Pump Up Your Brain

Published on this site: November 28th, 2006 - See more articles from this month

According to Nobel prize-winning chemist Linus Pauling, the best way to get a good idea is to get a lot of ideas. Unfortunately, school teaches us to find the right answer, when actually there is usually more than one right answer for a problem.

When an adult is challenged to come up ideas, he or she typically generates three to six possible solutions. The average child generates 60. We need to be more child-like in our approach to ideas. Let's try some exercises to help us generate ideas or to look at things from a different - and perhaps, childlike - perspective.

Change the question Sometimes just by changing a word or two in a question, you can come up with radically different ideas. Centuries ago a plague spread across Europe which was almost always fatal. In one town, a person thought to be dead was buried alive.

Towns people wanted to make sure this didn't happen again. One group proposed putting food and water in every casket and an air hole up to the surface.

Their question: "what if we bury someone alive?" Another group suggested placing a 12-inch spike in the coffin lid and aligning it with the victim's heart.

Their question: "how do we make sure everyone we bury is dead?"

Ignore the Rules

Now, I'm not suggesting that you should break laws. Rather, I am saying you need to look for approaches that fall outside the norm. Ancient prophecy said that whoever could untie the Gordian Knot would be king of Asia. Everyone, including Alexander the Great, failed when they tried to unravel it. Frustrated, Alexander took out his sword and sliced the knot in half. Mission accomplished.

Reframing the Problem

You can look at problems from different perspectives using what is called the Reframing Matrix. Take a piece of paper and write down your question in the middle of the paper. Draw a grid around it. In one grid you might ask, "how would a doctor approach this problem?" In another, "how would an engineer solve this?"

Group Think

Brainstorming in a group often does not work because people are afraid of speaking their ideas out loud. This is a way around that fear. Assemble a group. Write down three ideas on a piece of paper and pass it to the person on your right. That person reads the ideas and adds three more ideas triggered by the previous ideas. This continues until it gets back to the beginning.

Random Input

A random piece of information often can take your problem-solving process into hyperdrive. Once you have your question or problem clearly stated, open up a dictionary or a thesaurus to any page and select a word. Now, think about how this random item applies to your problem. There is some connection and your job is to find it.

OK, now you have some new tools to pump up your brain. Do some heavy lifting.

Harry Hoover is a partner in My Creative Team,
http://www.my-creativeteam.com. He has 30 years of experience in crafting and delivering bottom line messages that ensure success for serious businesses like Bank of Commerce, Brent Dees Financial Planning, CruisingTheICW.com, Focus Four, Levolor, North Carolina Tourism, TeamHeidi, Ty Boyd Executive Learning Systems, VELUX, and Verbatim.