Making Your Gray Matter

October 2008

Contents This Month

· Why Force Connections

· Eyes Have It

· Quotations

· Update Your Email Address

· Refer Madness

Why Force Connections?

During creativity workshops, I talk about and practice forcing connections to expand the way we examine challenges we work on and solutions we generate. You may have heard of “reframing” a problem – using forced connections is a way to do this.

Connections can be forced by introducing unrelated stimuli into a problem or challenge, and then artificially associating it into the problem. It can result in new ways of phrasing/framing a problem or heretofore unthought of solutions. Here are a couple of examples:

· A creativity consultant worked with several human resources executives to cope with a reduced workforce. The reduced workforce created several difficulties such as continuing to meet deadlines with fewer people, minimizing the disadvantages of being in separate locations, and helping various divisions improve their relationships with the human resources staff. The consultant used a forced connection technique to generate new statements that described the issues in different terms. One of the toys was a plastic monkey, which helped generate comments like

o “We need to take the monkey off our back and ask the departments to help with some people issues,” and

o “There’s too much monkeying around on trivial policy instead of focusing on key issues,”

A forced connection with a measuring tape generated the idea “How do we measure the amount of work each person now does?” You can read more about this example at www.diegm.uniud.it/create/Handbook/techniques/List/ForcedAssociation.php

· Bell telephone (before it was divided into smaller companies) struggled with pay phones being vandalized and not working properly. These phones used to be free-standing phone booths (now these are found only in museums and old Superman movies). When trying to resolve the issue of vandalism, a connection was forced with structures in nature. At one point the phone booths were connected to canyons. What’s like a canyon in big cities? Skyscrapers and big buildings are a city’s canyons. This forced connection yielded the pay phones that were attached to the buildings. (Now these are becoming obsolete.)

Eyes Have It

Fitness trainers all have one thing in common, they make sure their clients warm up their muscles before they start the hard work. Do you warm up your eyes before doing some hard work (reading or speed reading)?

Here are a couple exercises to get your eyes ready for a workout:

· Stretch. Sit comfortably with your head straight forward. While keeping your head still, focus your eyes on a spot on your left shoulder. Hold it for 8-10 seconds. Now repeat that with your right shoulder. Then repeat this by focusing on the tip of your nose.

· Relax. Focus on a spot directly in front of you. Hold your focus while “softening” your eyes and expanding your peripheral vision. Do this a couple times for 8-10 seconds.

· Focus and concentrate. Randomly move around a small object (tip of a pen or pencil works well) and follow the movement with your eyes. A couple sets of 8 to 10 seconds are a good time frame for this as well.

These time frames are guidelines. You may want to extend them as you get more comfortable with them.

Quotations

“I honestly think it is better to be a failure at something you love than to be a success at something you hate.” – George Burns (American comedian, actor)

“Defending yesterday – that is, not innovating – is far more risky than making tomorrow.” – Peter Drucker (American futurist, author)

Update Your Email Address

Don’t miss an issue of Making Your Gray Matter. If your email address is going to change, let me know about it.

Refer Madness

If you had a good experience in my workshop/seminar, share it with someone you know. If you provide me with a lead that generates new business for me, I’ll pay you (or your favorite charity) $250 (less if it is less than a full-fee engagement).

If you belong to a professional organization that needs a speaker or If you know any business or non-profit organization (including your own), that could benefit from my workshops, presentations, coaching, or needs a facilitator:

1. Tell your contact about me.

2. Tell me about your contact. Call me at 972-378-0937 or write me at dgunby@mindimensions.com

3. Wait for your check (if I get your contact’s business)

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