Tips for Leveraging Your Thinking

Leverage Your “Intersection”

Question of the Week: In the world of creativity and innovation, I struggle with breaking through my black and white analysis. Even though I’ve attended seminars, and have read books about steps to creativity, all of these methods seem to be illogical for me. I’ve recently been promoted to Head Supervisor, and am dreading the discussions about innovation at management meetings. How do I move from that analytical, no nonsense frame of mind into understanding how creativity actually works for people like me?

Let me introduce you to the word “Intersection”.

The Intersection is the connection point for ideas which could either clash or combine. When stepping into the Intersection, you will begin to overcome logic-related challenges and appreciate your creative ideas. By generating and not judging your thoughts, you will produce a constant mix of surprising insights.

Rather than keeping your systematic thoughts in separate “files”, merge them.

How to Merge Your Brain

When left-brain (your strength) thinkers look for solutions, they are more likely (than right brain thinkers) to immediately discard concepts which don’t fit into the category for solving the problem.

1. The technique I recommend is to identify the judgment immediately by writing it. Listen to your own thinking!

2. Then substitute the judgment by using a replacement process. Move your items from the judgment category into the generating category by using a developmental tool, called the metaphor.

3. A metaphor, “a picture is worth a thousand words”, helps your brain to amalgamate dissimilar information. Metaphors connect old information to new information, and bring you easily to the Intersection.


How do you create a metaphor?

One way, is to listen carefully to conversations. Pick out proverbs and clichés, which more than likely will contain a metaphor.

“A chain is only as strong as it’s weakest link.” “If the only tool you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail.”

In each case, you can actually picture the elements of these ideas. In fact, I’d encourage you to draw the phrase. Yes, draw. Doodle. Diagram. Stick figures, weird lines, crooked objects – the artistic quality is irrelevant. Your objective is to kick-start your right brain function, not compete with Van Gogh. By doing this, you will find the “intersection” visually and intellectually.

What do you do at your next management meeting?

First, listen. List. Draw, doodle, diagram the metaphors. Find the potential Intersections. Mix and match, without looking for the “right” idea.

Metaphors are everywhere, once you are aware of their importance. Metaphors pull you to the Intersection, the crossroads of emerging ideas. The more remote your ideas, the less they seem to have in common, the higher the potential of a great solution!

Many of the world’s largest and most successful strategies have come about because someone found the Intersection. Steve Jobs – Apple! – is an obvious example.

Let me share another version with you, even though including this story creates a longer column than usual. You're investing about 7 minutes this week!

This “Creative Confessions” article was written because of the awkward positioning of two unrelated words in a metaphor: “Trailer Hitch” and “Hearse”.

Finding the Intersection is natural for some of us. If your analytical left brain is stuck, here's the process for you:

While you’re reading, pick out the Intersections! Draw, doodle or diagram “to your heart’s content”.

Do not worry about your artistic abilities - don't judge yourself, generate!

If you’d like to know more about moving from your analytical base to a conceptual style, just ask!


Creative Confessions
“What’s That About a Trailer Hitch, Dear?”
By Maggie Chicoine

You don’t really need to know why we’ve been “living” at the hospital more than at home lately. We were in Emerg, off and on, for months on end with a variety of young and old in the family. We now own 2 spaces in the hospital parking lot! You can guess how often we commented about how bored we were, especially trying to lounge in those stiff awkward seats in the waiting room. We did our best to tough it out, because being there was the most important duty of the day.

Being a people watcher, I counted the numbers of screaming babies cuddled by harried fathers, hobbling geezers, teens in labour and just plain sick folks. I’d switch spots, walk the loop, stop to talk to the “porter” at the elevators, gawk some more and wonder what had happened to turn these people into “patients”.

Ignoring mom’s warnings about picking up germ-infested magazines in clinic sitting rooms, I chose the least tattered ones first. Mag-scanning suited my curiosity about urban sociology; for example, the advantages of wearing grey nail polish (“A colour signaling stability in tough economic times”, “the sign of a true risk taker”). I discovered innovative diet techniques, including calorie savings by simply kissing my sweet husband while he devours his chocolate dessert. French necking might inspire a smaller dress size! Tired and bored, a few striking headlines did continue to catch my attention. In a thick journal featuring the letter O, an oversized quotation blared, “Have you ever seen a hearse that needs a trailer hitch?”

“Hey, dear, listen to this!” I reached over to tug at sweetie’s sleeve. He didn’t budge. Eyes closed, world shut out. Not listening.

Reading out loud was normal for me. I loved my family’s tradition of reading out loud while I was growing up. We enjoyed the nuances of my grandmother’s voice. She always picked the perfect paragraphs to share with us. There was no question: when she started reading, we dropped what we were doing and listened.

I tried again, couldn’t wait. “I’m reading this cool article; listen to this!! “Have you ever seen a hearse that needs a trailer hitch?” Is that a perverse headline? Sweetie…are you awake?”

No answer. An hour later, when it was my turn to just rest my eyes, he replied, “What was that about a trailer hitch? I was just thinking we should get one, and buy that trailer. It would be handy, don’t you think?”.

Who says men don’t listen! I let it go.

As often happens, that phrase just kept buzzing around my head. I liked the metaphor: “trailer hitches on hearses”. Trailers – big or small, heavy duty or the garden variety – haul “stuff”. Either the contents are useful as they enter our lives, or debris as they exit, carrying building materials heaped neatly for new homes or broken furniture and household waste piled haphazardly. What’s more, the loads are symbols for investments we have made of our time, energy, money and other people’s expertise. We need the help of an external appendage, the trailer, to move them.

I’d like to think that the hearse moves the best of the best. All that is precious, lovely, and battle weary from existence. Simply, worthy of remembrance.

Everything attached to the trailer hitch of life would be irrelevant when the hearse pulls up. The time, the sweat, the cash, the debts, the accumulation of precious things, all loaded onto a platform to be moved and rearranged; carried in or carried out.


How Hitchless Are You?

Pardon me, but My Coach Mode has this habit of kicking in. I recommend three questions to help you clarify your “hitch quotient”. Write these on a slip of paper to keep in your wallet for a time when you’re musing about life. If you share my bizarre sense of humour, please jot down or doodle the trailer hitch image, as a reminder.

Question 1: “What’s Important?”
Question 2: “What’s Really Important?”
Question 3: “What’s Most Important?”

Wouldn’t it be wonderful not to worry about that hitch? To know what is important despite the commercialization of our lives?

Perhaps today, I’ll forget about finding that gray nail polish. I will start kissing the frosting off my sweetie’s lips more often. I’ll report back on the new dress size, next issue!


"When Maggie promises a twist of ingenuity, she's not kidding!"
Maggie Chicoine is an expert at sparking deep thinking and asking for a commitment to act on the possibilities, whether she is writing or speaking at conventions. People say that she's “provocative, well-researched, funny and the easiest speaker to work with on the circuit!”. Contact Maggie at 1 800 587 1767 or read her MAG-Oh!-Zine at www.theideascuptor.com