{"id":3,"date":"2010-08-17T09:28:20","date_gmt":"2010-08-17T13:28:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mgfinch.com\/blog\/?p=3"},"modified":"2010-08-20T08:37:55","modified_gmt":"2010-08-20T12:37:55","slug":"book-review-think-better-by-tim-hurson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mgfinch.com\/blog\/?p=3","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Think Better by Tim Hurson"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n

One of my favorite quotes is from Michael Hammer, the father of reengineering: \u201cAverage people in a great process will outperform great people in an average process every time.\u201d I am always looking for \u201cgreat processes\u201d in the field of creative problem solving. Tim Hurson\u2019s book Think Better<\/a> has an excellent example called What\u2019s Going On? When I first read Tim\u2019s book (it has become a favorite), I asked my partner Jack to \u201cstory board\u201d the process, and Tim graciously gave me the ok to post Jack\u2019s illustrations.<\/p>\n

\"\"Hold on to the question<\/h2>\n

<\/strong>This isn\u2019t really part of the process but is key to understanding the importance of being \u201cokay with the ambiguous, being ok with not knowing\u201d in order to get to the really great answers. As Joyce Wycoff says in her book on mind mapping, \u201cgreat ideas are not like cream to be skimmed from the top; they are \u201cbottom feeders\u201d and it takes a divergent\/convergent process to find them.<\/p>\n

\"\"What\u2019s the itch? <\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n

\u201cHere we investigate the need for the new idea in the first place. What\u2019s wrong, what could be better, what\u2019s out of balance, what needs improvement?\u201d (Think Better<\/a> by Tim Hurson)<\/p>\n

What\u2019s <\/span><\/strong>the impact?<\/span><\/h2>\n

Once you\u2019ve settled on the most important itch to resolve (and Tim tells you how to do that with convergent thinking), delve into why is this Itch so important?<\/p>\n

What concerns you? How do you feel about this itch?<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

What\u2019s the information?<\/span><\/h2>\n

Hurson introduces a simple but powerful tool here called KnoWonder. The questions in this part of the process help create an \u201cinformation platform on which to build.\u201d Listing all the known \u201cfacts\u201d and needed information also helps a team see where they have agreement and where they differ on the data.<\/p>\n

\"\"Who\u2019s Involved? <\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n

So far, you and\/or your team have looked at the Itch from an internal point of view. Now it\u2019s time to identify your stakeholders and the impacts of the Itch on them. Key questions here include turning to everyone\u2019s favorite radio station, WIIFM. What\u2019s in it for the stakeholders if things change and what are the benefits to them of keeping things the same?<\/p>\n

\"\"What\u2019s the Vision? <\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n

Here Hurson introduces the concept of Target Future. He explains a method for \u201ccapturing the dream\u201d or an \u201citchless future\u201d by using sentence stems such as \u201cIt would be great if\u2026or if only… Once you or your team has identified a long list of potential Target Futures, Think Better<\/a> suggests a convergent process for identifying where the group\u2019s energy is focused and what it the most important Target Future to begin action planning.<\/p>\n

And now the real work begins!! There are many more processes and tools in Think Better<\/a>. \u00a0And the best news is when I met Tim at at the Atlanta Creativity Conference in May, he talked a bit about his new book coming out soon. If it\u2019s as good as Think Better<\/a>, I can\u2019t wait!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of my favorite quotes is from Michael Hammer, the father of reengineering: \u201cAverage people in a great process will outperform great people in an average process every time.\u201d I am always looking for \u201cgreat processes\u201d in the field of creative problem solving. Tim Hurson\u2019s book Think Better has an excellent example called What\u2019s Going […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mgfinch.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mgfinch.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mgfinch.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mgfinch.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mgfinch.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3"}],"version-history":[{"count":49,"href":"http:\/\/www.mgfinch.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34,"href":"http:\/\/www.mgfinch.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3\/revisions\/34"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mgfinch.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mgfinch.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mgfinch.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}