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The Creative Power of Opposites
“The Other Side of the Mirror”
John Smithman,
founder of Champions in the Workplace™
 An early sign of intelligence is being able to remember where an object is hidden without being able to see it. To test the IQ of a dog, show the dog a favorite toy and then hide it inside an overturned bucket. Less intelligent dogs will lose sense of where the toy is as soon as it is covered up. A child demonstrates higher IQ when that child stops looking for the other ‘child-who-looks-like-me’ behind the mirror. But is that also the end of discovery?
A key to creative management is the ability to see things from different viewpoints through a variety of lenses.
As managers, we have some helpful tools. The ability to perceive the various aspects of a problem or a solution is one of them. Perceptive flexibility gives us more options. To build our understanding, we must ask ourselves, “What will happen if I take this action?” Then, ask, “What will happen if I don’t take this action?” When resolving a communication problem, we share our expectations, observations, thoughts and feelings. But we must also ask the other person to share their expectations, observations, thoughts and feelings. We need to look through our eyes AND through their eyes.
All colors are the friends of their neighbors,
And the lovers of their opposites.
–Marc Chagall–
Opposite Thinking is what boxers do to win their matches. They think, “What does my opponent expect me to do when he throws a punch.” Then, they decide, “I will do the opposite.”
Another management tool that can help or hurt us, depending on how we use it, is Expectation. We get what we expect in this world. If we expect a bad day, guess what? We get a bad day. The power of affirmations is that we repeat expectations of good results until they happen. We get what we prepare ourselves to expect.
Repetition can create false expectations. In gambling, we wrongly assume the law of averages. And that assumption has sent many a gambler to the poor house. Each roll of the dice is random. Just because your desired number hasn’t occurred for awhile, doesn’t mean that it is more likely to occur on the next roll.
If someone repeatedly behaves incorrectly, we may expect the same behavior in future. If we always look at problems through the same set of eyes, we’ll never see the other possibilities. Changing our perceptions allows us to think creatively.
We coach our Champions not to jump to conclusions based on past experience. On the one hand, we’ve heard that past performance is a good guide to future performance. That’s the principle behind the practice of Behavior-Based Interviewing: “What did you do in the past when you had to solve a customer service problem? Tell me about it.” However, here’s another rule that might apply: Newton’s First Rule – an object in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.
So, what if that employee who is constantly making mistakes learned yesterday how to avoid mistakes. A mistake occurs, and because of our expectation based on repetition, he is assumed guilty. Good managers say three things when faced with a bad result by an employee: (1) “This is what I expected.” (2) “This is what happened.” (3) “Tell me about it.” The process delays judgment until all facts are heard. It allows a manager not only to count to 10, but also to hear what might be acceptable circumstances or expose a misunderstanding or incomplete personal perception of what really happened. It saves face and creates learning opportunities for both parties.
There’s another rule of physics that can help us managers do a better job of problem solving. It is behind the Kaizen Five Whys process and it is built into the Theory of Constraints problem identification process. It is the principle of cause-and-effect. The real cause of the problem may not be seen without sufficient probing. These methods expand our awareness of the relationships between events and their cumulative impacts. They often reveal the elegant solution that will solve multiple problems at once.
It is the pull of opposite poles that stretches souls.
And only stretched souls make music.
–Eric Hoffer–
So, keep an eye on the other side of the mirror. Use your perceptive flexibility, implement opposite thinking, clearly understand the causes behind each effect and you will manage more effectively in the complicated, changing world of business.
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