Four Foundations of Breakthrough Thinking
Vistage speaker Bryan W. Mattimore has identified four foundations of breakthrough thinking. Strategically applying each of these pillars can result in dramatic changes for individuals — and organizations.
Questions — Reframing Your Problems
You’ve got a problem. Or you think you’ve got a problem.
“People often solve the wrong problem, or they have defined it badly, or they haven’t defined it creatively,” says Mattimore.
“You can frame the problem so you get very pedestrian ideas, or frame it in a liberating way so you get good ideas,” he explains.
Metaphors — The Power of Making Associations
Our minds are always at work making connections that organize the world for us. These associations are metaphors.
Businesses can use metaphors to reconstruct how they think about their problems and opportunities.
“Let’s say you have a hospital,” says Mattimore. “The way to get very creative about your hospital service might be to think of different metaphors — like ‘luxury hotel,’ ‘spa’ or ‘amusement park.’”
These metaphors inspire a variety of creative approaches for how to position your business. Maybe you want to offer 24-hour room service or down pillows. You might want to offer alternative therapies or spa food. Or you might want to add an element of fun and the unexpected, like adding carousel music to wheelchair rides.
“Metaphors have the potential to be tremendously liberating for your thinking,” says Mattimore.
Unlocking Our Minds with Visuals
Words, by their very nature, limit the way we think about issues.
Einstein solved many of his problems using thought experiments that were kinesthetic. He might imagine that he was falling through space in an elevator with aliens pulling on his legs to get at a particularly difficult problem.
Picture “prompts” can unleash all kinds of new ideas.
“Wishing for the impossible” is a valuable technique for coming up with new, more efficient ways of doing a process. It is also effective for new ideas to promote products, and for new products themselves.
In trying to improve a process, for example, the question would be, “If this were the perfect process, what would it be?”
“Wishing” takes us back to childhood, when we were often wishing for something — and often that was something that adults would say was impossible. Soon, we gave up and began wishing only for what was possible — and that became a much smaller world to live in.