How Successful People Think: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life pdfdrive com

2. Think Creatively by Asking the Right Questions
Creativity is largely a matter of asking the right questions. Management
trainer Sir Antony Jay said, “The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it
takes a creative mind to spot wrong questions.” Wrong questions shut down the
process of creative thinking. They direct thinkers down the same 
old
path, or
they chide them into believing that thinking isn’t necessary at all. To stimulate
creative thinking, ask yourself questions such as…
Why must it be done 
this
way?
What is the root problem?
What are the underlying issues?
What does this remind me of?
What is the opposite?
What metaphor or symbol helps to explain it?
Why is it important?
What’s the 
hardest
or 
most expensive
way to do it?
Who has a different perspective on this?
What happens if we 
don’t
do it at all?
You get the idea—and you can probably come up with better questions
yourself. Physicist Tom Hirschfield observed, “If you don’t ask, ‘Why this?’
often enough, somebody will ask, ‘Why you?’” If you want to think creatively,
you must ask good questions. You must challenge the process.

---

3. Develop a Creative Environment
Charlie Brower said, “A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a
yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on
the right man’s brow.” Negative environments kill thousands of great ideas every
minute.
A creative environment, on the other hand, becomes like a greenhouse where
ideas get seeded, sprout up, and flourish. A creative environment:
Encourages Creativity:
David Hills says, “Studies of creativity suggest
that the biggest single variable of whether or not employees will be creative
is whether they perceive they have permission.” When innovation and good
thinking are openly encouraged and rewarded, then people see that they
have permission to be creative.