The Power of Impossible Thinking – Transform the Business of your Life and the Life of Your Business
Authors: Jerry Wind and Colin Crook
It’s nine in the evening and you’re on your way home from work. You go down to the car park and look for your car. You hear footsteps behind you. You don’t want to turn around, but you start walking faster. You remember a story about a robbery a couple of weeks ago. You walk faster, but the footsteps behind you also get faster.
The person behind you is catching up. You get to your car and try to find your keys. You hear the person come right up behind you. You turn around quickly and stare straight at the person. It’s a colleague whose car is parked close to yours. Relieved, you say goodnight and drive home.
The point of the story is that the situation didn’t change, but as soon as you saw your colleague, your perception of the world changed. Only a little part of this drama took place in the cark park; most of it took place in the mental models of your brain.
Research shows that the brain disregards most of the stimuli it receives based on its mental models. The Power of Impossible Thinking deals with how you can become better at understanding the world around you so that you can begin making decisions based on the real world, and not only on the mental models of your brain.
The main point of the book is that in order for you to change your world, you first need to change the way you think, in other words your mental models. If you succeed in doing this, a whole new series of opportunities will open up for you and your company. Or as Albert Einstein wrote, “Without changing our pattern of thought, we will not be able to solve the problems we created with our current pattern of thought.”
The book recommends a number of methods that individuals, companies and society can use to change their mental models. One such method is to use radical thinkers who in no way fit in with your current life, company or society. Another method is to go out into the world and experience how other people and companies perceive reality.
Even though the book doesn’t solely focus on business, it is relevant nonetheless. Both society and business are focused on innovation, on inventing, developing and selling – activities that our nation will be living off in the future. This requires that we are conscious of – and dare to break away from – our mental models and work with Impossible Thinking.
At CSC, we’ve opened an innovation lab (I lab), where, together with our customers, we develop new solutions to our customers’ challenges. We start changing our mental models by ignoring how things are today, including internal and external limitations, and instead focusing on what we would like in an ideal world. In order to ensure that we don’t resort to the mental models in a traditional customer/supplier relationship, we initially do not enter into a contract for the sale of the solutions that emerge from the sessions in the lab.
The Power of Impossible Thinking is filled with examples of how companies have broken with their mental models and succeeded in changing their worlds. For instance Starbucks is mentioned, which, as we know, transformed a low-priced commodity into an exclusive lifestyle product. An example of an individual is Roger Bannister, the British runner who broke the magic barrier of the four-minute mile in 1954. It was said that it couldn’t be done, but three years after Bannister succeeded, there were 16 other athletes who could run the mile in under four minutes. The mental model was broken.
The book is challenging, and provokes the reader into some very deep thinking. For this reason, it is absolutely recommended reading.
The main points of the book are:
* To change your life, you must change the way you think.
* Constantly question the way you perceive the world.
* If you think the impossible, you can do the impossible.
