S. S. A. Zaidi
Training and Development Consultant
0091-9987644300
Life is a struggle. One such struggle is to find solutions to the problems we encounter day in and day out. And to overcome this we all need to be Thinkers?.
It is wisely said "most problems are really the absence of ideas. And the moment a problem has been clearly defined and stated, 90% of its solution has been found?.
To get ideas, keep your mind open. Mind is like a parachute. It is useless if it is not open." Newton had his eyes open when the apple fell in front of him. He saw the apple falling, he thought and came up with Law of Gravitation. A man could not have landed on the moon without the knowledge of this Law'.
Knowledge and experience no doubt widen one's mental horizon but in the end it is the "THINKING Process" that helps find a solution. A process is a series of meaningful repeatable steps that produces an outcome. Every process requires Inputs to produce some output. The process of thinking produces IDEAS / SOLUTIONS. This thinking process involves.
- Letting one's sub conscious mind work on it round the clock.
- Meeting, visiting and talking to a lot of people.
- Developing one's common sense and using it.
- Not making "Best" the enemy of "Better" i.e implementing what one thinks is better than before.
- Not being afraid of mistakes - Remember a mistake is the best teacher. A wrong decision can be corrected.
Start your thinking process and see the ideas popping up like Pop- Corn.
Dream is the ultimate of process of thinking. It is the result of complete involvement. What we think during the day, we dream about in the night. Success comes only from complete involvement, that becomes a part of one's sub-conscious and is reflected in one's dreams.
Remember in life there are two things worth living for,
- Do what is worthy of being written.
- Write what is worthy of being read.
Thinking is done in "Mind" . It is the "Mind" which thinks, perceives, feels, wills, conceives, believes and achieves.
"Mind" is the best asset we have. This asset needs to be taken care of and protected as one would do, for example, for one's car. When one buys a car, one gets a "CAR OPERATING Manual" . When one gets a job, one perhaps gets a job Operation Manual. Manuals describe the logical steps / precautions that need to be taken to operate the car and to do one's job.
Can't we then have a "MIND Manual" to do our job better at home and in office?
Relax and think how much of your mind did you use yesterday? You might have done 100 things, but think how many of these could have been done by your assistants. May be, your assistants may have taken longer time, may have made more mistakes but if you keep on delegating authority and responsibility to them, don't you think your assistants will improve themselves? Certainly they will.
This will give you enough time to use your MIND fully and it will take you towards your goals.
Your mind can store as much information as you want to. It will never be full. Mind is like a tape recorder. It will keep on recording, if you keep it switched on. It will also play back whenever you want to have any information.
Mind is like a muscle. More you train it, stronger it gets. The older you get, better it becomes provided you KEEP ON USING IT.
Mind is like a piece of land. On the land you can grow whatever you put into it. You cannot get good ideas unless you put in seeds of good ideas.
Mind is actually better than the piece of land, because germination can even take place not only within six days, or six months, but even after 10,20 or 30 years. Relax and think. To one who tries and concentrates, ideas come seemingly from nowhere.
Mind comes to us Free as standard equipment at birth What we get free; we attach little value to it. If you use your mind and value it, you will experience its miracle.
It is the miracle of mind when suddenly an idea starts flashing on the screen of your mind. It is now up to you to transfer this flash from your mind to a piece of paper.
God has given this piece of land MIND to all of us. We add to it or delete from it in regard to its fertility.
These ingredients would add fertility to your Mind helping it to produce rich crops of good ideas. In the process you become rich and your Organization becomes richer.
REMEMBER
Thinking can be done by your assistants too. Encourage them to get involved in thinking.
There is a story of a crow that could raise the level of water in the pitcher by dropping pebbles into it. The crow solved the problem by thinking and using its mind. Incidentally this story has been modified. The crow who had dropped the pebbles saw that the water that came up was muddy. It flew away without drinking the water. Another crow who was sitting nearby and observing all that was happening waited with patience for a few minutes so that the mud could settle down and when it did, it quenched its thirst with the clean water.
The moral is when you are thinking, do not limit your scope and span of thinking.
If you are asked to join the following nine dots with four straight lines without lifting your pen, you cannot do it until you widen your span of thinking and extend to the area that lies outside the nine dots. This is known as ?THINKING OUTSIDE THE Box. (A very common exercise used in Training Programs).
Can you join these dots with four straight lines without lifting your pen?
THINK
Yes ? you can but only if you think beyond the area of dots.
This reinforces the view that greater success comes only to those who do not confine their thinking to a definite / set mould. And this is what we as Managers need to work on. We should widen the scope and span of our thinking.
We should strive to be ?DIFFERENTIATORS?.
To be Differentiators we need to:
- Give more autonomy and space to employees.
- Raise the performance level in all key activities.
- Encourage activities like team working / reciprocity.
- Give demanding expectations that would require the employees to think to go that extra Mile?.
Managers, therefore need to think and encourage employees to think. This would produce plethora of ideas. Such ideas would help organization scale newer and newer heights of achievements.
This is very well illustrated and testified by the experience of a Production Manager in a leather factory in India under whom more than 300 workers were working. Almost all these workers were illiterates, with not so bright IQ. But the Production Manager never had any difficulty in getting the required output from them. When this company got a very large export order it became necessary for the Production Manager to increase the productivity. But there was a big problem. There was no drying machine with the result that the leather after having been tanned and dyed was put under the sun for it to dry. This took longer time hampering the productivity. The cost of the drying machine was about $9,000 and it required to be imported from Germany after obtaining import license. And to get the licence was a long drawn procedure. The company had actually applied for the licence eight months back but had not yet received it.
The Production Manager did not want to lose this export order. And the only way to do it was to accelerate the drying process to increase the productivity.
The Production Manager went to his workers and told them about the export order and the need for rigging up a drying mechanism. He asked the workers: How shall we do it
The workers responded to the challenge and said that they would think about it. After some time they came up with a Drying Mechanism that cost the company only $1,000 and accelerated the drying process resulting in increased productivity.
This Production Manager, whenever he had a problem, would go to his workers and ask them How shall we do it. This would trigger the process of thinking and the workers would come up with ideas to solve the problem.
This Production Manager was a differentiator, a Motivator. We, managers therefore, should go to our employees with the Poser. How shall we do it. And experience the miraculous results.
As SWITZER said,
You do not help anyone by preaching a new idea; you help only by assisting a man to think.
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