Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Tim Hurson is a founding partner of thinkx intellectual capital (www.thinkxic.com), a firm that provides global corporations with training, facilitation, and consultation in productive thinking and innovation. He's both a faculty member and Trustee of the Creative Education Foundation, and a founding director of Facilitators Without Borders.

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Want to Outsmart the Competition? Learn how to Think Better.

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THINK BETTER

McGraw-Hill

Contents

Chapter One

Imagination is the beginning of creation: you imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last you create what you will. George Bernard Shaw

This book is about creating the future. It's about a way to see more clearly, think more creatively, and plan more effectively. It's about thinking better, working better, and doing better in every area of your life. All of us have the potential to think better. The first step is to free ourselves from the unproductive thinking patterns that hold us back.

There's an interesting little insect known as the processionary caterpillar that can teach us a lot about the stifling habits of everyday thinking. Processionaries got their name because of their distinctive behavior. When they leave their nests to forage for food, they travel in a line, like elephants in a circus, head to tail, head to tail. The lead caterpillar spins a fine trail of silk as it crawls along. The next caterpillar in line walks along the silk trail and adds its own. Processionaries can form trains hundreds of creatures long as they march through the forest.

There's nothing particularly distinctive about the lead caterpillar: It just happens to be at the front. It walks along for a while, pausing and raising its head occasionally, trying to sense which way the nearest food source is, and then continues the trek. If you remove the lead caterpillar, the second in line will take up the scouting duties without hesitation. The trailing caterpillars don't seem to care about the change in leadership.

Processionaries fascinated one of the world's great naturalists, Jean Henri Fabre, who is considered by many the father of modern entomology. He spent years studying them, both in his green house and in their natural environment. Fabre was an observer. He took nothing as given, nothing for granted, made no assumptions. He once wrote that his scientific credo was "the method of ignorance. I read very little.... I know nothing. So much the better: my queries will be all the freer, now in this direction, now in the opposite, according to the lights obtained."

Fabre was curious to see how powerful the processionaries' instinct to follow the leader could be. What would happen if he arranged the caterpillars in a circle? Would their instinct to follow force them to keep going round and round in an endless loop? On January 30, 1896, Fabre constructed an experiment in which he coaxed a chain of caterpillars around the rim of a large pot filled with earth. As soon as enough caterpillars had ascended to form a ring, he brushed away the ones at the end of the chain. He then nudged the lead caterpillar behind the trailing caterpillar to close the circle. Instantly, there was no more leader. Each caterpillar in the circle simply followed the threads laid down by those ahead of it, ignoring a cache of the caterpillars' favorite food that Fabre had placed within about 12 inches of the circle.

Six days later, on February 5, the caterpillars were still circling. Only after many started to collapse from exhaustion and starvation did the circle begin to break, allowing a few caterpillars with the strength to do so to escape. According to Fabre's calculations, the caterpillars had made over 500 circuits of the pot and traveled over a quarter of a mile. That's equivalent to a person walking about 90 miles, or completing three and a half marathons, without food, drink, or rest. Fabre concluded his description of the experiment with these words: "The caterpillars in distress, starved, shelterless, chilled with cold at night, cling obstinately to the silk ribbon covered hundreds of times, because they lack the rudimentary glimmers of reason which would advise them to abandon it."

If you've ever had the feeling that you have been in a procession of caterpillars—on your job, in your community, or at home—read on.

At some time in our lives we've all been processionary caterpillars, mindlessly following a trail of silk for no reason except that it's laid out before us. It's all too easy to be a part of the procession and not even realize we're in the parade. It's not the exceptional day that we find ourselves in the procession. It's most days. We go through our lives following the patterns we've grown comfortable with. We do things because that's the way they're done. Our routines seem so natural that it doesn't even occur to us that we're following patterns at all. We overlook opportunities, fail to see warning signs, or just plod along because we've kept our eye, not on the target, but on the routine. It happens to all of us.

As with the caterpillars in Fabre's experiments, sometimes the only thing that saves us is that things go so drastically wrong that we're forced out of our processions. Our pattern has been so counterproductive that the circle we've created can no longer sustain itself. It breaks apart. With no more circle, we're forced to find new ways of doing things. We change only when we're forced to.

How different are we from the processionary caterpillar?

* * *

At its heart productive thinking is about freedom. It's a way of escaping from the tyranny of the silken track. Sometimes, of course, there's real value in following the procession. It can be useful and efficient to do things the way they've always been done. Clearly, social conventions, thinking conventions, and best practices have very important and powerful places in our lives. They represent a type of thinking I call reproductive thinking, which I'll discuss in more detail in Chapter 3. In many areas of our lives there is nothing wrong with reproductive thinking. After all, the behavior of the processionary caterpillar has been a successful survival mechanism for millions of years.

Nevertheless, as Fabre observed, there are times when reproductive thinking can be counterproductive and even disastrous. As I will try to demonstrate throughout this book, all of us have the potential to think better, more productively, and more creatively. What we need is the incentive. The silken track is alluring: It's safe, it's easy, and in many cases it works just fine. Rarely will you be criticized for sticking to it. No wonder most people are content to play follow the leader. Thinking better is hard work. It can be risky. And it can certainly make you unpopular. So why bother?

I think there are three good reasons.

There's Plenty of Room for Improvement

Nothing is perfect. The word is full of things we can do better.

I once heard the systems thinker Dr. George Ainsworth-Land tell a story that changed my life. Land worked as a consulting psychologist to school systems throughout the country. In preparation for one assignment, he was given a tour of an Arizona high school by its principal. On their walk through the halls, they saw two boys fighting in front of their lockers. One of the boys was the aggressor, pounding furiously on the other boy, who was trying to defend himself. The principal grabbed both boys by the collar, marched them into his office, sat them down, calmed them down, then turned to the aggressor, and asked, "Why were you hitting Brian like that?"

The boy looked up and said, "Because I couldn't think of anything else to do."

I couldn't think of anything else to do. What a statement! How much misery do we cause and...