What Large Companies Most Fear
I have spent the last 15 years working with small and large company leaders and I can now let you in on a secret. Do you know the one thing that large companies fear the most? It is this — small business leaders with imagination and passion.
Imagination is threatening to the status quo. The large players want the rules to stay the same. The smaller players should be aiming to change the rules of the game to their advantage. For example, it only seems like yesterday that Aussie Home Loans had the audacity to challenge the dominance of the Big Four banks with amazing success.
For most people, their imaginative mind is a largely untapped resource. You only have to observe kids at play to know that the ability to imagine is a universal condition. Our four-year-old wrestles with crocodiles in the bath and pretends that she is in a circus while she jumps up and down on our bed. This is the mind that (as we age) we neglect and can become overshadowed by our rational mind.
Your imaginative mind is the one you turn to when you want to escape what has gone before you. It helps you make great leaps rather than small incremental steps. Your imaginative mind helps you to create new possibilities and pathways.
Increasingly in the business world, if it can be imagined it can be made. It is ‘mind-width’ not ‘bandwidth’ that will drive future success. There seems to be no limit to where technology can take us but it may be our imagination that is the limiting force. Can you imagine a mobile phone that can be used as a credit card? A self-defence weapon? Perhaps a torch or a music system?
The message is simple — if it can be imagined it can be built.
Your imaginative mind tends to work on an unconscious level but there are many practical things you can do to harness its full potential. I have listed some of these below.
Capture All Ideas
A common trait of people with a good imaginative mind is that they capture all their ideas. This can be done literally on the back of an envelope or it might involve a more sophisticated electronic format, but the message is the same — capture everything. For example, the creative directors in the advertising industry talk about their ‘bottom drawer of advertising concepts’. These are concepts they have developed but have been rejected by a client and/or are half developed. They know that even if one client rejects a concept, it could be adapted for another or re-presented to the same client at another time.
Imagination is threatening to the status quo. The large players want the rules to stay the same. The smaller players should be aiming to change the rules of the game to their advantage. For example, it only seems like yesterday that Aussie Home Loans had the audacity to challenge the dominance of the Big Four banks with amazing success.
For most people, their imaginative mind is a largely untapped resource. You only have to observe kids at play to know that the ability to imagine is a universal condition. Our four-year-old wrestles with crocodiles in the bath and pretends that she is in a circus while she jumps up and down on our bed. This is the mind that (as we age) we neglect and can become overshadowed by our rational mind.
Your imaginative mind is the one you turn to when you want to escape what has gone before you. It helps you make great leaps rather than small incremental steps. Your imaginative mind helps you to create new possibilities and pathways.
Increasingly in the business world, if it can be imagined it can be made. It is ‘mind-width’ not ‘bandwidth’ that will drive future success. There seems to be no limit to where technology can take us but it may be our imagination that is the limiting force. Can you imagine a mobile phone that can be used as a credit card? A self-defence weapon? Perhaps a torch or a music system?
The message is simple — if it can be imagined it can be built.
Your imaginative mind tends to work on an unconscious level but there are many practical things you can do to harness its full potential. I have listed some of these below.
Capture All Ideas
A common trait of people with a good imaginative mind is that they capture all their ideas. This can be done literally on the back of an envelope or it might involve a more sophisticated electronic format, but the message is the same — capture everything. For example, the creative directors in the advertising industry talk about their ‘bottom drawer of advertising concepts’. These are concepts they have developed but have been rejected by a client and/or are half developed. They know that even if one client rejects a concept, it could be adapted for another or re-presented to the same client at another time.
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