Leroy Eims III

Imagination - three steps.

Step 1: ask questions like a child. Often times parents are faced with questions from their children and some of us struggle with the answers. Questions like, why is the sky blue? Or why is the celebration of the birth of Christ called Christmas? Or why can't we have pink elephants?

It may seem like silly questions, but these actually do one thing for us and that is it allows us to see things in a different light. As adults, many of us face issues in relationships because we make too many assumptions (so who says Economists are the only ones making assumptions?).

For instance when speaking to a co-worker, we may assume that if we have told them something often enough and long enough they will remember. The underlying assumption here is that repetition works. Or perhaps when we communicate the benefits of our programs to prospects, we sometimes assume that they understood the benefits or worse that they see that as benefits.

What assumptions do for us is that it simplifies things. Imagine every time you need to communicate to your staff, you have to start with the reiteration of the assumptions. This could prove cumbersome. In order not to make too many assumptions but yet not having to repeat them every time you speak actually requires a four-step process (we will discuss this another time).

Therefore to unleash our imagination, we first have to ask questions like a child.

Step 2 involves formulating plausible solutions to address the underlying issue of the question. Hence after you've asked the questions, next is to come up with a whole lot of solutions, ignoring whether they seem odd or impossible at all. This is essentially the brainstorming aspect. Here suspension of the critical thinking is important. The best way to do this with a team. Essentially gather your team and have each person writes an idea to the question on a sheet of paper.

Next, within a short-span of 2 minutes have that sheet of paper rotated to the next person. In this way, you can look at my idea and either improve on it or add a different idea altogether. And then have this process repeated as many times as possible. That way you will have a bountiful of ideas which may or may not work.

And we'll continue with Step 3 tomorrow.

Your friend,
Melvyn
(Sent from my Blackberry Bold)