Do you have any idea what you're doing?

Disruption, reinvention, rapid change and transformation. How do we know what to do? And is it ok if we don't know what we're doing?

Will Dayble presented a great session last week at the Future of Leadership in Brisbane, on Disruption.  
Here's the still and below is the moving picture of my digital visuals from Will's session. 



You can check out the rest of the visual content from the event's nine brilliant speakers in digital format. When the topic was about the future, paper and markers just wouldn't do!

How to explain your ideas…

Product design company Zurb was in Melbourne recently at a session on ideation. These creative people spend their every waking hour creating; they're constantly designing products, websites and online services. 

But it's not always a smooth path... uncovering your awesome ideas so you can get your thinking 'out there' to people in the shape of a product or service. 

My visual notes reflect some of the hottest tips on ideation:

• Use stories (more engaging than boring zzzzz features and benefits)
• Set a time limit or 'time box' so brainstorming time is constrained 
• Get user feedback to inspire and generate new thinking
• Use a Sharpie marker to sketch out your thinking
• Keep your sketches 'lo fi' and rough
• Go for quality ideas not quantity

Then once you've got some ideas down, group them together in chunks or clusters so they're easier for people to see, understand and digest. 

Go ahead and encourage some wild ideas with the team this week! It's the actual process of coming up with ideas, the 'ideation', that gives structure to creative thinking.

In the words of Albert Einstein: "If I can't picture it, I can't understand it'. 

"I didn't think; I experimented"

Kick off 2014 with some experimentation. No need to overthink, ponder for too long or wonder. 

Just start. 

Try something out. 

Then try something else. 

Keep on experimenting. 

"I didn't think; I experimented" is exactly what Wilhelm Rontgen did. 

If you or someone in your circle or network has had an x-ray lately, you can thank Wilhelm.  It was he who discovered and detected the wavelength that we know today as x-rays, or 'Rontgen rays'.

A Nobel Prize later and he was recognised as truly having changed the future of health care and medicine. 

And if you're a fan of the TV show 'Big Bang Theory', you'll understand how cool it is that Wilhelm was also recognised by having one of the elements named after him. Number 111, 'Roentengium'.

He didn't just sit, gazing out the window thinking about how x-rays might work. He got to it, experimenting, testing, trying things out. 

Wilhelm took notes after each of his experiments and kept on testing and investigating. He was human... and he was worried that his ideas may have been seen as a bit too out there or in error. 

But without his experiments, our health care and medical diagnoses could be so very different. Wilhelm is a brilliant inspiration and a reminder that few pieces of truly impactful work are created by just thinking. Sure, start with a thought, an idea... but then go and test it out. 

Talk to someone about it. Get a minimum viable product up and out there to see how it might be received, how it could work, what else needs to happen.