“Whenever you face a deficit
in resources, you need to
replenish your inventory of ideas.”
— Dr Marc Dussault
Tag Archive for 'Creativity'
Have you ever wondered why success gets harder as you become more successful?
It’s because of your opportunity costs that keep rising as you get more and more successful mixed with a short term focus on “making deals” and taking care of emergencies instead of working “on” the business…
It’s quite a dilemma that paralyses many entrepreneurs. They know they could do better, but remain stuck in the Vortex Of Mediocrity™.
So how do you break out of this stranglehold?
Simple – MAKE time to get away from the business. It can be a long weekend or ideally a whole week. PLAN for it so you’re not stressed and you don’t cheat.
Remove yourself COMPLETELY from the day-to-day pressures and DISCONNECT completely.
Then ask yourself the following questions:
- If I was to start over again, what would I do differently? What would I change?
- If I was a competitor, how would I exploit me/us?
- What are we really good at?
- What could we be really good at (or better at)?
- If I knew I could not fail, what would I try?
- What is the #1 complaint of the industry/marketplace that I can solve?\
- What am I not doing that I should be doing?
You can’t have the thoughts to start to answer these questions while you’re knee deep in the intellectual quicksand of day-to-day operations.
You need distance.
You need your personal journal (you might even give MindMapping a go!)
You need to do this otherwise you’ll stagnate.
I do this exercise every year at Christmas time which conveniently coincides with my New Year’s Resolutions.
If you have a business trip planned, consider extending it by a day or two and take those unfamiliar surroundings to start the process. Once your business is done – check out of THAT hotel and check into another one t0 completely shift your mindset. I mean it. Pick a hotel near the beach, mountains or go upscale or totally rough and tough.
Make sure there is CONTRAST so that your brain registers the new impulses.
It’s necessary to jolt your system into a new realm, to get a new perspective.
Give it a go and see what happens!
As a business owner or corporate executive, you’re always looking for ways to be more creative and innovative to find fresh new ideas to make your next sales or marketing campaign a success. In an attempt to determine how great thinkers achieve their great outcomes, British marketing consultant Simon Sinek believes that he has stumbled upon a simple method to codify the way innovators think. He calls it the Golden Circle. In the YouTube video below he shows why it pays to be cynical.
Thank you to Ian Faulkner for providing this link, it’s much appreciated!
If you haven’t seen this video, it’s a great metaphor for Exponential Mindset Thinking™, coming up with great solutions to apparently “unsolvable problems”. We have an event coming up called Etch-A-Sketch Thinking In The iPad Age that introduces you to this idea of coming up with fresh new ideas that get you out of trouble quickly and easily!
