If you are planning a major change, a big initiative, a new product launch or something really innovative then try writing a future news story. Imagine that the project has been a surprisingly big success. A reporter in a major newspaper or on TV files a glowing report. Write it up. It should include.
- How unexpectedly successful it has been.
- The remarkable benefits that it has brought to people.
- Quotes from enthusiastic users.
- The strong initial opposition from people and how they were brought around.
- Some technical or logistical difficulties that were faced and overcome.
- How the idea is now being adopted, copied and developed.
Write the report and then share it with your team or whoever is working with you on the project. It should be amusing and provocative. More importantly it should help you focus on the benefits of your plan and the challenges you have to overcome. It will provide a fruitful basis for discussion and should be highly motivational for everyone involved.
Of course you should separately consider all the ways in which the project could fail. One way to do this is with the pre-mortem or fake failure. The leader of innovation is schizophrenic. They aim for great heights and encourage their team with a glorous picture of the importance of the goal and the worthiness of achieving it. But they remain well aware of the dangers and pitfalls along the way.
Based on an idea in Creativity Now by Jurgen Wolff.
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