Leon said, in LO12066:
>"I have noticed that most effective communicators - especially humourists -
>are able to make connections between disparate objects, apparently
>unrelated, with ease. This is a kind of pattern making. Does it fit in to
>what you are saying about creativity? If so, what is the link?
And it's a good point. I'm reminded of what American Southern Humorist
Louis Grisard said years ago about marriage (this being after his 5th
divorce, I believe, and from my recollection and not bibliographic quote
file):
"The next time I'm thinking about getting married,
I'm going to find an ugly woman who hates me and give her a house."
It's this linking of ideas that is funny, but also where much of the
innovation and creativity in business comes from. Gary Larson (Far Side)
had a really interesting way of taking normal things and making them
far-out, like taking the caption that appears on the passenger side door
mirrors of most automobiles -
"Objects in this mirror are closer than they appear"
and putting the hideous eyeball of a monster appearing next to his woman
passenger (who just notices). But this counter-sorting of themes gave him
an incredible sense of the rediculous and thus continuous innovation.
Modeling would suggest that these sorts of strategies can be "mirrored"
(yes, pun intended) and thus improved in most of us. Me, I'm constantly
listening for themes I can "cartoon" for my drawings, like, "The rule of
thumb in my organization" as a comment in a seminar resulting in my "Rule
of Thumb," about most organizations' response to initiative: A huge thumb
squishing a bunch of people with nothing more than a few feet and hands
showing from underneath.
Cam Underwood at a local hospital shared a new view of my View From The
Back (of the wagon which showed boards and hands and not much vision from
ahead). She said that the wagon had actually rolled backwards and was
pressing them up against the wall behind them, too. Pressures of
Performance, I guess.
>From Michael Erickson's repeated descriptions of his Boeing illustrations,
it seems that this theme of innovation is a good topic of discussion into
the nature of innovation and creativity as it applies to learning.
For me, guess I am sometimes reminded of Systems Thinking as a set of
square gears in a drivechain,
For the FUN of It!
Scott J. Simmerman
Performance Management Company
3 Old Oak Drive
Taylors, SC 29687-6624 (USA)
SquareWheels@compuserve.com (new name, same address!)
--Scott Simmerman <74170.1061@compuserve.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>