Thinking Beyond the Box – Part I

Thinking Beyond the Box – Part I

Brainpower is the currency of the future and each of us has the potential to think more effectively. Without a competence in assessing complex situations, sensing and judging, solving problems, making decisions and seizing opportunities, we cannot advance and prosper. This insightful, provocative workshop is based on two fundamental notions: that successful people think quite differently than unsuccessful people and that we can change the way we think.

The ability to think differently is the most significant competitive advantage you’ll ever possess. Your success lies not in what you know but rather in what you do with what you know. “The idea that people can simply decide to think differently from the way they have in past is delusional. They need tools that bring a new dimension of insight.” (Harvard Business Review)

This course will enable you to change the way you look at problems, change the way you ask questions, overcome the barriers that impede your thinking and expand your awareness, not only of the world around you but also of your innate but untapped potential. In short, it will show you how to exit “the box.”

Most executives today rely on the lens of rational analysis to solve their problems and peer into the future. Unfortunately, that approach is no longer up to the dictates of the world in which we live. Imagination is the mind’s faculty for seeing patterns that are neither contiguous nor logically related and for looking around corners to anticipate emergent challenges and high-risk events. The critical question is whether your thinking machine is a prison or a platform for greater accomplishment.

In this course, you will discover why information is the enemy of intelligence. You will learn new techniques for thinking through problems, discerning the difference between data and insight, discovering the creative power that lies within both you and your organization. You will also discover why the presumed obstacles to opportunity, like insufficient time and fear of failure, are little more than self-perpetuated myths.

To compete for the future and advance your agenda, you must change your traditional thinking patterns, the way you look at your challenges and how you ask questions. The solutions to today’s complex problems already lie within, provided you know how to release them. Our social conditioning and corporate cultures have produced comfort zones where thinking is habituated and creativity blocked. Only by expanding our typical frames of reference can we move from the zone of predictable thought into the zone of breakthrough thinking.

Heed the warning:  This course may change your life.

Topics include

  • Consequences of different thinking styles: Analytical, creative, synthesis, probabilistic, et al
  • Defining the Box: Getting beyond your small-cage habits, thinking traps and cognitive biases
  • Understanding our basic neurology: How our thinking machines work (and don’t work)
  • Overcoming fear and other critical barriers that prevent us from solving problems
  • The power of intuitive thought and how to develop it: Unleashing genius
  • Does intelligence really matter and how does yours stack up?
  • Attention management: Essential principles of creative thinking