Griffiths / Costi Grasp The Solution

How to find the best answers to everyday challenges
1. Auflage 2011
ISBN: 978-1-905493-37-1
Verlag: Filament Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 290 Seiten

Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower...Which do you want to be? 'GRASP The Solution' is a refreshingly pragmatic and straight-talking guide to making decisions and solving problems creatively. If you've always thought creativity was all fluff and no substance, this book will make you think again. Chris Griffiths (head of ThinkBuzan, the organisation behind Mind Mapping - the thinking tool used by millions worldwide) compels you to let go of what's killing your creativity. In just four clear steps, he shows you how to unleash bold, fresh ideas and solutions in a systematic way to help you triumph innovatively over any challenge.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Griffiths, Chris

Costi, Melina

Leseproben

INTRODUCTION During the last decade, we underwent one of the most significant shifts ever experienced in human history – the information explosion. As a result, we witnessed the rise of what Peter Drucker termed the ‘knowledge worker’1 - the programmers, IT workers, accountants, MBAs and lawyers who could process and manipulate this all-important resource. These individuals have been credited for achieving some of our most spectacular successes in business and industry – and rightly so. But today, this is all changing. While the linear, logical and analytical talents of knowledge workers are still very much necessary, it’s hazardous to presume that these skills will continue to shape the nature of success in a new ‘creative’ age. As the value of ingenuity and innovation skyrockets, the competencies of analysis and logical processing of information can no longer rule. Why is that? New technologies are proving that they can execute this type of sequential, analytical and computational work better, faster and more accurately than even those with the highest IQs.2 Ask any lawyer, stockbroker, analyst or programmer and they will bemoan how many of their functions are increasingly being turned over to machines! Knowledge is a fantastic means for aiding advancement but it’s not a solution in itself. In this new creative era, the power is inevitably going to shift to people who can look at things differently, who can think imaginatively and objectively to deliver new values and ideals. The leaders of the next decade will be those who can deliberately and systematically make fresh connections and discoveries, generate original ideas, solve problems creatively not just logically, and break the rules to overcome sameness. They will be true ‘whole brain’ thinkers, harnessing both their left (analytical) and right (creative) cortical skills to make optimal decisions. Information is still important, but unless we make the effort to look at it in different ways we get stuck and stagnate in the same old habits and patterns.3 It will be this new breed of thinkers who will be able to synthesise, exploit and transform information to find original solutions to contemporary challenges and so forge the way forward. Success is no longer a matter of what we know but how we think. The leaders of the new age will be those who can think differently! By reading this book, you’re fundamentally setting yourself up to be one of these people - to be someone who makes a difference instead of following the crowd. You’ll be learning how to equip yourself with strategies and tools to cultivate your thinking and, by doing so, discover how you can add value to your organisation, confidently address problems, and massively boost your chances of reaching pre-eminent levels of productivity and innovation. “No company can grow and prosper without new ideas. Customer’s changing needs, increasing pressure from competitors, and the evolving abilities of suppliers all necessitate a continual source of creative thinking for a company to stay on top.” Henry Chesbrough, Author of ‘Open Innovation’ The Most Important Factor... Here’s a question for you. If you wanted to create a successful organisation, whether a business, school or charity, what would be the most important advantage or asset you could have? Take a few moments to think about this. Would it be the best product, most competitive price, a brilliant sales team, a powerful brand, sound infrastructure and processes, a hungry crowd? Let’s say you believe that brand is the most influential factor. Of course the brand is an incredibly valuable component of a business, but where does it come from in the first place?... ...It comes from PEOPLE. People are the driving force of an organisation; they are without doubt the single most important ingredient for success. Seth Godin,4 entrepreneur, author and public speaker on marketing and change, quotes: “Carnegie apparently said, ‘Take away my people, but leave my factories and soon grass will grow on the factory floors...Take away my factories, but leave my people and soon we will have a new and better factory.’ Is there a typical large corporation working today that still believes this? Most organizations now have it backward. The factory, the infrastructure, the systems, the patents, the process, the manual... that’s king. In fact, shareholders demand it. It turns out that success is coming from the atypical organizations, the ones that can get back to embracing irreplaceable people, the linchpins, the ones that make a difference. Anything else can be replicated cheaper by someone else.” So with this being the case, what’s the most important factor that determines the success of the individual? Again, stop and think about this for a short while. Perhaps there are a number of qualities and aspects that could be significant here - intelligence, inspiration, communication skills and creativity. But again, where does inspiration come from? Where does intelligence come from? They all funnel down to the ability of people to THINK in the correct way. Ultimately, all of the successful elements of a business are devised by individuals who, first and foremost, are able to think fittingly to the task. In simple terms, thought is our most valuable human resource. People – The most important factor in an organisation We are what we think, and if we think better we can be more efficient, creative and productive... But how many of us actually stop to think about how we think? We probably all agree that having adequate systems, processes and procedures in place is instrumental for a business to grow and succeed. A pilot can’t fly to his exact destination without a set of monitors and gauges to guide the way and make sure everything is progressing well.5 Likewise, an organisation benefits from systems and processes to drive its operational efficiency and help optimise end-to-end performance. McDonald’s is an excellent example of how efficient and organised processes can become the basis of a successful business model. Every activity at McDonald’s has a very specific process, enabling the entire organisation to run like a well-oiled machine. Ray Kroc, the man responsible for building McDonald’s into a massive-scale fast food operation, even created a 75-page manual detailing the entire ‘McDonald’s Method’ to the letter.6 The system is so fine-tuned, it delivers the required end result almost every time. With such great value brought by systems and processes, surely a chief goal for all organisations should be to implement systems which assist people to think in the most focused and effective ways for particular tasks. If thinking is the most fundamental factor for success, doesn’t it make sense that the best action we could take would be to actually help people think about thinking? “The ability to think better will soon become the most significant competitive advantage companies and individuals can claim.” Tim Hurson, Author of ‘Think Better’ Are We Ready For Creativity? Although most of us have an intuitive understanding of what it means to be creative, there’s still a great deal of uncertainty surrounding the nature of this fascinating concept. I define creativity as “the incubator and cultivator of new ideas, which are born from existing knowledge and combined to form a new neural pathway in the brain, leading to a personal original thought.” The key point to take from this definition is that, at its simplest level, creativity relates to the mental processes that lead to solutions, ideas, concepts, theories or products that are unique and novel.7 Creativity is a fundamental driver for innovation - but what is innovation? It’s “the marriage of creative thinking and sound logic, which when applied together, create a solution or direction for one to explore and deliver.” “Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things.’’ Theodore Levitt, American economist and professor at Harvard Business School On this basis, we can acknowledge that all progress and advancement is attributable to creativity at the outset. It’s the catalyst for change. Without it we remain trapped in the past, rehashing the same out-dated concepts. In business especially, there’s a need for creativity to make up for the shortcomings of conventional logical thinking which boxes us in by merely extending what we already know, rather than bringing something entirely new to the table. And critical thinking is just as bad! As the eminent thinker Edward de Bono puts it, “You may be so brilliant at critical thinking that you can destroy any silly idea, even good ones. But no amount of critical thinking can produce good ideas in the first place.”8 Despite our serious...