Page 62 - THE DO-IT-YOURSELF LOBOTOMY Open Your Mind to Greater Creative Thinking

A Problem Is a Must 53

The Lobotomy Files
Insuring Competitive Success

If an organization is to move forward and compete effectively today, it must
have people with the right attitude. The fast-paced thinking methods of The
Do-It-Yourself Lobotomy got the mental juices flowing and stimulated the
mighty power of innovation and creativity to help shape dramatic change at
The Amica Companies. This is of particular importance to us given the
fiercely competitive property/casualty and life insurance marketplaces in
which we operate today.
The fundamentals our management team across the country learned from
The Do-It-Yourself Lobotomy's interactive and fun-filled thinking
approaches, along with strong support and encouragement from our
senior executives, has truly energized our organization. Our talented team
members are now liberated and exercising the muscles of their minds.
Clearly, we now have an organization that has become much more open-
minded to opportunity and better equipped to innovate its way to even
greater success.
Tom Taylor, President & CEO
The Amica Companies
Lobotomized, along with 180
colleagues, 2000

7

PROBLEMS DON’T HAVE TO BE TORTURE
(Or Maybe They Should Be)

Many years ago when we were developing a low-budget TV commer-
cial, my creative team partner and I encountered a problem that
caused us to stretch to a place that helped us generate a wonderful idea
we probably would not have come up with otherwise.
The spot was for a software product whose primary advantage
over other software at that time was its extreme ease of use. We looked
at many executions, among them an approach that showed or men-
tioned the problems of “harder-to-learn, harder-to-use” software.
(This concept of demonstrating the problem with the competition is
one of the more popular uses of 180° Thinking, which you’ll learn
more about in Chapter 8.) I forget exactly which creative approach we
finally took to the animation house; all I remember is that we couldn’t
afford to do it. This was in the waning days of cell animation, just
before computers made this art form almost obsolete and a lot less
expensive. And therein was the problem. Since animation costs were
$1,000 per second and we had a budget of only $7,000 for the video