Imagination in the business world and its role in strategic management came to the fore at a recent conference organised by the Malta Association of Family Enterprises and Znanie Association of Bulgaria. Themed The Knowledgeable Family Enterprise – Driving Creativity and Profitability, the event was attended by students of Breda University in the Netherlands which offers a Master’s in Imagineering.
Educators carry the responsibility to break constraining mental models
‘Imagineering’ entails engineering with, and for, imagination. It is about evoking images that create the right practices in business and that inspire others. Imagineering is not an action of one person but integrates the imagination of individual actors. It is a word made popular by Walt Disney and is a process by which an imaginative artefact mobilises people in a generative manner.
This powerful transformative tool has a lot to offer the business leader. It moves people away from ingrained ways of thinking and constraining mental models. The next generation of leaders would benefit from experiencing the process of imagineering early in their careers and working lives. Unfortunately, tertiary education does not always allow such experiences of thinking outside the box.
To our disadvantage, human beings tend to be cognitive misers who naturally conserve their limited information-processing resources. They use the most easily accessible or available information for decisions, take short cuts whenever they can, and often rely on the path of least resources. As a consequence of these cognitive processing characteristics, errors and biases occur. What the business leader needs is imagination. Educators in all levels and fields of education carry the responsibility to break such constraining mental models.
Poor leadership may in part be described as a lack of imagination. Business leaders may benefit from being coached into questioning what they are doing and what they would be comfortable doing, and then going a step further to challenge the mind sets and methodologies with which they think issues through.
They may not even be aware that they operate from a rigid and narrow mental model that permits only limited and particular types of decisions. Such narrow mental models may easily be passed on to the next generation, which, as a result, will have difficulties in achieving the strategic renewal required for the growth of a business in the future.
Imagination in leadership may help to revisit the meaning of an event, to reinterpret options or alternatives, and reframe purpose in the larger context of an event. It is focused and the business leader is invited to focus on specific desired outcomes cutting through all logical resistance.
Smart and educated business leaders are not always or necessarily innovative. Applying imagination helps one build the future one wants. It shapes decisions and behaviour. However, it requires passion because imagination that does not have emotion will not give the required motivational charge for action.
Athletes use this technique to reach new records. It increases motivation; builds confidence; helps one strategise; manages energy and behaviour; makes one bounce back quickly; enhances strategic thinking; helps to master new skills and maintain focus; increases competitive advantage and creates vision and next steps.
Business leaders must create the necessary space to practise imagination, where they feel safe and are accompanied by individuals and professionals they trust. They are encouraged to pick an objective that is meaningful and important and then to ask questions about that objective in order to help create imagery. Professional coaches help create this imagery through probing and allowing the space for imagination. Such images need to be experienced in a multi-sensorial fashion and need to feel achievable.
In today’s business environment of high velocity and competition, organisations need to adapt to fast changes. This adaptation is essential for survival. Flexibility is the ability of the business to exploit such business environment and its changes. Flexibility implies exploring new opportunities and exploiting such opportunities. Such flexibility requires the use of focused imagination that challenges existing operative mental models to find and potentially use new ways of framing and making decisions.
fenechrob@gmail.com
Roberta Fenech is an associate consultant for EMCS and a lecturer at St Martin’s Institute of Information Technology.