Page 209 - THE DO-IT-YOURSELF LOBOTOMY Open Your Mind to Greater Creative Thinking

200 MIND FARMING

difficult for them to live up to their words. It may be trite, but people
follow the lead of what you do, not what you say.

Understanding Is the Key
To develop as creative thinkers in your organization, first your people
have to understand that creative thinking is the most important
weapon your company has in the battle to compete in the rough-and-
tough, even hostile world of business. Your people need to know that
creative thinking and problem solving are fundamental to virtually
everything else they do in all realms of their particular jobs.
There is another kind of understanding that can help your people
become great achievers in this area. And that is their understanding of
how to come up with ideas—basic creative thinking and problem solving.
Of course, the primary objective of this book is to provide under-
standing of this elusive stuff called creativity. As we demonstrated
earlier, everyone has the capability to come up with ideas and solve
problems. Yet, do they get the big idea, the big solution, every time?
No. Actually, most people are quite inconsistent in doing so. And the
reason for this is quite simple. Most people have no idea how they
come up with ideas or solve problems, so replicating it consistently is
quite difficult for them.

A METHOD TO THE MADNESS

If you study the traits of real-life dreamers, the most fully developed
thinkers on the creative typologies map, you will see some similarities.
From Albert Einstein to Stephen Hawking, from Leonardo da Vinci to
Martha Graham, from Thomas Edison to Steve Jobs, from Mozart to
the Beatles... all of these great, leading-edge thinkers have some fun-
damental characteristics that actually can be developed in anyone.
I have worked for years to identify definitive creative thinker traits.
I’ve trained over 100,000 individuals, many of them dreamers who
want to be even better dreamers, the vast majority of whom are
crafters and rationals, and even some laborers (often dragged kicking
and screaming to the training sessions by their bosses). During my
training sessions—some that last only one hour, most in the half- to
full-day range, some that last for three days—virtually all participants
become consistent, effective dreamers, proving that anyone can
improve the ability to think more creatively if given a better under-
standing and the proper conditions.