Last week I felt stuck, like I didn’t know what to do next.   Not because I didn’t have work to do – my ‘to do’ list was a whiteboard without any white visible.  It just felt like everything was equally urgent.  It felt like trying to decide what to eat for lunch, but everything in the fridge is in identical shiny cans marked “to eat”.

Then my mind did a short circuit and tried a different approach.  Instead of telling myself what I need to do, I imagined how I would explain to someone else what needs to be done.  This slightly different way of looking at things broke up the logjam, and by Friday I was back on track.

The problem was that I was standing too close to my work, and couldn’t see how the tasks immediately in front of me fit into the larger picture.  Sometimes we just need to look at the situation from a different perspective.  Imagination is powerful tool for doing this, one with unlimited applications.  Here are a few mental gymnastics to challenge your current mindset.

1.  If you were hit by a bus…

This is the one that worked for me.  Imagine you are suddenly taking a different job and have to leave instructions for your successor.  What would be at the top of the list for him or her to do their first week on the job?  Those should probably be your priorities right now.

This line of reasoning is also applicable to ‘succession planning.’  What things depend on you and you alone, and no one else could do them?  Hopefully that last one is a short list.  How about your key employees?  If you lost one, how long would it take to get the next person up to speed?  Is there information that would be forever lost?  Healthy organizations have written procedures in place to offset this risk – does yours?

2.  It’s a Wonderful Life

Existence is not futile.  Just ask Ebinezer Scrooge or George Bailey, both of whom had such vivid imaginations they couldn’t distinguish fantasy from reality.  Without getting so carried away, imagine a world where your business doesn’t exist.  Can the world live without your product or services?  If so, how can you make yourself more essential?  Who would get your customers?  And would those customers be better off or worse off with a new provider?

3.  Do the time warp

What if you could freeze time for everyone except you, and then start time again when you’re ready?  What would you use ‘your time’ for?  For instance, a musician could practice their instrument while everyone stayed at the same skill level.  A chef could try out new dishes, a manufacturer new production processes, or a store owner researching competitor’s prices, etc.  What would you work on, how long would you need, and when would you decide to ‘start time’ again?

Or turn this one around – suppose time stopped for you but everyone else got to keep going.  How long would it take before they caught or surpassed you?

4.  Disaster recovery, without the disaster

Imagine that a tornado destroyed ripped through town and your place of operations (main office, store, etc.) was destroyed.   What could you have done beforehand to make it easier to put everything back together?  Are there things that should be stored off site or in a safer location?

What about in a flood?  A few years ago during that 100 year flood, my office ended up with an inch of water.  Luckily someone was here to raise my computer off the floor, but things would have been different had it been the weekend or the middle of the night.  Look around – what would you lose if there were an inch of water in your building?  Just a few inches of clearance might prevent having to get a new computer and take a week or so getting set up with all your C drive files, computer preferences, settings, etc.  If you aren’t on a server, you could lost it all.

5.  Imagine complete success.

Also known as a ‘vision statement,’ complete success has  vastly different implications depending on the type of business.  For some, it might mean they aren’t needed anymore because the problem that their products or services are designed to solve would disappear.  Take the animal shelter: if homes were found for every stray animal and all animals were spayed or neutered, we wouldn’t need a shelter.  We would become like Wisconsin or states in the northeast that take in animals from states (like Indiana) with too many animals.  So, the shelter’s job is done when it literally puts itself out of business.  Is it possible for you to be too successful?

For others, complete success might mean that everyone needs you all the time and can’t live without you.  For instance, if everyone in Bloomington bought only your potato chips because they are so darned fresh and tasty, you’d be selling potato chips by the truckload forever as people devour bag after bag.  Are you positioned to satisfy that kind of demand?  How can you gear up for it so you’re prepared when it hits?

What are some other ways imagination can provide a fresh perspective?  I’m interested to hear them!