SIMPLE  STEPS TO GET THE IDEAS FLOWING

Dreaming of success, plus a little help from Vivaldi, may well be the key to achieving success.

I like to touch on the power of creative visualisation, or the art of brainstorming without a group.

There are thousands of ways to brainstorm. Albert Einstein used to go to bed and dream about his theories. Archimedes made his famous discovery while taking his bath in a tub.

On a more contemporary note, Dr Yoshiro Nakamatsu, or better known as Dr Nakamats, Japan's inventor extraordinaire who designed the floppy disk, literally goes under. He picks up a water-proof note-book and marker pen, puts on his googles, jumps into a swimming pool and stays underwater as long as he can manage while brainstorming.

For managers who may not want to go to such extremes, there are other tried and tested techniques for getting the ideas flowing. 

While working in various general management portfolios during my almost a quarter of a century in the corporate world, I have gathered and synthesised some of these into the following approach for brainstorming, especially when one is alone. The process goes through several distinct phases.

PREPARATION

Play Baroque and Classical music in the background as you prepare to brainstorm.

Research has shown that such music from the 17th to  18th century can help eliminate stress and enhance performance.

Vivaldi's The Four Seasons and Pachelbel's Canon in D Major are highly recommended for enhanced mental performance,

Other recommended Baroque and Classical composers include Bach, Corelli, Handel and Telemann.

From my own strategic exploration, New Age music selections work beautifully too. My favourite New Age composers include Kitaro (just stay away from his drums), Ray Lynch, Ravi Shankar, Stephen Halpern, van Gelis, and Yanni.

PAINT THE BIG PICTURE

Write down the problem or issue you want to resolve, in key words or phrases. Better still, paint a "big picture" of the problem, using what is popularly known as the mind mapping system.

Mindmapping is described in Tony Buzan's book, Using Both Sides of the Brain. The author explains that the left-brain, which is logically oriented, "reads"only words, numbers, lists and facts. The right-brain "reads" spatial relationships, patterns, rhythms, feelings, colours and "senses" the whole. 

The left and right brains together process the "big picture".

A mind map is just like a road map, with a pattern of inter-related clusters of ideas.

At the centre of a blank sheet of paper, write the key word or create a central image that captures the essence of the problem. Then, as you proceed to think about the problem, you build clusters of ideas around this key word or central image.

As your thoughts flow, you connect or link the many clsuters of ideas. Using different colours to mark different cluster sof ideas, you can make your "big picture" more sensory-rich, since your eyes from the pathways to your brain.

This is a very powerful technique because it is exactly how the brain processes, assimilates and retains information.

For those of you who are seasoned keyboard warriors, you can make use of computer-aided mind-mapping software like MindManager or VisiMap, which are my perennial favourites. 

[To be continued in the next post!]