da Vinci and the 40 Answers

Raiders of the Broken Cable

“You haven’t taken me anywhere…. in like…forever!”

“All right, Miss Two Weeks, we’ll do something fun.”

After nearly15 years of marriage, I have finally figured out one thing about my wife; if it has been more than two weeks since we did something fun together like visit a restaurant, take an impromptu road trip, or a see a movie, it might as well have been 20 years. Her “fun memory” self destructs at precisely at 14 days.

“What do you want to do?” I asked.

“Let’s fly to Wendover.”

Wendover is scant little gambling town, on the way to nowhere, that straddles the Utah/Nevada border. From our home, Wendover is about a one-hour flight in my homebuilt airplane. We both like to go to Wendover periodically to play Blackjack; our game of choice because money seems to burn more like a blow torch than a bonfire.

We were smooth sailing at 8,000 feet when suddenly the engine bellowed a blood curdling scream;

“Whreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee !”

The RPM’s shot past red line. I immediately pulled back on the throttle to silence the screaming. Then without a second thought,  I performed a textbook-perfect, calm, cool, and collected turn back to the airport with unruffled grace; a striking resemblance to the likes of Indiana Jones (this is how I remember handling it; of course, Miss Two Weeks has her own version of the story).

For the engine to over-rev like that meant I had lost the pitch in the propeller somehow. I immediately had my suspicions. Even though the design of the prop cable had worked fine for eight years, I never really liked the design.

I nursed the airplane safely back to the airport, all the while waffling back and forth on whether to declare an emergency with the FAA. I was still maintaining altitude and I figured if Indiana could get through this unscathed, so could I.

After landing safely, I investigated the cable and confirmed my suspicions. Sure enough, the clevis design connecting the prop cable to the electric servo had broken. The problem was exactly as I had figured.

I spent several weeks trying to improve the design, which was part of the original airplane kit. I had come up with several versions that were better and stronger, but each version still had some drawbacks. I just wasn’t satisfied. The part was still made of plastic and I wasn’t ready to soil another pair of tighty whities just yet.

Then I decided to take another viewpoint.

I thought, “Let’s start from scratch and throw away the old design. Let’s look at the IFR, the Ideal Final Result. What am I really trying to do? How could I accomplish my task and maximize all the good and minimize all the bad? How can I minimize the time and cost? How could I approach the IFR equation so it got closer to infinity?”

Applying these IFR principles, I wondered how I could connect the servo to the prop with the least cost, least risk, and maximum simplicity. Then I tried to think about my surroundings and other hobbies.

This lead to several solutions, each one better than the last.

Then I hit pay dirt.

I knew from my sailing days that sailboats have all kinds of stainless steel cables that have a clevis as part of the cable assembly, and they look a lot like this design. There is no plastic in sail boat parts, either. I knew even the smallest of these cables were capable of withstanding 20,000 lbs of force; they safely hold sails in even the strongest of winds.

I measured the exact size of the servo and clevis connections, measured the length of the cable I needed, and jumped on the Internet. I found a listing for sailboat cables, did a little comparison shopping, and found the perfect cable for $30. I had already spent 20 times that in personal labor trying to fix the original flawed design.

I FedEx’d the part, installed it, and voila! I had a working cable, and more importantly, I felt confident that my next flight wouldn’t require my best Indiana Jones emulation.

By searching for the IFR, you position yourself to find not only the best solution, but also save valuable time and money. Aim high, and you’ll exceed even your loftiest expectations.

Back to the Basics

The “Basics” that we’ve discussed in Part I: Peel the Onion, Try It, Sensible Design, Clear as Mud, View Point, Universal Network, and Ideal Final Result, are the foundation for establishing a creative mindset. I believe that Lenny, Hank, Buck, and Walt all used these basic principles as well as 100’s of other creative geniuses. However I am fairly certain all of them would have had different names for it if they tried to describe how they thought and behaved. Most of them probably never tried to describe what they do in concrete concepts because they just did it subconsciously. With these basics we can all do it consciously.

These basics can not only be used in business, but in your professional life as well. The next time you’re buying a car, a home, planning a vacation, or trying to figure out how to manage your teenage daughter, try thinking about the issue from the perspective of the basics.

Using these tools can make a world of difference in your ability to think up creative ideas and solutions. I’ve been through a number of creative thinking courses. I’ve had a great time dancing and singing, putting paper cups on my head, and swimming through swamps at these workshops, but when the fun is over and I come back and sit down at my desk, I often discover that I didn’t learn anything that I can apply in a real-world setting.

I strive to give my readers and students deliberate methods and deliberate tools to generate ideas quickly so that they come up with some crazy, wonderful, new ideas.

In Part II we will examine the 40 Answers which will give you a set of even more tangible, tactical tools to use for generating new creative ideas.

But first a little more play.

Uncover your Inner Artist

Dr. Betty Edwards’ book, “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain,” teaches people how to become better artists, while also unleashing creativity by encouraging readers to explore and familiarize themselves with the hidden potential in their own brains. So, to further explore the power of viewpoint and perspective, I’d like to make you into an artist.

This is a five to ten-minute exercise. Go get a piece of blank white paper and a pencil. Do not turn your page upside down. Replicate the image you see without looking at objects. Look at the lines, angles, curves, and spaces, paying special attention to the relationships between spaces, angles, and curves, and the distance between lines.

Remember, there are no objects. There are no eyes, there is no nose, and there is no face. You are simply trying to duplicate exactly what you see, not what you think you see.

Start drawing.

Seriously, put the book down and go get a piece of paper and something to draw with. Do the exercise before you read anymore. Come on! Give yourself a gift and escape to the right brain, it’s only 10 minutes.

I’ll wait.

When your image is complete, take your paper, turn it right-side up, and look at what you’ve drawn. Is your picture better than you expected?

The first time I did this exercise I was shocked. My drawing was incredible, especially when you consider that stick-men are the foundation of my art career.

The reason that your image probably looks better than the pictures you typically produce is because you changed the context. You changed your view point. Rather than looking at the picture as an object, or as specific elements such as an eye, a nose, or a face, you just tried to reproduce what you actually saw, which enabled you to depict the image in greater detail and accuracy.

This idea of context applies to business and life as well. You’re used to recognizing patterns and themes, but when you identify those patterns and run with them, how much detail are you missing? How much detail are you leaving out because you already have the pattern established in your mind?

Have you ever had someone finish a sentence for you? When someone does that, they are assuming based on patterns and experience that they don’t even need the rest of the information in your thought because they think they already know what you are going to say. Have you ever had someone finish a sentence incorrectly or miss your point altogether because they were so stuck on their own perspective?

When you look at the image from a totally new perspective, you’re not allowing your history, prejudices, or patterns to draw the picture for you.

Apply the same concept to your personal and professional life. Rather than drawing conclusions based on what you already know, look at the issue from a new context or viewpoint and be amazed by what you can discover and create in your own mind.

View Point to make your Ideas Stick

Chip and Dan Heath recently released, “Made to Stick,” a book that explores why some ideas thrive while others die. I have spoke to Chip and Dan about their powerful and insightful book, particularly about how we could use a new viewpoint to generate dozens of new products and services based on the book’s principles. The foundation of the book is based on the observation that “sticky” ideas have several common attributes.

Sticky ideas are:

Simple
Unexpected
Concrete
Credible
Emotion
… and tell a   Story

These attributes spell success, which makes the concepts easier to remember. Let’s now explore each of these concepts in greater detail, highlighting some examples from the book.

Simple

In the military, there is a concept called commander’s intent. The commander’s intent is defined as, “a concise expression of the purpose of the operation and the desired end state that serves as the initial impetus for the planning process. It may also include the commander’s assessment of the adversary commander’s intent and an assessment of where and how much risk is acceptable during the operation.”

Despite the enormous amount of planning that goes into a military operation, the plans often change shortly after the first contact with the enemy. Military operations and the environment are complex issues that are not easy to plan for – and the enemy gets a choice on what happens.

That reality makes the commander’s intent even more important. This statement is a simple core message that everyone can understand: “This is the desired outcome; this is what we came here to accomplish.” No matter what happens, the foot soldier on the ground knows what has to be accomplished that day. 

Unexpected

As you’ll recall from previous chapters, Broca’s area is the portion of your brain responsible for filtering boring, mundane, and otherwise unmemorable experiences from your long-term memory. An experience, product, or event has to break a mental pattern in your brain in order to be embedded in your long term memory. The movie, “The Sixth Sense,” mastered the unexpected. Throughout the film, viewers are shocked and surprised by the multiple twists. This cinematic masterpiece is memorable primarily because the creators harnessed the power of the unexpected.

Concrete

"I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth."

President John F. Kennedy
May 25, 1961

President Kennedy’s challenge to Congress is memorable because there is no wiggle room in this statement. Kennedy’s objective was to land a man on the moon and return him safely within the decade. The challenge was concrete and clearly defined, and thus more likely to stick in the minds of its recipients.

Credibility

Credibility has an incredible impact on the “stickiness” of a message. In “Made to Stick,” the authors discuss how the NBA brought home the dangers of AIDS to their rookies in a way that they wouldn’t soon forget.

The NBA requires all rookies to meet in a mandatory session before the season begins. On the first night of the orientation, the players were hanging out at the hotel bar when a group of very attractive women walked in. The women were dressed for attention, and the players were happy to oblige. By the end of the evening, several of the players had made plans to get together with the various women later in the week.

When the players arrived for their first meeting in the morning, they were shocked to see the women from the previous evening lined up in the front of the room. One-by-one, the women stepped out of line, introduced themselves, and said, “and I’m HIV positive.”

That stunt certainly added credibility to the NBA’s message, but how do you think the rookies’ view point changed in light of the women’s revelations? Their perspective changes dramatically when they realize that the beautiful women they had been flirting with the night before were, in fact, HIV positive. This new viewpoint brings home the message that the NBA is so desperate to transmit: AIDS is real, and anyone, anywhere can be a carrier of this deadly disease.

Emotion

One of the easiest ways to make a message stick is to tap into someone’s emotion. Charities have known for years that if they can make an emotional, one-one-one connection with a person, they’ll give more money than they would have donated to a group fund. That’s why charities often have patrons “sponsor” or “adopt” a young child in an impoverished, third-world country. By giving the donor a name, a picture, and a story of the recipient, the charity appeals directly to the donor’s emotions, leading the donor to contribute more money.

Targeted messages such as these change the donor’s viewpoint as well. Even though there are a lot of people in need, when a potential donor looks at the world through the eyes of a starving child in a third-world country, their perspective changes. Charities capitalize on this new perspective by letting donors know that their money really can change one life, even if they can’t save the world.

Story

Stories add a human element to a message, making it both more unusual and memorable. Think about Subway’s Jared campaign. Almost everyone is familiar with the story of the man who lost hundreds of pounds by creating his own Subway sandwich-based diet. Jared’s story has carried a lot of momentum and weight for the Subway campaign. Stories stick.

As you consider your issue from different viewpoints, keep the SUCCES attribute in mind.

The Universal Experience

“David, whatever you do, don’t mention the “L” word.”

“What the hell is the “L” word?”

“Shush….don’t even say the letter. Don’t even think about it. I’m talking about licensing. We don’t even want to say that word. If we do, we’ll have their lawyers on us like white on rice. The project will never get approved because we’re too small for them to care about granting us a license. They wouldn’t even give us the time of day. We’ll be dead in the water. Don’t you dare bring up that word. We have to figure out another approach. We need to go at this from another view point.”

Dave Campbell and I had been brainstorming for days on how we could leverage our new creativity and innovation course. We kept asking ourselves, how do we make this new course larger than life? Who could we partner with that could take us to a higher level of status and credibility, one that we couldn’t possibly reach on our own?

We finally settled on Universal Studios. If we could partner with them and use the prestige of Universal to launch our new course, we knew we could make our class an instant success.

Our plan was to put the course together and integrate our workshop with the activities and facilities of the theme park. The class would be a three-day corporate training event on creativity and innovation at Universal Studios Orlando.

We had managed to set up a meeting with Universal to showcase our product. We wanted to hold this event on Universal’s property, and we desperately needed to use the Universal name in our marketing materials. Their name would give us the leverage we were looking for, but we knew they would never agree to let us license the Universal trademark.

We needed approval to use the Universal name, but we knew if we brought up the “L” word, they would just tell us to go pound sand. From Universals’ viewpoint, there was no reason to allow us to license the name. We weren’t big enough. We didn’t have enough revenue potential for them to care. They spill more popcorn in a day then they would make on a revenue share with us over a year.

To get approval to use their name, we knew we had to approach the issue from a different viewpoint, so we put on our curious caps and started doing research.

We found that Universal hosted three to four corporate events at their theme park per day.  We figured that if all these other companies were already using Universal’s facilities for corporate events, we could do the same thing; we just needed to host our own corporate event.

On the day of the meeting, we were extremely cautious.

“So let me get this straight. You are the Corporate Events Organization team for Universal Studios Orlando. You already have a system set up to handle three or four corporate events each day. What do we need to do to host a corporate event here as well?

“Well, you simply select the facilities and days you want and then book your event with us. All we have to do is complete a normal purchase order.”

Now I had to dance around the “L” word issue.

“OK, so the corporations that come here now … they all have to tell their employees that the event is being held at Universal Studios Orlando … right?”

“Yes, of course.”

“So I can safely assume they post information about the event on their internal Web sites.”

“I’m sure.”

“They probably provide maps of the park, information about local hotels, restaurants, and general details about the event, such as what to bring, what to wear, and what there is to do in the area. They probably use some of your marketing collateral to share that information internally, as well, right?”

“Sure.”

“Do you have a packet of information about Universal that we could use to announce our corporate event?

“Certainly. We can get you a package.”

“And since you have more than a thousand companies hosting events here each year, do you see any problem with us posting some of your marketing materials on our Web site? You know, the Universal logos, restaurant information, and details about rides … that sort of thing?”

“No, we don’t see any problem with that.”

We had just gotten approval to use the Universal Studios name without ever discussing the “L” word.

We just had to use a different perspective. Of course, we were looking out for Universals’ best interest as well. Nothing we did was devious or deceitful. Not discussing the “L” word didn’t hurt anyone.

We got our new event approved, and we are providing another (albeit small) revenue stream for the Universal Corporate Events team, all by using a different view point. Check it out:

www.imaginationlive.com

View Point - Adoption and Business

“Your birth mother’s first name was Toni. She was 14 years old when you were born.”

That was the first line of the new packet that had just arrived.

Toni held you after birth and showed a great deal of love and concern for you. She felt adoption was the best plan as she wanted you to have the security and family life which she could not provide.

She and your birth father were boyfriend and girlfriend in high school. When you were born, he was 16.

Toni was described as a feisty, healthy kid who was very bright, but whose behavior was out of control.

The social worker speculated that had she had her parents’ active support and had plans to marry your birth father, she might have raised you.

She was asked to leave the maternity home after some concerns about excessive ‘necking’ she and her boyfriend, your birth father, were engaged in during his weekly visits to the maternity home.

Your birth father was described as ‘being on the short side of average build.’ 

If you had ever met me, you would find that last statement extremely hilarious. I am 5’7 and 13/16th”.

This particular package had arrived because last year my cholesterol suddenly climbed to unacceptable levels for no apparent reason. This spike occurred in spite of the fact that I was eating better and exercising more than ever before in my life. The high levels just didn’t make sense to me. Becker, my doctor, suggested that since I was adopted and had no medical history he could refer to, I should take the safe route and get on Lipitor. But I didn’t want to take any more drugs.

I also had no real desire to search for my birth parents. Now don’t get me wrong. Of course I thought about my birthparents from time to time as I was growing up (or I wouldn’t be curious or even human) but it was never that big of a deal to me for one very good reason: I was raised by the best and bravest parents in the world. In the 60s, they adopted four kids from four different families, God bless them. I never had any reason to search for my birth parents because I already had the greatest parents on Earth.

But then this cholesterol issue got me going. I called the adoption agency and asked if they had any medical history on my birth parents. They said they could send me a packet with “non-identifying information,” if I was interested. After some thought, I said OK.

That was how I ended up with the Toni packet. Her name was Toni Gayle something. I didn’t know her full name because they had whited out her last name on each page to make her “non-identifying.”

Except on the last page. On the final page of the packet, someone had made an error and whited out the middle name, Gayle, and left her last name. McDaniel. Now I knew her full name.

Toni Gayle McDaniel.

My birth father’s name was Richard Martin something. The last name was whited out again, but I could tell the name was five letters. Hmmm … Brown? Green?

I started to mentally peel the onion.

Then it hit me. I knew my birth father’s last name was Smith.

When I was about seven, my mother (the one who adopted me) was looking for my birth certificate for some reason long forgotten. I was standing next to the filing cabinet with her as she was going through the papers. I don’t think I had ever seen my birth certificate before. When she pulled the document out, I saw two names.

Mark Lee Fox … and Richard Martin Smith.

“Mom, who is Richard Martin Smith?”

She didn’t know what to say at first. I think she had forgotten that there were two names on the birth certificate.

“That was the name the foster parents gave you before we adopted you.”

I am certain that is what she was told or what she remembered. At the time, the name wasn’t all that important, especially when you consider I was only seven.

But then, thirty-nine years later, after totally forgetting about that unimportant episode, some brain cell in the recesses of my brain remembered “Smith.” Go figure.

Now what?

Knowing their names made a difference. My birth parents were now real people. That notion dramatically changed my viewpoint about my life. I started thinking differently about things I had assumed or taken for granted for 46 years, things that may or may not have been correct.

Was there a 60-year old woman out there in need of closure? Was there a 62-year old father in the same boat? What if I contacted her and she got angry? Would she be happy to hear from me or not? She was only 14 when I was born. What did that pregnancy do to her life? Did she even remember having a baby? I know she went to a maternity home for a while, but then what? Did her parents send her away?

What if I called her and she had a heart attack? That possibility stuck in my head for a few days. “What if my phone call kills her?”

These and 10,000 other questions ran through my mind the following days and changed my viewpoint about adoption, myself, and my life in an instant.

I use this story to illustrate an example of how a change of viewpoint or a change of perspective can generate questions. If learning about my birth parents can raise 10,000 questions in my mind, what other perspectives can I use to generate that same burst of ideas and curiosity?

You don’t have to experience something as dramatic as this to change your view point. This is an extreme example of contextual change. You can change the way you are looking at an issue by looking at the idea from another person, place, or even another thing’s viewpoint and get a plethora of new ideas and thoughts about the issue. Using a new viewpoint allows your creativity to flourish.

You can really get creative when you think about a topic from the perspective of something that’s not human. I once read about an engineer at Sunbeam who pretends he is the idea. So if he’s making a toaster, he imagines that he is the toaster. He asks himself, do I want people to look fat or skinny when they see their reflection in my panels? How do I clean the crumbs out of my bottom tray? By thinking about the product from the viewpoint of the product, he is able to make a mundane task both more fun and become more innovative.

How could you change your perspective or viewpoint in your business to generate 10,000 new questions? What if you assumed the viewpoint of the CEO of your company? What if you assumed the viewpoint of President Bush? What would you do differently?

Are the creative juices flowing yet?

Oh yes. You might be wondering if I ever found the medical history I was searching for. The information was listed on the last page of that fateful packet.

“Medical history: The only medical history (as follows) was provided by your foster family during the six months that you lived with them before you were adopted.”

You were described as a whiney, crying, gassy baby.

Gee thanks, how helpful.