Think around corners

Think outside of the box - how many times have you used that phrase and wished you had a fresh new way to encourage people to be creative? Cliches are true phrases that have gotten beaten into the ground through overuse. I always wanted to find a better phrase and now I have. My most recent reading on leadership used the phrase "he was known for thinking around corners. I had never heard that before but I was hooked. It was such a fresh, novel way of putting it. I googled it and found that this is an up and coming phrase for creativity. I found several articles detailing the process.

My initial reaction was that it didn't say see around the corners, but rather think around the corners. I also noted that even though you can't physically see around a corner you can use other senses to give clues about what is around the corner. You can hear sounds from around the corner, you can smell something around the corner, and you can feel vibrations around the corner. So much like a blind person relies on there other senses when deprived of sight, you can use other senses to make up for the lack of sight around that corner.

But then there were other concepts that I was introduced to that amplified the concept. One person wrote about how a strategically placed mirror could help you see around the corner. They said that we all have times that we can't see around the corner and we need to have  different perspective and the mirror could be used to represent that. If you were able to create characters quite differently than yourself you could put the questions to them and get responses and perhaps get help to "see" around that 'corner'.

They suggested creating 3 characters to be that mirror - to give you options.

The other view involved an ongoing practice of asking 'what if?", using several methods including a heavy dose of curiosity to assemble options based on  what might happen, so as to be prepared for what is around the corner. This is both a hedge against bad things that might happen, but also a preparation for what good things might happen We often treat surprises with suspicion, thinking worst case scenario, fearful of carefully laid plans that get foiled. But we also need to anticipate that things might turn out much better than planned and be prepared to take advantage of them. 

There is much more to learn about this and I will be incorporating this into my leadership planning. And I would encourage you to be curious and try to think around the corner.