If you could have a business super power- what would it be?  Would you be able to leap over complex business solutions in a single bound? Be more powerful than a locomotive or Sir Richard Branson?  Whatever challenge you are facing in your business or association in 2017,  I know one super power everyone needs.  To think more productively.  Everybody talks about innovation these days, but very few actually know how to achieve it. Having a defined process to generate more ideas is one way to get there!

I have a new favorite speaker crush. Yes, that’s what we call it in our industry. It’s a crush.  We have the amazing opportunity to work with so many talented experts and business thought leaders. And when you discover a new favorite, well—you know, you just can’t stop thinking about them. He’s kind of my superhero. His name? Tim Hurson.

According to Tim, we already have all the ideas we need to succeed. They are inside us all the time. The trick is to capture them so that you can use them. (Remember some of  your best ideas were in the shower or while driving or exercising or just daydreaming?) Wouldn’t it be great to be able to capture those ideas and really put them to work?

Tim has a repeatable process that will help  you have more ideas, better ideas, more of the time.  One of the steps he talks about is how to generate answers- he says that “Brainstorming is like cholesterol. There’s good Brainstorming and bad Brainstorming. And most of us have experienced only the bad. Bad Brainstorming usually produces only a few ideas — and not very original ones at that. Good Brainstorming lets you get to what Hurson calls the ‘Third Third’ — those answers that are full of creativity and promise, not just the same-old, same-old answers you’ve heard hundreds of times before. But answers that really do have to power to produce innovative results. Just as the term implies- you do three rounds of brainstorms. First and second round are set aside, but not discarded (after all there can be promise in almost any idea). A good quote is Linus Pauling’s. “The way to have good ideas is to have lots of ideas, and then throw the bad ones away.” Now the groups is turning on the brainpower to deliver NEW ideas for round three. And that’s where the magic happens. It’s the Third Third you want to get to. Try it at your next meeting!

To create the future, you first must be able to imagine it. Productive Thinking is a way to help you do that.  Grab your cape, and meet the balance of this year head on – with a clearer vision and maybe just a touch of your own new super power.