With the barrage of stimuli that competes for our attention everyday, we navigate it by going on autopilot, making ultra-quick decisions (usually on an unconscious level) of what is important and what can be ignored. While this is a coping mechanism, it also can lead us to a state of mindlessness that interferes with information reaching our higher levels of thinking within the brain. As a result, mistakes are more likely to be made where issues are never recognized and the flow of evolving the way we perceive things can be stunted. Human beings are at their creative best when more parts of the brain are engaged. Below are a few questions, designed to shift your perspective into a state of pure curiosity, which is the integral ingredient to get more of your brain cells activated and engaged around innovation.
Questions to Shift Your Perspective:
- What are we tolerating? What am I, my colleagues and/or our potential customers dealing with as a problem that does not seem to ever get better? The hint here is to think of something that everyone just accepts as “this is just the way it is”.
- What do we see when we look at the issue from a different perspective? For example, for a problem that involves the bottlenecking of foot traffic, would it help to literally view the current state from a different vantage point and/or would it help to move through the experience as different players dealing with the traffic?
- What is the outcome that I or other people would like to experience? Start big here. Think about the question as if you were creating your ideal. This in itself expands the mind’s ability to conceptualize more powerful solutions. As you work backwards from this best scenario, take information from the first two questions to create your plan of new action.