Where Do Ideas Come From?

But do it now before you forget.

Today, we'll take a close look at what critical thinking looks like when put into action.

But before we do, let's refer to last week's discussion about cognitive bias, that nefarious force that keeps us from spawning good ideas, making good decisions, and creating a creative climate.

Let's assume for now that we've got all that. With that, let's look at 12 ways that leaders generate ideas. I taught a graduate-level leadership course at Fairleigh Dickinson University in both the MBA and the MAS programs for 15 years. leaders, we relentlessly looked at what leaders do to get their organizations moving forward. This is the practical part of critical thinking.

In his 1962 book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, a highly heralded book, Thomas Kuhn argued that transformative ideas, and with them scientific progress, don't arise from the day-to-day process of experimentation and data accumulation, or from ongoing stultified thinking.

Well, it's no different outside the world of science. Let me ask you a question.

What's the difference between an idea and a thought?

We have hundreds of thoughts every day, but few ideas.

A thought is a mental process that takes us from a premise to a conclusion. illusion, and we have hundreds of those a day.

An idea is an original, novel thought that changes our mental construct, a construct of our universe, planet, business, or even cubical space.

A thought doesn't necessarily have that effect. a pizza for a group lunch may sound like a good idea but it's merely a fleeting thought here's the difference the guy who invented pizza had an idea the guy who orders it has a nice thought big difference so where do ideas come from?

The most valuable asset any organization has is its employees' creativity.

Creativity generates ideas.

Ideas generate value.

Yet there isn't a CEO who won't say, we need more ideas around here. Well, if ideas are so valuable, why are they so rare? Well, that answer has two parts, individual and organizational.

Individually, most employees don't consider themselves creative because their schooling and their work experiences, all highly routinized, don't reward creativity. They reward conformity.

They reward compliance Whereas being creative and being rebellious Rewards defiance Properly channeled, that's a powerful force I'll get into the World of creativity in a future podcast but creativity, suffice it to say, does not get spawned by compliance or obedience.

Therefore, most people do not feel they're creative, whereas most children feel they are. This is, frankly, how babies figure out their world. They crawl around, they eat dirt, They look up, they explore, they try to stand up.

Ultimately, they try to ride a bike. Then they try to learn how to play the guitar.

But these are all creative measures about which they don't believe they are capable. They are.

The second part of the answer is on you. The first part was the way the organization suppresses your creativity. Designer of your workplace. In observing companies across 25 industries, which I have, the most common organizational characteristics blocking creativity and ideas are the voice of judgment, management, petrified expectations, sticking with something long after its useful life, organizational structure, inflexible teams, micromanagement, internal competition for power and recognition, and disagreement instead of dimension. mentioned.

Additionally, ideas don't happen on schedule and therefore time pressures get in the way. And a big one, process.

That's the comment that gets thrown in your face. That's the way we do things around here.

Well, how is a leader going to generate not only an endless flow of ideas, but expand the number of sources from which he gets ideas?

So upon identifying barriers to creativity and ideation, what do we do about it?

Much easier said than done.

Aphorisms for the day. The first aphorism today, the ubiquitous song God Bless America, was written by Irving Berlin.

Irving Berlin was an immigrant, just saying.

My second aphorism, a little more lighthearted.

In 2021, I had the following.

My COVID shot first dose. My COVID shot second dose. My pneumonia shot. My shingles shot first dose. my shingles shot second dose, my flu shot, and my COVID booster shot.

When I was younger, doing shots was a much different activity.

And number three for he or she who likes to accomplish you'll agree that a day feels like a year when you haven't accomplished anything and a year feels like a day when you have and to wrap up today let me move the great minds section and the what if section together and talk about somebody you may have heard me talk about in the last episode and that's jonas salk who invented the polio vaccine you know the heroic job he did and how it changed the world but i've got a couple of posers for you.

Jonas Salk, who was a very disciplined, thorough researcher, was also one who believed in intuition.

And he said, intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next.

And it certainly was the case with him.

And then he moved forward from there. But the what if question is, what if Jonas Salk had agreed with the lawyers at the University of Pittsburgh to go after a patent for the vaccine?

The whole remainder of the 20th century would have been different.

He refused to let it take that long. He wanted to jump into distribution of the vaccine immediately, which he did because it was under his control.

And the fact is that he never made a dime on the vaccine, other than his salary that he was being paid, because he agreed or disagreed with the lawyers and forced the fact that they were going to go ahead with the release of the drug. And many hundreds of thousands of people were saved from the disease or death from the disease. that'll do it for me right now and uh i want to thank you as always for taking a part of your day and your future by sticking with us and listening to the podcast share it with somebody you know somebody you love a business associate a family member we would really appreciate I appreciate your helping us to spread the word of Vantage Point.

Thanks again, see you next time. Until then, keep questioning, keep learning, and keep thinking critically.