Off the Presses: Thinking for a Change

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From NetSpeed Leader Volume 11, August 2003

Many books present the behaviors and attitudes of highly successful people. But it's a special gem that can elegantly describe 11 ways highly successful people think. This volume by leadership expert John C. Maxwell is an explication of and tribute to nothing more or less than thinking.

Readers who want to think about thinking--big-picture thinking, focused thinking, realistic thinking, strategic thinking, unselfish thinking--will treasure this book. But more than that, readers who want to change their way of thinking will find validation, inspiring stories, practical examples and exercises, and "thinking questions" to move them forward. For example, this question ends the chapter on reflective thinking: "Am I regularly revisiting the past to gain a true perspective and think with understanding?"

Like other chapters, the section on creative thinking is engaging, compelling, and practical. In it, Maxwell shares a method for adding value to one’s creative thinking. The method involves having a plan. To illustrate it, Maxwell describes his earlier career as a minister. In that role, he found that if he chose his sermon topics several months in advance, he had several months to collect information on the topic, or to "connect the dots." He writes:

Once you begin to think, you are free to collect. You ask yourself, What material relates to this thought? Once you have the material, you ask, What ideas can make the thought better? . . . After that, you can correct or refine it by asking, What changes can make these ideas better? Finally, you connect the ideas by positioning them in the right context to make the thought complete and powerful. The whole process happens more readily when you have a framework or picture of where you want to go.

Like others who have written on creative thinking, Maxwell urges banishing "creativity killers" from one's own vocabulary and avoiding the company of people who use them. Creativity killers are those phrases that douse creative flames. Maxwell lists two dozen taboo phrases, among them:

• I'm not a creative person.
• That's not logical.
• It didn't work for them.
• We can't afford to make a mistake.
  
• It will be too hard to administer.
  
• We don't have the time.
  
• We don't have the money.
  

Maxwell recommends developing a creative environment, a place where ideas can sprout and flourish. To his way of thinking, a creative environment:

• Values individuality and trust among team members.
  
• Encourages, expects, and rewards creativity.
  
• Focuses not solely on invention, but on innovation: "the logical combination of two or more existing elements that results in a new concept."
  
• Places a high value on options, which lead to opportunities.
  
• Appreciates the power of a dream. (Maxwell notes that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said, "I have a dream"--not "I have a goal."

A chapter closely related to creativity, "Question the Acceptance of Popular Thinking," promotes going against popular thinking, which Maxwell describes as average, inflexible, lazy, small, shallow, trendy, uncommitted, and satisfied. He objects to popular thinking because it sometimes means not thinking, it is slow to embrace change, it offers false hope (that one will be safe and accepted), and by its very nature, it brings only average results. Maxwell recommends the following methods for questioning popular thinking:

• Think before you follow--don't assume that the person you're following did so.
  
• Appreciate thinking that is different from your own. Spend time with people who disagree with you.
  
• Continually question your own thinking. If you're too attached to it, you will not progress.
  
• Try new things and new ways: travel different routes, try a new dish at a familiar restaurant, do something familiar with someone you don't know well, or do something unfamiliar with someone you do know well.
  
• Get used to being uncomfortable. It's not easy to swim against the current.

In Thinking for a Change: 11 Ways Highly Successful People Approach Life and Work, John C. Maxwell appears to have followed his own suggestions about collecting, building on, and reshaping ideas. The result is a highly readable, worthwhile volume. In 266 pages, it's published by Warner Books.