The Quality of Your Thinking

 The quality of your thinking is increasingly recognised as the most valued competitive advantage in harnessing creativity in the workplace. Unlocking your creativity by unleashing the vast amount of unrealised thinking potential within you does not have to be an arduous or far-fetch idea if you have the right tool. You can be empowered to think strategically by having a clear overview of the complex circumstances affecting your personal and work life, manage your workload, plan meetings and presentations and solve the toughest of personal and business dilemmas.

Creative Thinking

“How much time do you set aside to do creative thinking in a day or week?”  Many people I come across were not quite prepared to answer this thought provoking question. Making time for this one needful task is fundamental to the quality of our performance simply because our actions are based on the way we think. For example, how do you find ways to improve your communication and relationships with people in your life or reset your own priorities?

An inspired leader will in turn inspire others to be more effective by helping them tap into their creative potential to think of new ideas for improvement, overcome challenges and manage change. After all, brainsmart leaders recognize that the RIGHT thinking workers are the primary asset of any organization, and harnessing the creative and innovative ability of your workforce to boost productivity will help your organization remain competitive in a global economy.

Mind Map as a Creative Thinking Mechanism

If you know how to apply the Mind Map technique purposefully, it can propel you to spark off a stream of ideas that will take off to boundless grand heights, effortlessly! It is a commonly seen phenomenon for Mind Mappers to generate at least twice as many ideas as opposed to a conventional brainstorming session. Initial ideas that may appear absurd should not be discounted early in the game as they often hold the key to new perspectives and breaking old habits and patterns. Take advantage of this creative mechanism to link up new ideas for innovation.

Innovate To Stay Ahead

Innovation a Top Priority

Today Singapore and the world talk about how innovation is now considered a top priority for companies large and small, without which any organization’s long term prospect will eventually be at risk, so will its employees’. The ability to generate ideas for improvement is now more indispensable than ever before. Tom Kelly, the author of “The Art of Innovation” says, “Without creativity a manager may do a good job, but he can’t do an outstanding one.” Leaders are obligated to constantly think up fresh new ideas to improve business products, services, designs, systems and processes in order to stay ahead of the game.

Mind Map is an Idea Machine

A mind map is like an idea machine that will create the momentum for you to generate tons of new alternatives, ideas and solutions in response to your issues, challenges, opportunity or problems. This is because it encourages your thinking to flow freely that sparks off in all directions in generating options, possibilities and perspectives. This form of engagement of the mind allows our brain to search through multiple aspects of an issue through associative, radiant and divergent thinking. Leonardo da Vinci, the Renaissance Man said, “Everything is connected to everything else.”

Interconnected Thoughts

Based on this phenomenon, your brain is akin to an extraordinary, super-powered processor capable of boundless interconnected thoughts. If you know how to harness it, your personal thinking effectiveness, leadership & management skills will prove to be more effective, efficient, creative and hence fruitful. This potential therefore empowers leaders to draw on the brain’s inter-connected processes to inspire creative and innovative power effortlessly.

Holistic Thinking

What is a Mind Map?

The mind map is an extraordinary generative medium that will allow you to generate, record and store your ideas on paper or on screen for reflection and evaluation later. Its effectiveness lies in its dynamic shape and form. It radiates from the centre with its curved lines, symbols, words, colors and images which mimics the organic structure of our brain cell. Creating new ideas or building on existing ones is as easy as connecting another ‘branch’ to either the central theme or the main branch. It keeps you focused on your main goal while still allowing you to expand your thinking freely. Surprisingly, just by elaborating and expanding on one idea alone, you can give birth to new and unexpected ideas of doing things.  

All on ONE page

It is easy to allow things to fall by the wayside when we fail to focus on the big picture at all times. To stay tuned to the big picture consciously and constantly, Mind Map ensure that nothing falls through the cracks simply when  information is presented all on ONE page!  For example, a one-page marketing plan will allow you to identify the strategies you need to be effective.  It may point to a communication flow that needs to be implemented. This becomes a viable action plan necessary for optimising synergy between the parts.

Systemic and Holistic Thinking

A mind map allows you to think systemically and holistically because it allows you to see the big picture of all your ideas and alternatives so you can clearly and readily draw relationships among them. Just as all the branches in a mind map are all connected, so are the ideas in relation to each other. This gives a mind map the depth and breadth of scope as compared to a linear form of listing your ideas. The power of being creative lies inherently in the ability to cultivate generative thinking. This form of thinking can produce at least twice and up to 5 times as many creative ideas as traditional brainstorming, thus maximizing your brain power.