Spring cleaning. Always a good thing in any season. I was using cleaning today to both organize my space and as a means to break free of a mental block to my creative thinking on some new projects. That’s when I stumbled upon a magazine I had brought with me when first arriving in Cameroon.
I had tagged the article “ Schumpteter: The three habits … of highly irritating management gurus” from the October 24-30, 2009 copy of The Economist. It brought my creative thinking blockade to something akin to a standstill. Not because it released the ideas, but because it reminded me of why “thinking” is no dying art.
The article makes the argument that if “management” abided by the simple rules, principles and methods described in current management self-help books, that there would essentially be no further need for management thinkers. The reality of course is that no matter how simplified, straightforward or basic management best practices are, systematically and consistently applying them is where the challenge lays… not in the thinking about it!
Finding this article again was a reminder of two important lessons:
1) If one instantly recalled each and every one of the tools to work through every possible challenge, then there would be no space for struggle that leads to epiphany; and
2) Rules, principles and methods are never one-size fits all, which is why we continue to need them and adapt them for various situations.
Thinking can never end. And a mental block is one way to feel just how powerful creative thinking is. Once one’s thoughts become jumbled or disconnected, it’s easy to see what is missing. Once the free flow stops, a void is created.
While I will tell anyone who asks (and a few who don’t!) that coaching is one way to encourage and focus creative thinking, it is also a powerful means to connect one’s own wisdom to those of management thinkers. A coach’s role is to facilitate that process, hence the idea of coaching as a thinking partnership.
Reconnecting the dots of the management thinkers, my own observations of working in Cameroon and the tasks at hand, the blockage that was plaguing me has started to lift. Not because I can steal other’s thinking, or rely on a self-help book to solve my challenges, but because I can use them for inspiration.
From inspiration comes motivation, and from motivation comes performance. Performance leads to moving forward with thinking, feeling and doing.
Thank you management thinkers.
Block lifted. Thinking freed!
