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ReThinking Lens

Lesson 29 from: Jumpstart Innovation with Adventurous Thinking

Sally Dominguez

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Lesson Info

29. ReThinking Lens

Next Lesson: Finding Core Value

Lesson Info

ReThinking Lens

The rethinking lens is a really interesting one because so many people are looking to be creative when they're thinking about perhaps career change and career change doesn't have to be at the middle of your career or in the middle of your life. Career change can be anytime especially now when people are flipping and changing and pivoting so often. Rethinking lens is a fantastic one because it basically takes what you know really, really well and then we have a couple of tools to manipulate it so you can do tricks. That's the whole concept behind rethinking. So what we're looking for on rethinking and I talk about career change just as one useful aspect of it, rethinking is useful for everything but I find it particularly great when people are trying to think about what is it in fact, what is the essence of what I do, what do I do really well, what is my purpose and my value and what else can I do with it? So rethinking relies on you knowing something really, really well, knowing yourse...

lf, knowing a product, knowing a service or a business. The thing about rethinking is we're looking for core value but that core value can be in anything. Again, you don't have to have a problem. Rethinking is about giving you greater understanding about something that you know incredibly well. So you can use your career as a starting point. You can use personal attributes as a starting point or you can go to a product that you don't particularly care about but you know it really, really well. So unlike some of these other things where we're looking for the stuff we don't know, rethinking is about getting to the heart of what we really, really know, stripping back everything nonessential and finding out the purpose and the value so we can manipulate it into different types of thinking. So value and purpose give us optimism and optimism is what it's all about. If we feel like what we're doing is valuable and purposeful, we feel fantastic. Once we feel fantastic, everyone around us gets a lift. So understanding value as opposed to how much you're making say or what something is monetarily worth is super, super important and of course, if we feel optimistic because we understand our value then not only is it catching but according to Tali Sharot in The Optimism Bias, my favorite author of The Influential Mind has also written another book and done a TED talk called The Optimism Bias which reminds us how research backs up the fact that if you feel optimistic, you are more likely to succeed. Just so simple and such a nice fact. I really like that. So basically, with rethinking, we're gonna cut through all the white noise to find the one thing that really matters. Now, I'm not suggesting you have to have one core value. You can have a couple. One of our downloadable sheets is actually helping you identify three core values and then the line below says what does success look like to you and that's not so much suggesting that you need to be successful in this. What it's suggesting is a great question to ask yourself like how in fact do I want this to succeed versus as I get older, I start thinking in terms of what legacy do I wanna leave like how can I turn my core value into something that's really lasting as opposed to just affecting just a few people? So basically, rethinking requires you to find your core value so that we get a really deep understanding of what it is that's essentially us or essentially what we do as a career, what we do in our personal life or what our business does. So basically, we need the value. A value is part of lean philosophy and of frugal innovation. So basically, value is when you strip everything back, what do you want left? You need other people to value something in order for it to be relevant and current, right? So we wanna value something ourselves but we'd also really like other people to value it so we need to create value. So this whole idea of rethinking is about identifying a value and then making it work even harder. We have three different manipulations. We're gonna work on this so that what we have really, really resonates. That's the plan. It sounds quite deep and meaningful. Actually, quite a simple lens in many ways once you've done the tricky thing which is identifying the core value. We're gonna talk about identifying core value but before we do, when we're talking about, a little side note, when we're talking about something we know really, really well, has anyone in the audience ever practiced Toyota's five whys? Anyone used in business the five whys? So there's a really interesting technique that began as a manufacturing thing with Toyota as so often many things did. Toyota really did rethink a lot of the human machine interaction in terms of assembly lines, manufacturing and making things more efficient but with people and one of the things they came up with that worked in manufacturing that really translates to anything that you know well is a system called the five whys and what that is is you ask a question five times. Five has been proven to be the number of times you get to the optimum answer before people start getting silly but you have to be asking a team of people who know a thing well. So if you're working on a team on a project or if you have a family issue, right, your family is gonna know the details well, your team is gonna know the things well and if you're on an assembly line or you're a mechanic, you're gonna know your stuff really well and so you're gonna go around in a circle starting with the problem and ideally, at the fifth question, coming up with the root cause. I'm gonna give you an example based on experience I just had with my car. So here it goes, my first question to perhaps the mechanic, visualize the mechanic, is why did my engine basically drop out of my car? Engineer answers, engine guy goes, your harnesses broke. Why did my harnesses break? Some animal, possibly a rat, gnawed them. Let's just check on this. Why would a rat gnaw a plastic harness in a car? Because it was hungry and couldn't find food anywhere else and also, it really likes bioplastics. Why it couldn't it find any food anywhere else? It was raining and did I mention they really like plastics based on soy? So the answer was, I can't believe it but you actually have to protect your really cool Mazda from the rats entering it in times of rain and low food because they love eating soy based plastic. So what came from this that I would never have known was that in Moreno where I live, there was always a rat problem, that in fact I have to spray the insides of my car with an ammonia solution during the winter months or the rat inevitably will come back and gnaw all of the bioplastic in my car. Isn't this crazy, right? So we could've just said, oh, the harness mount broke but in fact, you can use the five whys if everybody in your group knows the situation and knows the particulars and can answer with a fact then after five whys, you will actually come to a solution. So five whys is not adventurous thinking. It existed way, way long before but it is actually a really useful side thing. If we're talking about something you know really, really well and a problem arises in that area, five whys is a super, super useful tool. It's quick and it usually delivers you an interesting result. So anyone that has a modern car and bought it because you love the use of soy plastics, be aware that rodents really like soy plastic. That's my hot tip for today.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Creativity Quiz Worksheet
Rebound Worksheet
Core Value Worksheet
Innovation Quadrant Worksheet
Which Lens Worksheet
Backcasting Worksheet

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Ratings and Reviews

Ivana Vucinic
 

This class is truly AMAZING! It is really unique and it got me thinking in new and innovative ways. Very much out of the box thinking! Makes you become courageous, Well done, Sally!!!

Sukey Dominguez
 

Jumpstart Innovation with Adventurous Thinking exceeded my expectations! Sally brought practical tools that, "lenses" to flip every situation inside out and find the possibilities in every situation. As one who works to lead teams, healthcare providers facing incredible demands to achieve results in population health / ultimately global health and the wellness of business operations, I'm thrilled to have found this course. Design is one thing, taking risk is another. I'm inspired by Sally because she drives energy to see what CAN be in the future. This is a unique class and I look forward to her next offering.

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