The Story

One fine morning, a man of extra-ordinary wisdom walked by a poor man sitting on the roadside. The poor man stretched out his hand, and asked for assistance.

The man lamented: "Oh, I have no money to give you. But, what is in that box that you are sitting on?"

"Nothing that I know of; I have been sitting on it for 30 years; I never looked inside it;" replied the poor man.

The man insisted: "Do get up, open that box, and see what's in it."

The poor man complied. Guess what he found — the box was full of gold — a treasure that he never knew he had. He was flabbergasted with his own hidden riches.

The Metaphor

Are we aware of our own untapped treasure grove of IDEAS? We would be pleasantly surprised once we open ourselves to free flow of ideas.

Aren't we — every one of us — endowed with natural capability to think? Of course, we may think unconsciously and unfocused — producing a jumble of thoughts. Or, we can orchestrate more productive thinking — generating ideas?

How productive is our thinking? How relevant and useful might our ideas be?

Don't we often lament: "Oh, business is suffering; revenues are down; margins are lower; cash flow is tight; customers aren't buying what they used to; competition is killing us. We don't know what to do!"

Are we at a loss — for ideas?

Our Treasure of IDEAS — Do we know it? What are we doing with it?

Thoughts are the source of our ideas:

Thought Focused on a theme with a purpose Idea

And, when people collaborate on a common theme with a common purpose, ideas quickly multiply, and many useful ideas arise.

Imagine the treasure of ideas you command within your teams!

Are you harnessing the IDEAS [harvesting, sifting, and putting in action] of your teams and clients — ideas about how to increase revenues and profits, how to maintain the margins, how to cope with tough times, how to keep costs within reason, how to retain customers, how to solve problems, how to respond to changing market conditions, how to be one-up on competition, how to ..., how to ... ?

Seth Godin, in his book "Ideavirus" writes: "... ideas are driving the economy, ideas are making people rich and most important, ideas are changing the world ..."

And, Roger Von Oech, author of a 'creativity' book "A Whack on the Side of the Head: How you can be more creative?" asserts: "Either bemoan the fact that things aren't as easy as they used to be, or you can use your creative abilities to find new answers, new solutions, and new ideas ...."

True enough, new solutions, innovation and improvements, and different and better outcomes are all rooted in IDEAS!

Can we produce ideas on demand?

Only if we tapped the idea treasures of all our people — not only the business leaders and the management teams, but also the sales people, project managers, customer service reps, engineers and other professionals, office staff, in fact everyone in your organization, we can produce all the business results that we want.

Look at the following three mindmap diagrams, showing progression of thinking:

Thinking --> Deliberate Thinking --> Outcome-focused Thinking

and see how we can harness our thinking and idea generation to our advantage.

Do you get the picture?

You can harness your thinking prowess and unleash your treasure of ideas — ideas to exploit your opportunities, solve problems, and produce outcomes that matter to you in different aspects of your life.

Are ideas enough?

Ideas alone won't do a thing though. You must refine, sort and select key ideas, define your desired outcomes, and take action to achieve results. Results count.