The S.O.S. approach

Imagination is a wonderful thing.

And it is not just for children.

It is in fact plenty useful in business too.

Imagining how might the future look like.

Imagining how a plan might unfold.

Imagining what the outcome might be.

Imagining various what if situations.

Imagining what might happen if things go bad.

Truly, endless possibilities, limited only by our—wait for it—imagination!

Here is a simple structure I call S.O.S. for leveraging imagination for innovation, growth, and transformation:

• Scenarios: given our context, what might happen? Articulate the current state, relevant basic trends, key uncertainties, and what is driving change. Then apply imagination to craft a number of scenarios.
• Options: given our desired state and imagined scenarios, what can we potentially do? Usually the most difficult part is articulating and agreeing on what is it we really want to accomplish. When we have that, then the fun part comes: generating all the ways we could bridge the gap between the current state and desired state.
• Strategy: given our context and available options, what will we choose to do? Use imagination to work through all the options, in order to evaluate them and select the smallest mix that can create the greatest results.

Above process can be used at any organisational level. All that is needed are people. Ideally in the same room or workspace, since that makes it much easier to bounce ideas off of each other.

Imagination is a wonderful thing, is it not?