What if? The magic question

I am attending an online course on current marketing theory and practice. There is something to be said for being up to date. The surprise at the beginning was that the first few lectures were about the use of AI in marketing, both from the point of view of CRM platforms and creativity. Why a surprise? If you follow the marketing blogs, you will be under the impression that the field consists of not much more than SEO, with scant attention paid to the all-important field of business creativity.

The presenter of the first module made it clear that AI will probably not replace jobs but will lead to an evolution of job content. Using frameworks researched using AI, and AI processing of results, minds will now need to place a greater emphasis on thought and creativity. Repetition of AI results will not be enough.

The analogy that I have been mulling is the rise of Excel in the early Nineties. In the late Eighties, most accounting was done with manual ledgers. By the mid-Nineties Excel was a standard for productivity, and ledger clerks had to up their game. AI will do the same for business creativity.

In my experience the first round will be use of AI to establish the framework and the second round will be human thought and manipulation of the framework. This approach has saved me hundreds of hours of going through Google search results and freed me up to think about possibilities instead of rushing to make the deadline.

The real question is how to stimulate the second phase of the process, to bring business creativity into play. Most people are able to repeat what they have learned. Business creativity needs to be trained and nurtured.

At the outset, I am going to say that you will benefit from Michael Michalko’s manual on creativity. ‘Thinkertoys’. If you want to supercharge your thinking, get hold of it, familiarize yourself with the techniques and go through the exercises. If not, at least get a notebook and write down five ideas every day, no matter how preposterous. By the end of three months, your mind will be very fertile and you will have at least 20 ideas that you can use to reshape your business.

Begin with the question, “What if?” Those are the magic words that open all the realms from corporate philosophy to operations to creative communication. Use it or lose it.

Now the first caveat. Not every idea that you have will be feasible or good, however you have to open yourself to experimentation failure and the adage, ‘fail fast, fail forward’. What if the above-mentioned possibility of 20 ideas leads to one or two successful ideas? You will have made a substantial gain.

The second caveat is to abandon your ego and open the ‘what if’ environment to others. You will need find the sounding board for your ideas useful and a good way of getting an additional overview of risks. You are likely to find that you receive ideas that add to your own idea and strengthen it. Most importantly, by opening up the ‘what if’ environment to a team, you will receive the ideas of others, strengthening your entire function. Leadership entails acknowledging others and the idea that you can’t do it all on your own.

The ‘what if’ environment is the realm of potential. If you don’t ask the question and you don’t open to others, you lose the potential for change and growth by avoiding the risk and effectively become static.