Doodles

Reading The Designful Company: How to build a culture of nonstop innovation, has definitely gotten the rhombus (i.e. not square) side of my brain pumping. Its led me to consider how ideas are generated that follow non-method based formats. I'm talking about Flux Capacitor ideas - those ideas that come when you bump your head in the middle of the night. Ideas that you have to immediately write it down or they are lost forever.

If you can't sit down and force those ideas out by sheer willpower, can you at least give them more opportunities to surface?

I believe so.

I've noticed two main things that seem to fuel these types of ideas in me - frustration (even sometimes anger) & chaos. Let me explain...

Frustration is usually birthed out of someone presenting me with a problem that goes completely contrary to a deeply held belief or ideal. Out of fear, I want to immediately reject the opposing idea, considering its failure to altogether recognize key flaws. And here's where things get tricky...if I will stop myself from immediately rejecting the idea, and pause for even 10 minutes - quieting my internal mental arguments - a funny thing starts to happen...I start to see a new side of the issue I never saw before. Its not that I change my mind, or even give up my original opinion. It merely causes me to explore one side of the issue I had never even known existed previously. And when I explore that new angle, and then revisit my original ideal, the compounding result is that a solution emerges that both addresses my previous concerns as well as stretches beyond them.

Chaos is the second place where I see new ideas begin to emerge. Sitting in the midst of competing priorities, limited time, budgets...colliding constraints, stress starts to set in. Stress can do a lot of things to you, but if you stick with it for a minute, I find many times you start to see patterns take shape in the midst of the choas. You stop seeing lines on a page and start seeing musical notes. You can actually give this one a try in a simple exercise...

Draw a series of random, disconnected lines all over a page (you can also just draw a number of dots). Start connecting those lines or dots randomly until you have about 5-6 connecting lines. Now stop, put down your pen, and look back at the lines you just connected. Don't stare at the lines individually, but look around them and in between them. See it yet...a shape, a person's face, a dog, a car?

This is not magic eye; its merely your eye ordering the lines into some recognizable pattern. Your mind can do the same thing with the chaos around you.

So the take-away is this - as a Middle Manager, let the frustration and chaos act as a catalyst toward truly innovative solutions. Resist letting them shut you down.

There will be more thoughts coming in the weeks ahead on this topic...so stay tuned.