E-Book Overview
How often have we heard: "You can do anything once you set your mind to it," or "It's all in the way you look at it." This book helps readers unleash the straitjacket of your current thinking and unleash your potential with powerful new mental models so you can do the seemingly impossible! Jerry Wind and Colin Crook explain how your mental models stand between you and reality, distorting all your perceptions...and how they create both limits and opportunities. Next, they show how to keep your models relevant and fresh. You'll learn how to develop new ways of seeing; when to change to a new model; how to swap amongst a portfolio of models; how to "zoom in and out" to understand complex environments; and how to do "mind RD" -- improving your models through constant experimentation. Wind and Crook tell why it's so hard to change mental models, and offer practical strategies for dismantling the "hardened missile silos" that are your old and obsolete models. Finally, they show how to access models quickly through intuition, and help you assess the effectiveness of any mental model.With profiles on Howard Schultz, Oprah Winfrey and Andy Grove the authors provide real examples of their ideas in action. Simply put, this is the first "hands-on" guide to enhancing your mental models: the key to breakthrough success in business -- and in life.
E-Book Content
The Power of Impossible Thinking: Transform the Business of Your Life and the Life of Your Business Yoram (Jerry) Wind Colin Crook PEARSON EDUCATION, INC. Are you having trouble making a needed transformation? Are you stuck in your career? Is your organization stalled in its progress? Are you lagging behind competitors in innovation? Are you having trouble making your diet and exercise program work? Are you overwhelmed by information? It could be that you need to change your mental models. Transforming your mental models can help you think impossible thoughts and overcome the barriers to change in your life, work and society. This book will show you how. This page intentionally left blank It’s almost midnight. You are walking down a dark city street toward your car parked several blocks away, when you hear footsteps behind you. You don’t turn around, but you quicken your pace. You remember a news story from a few weeks ago about a robbery at knifepoint in the neighborhood. Your pace quickens. But the footsteps behind you are also moving very quickly. The person is catching up to you. At the end of the block, under the street lamp, the steps are immediately behind you. You turn suddenly. You recognize the familiar face of one of your colleagues, heading to the same parking lot. With a sigh of relief, you say hello, and you and he continue on your way together. ■ What just happened? The reality of the situation didn’t change at all, but the instant you recognized the face of your colleague, the world in your mind was transformed. The image of the pursuing attacker was transformed into that of a friend. How could so little have changed in the situation, yet so much have changed in the way you viewed it? First of all, you had created a complete picture of what was happening based on a tiny bit of information—the sound of footsteps behind you at night. From this mere suggestion, you drew upon memories of news stories of crimes, together with your personal fears and experiences, to conjure up an image of a potential attacker. You changed your actions based on this assessment of the situation, walking faster to escape an assailant. This could be a great survival instinct, but in this case, you were fleeing an assailant who did not exist. Then, just as quickly, in the flash of the street lamp, you gained a little more information—and the entire picture shifted. In a split second, you recognized the face of a colleague—again based on the vaguest