Be careful what you know: 3 techniques for keeping an open mind

Two stories came across my social media screens today:  one from Pew on how what you "know" about budget deficits is influenced by your political affiliation, and another from Time on how the myth of the independence-seeking male and the marriage-seeking female is a.... myth.  It just goes to show that you should be very careful about what you know.

I am fascinated by what it takes to think creatively, and the most important tool is a knack for keeping your mind open.  It turns out that your frontal lobe is better at openness, and your temporal lobe is better at closing off debate.  Well, if this is a contest that takes place in your brain, then you can be the referee.  

Much of the time it makes sense to learn from experience and apply existing patterns to new problems.  If we didn't listen to the temporal lobe, we'd never have moved on from the invention of fire, because we'd have to keep inventing it over and over again.  However it doesn't always make sense--if it did we'd never have moved from open pit fires to gas heat.  

In other words, you need to re-examine the world from time to time and come up with new ideas, or you're just as stuck as the person who doesn't learn from experience.  For example, when you look at competition do you consider that you are competing for people's time and attention, not just the dollars they spend in your brand's category?  Not that you should think of a dad's kids as your competitors, but you should be realistic about the need for a father to turn off the computer or the TV and spend time playing outside on a Saturday afternoon.

Here are three ways you can help to keep your mind open when your watch is telling you to just make a decision and move on:

1)  Make a Customer Your Colleague.  Look at life through the eyes of a customer.  Pick any customer and imagine what their day is like.  Don't try to jam your imagination into the purchasing lifecycle, just spend a good hour or two empathizing with what's important to them.  Sketch out how they move through a good day, then a bad day.  Map out all of the choices they have to make; the joys and frustrations they might experience.  Give your hypothetical customer a name and keep him or her with you as you strategize.  What would your customer tell you about the problems you're facing in your business?

2) Dream up Scary New Competitors.  Imagine that some entrepreneur was going to come out of nowhere and completely change your category.  What might they do?  This one is fun to do with colleagues.  Draw a map of all of the industries that touch your marketplace; where might the new competition come from, and what might it look like?  Again, don't leap to any conclusions; keep going until your scenarios are completely ridiculous.  (Probably you don't have to worry about competition from alien superbeings; Mark Zuckerbergs don't come along every day.  Phew.)

3) Clear Your Mental Desk.   This one is different; it's a mental exercise that you can bring not only into your work life but also your daily life.  Most of the time, the reason we don't think we have any time to dream up new ideas is that our mind is cluttered up with deadlines, conflicts, and inner turmoil of various kinds.  That puts you in survival mode and your temporal lobe in charge.  How hard would it really be to clear out even fifteen minutes where you turned to a blank wall and just let your imagination fill it?  The more you do this, the easier it gets to flip into frontal lobe territory when you need to. 

Your imagination is a powerful thing; it can touch the hearts of your customers, invent a new product, replant deforested deserts or resolve seemingly impossible conflicts with an angry teen.  The great news is that you, like everyone else with a frontal lobe, have a great imagination.  The key to setting it free is to be less focused on what you already know.