and visualize them in real-time. I’m not talking about music, but actual ideas like the ones that we have when we’re thinking out loud or brainstorming with a group.
In the video above you see an application called Ableton Live, used by many DJ’s in concerts to create music in real-time. I repeat, not pre-programmed but in real-time!
Why is this important? It’s important because DJ’s can experiment with different sounds and music in real-time. They’ve always had this ability but with this tool, DJ’s can input the sounds where they want, listen and make the adjustments all in a matter of seconds.
Again imagine if we could have a tool where we could input our ideas, combine them and see a result in real-time before we release it into the world.
What would such a tool look like?
We have one…our brain.
Yes, our brain is the most powerful machine ever invented and although it would be great to have a tool, such as Ableton, at our disposal that could enable us to create more in less time; our brain will ultimately connect the insight that gives us that breakthrough idea.
Only our brain gives us the ability to imagine how things could be before we ever see them out in the world. ???? ??????? ?????????
I’m sure there are people already thinking about a technology that can enable us to make connections faster but in the meantime we can start by flexing our brain muscles and learn to think better.
P.S. I’m not promoting Ableton Live, I just saw that video and thought about such a tool for the purpose of innovation.
Readers what do you think, is such a tool possible? How would it work? How can we start creating one right now?
