What I know about it is based on studies that first, some partners of mine and I did with invention groups where people, in teams, were under some pressure to either produce a new product or improve something or come up with a new process.

03:25

What we would do is, rather than read books about creativity or theories about it, we just tape-recorded these meetings. In the beginning, we used tapes, then eventually videotapes, and we would replay them afterward, and say, “Well, this meeting produced a lot of very good ideas, and people were very excited about the result. In this meeting, they didn’t. It had similar people, similar backgrounds, similar expertise, so what was the difference?” It became very clear after a while, that the big difference was how they were processing each other’s ideas, and what kinds of ideas they allowed to emerge.

What we all clued in on very quickly was this went way beyond what we think of as brainstorming. Everybody’s probably familiar with probably with brainstorming. Essentially, one way of thinking about it is that brainstorming produces ore, not finished products. It’s iron ore, let’s say. You have to refine it, smelt it, and then form whatever you want out of it, whether it be a better knife, a sharper blade than you ever had before, or any new product you can think of. But that takes work. So, brainstorming produces just ore.

What we watched in this session of people that were very productive is that yes, they did that, and they did that very freely. Then they would take that ore, and create and fashion the useful ideas for their application. It was fascinating how they went beyond just brainstorming. It turns out that the creative side of the mind, as I said, produces ore. In typical brainstorming sessions, you’ll put up a whole bunch of ideas, and people will say, “Okay, we had a lot of fun. Time to get serious,” and somebody gets a pen and they start crossing things. “Oh, wow! That was just a joke.” “That was a silly idea.” “Oh, I was just kidding there.” We end up with a few practical ideas, but they are very new. That’s the typical brainstorming session.

Sean Murray  05:41

That’s fascinating. So you sat in on these meetings, recorded the proceedings, and then went back and looked at both the meetings that had a lot of innovation and the meetings that didn’t produce a lot of good ideas and innovation. You said, “Okay, what was going on?” And it sounds like, for the meetings that really produced a lot of good ideas and the group made progress on innovation, that the key was how ideas were processed.

When someone shares an idea with us, we should think of it as ore or raw material that needs to be processed. It sounds like there were people you observed who were very good at mining this ore, this raw material, for gold. Maybe you could give us an example client or a situation where this process played out.

Jit Chopra  06:24

I can give you an example of one section that I ran. I was not brainstorming, but we did some at the beginning of each segment of meetings. It was in the pre-digital era, for a very large European company that made photographic paper. They were just entering the market in the US. They used to have these little booths where you could walk in, take a picture, and in a few minutes, you had a print. If you were rushed to get your passport, you could do it that way. Come in, and after 20 minutes, you have your pictures. It was that market that they were looking at, the so-called minilab.

They were brand new to the US and had next to zero market share, so the meeting was about how to create market share and get off the ground very quickly. The manager said, “It takes time and new business to get it off the ground because a lot of relationships are involved with these mom-and-pop stores that operate these machines and labs. So, let’s have some ideas.”

I had asked him to include not just his marketing team, but people outside the marketing team. We did a little brainstorming. I said, “Alright! Let’s get up some ideas. Pitch in whatever comes to mind.” Joe from procurement threw out an idea that made everybody laugh at, including the manager. Their company had just come up with strict instructions from the top, dictating, “We’re gonna stick to our knitting.” That was the big mantra in those days. No acquisitions. No going outside to acquire anything. Do everything in-house. But the idea that Joe threw out was, “Hey, why don’t we buy the manufacturer of these machines?”

A big Japanese company was a major producer of these machines, and so everybody laughed. A, it was directly in the face of what senior management just put out as an edict; and B, how do you justify spending billion dollars acquiring this company, or more, in a market in which your bottom line at best would, after it was fully developed in terms of their marketing plan, might be a few hundred thousand dollars. It was a very impractical idea.

Sean Murray  08:50

I’ve been involved in brainstorming. I tend to get a lot of impractical ideas. That’s one reason why I think people avoid brainstorming. It’s because these are the kinds of ideas that come up, and then, as a manager or leader, you’re put in a situation of reminding people that it’s not a great idea. It almost gets a little awkward. So I think that’s a great example of why we often avoid brainstorming.

Jit Chopra  09:14

I think that’s very true. It also puts pressure. You invite people, get their ideas, and then you have to reject most of them, which is not very nice. And so, we did a little brainstorming, and this idea was part of that. We had about 20 ideas up. I had talked to the manager about how to process ideas before, so he wasn’t coming into the meeting totally green. I said, “Now you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to ask you to pick the worst idea up there. The least practical, not the most practical because that’s not going to be anywhere new.” He said, “Well, I don’t have to think very much about that. I choose it’s bad to buy the manufacturer.” I said, “Okay, now what do you do with this raw ore?” The process is very simple. The mind goes straight to thinking about what’s wrong with the idea, all the obvious faults. We’re trying to think that way.

Sean Murray  10:13

Yeah, that is so true. When I’m in a meeting and someone throws out an idea. The first thing I think about is the flaws. I think about why the idea won’t work. I don’t often go to the pluses. I focus on the flaws. I can tell you from experience when you point out the flaws in other people’s ideas, it doesn’t often lead to innovation. So there must be something else going on with this technique you’re talking about where people can turn the raw material into good ideas. How do they do that?

Jit Chopra  10:43

First, let’s look at the obvious side of the idea. What’s wrong with it? Then, let’s look at the non-okay side. We’re not going to do it, but if we did something like this, what would be going for it? What are the potential advantages of doing something like buying this manufacturer?

I wrote up the idea on the chart, “Buy the manufacturer”.

One person said, “They’d recommend our paper kind. We get a seal of approval for our paper.” Good idea. Somebody else in the room says, “Well, they have a sales force. It would expand our capacity to sell without adding to our payroll. We’d use their sales hook.”

Now, two or three answers usually come easy in this process. You need to stretch it. Creativity and innovation are always about the non-obvious. What are some non-obvious pluses? At this point, I turn to the manager. I said, “It is your time. Think of something that’s not obvious. What would it do for us?” He thought for a minute, and he said, “Oh, can we acquire relationships overnight! We’re going to have to create relationships with all the owners. There are a lot of these photo labs, and they already have existing relationships. So overnight, we’ll acquire relationships.”

Very quickly, I said, “Terrific!”

12:08

Now, the flaws are obvious, right? It’s not in line with the corporate strategy, we’ll get into trouble, and there’s no way we can justify the cost. So, now the question is, “How can we keep these advantages some other way? Forget about acquiring the Japanese company.”

One person in the meeting said, “Well, we don’t have to buy the company. How about a technology exchange relationship? We have a very good technology group, and they have a good technology group too. There can be some kind of exchange or relationship with the company.”

Somebody else said, “Yeah, it could be a marketing relationship. Wherever we’re strong, we’ll help them to market. Wherever they’re strong, they’ll help us to market.”

One of the staff members, let’s call her Sue, was just looking at the pluses that I wrote on the board. She raised a hand, and said, “Hey, wait a minute. Why do we have anything to do with a Japanese company at all? In every town, every city in which we’re going to operate, people service these machines. These are independents or very small organizations. Why don’t we acquire a few service companies? They have relationships.”

At this point, the manager got very excited. He said, “Oh, write it up! Let’s not lose that idea to terrific idea!”

I said, “Well, tell me why.”

13:28

He said, “Well, look, not only would we acquire relationships very quickly because these local people have them, but the Japanese company’s sales force and people are not local. These are local people who have ongoing relationships. To see them very often, their recommendation will be really powerful because they’re the ones that come help them solve problems when they have technical difficulties.”

Terrific. At this point, people started to build more on the idea.

They said, “Why do we have to buy any of these? Why don’t we just put them on a retainer? At the end of the day, they’ll help us to really grow the market share quickly. We’ll give them a bonus.” That was the endpoint of the idea, and it came out of this totally impractical idea.

So that’s just an example of how if you do some brainstorming, you can get the most out of it. Now, the interesting thing is, when we were done with this idea, still, whose idea was it? Joel was sitting there grinning while this was going on because it was his idea that was being grown and built on, and he loved it. But whose idea was it? It belonged to the team because everybody had gotten involved in the process. So, the growing idea process creates room for other team members’ ownership of the finished product, not just the person who produced the ore.

Sean Murray  14:51

Jit, that’s a wonderful example of taking a raw idea, and converting it into something that’s practical and has advantages. Just reflecting on it, there are very specific things you did in that room to keep that process going. Those behaviors, those questions you asked came from observing people in similar situations. There are people that you call in your book ‘naturals’, who, for whatever reason, when they’re in a group or in a room, can grow an idea. They’re able to get people energized around ideas. We’ve all been in meetings with people like that. But we’ve also been in meetings with people that love to shoot down others’ ideas as quickly as possible, and that shuts down the innovation.

So remind us again, what are the key steps that you did there in that example to go from a flawed but sort of funny, crazy idea, into a practical business idea that could be implemented?

Jit Chopra  15:48

The first thing was to remind the group not to take the idea literally. What I did was write up the idea “Buy the Japanese manufacturer.” I remind the group that we’re not going to do this. It’s just a starter. It’s a baby idea. You don’t ask babies to go and earn a living. They can’t do it. They don’t have the skill.

Then I said to them, “So now, let me acknowledge right away that we’re not going to be able to do it because corporate will get on our case, and we could never testify. I know that. You know that.” You have to acknowledge what they’re also thinking. What’s the block in their head?

“Now, let’s go back to the non-obvious side of the idea. If we did something like that…” I stressed that we don’t know what it is going to be because people need to be reminded that we’re not at a point where we have to decide yes or no. Where in a growing mode, not in a yes or no mode. People sometimes need that reminder because of the habit of worrying about and taking ideas literally so strongly. Part of keeping the idea from being just killed right away is reminding people that we’re in a growing process, not in a deciding process.

Then, push people to think beyond the obvious pluses. When you’re doing this, listing the potential advantages, don’t stop with the first few and say, “Well, we did our job.” Well, yes, but push harder. When you push harder, the non-obvious answers pop up, such as what the manager said.

Then, you can go into saying, “All right. How do we do this more practically, and open the door to growing the idea?”

Sean Murray  17:58

Reading your book, I’ve practiced applying some of these idea-growing ideas. One thing that I find interesting is when I’m listening to an idea as I go about my day, with my team, and working on my business, ideas will come at me. Sometimes it’s not in a meeting, unlike in your example where you had convened a team specifically for creative problem-solving. Sometimes, you go about your day, and someone comes up to you and says, “Hey, Sean! I have this idea.”

I’ve been listening to the conversation in my head. As someone explains their idea to me, what often first pops up in my head are all the flaws in the idea, almost by instinct. I think there’s a reason for that because I’m thinking about practicality and budget.

In this current situation, we’re in with the Coronavirus, there’s a lot of fear out there, and there are limited resources, and so you’re thinking about the constraints. You don’t have time for crazy flawed ideas or at least you think you don’t.

So, as I see those thoughts coming through, one thing that has helped me in reading your book and applying your ideas is that, if I can just suspend for a moment the part of my brain that is being practical and trying to shoot this idea down, and tune that to “What do we like about that idea?” That’s the question I’ve been trying to go to when I hear an idea from an employee that has some merit, but it’s completely impractical. I just suppress the part of my brain that wants to kill the idea and ask that person, “Tell me more. Why do you like it?” It’s produced amazing results.

Jit Chopra  19:37

Yeah, in your own mind, if you can remind yourself, “I’m not going to forget the negatives I’m thinking about. Those are hurdles to overcome. We’ll get there.” But we need to arm ourselves first. What’s the reason behind overcoming those hurdles? What’s the gold in this idea that we need to save and pull out? What do I like about it? What if we did something like that?” Once you begin to see what the potential in it is, now you are energized to say, “Okay, now let’s overcome the negative. Let’s take it one at a time.”

Now, you’ll often find in meetings, for example, that when you go to the advantages, somebody will say, “Yeah, but let’s not lose the negative.” Okay, fine. Then let’s list them. You may end up listing six potential problems of an idea. What you need to do is to say, “Okay, which is the biggest one? Is it the cost? Is it…what?” And people will say, “Yeah, it’s the cost that bothers me the most.” Fine, but what’s the question about it that you need to resolve? Is it how to make it cheaper? Is it how to get the customer to pay for it? What’s the question for which we need creative building on the idea? Once that’s clear, what’s the primary flaw? What’s the big problem with this idea? “Well, we don’t have physical capacity.” So, what’s the question? How to acquire the physical capacity? How to find it somewhere else? What’s the question related to the problem that you’re seeing? What’s the biggest problem first?

Sean Murray  21:22

I like the idea of attacking the biggest problem first because if you can remove that, then you’re well on your way of converting this into a good idea, right? That’s the biggest obstacle that’s preventing this idea from really soaring. And so, if you can address that and start creatively problem-solving around addressing that problem, then it’s the highest leverage point to convert that raw material into gold.

Jit Chopra  21:47

What you find very often is that the reason for focusing only on the biggest problem is we’re not doing pro and con. We’re not measuring the pros versus the cons in a balance. We’re saying what’s the biggest negative? What’s the question about it that we need to answer? You’ll find, more often than not, that if you do this with one or two of the major problems that you had with this idea, the rest disappears because the idea changes. You’re no longer talking about buying the pros and cons of buying the Japanese company. So, any other negative you might have had about the bad idea are irrelevant. You won’t find the condemning need to actually work on more than one or two of your concerns because, in the process of addressing those, you’re changing the idea. It’s growing. It’s no longer a baby.

Sean Murray  22:41

Another aspect of the example that you just provided around the European paper company potentially buying the Japanese maker of the machines. You talked about in the book that for any innovation at its heart, the value of the innovation is really only realized through execution. You can have a lot of great ideas, but if you can’t execute, you, personally, or your organization, don’t get the benefit of the innovation. To execute, you need people’s hearts. And you say that to get to their hearts, you go through their minds.

Jit Chopra  23:13

There are several things there. One is that we are thinking animals. Descartes even said, “I think. Therefore, I am.” We identify very much with our minds. Your ideas and concerns are products of your mind that need to be addressed. But the products of your mind are not just something. They’re pieces of you. What you do to those, and how they’re managed and handled is a very powerful way to make people feel good about themselves, and to feel that they have ownership of whatever decision you make based on some of those ideas.

The second thing is that we don’t exercise our creative side of our minds often enough. At work, we feel we don’t have the time for doing that, or our muscles aren’t very strong because we haven’t practiced drawing ideas. And it turns out that that having shared that experience of jointly engaging our creative sides is both very satisfying to the individual, and also creates team spirit. It’s like going whitewater rafting together. “Oh, look at what we did with these ideas!” “How we avoided the rocks! We came through.” “Oh, wow! What a trip we had!” It’s an enjoyable trip for both the individual and the team.

Sean Murray  24:47

Yeah, it’s a shared experience that people get jazzed about. There’s something about creativity and innovation that brings out of certain energy or passion or zest, and if I tap into that, as a manager or a leader or even in our personal relationships with, as you mentioned, with our families, with our spouses or our kids, people share ideas. How we react can have a big impact on that relationship.

In your example, the manager was able to involve, I guess with your help, pretty much everyone in the room to somehow add a little value to the idea of where the end product couldn’t really be assigned to any one person. The ownership of the idea to your point was to the entire group. The power of that in the next phase of innovation, which is execution, is not something to underestimate because, as a manager or leader, you now have a group of people who feel bought-in to this idea that they created through a shared experience. You’re going to find that their hearts are in it. They’re more committed, and your chance of getting the idea out the door, executed, and realizing the value is much higher.

Jit Chopra  25:59

The meeting was a 2-day meeting. As it went on, the growth of ideas was going on all the time. In the end, the manager had a business plan that people felt the same way about. It was their plan.

Now, the second thing to think about is the meeting is just one thing. It was a formal meeting that was good. The important thing for the manager when they all got back to work was to remember to keep doing this because people learn then that the idea is safe with him. And so they will come to see him in the corridor and say, “Hey, Peter. I had this crazy idea the other day. Here’s what it was.” He doesn’t have to respond to it right then. He can say, “Well, thank you very much. Let me think about it.”

As you mentioned, sometimes people will just come up to you and say, “Sean, I have this thought. What do you think?” If you don’t have time to go through the growing process, then you can just say, “It’s food for thought. Let me think about it.” You don’t have to respond right away. But if you are going to respond, keep in mind that new ideas are, typically, if they have just come to mind, not going to be practical. That’s usually what’s missing. It’s like the creative side of the mind is to give you something fresh. You fix it to factor in the practicality. Remember that when it’s a new, fresh thought, the only productive response is one that helps it to grow. Now, our classic response is “Yes, but.” We’ve all heard that. “Yeah. That’s a nice idea, but.” That is a polite way of saying, “The idea is no good.”

Sean Murray  28:08

It’s a very deflating thing to hear when I share an idea and I hear a, “Yes, but.” It’s almost like my heart just sinks.

Jit Chopra  28:15

The trick, Sean, is to create an alternative habit that doesn’t say “Yes, but”, which is “No, but.” “No, I don’t think we could do it as given, but let me tell you what I like about it.” That changes. You are not pretending to like nor accept the idea. You’re not trying to be nice. We don’t have time for that. If the virtual role is to rush because we need to do things, then you can’t pretend that you like an idea. But here’s what a “no, but” would do. If we couldn’t do something like that. A, B, C. “Let me think more about it. How about you think more about it too? My concerns, by the way, we’re…” “Let’s think about it. How can we keep the good part of this idea? It’s potential?” End of story.

You can do this in the corridor. You can do this whenever somebody walks up to you and says, “Hey, I got this.” And other than that, no response. It’s either one that helps it to grow, which is the “no, but” instead of “yes, but”, or no response that says, “Let me just think about it. It’s food for thought.”

Sean Murray  29:32

Jit, in your book, you spend a lot of time talking about ego, and the role ego plays in ideas and idea-growing. Could you share a little bit about that?

Jit Chopra  29:42

Because our ideas are part of us. It’s like your child, your baby when you toss it out there. What happens in a classic meeting is we sit back. The next time you’re in a discussion, it could be two or three people, in either a formal or informal meeting. If you sit back and watch the action, you’ll see this again and again: Person A will have an idea. Somebody in the room will say, “Well, we can’t really do that because…” There’s a, “Yes, but” response to it. If you watch the person whose idea it was, you’ll see a physical reaction. You’ll see either the arms crossing, or the person sitting in the chair leaning back, or turning away. You’ll see a physical response and impact. As you said, Sean, it doesn’t feel good when somebody says, “Yes, but” to your ideas.

Now, what happens next is interesting also. Let’s say it was Jane that had the idea, and it was Sam that gave her a big “Yes, but”. Jane will be quiet for a while, or she may argue and try to sell her idea, or she may just be quiet and wait until Sam has an idea. And before she even fully hears Shannon’s idea, before she even gets it all out of her mouth so that it’s totally understandable, Jane will start raising objections to it, and say why the idea is totally impractical, and can’t be done. It was done before. It’s not new. You name it.

You’ve seen it all the time, and you waste so much time in meetings because the ego agenda is there, and it’s always at work. Every meeting always has at least two agenda. There is a task, of course, whether it’s a formal meeting or whether it’s an informal one-on-one meeting. You say, “I have this problem. I wonder, what do you think?” Well, that’s the task. It’s always what I call the ego or looking good agenda. It’s called enhancing yourself or protecting your self-esteem.

31:59

Because we’re not just thinking animals, but social animals, our self-esteem is based on other people’s reactions to us and to our ideas. They are like mirrors in which we watch ourselves. How do I look? Am I really as smart as I think I am? I look at other people’s reactions to what my idea is to my thoughts, to the products of my mind. Whether we are aware of it or not, it’s always happening. And as soon as the self-esteem is attacked, even though the person who’s doing it has no intention of doing that, they’re just responding. But the impact on the other person’s idea of themselves can be great. “Oh, I’m not so smart after all.” Once that happens, two things will happen in a meeting: The person will stop putting out ideas, “I don’t want to take the risk.” Or they’ll start attacking everybody else’s. “You have to repair the damage that was done.” You have to maintain or protect and repair the damage that’s been done to the self-esteem.

So what’s the moral of the story? Be aware of yourself. Let’s just talk about individuals. When you’re discussing things with other people, be aware of the tendency to play it safe. You have raw material. “I don’t want to put it out there because it’s gonna get knocked off or killed.” Just be aware of that tendency to self-censor. Okay, you don’t want to let them see it, fine, but don’t lose it for yourself. Make a note of your own thought mentally or on a piece of paper. Don’t lose your own raw material thought. And for others, to remember that it’s okay for people to put those thoughts out. The most productive way of responding to them is “no, but.” Not “yes, but.”

Sean Murray  33:53

Yeah, it’s a very powerful concept to keep in mind that when someone shares an idea, they are putting themselves out there. They’re going to feel vulnerable. Their ego and self-esteem are going to be tied to that idea. That’s just human nature. So how we react to the idea is going to have an impact on the person who shared the idea, their own self-esteem, how they’re going to continue to react in the interplay and relationship. Nobody wants to hear that their baby is ugly.

Jit Chopra  34:24

It’s also important to remember when you are a boss, that people come to you all the time. Often, they either are not going to share any fresh thoughts with you, or they’re going to greatly feel about the way you respond to them. So, do you really want people to be open to you and be open with their idea? Do you want them to trust you with their babies, so to speak? Or not? You control that. And so, if you find yourself thinking, “Why don’t I hear more from my team?” Well, look at yourself first. What do you do when they do give you something? How do you process it? That can make a very big difference in a relationship, in how much they feel you’re with them, if you can be trusted with their thoughts and ideas, and if they can be open with you. It’s also applicable in your ongoing relationships with people, not just in meetings.

Sean Murray  35:24

Jit, I want to go back to something that you mentioned at the very beginning, which we kind of glossed over. You talked about it in the book, which is in the brainstorming meeting. You immediately focused on the most impractical idea or the silliest, I think. When that idea first surfaced about buying the Japanese company, there were a lot of laughs. Why focus on the craziest idea, or the idea that gets everybody laughing so much? What is it about those ideas? They’re often the ones that we, in a typical brainstorming, just dismiss right away.

Jit Chopra  35:54

It’s in part. It’s because that’s raw material. That’s ore. Usually, the ideas that are seemingly practical already, typically, are not new. Their newness quotient is low. The highest newness potential of a fresh, different way of doing something is usually the ones that are not practical, which is why I very often say let’s pick some of the least practical ones. Let’s look at those first, and see what happens.

Now, sometimes, depending on how much people are feeling, and the need to get something first quickly, it’s okay to say to the manager or to the group, “Okay, we’ve got a bunch of these ideas. Are they any takeaways? Are there any practical ones that also have a twist to them? That are ready to take home?” They’ll tell you all about one, but is it really new? “Not much, but yeah, a little bit.” Let’s identify those, so people feel that they can relax. “Whoa, we got something already.” Then dig deeper. Go for the least practical ones. Pick one or two, and develop them.

Remember the development is for two reasons. You are much more likely to get a fresh new thought from ore, rather than from something that is relatively similar. If it’s not new, it’s going to be fairly similar to what you’re already doing. It might have a small twist to it. It won’t have a big twist. The second reason is that you do want to shift the team itself into the growing mode so that even when you don’t grow ideas formally, they are doing it in their head. They hear Sean say something that’s not very practical, but in their head, they know what they can do with it. So you just want the team to start behaving that way with each other also. That’s the other reason for formally going through at least one or two ideas in growing exercises, very quickly and efficiently, with the whole team.

Sean Murray  38:07

To give you an example of how these ideas might play out in a more personal way, in the last four weeks now, I’ve been sheltering at home with my family. My kids have been going to school digitally and online. It’s getting a little stir-crazy at times, and next week is spring break, where we normally would do something as a family. My son came up to me just this week, and said, “I sure would like to go somewhere for spring break. Why don’t we go somewhere for spring break?” That was an idea.

And what did I do? I immediately shut it down. “No, we can’t. We can’t go anywhere. Because there are orders that we have to stay in our homes as much as we can, and we can’t travel. We should not, to be good citizens, travel far from Seattle nor gather with other people.” Basically, my message was, “Sorry, son. That’s a bad idea.”

Jit Chopra  38:56

When the idea that you don’t like is what somebody else wants to do, then sometimes, a better tact is to first understand why they want to do that. The general rule is that if the idea is good for you, you can say, “Well, here’s what I like about it. Here’s what I don’t.” But to grow the other person’s idea, you still need a blueprint, which is the pluses and minuses for the idea. But the blueprint needs to be their blueprint. Now, the question is, “How do you get that?” You could say, for instance, with your son, “Why do you want to? What’s the process of doing that?” And he may just say, “I don’t know. I just want to do it.”

The other way of doing it is to tell yourself, “I really want to understand why this person wants to do something.” Ideas are ends to means. The kid wants to do that, but he’s testing for certain reasons. It solved certain problems for him. So, if you first try to hear what those are, then together, you may be able to create an alternative. You can do that by saying, “Oh, that’s interesting. Tell me more about that. Why would you want to do that?” Now, Shawn, let’s go back. What might he have said if you had said to him, “Well, we can’t really do that, but first, let me ask you, why would you want to do that?” Now, you have to watch your tone. You really have to want to understand what the other person had in mind. In other words, what was the end behind the means, which is the idea of this suggesting?

Sean Murray  40:59

The tone or the way that you ask the question was one of genuine curiosity, but it can also come across as a more caustic, negative question. It’s a question that’s shifting, that’s closing the conversations that have opened in it, so I like the tone that you presented. But if I did ask that, he might say, “I’d like to get out of the house. I’d like to get out of the regular routine and environment of every day, and experience something new and different, and learn something, and see a part of the world I haven’t seen before.” Something like that.

Jit Chopra  41:38

Those are good points. “Let’s just talk some more about how else we might want to do that? Going out and going away is one way. What else could we be doing that might help to do either one or all of those things? Maybe there’s a whole set of ways we can attack for each one of those things that you wish to do. So let’s just talk more about that.” That would lead you and him into a kind of problem-solving discussion, and into an idea-generating discussion. Because now, he may be much more interested in helping you because you’ve listened to him first. You’ve put yourself in a position of really wanting to understand where he’s coming from, and what the problems he’s trying to solve are. Now that he’s told you what they are, he may be much more open to saying, “Oh, yeah, okay. Let’s talk about what else we could be doing.” Now, you can offer some thoughts to him, and say, “What if we did this instead? How about this? Did you want to change the routines? Well, let’s create some new routines that would be fun. What might that be?”

Sean Murray  42:59

Yeah. I’m thinking now about this conversation. It’s opening up some possibilities for potential activities close to home, or in our home city, that are as novel and new as going on a trip to San Francisco or going to visit relatives in another state. We just have to get creative about thinking about what can we do around in our own area that has that same sort of effect.

Jit Chopra  43:24

Exactly. And these days, as you know, there are ways to virtually visit other people too. There are tools like Zoom and other ways to be with them that can be fun. You can have an occasion where you say, “We’ll invite some of your folks, the ones that you want to see. Invite either your friends or relatives, but let’s invite them in a way that’s also fun for them. Let’s think about what might be fun for them to do with us.”

Sean Murray  43:58

So the key here is, if I’m understanding correctly, Jit, is that we want to understand why. And so we genuinely ask, “Tell me more about why you’d want to do that.”

Jit Chopra  44:09

Right. And you as you said, it’s very important that your tone conveys that you really are interested. The way to make sure that you really are interested is to keep in mind that what the other person tells you may change your mind. And you may say, “Oh, gosh! I hadn’t thought of that. Maybe there is a way. Let us do something like that, and find a safe way of doing it. I didn’t know that it would solve these problems.”

Sean Murray  44:40

The other thing you did, is you said, “…and what else?” I think that’s important too.

Jit Chopra  44:46

Yeah, yes it is, Sean, because a lot of times what happens is that the ideas that we have, our answers for, or means for, are very often not clear to us. Our mind jumps to solutions, and sometimes, we, ourselves, are not very clear about exactly why we want to do something.

When I push you to tell me a little bit more, you may surprise yourself by saying, “Oh, there was another reason why I wanted to do that. I wasn’t even aware of that.” “Good. Let’s talk about that. How might we do that? By the way, which is the most important one? Which one should we start working on?” And that way, you also start to get the other person’s priorities, and what they wanted to do. They may be willing to let go of some of those priorities once they understand what they are. And so, now they can understand, “Oh, I see. That’s also what I wanted to do. You know, that’s the most important thing I wanted to do.”

Sean Murray  45:51

I think in the book, you talked about really pushing your group to think about the non-obvious pluses. You want to draw out the benefits and the pluses of ideas, but get beyond the obvious surface level, or the obvious two or three big benefits. What else? Because often the biggest benefit is lying underneath, hidden. It just needs to be unleashed.

Jit Chopra  46:20

That’s right. And I think it’s the same thing now because why the other person wants to do something, are, in effect, the pressures of the idea for that person. That’s why they want to do it. That’s what’s going for the idea for them. And again, pushing for one more. Anything else? What more might it do? Again, help them to become aware of that, in their own mind, hidden reason for why they wanted to do something.

Sean Murray  46:51

Yeah, because if we can identify those pluses, and then find an idea, or together identify an idea that gets to that plus, then we can both agree that it’s an achievable and reasonable step. Then that’s a win-win.

Jit Chopra  47:09

Yeah. You may also recall, Sean, that I call this going upstream. What I’m talking about there is that if we think of what happened in our mind as we solve a problem, the first thing is the end. We want to be able to achieve something. It may not be very clear in our minds before we jump to a solution for it because the mind works very quickly. And so, pretty soon very fast, we get from the end to the means very fast. We jump downstream, and what you’re doing now is, if in the stream of thought, the end precedes the means, you’re taking the person back upstream to the end that the idea answers.

Sean Murray  48:00

Well, Jit, this has been a wonderful conversation. Thank you for being on The Good Life!

Jit Chopra  48:05

I enjoyed it, Sean! Thank you for inviting me.

Outro  48:09

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