How to Coach Yourself and Others Techniques For Coaching | Page 140

"To avoid this most common of creative errors, be sure to peek
under all carpets, including your own. Don't take anything for
granted. Especially success. Try looking at the world through more
inquisitive eyes; try getting ideas in motion; try asking the allimportant: "Why?" See what happens!" says Alexander Hiam, the
author of Creativity,
Triggering Great Ideas
A major stimulant to creative thinking for business problem solving
is focused questions. A well worded question often penetrates to
the heart of the matter and triggers new ideas and insights. To
trigger more and better ideas, you, first, must be be very clear
about exactly what it is that you are trying to do.
Write it down and describe it as if it were already achieved. And,
second, question your assumptions continually. What if there were
a better way? Be willing to try something completely different.
Case in point : GOOGLE
"We run the company by questions, not by answers," says Eric
Schmidt, the CEO of Google. "So in the strategy process we've so far
formulated 30 questions that we have to answer. I'll give you an
example: we have a lot of cash. What should we do with the cash?
Another example of a question that we are debating right now is:
we have this amazing product called AdSense for content, where
we're monetizing the Web. If you're a publisher we run our ads
against your content. It's phenomenal. How do we make that
product produce better content, not just lots of content? An
interesting question. How we do make sure that in the area of
video, that high-quality video is also monetized? What are the next
big breakthroughs in search? And the competitive questions: What
do we do about the various products Microsoft is allegedly
offering?
"You ask it as a question, rather than a pithy answer, and that
stimulates conversation. Out of the conversation comes innovation.
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