I warned them their plan wouldn’t work but they refused to listen.
They hired me to revamp their bond business. They had me write up a detailed business plan. I knew they weren’t going to follow my suggestions. It was pure theater because the executives were set on their own business idea and it failed miserably. But, I followed orders.
I knew the old way of trading bonds was over. However, my superiors were determined to copy a rival’s business model which they thought was flourishing and making money. When we approached our rival about a possible merger (hoping to capture some of their “magic”) they laughed. “We’re about to go out of business. You can have us for free so long as you honor our salaries and benefits.”
That’s when my associate and I were let go.
You see, the partners at the firm were furious at the outcome of that meeting; but, more than anything, they were embarrassed because we had been right all along. Did they change their minds and adopt the model we had suggested? Yes. Two years later. By that time the horse had left the barn.
When looking at any problem, you sometimes need to analyze it from obscure angles in order to to craft a solution. There’s a famous police riddle that tests the problem solving ability of detectives. It goes something like this:
A man hung himself in a barn from a beam 10 feet off the ground. The walls were 20 meters away. How could the man have gotten to the beam, placed the rope around it and hung himself?
ANSWER: He did so by placing a 5 foot block of ice under the beam. Then he climbed up onto it, wrapped the rope around the beam and hung himself. By the time the body was discovered the ice had melted.
The famous mathematician and cryptographer, Sarah Flannery, claims her genius came from the puzzles and riddles her father made her solve while growing up. Mathematical training was not going to be enough. Her father felt she needed something more to spur her to greatness. He trained her to look at math problems in new and creative ways. He scoured math books, puzzle books and literature to come up with problems for her to solve. Flannery became so good at solving complex math problems that by the age of sixteen her work and insights on cryptography were being recognized by leaders in that field.
Richard Branson, the billionaire and entrepreneur founder of Virgin Airlines, was taking a trip when he was left stranded in an airport with no way to get out of the country. He solved the problem by chartering a plane and selling seats to the other stranded passengers. His epiphany to start his own airline came about once he realized how easy and inexpensive it was to charter airplanes. Prior to that fateful day, Branson had no experience whatsoever with airline travel.
Shane Snow, author of Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success explains:
Lateral Thinking is the process of solving problems via different angles than you might expect. It doesn’t happen when you do more of the same thing. So just simply working harder may not accomplish a goal like rethinking the approach you’re taking. Lateral thinking is about getting in the mindset of breaking the rules that aren’t really rules; they’re just the way things have been conventionally done in the past.
Even in sports, great coaches use lateral thinking to improve performance and outcomes.
In 2013, the San Antonio Spurs lost the NBA championship to the Miami Heat. Spurs coach Gregg Popovich was so devastated by the loss that he watched hours of film to see what he could have done differently. In watching the replay tape, he realized that whenever the Spurs made quicker and more frequent passes, the Heat had a harder time reacting. So, when the finals came around the following year against the same team, he had the Spurs play much quicker. They brought up the ball faster and executed plays with lighting speed. This time they passed the ball so much quicker that the Spurs ended up blowing out the Heat and winning the championship. It was an outcome no one saw coming.
In my own experiences, lateral thinking has saved many of my businesses. One example is when I did niche marketing in the online divorce space. I could never get the website to convert to actual money. The site was good. I had traffic. My product really solved peoples’ problems. For this niche, websites were serious and somber. In talking with the video producer, he said his experience was that the higher degree of discomfort that I felt with the video… the better chance I had of it converting into money. So, I decided to do an outlandish video highlighting the problem and place it front and center on the website. Boy was he right! Once the site went live with the new video, I started making multiple sales daily.
Just because popular opinion sees something as correct and perfect, doesn’t mean it is. Everything in life eventually gets stale. Habitual thinking leads to stagnation. Its good to have the tools and mindset to look at things just a bit differently than everyone else. Albert Einstein said every good idea he every had came in moments of pure inspiration…not planning or the way it had been looked at previously.
That’s a good enough recommendation for me. How about you?
Steve