The Power of Make Believe

"Imagination is mankind's greatest gift. Also its curse."

- J. R. St. John

Daimler, Benz and Maybach dreamed up different versions of the automobile. Then they teamed up, went into the workshop and built an automotive powerhouse.

Henry Ford fantasized about an America where Everyman could mount his horseless carriage, and Go! Then he dreamed up the assembly line that could build it cheaply enough to make it affordable - for Every Man.

Curse: The unbridled imagination of the automotive, oil and tire companies unleashed the initiative which shut down public transportation in every American city, and tore up the tracks... Huge long term profits for three industries - and the L.A. Freeway at 5:30 pm.

Wernher von Braun imagined rocket powered weapons in Germany, then directed the space program in the U.S. (Talk about a redeeming second act...) President Kennedy dreamed of a U.S. Flag on the moon - and the NASA machinery to make it happen.*

Nike - the global juggernaut is not shoes, not clothes, not equipment, but "Just Do It!" Phil Knight has a big imagination.

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, well - this is being written on an iPad...

Fleece clothing, warmer than wool and hydrophobic (it doesn't like water...) is spun from recycled plastic bottles but first from the imagination. Aaron Feuerstein invented the stuff, but chose not to patent it - knowing that it would go far and wide, owned in the commons... What an imagination!

Cycling Silk - the Silk Road bicycling excursion through Tibet, Nepal, Kashmir and China - has taken two crazy (wonderfully) Canadian women on the adventure of a lifetime through cultures, locales and across difficult international borders.

Linux, GNU, Firefox. Open source software, worked on and improved by thousands of contributors around the world. So stable and inexpensive, they are becoming the firm foundations of corporate and government computing and internet search.

What do all these have in common? They came out of "make believe." Products, adventures and approaches that had never been before - all emerged when someone leaned back and "made them up."

The things that ignite our passions don't originate on spreadsheets. Analytics and budgets are the tools that help us make great ideas viable; yet they are too often the clubs used to beat down the "imagineer" on the verge of a breakthrough - "It'll never work Walt! Give up on that Disneyland thing... It'll break us!"

Imagination is our greatest gift, and sometimes a curse - and it's up to us to decide. Will we imagine ourselves a heaven? Or dream up Hell on Earth?

Applications:

1. Individually:
The life you are living is a monument to what you've been willing to imagine - up to now. Why not start now and imagine better, loftier... free of limitation? When you realize that the lives of everyone you see are simply the chronicles of individual imagination; then you become a witness to the power of imagination for better, or worse.

2. At Home
Familial relationships are group creations; led by the most powerful dreamers and anchored by the fearful, dour and critical - or just the penny pinchers. It amazes us that some people live in a world of scarcity and darkness - waiting for the apocalypse. Others imagine life as an adventure game - a feast - to be consumed with gusto!

Imagine for the better and be responsible for leading your family on a great vacation, a college selection tour, a bus budget trip to the fleece mill, or an afternoon at the museum. Dream Large!

3. At Work
Do offices or factories have to be under lit, dim, hard-edged places without color or fun? Only if we imagine "work" to be, well, "WORK!" What if we instead imagined a career to be sustaining, enjoyable, challenging, playful and respectful? What color would the walls be then? Now you may have to "re-imagine" and "re-engineer" the entire workplace.

We've put this explosive concept to work in a strategic planning discipline that relies on the power of Vision and Ideal Scene as starting points in the planning process. So a lot less, "How do we expand our profit by ten percent?" and a lot more, "Where would we really love to be working in five years?" and "What will it take in income to bring that about?"


Gift or Curse? It's up to you. Imagine your own life, family and career in a loftier way. From right now!

Dessert: Log on to Cycling Silk, and bike through the Himalayas with two crazy Canadian dreamers!
www.cyclingsilk.com


*The two sides of Dr. von Braun's career bear witness to the power of imagination to be used for destruction or reaching the stars. Imagination can go either way...