Observing subjective qualities in others past and present gives us a mental picture for the behaviors we want to practice. Each figure illustrates a quality researched from The Look to Craftsmen Project. When practiced as part of our day-to-day, these qualities will help us develop our mastery in our lives and work.

Imagination 101

Image Credit: The Paris Review — Image Credit: *The Paris Review*

“Fiction has to be something that people would actually believe.”

Margaret Atwood is a Canadian writer best known for her prose fiction and for her feminist perspective. She is brilliantly referred to in the New Yorker as “a buoyant doomsayer. Like a skilled doctor, she takes evident satisfaction in providing an accurate diagnosis.”

Over the course of her writing career, she has explored the power and limits of personal testimony in times of crisis. Her fiction has imagined societies riddled with misogyny, oppression, and environmental havoc. These visions now feel all too real, most recently with the renewed interest in her book The Handmaid’s Tale.

Exceptional diagnosis requires exceptional imagination. As an activity, it is not a passive experience. It implies an ongoing deepening practice of questioning one’s awareness. We must look at facts in a new light, synthesizing them in a novel way to make new connections. This impacts our relationship and response to material we thought we understood in one way, that we now relate to in another. Below Margaret shares her process of collecting information that exists as she considers shaping the future-universe of Handmaid’s Tale.

Excerpted from The New Yorker:

“Clip-clippety-clip, out of the newspaper I clipped things,” she said, as we looked through the cuttings. There were stories of abortion and contraception being outlawed in Romania, and reports from Canada lamenting its falling birth rate, and articles from the U.S. about Republican attempts to withhold federal funding from clinics that provided abortion services. There were reports about the threat to privacy posed by debit cards, which were a novelty at the time, and accounts of U.S. congressional hearings devoted to the regulation of toxic industrial emissions, in the wake of the deadly gas leak in Bhopal, India. An Associated Press item reported on a Catholic congregation in New Jersey being taken over by a fundamentalist sect in which wives were called “handmaidens”—a word that Atwood had underlined. … The ritualized procreation in the novel—effectively, state-sanctioned rape—is extrapolated from the Bible. “ ‘Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her; and she shall bear upon my knees, that I may also have children by her,’ ” Atwood recited. “Obviously, they stuck the two together and out came the baby, and it was given to Rachel. No kidding. It is right there in the text.”

When we use models as the guide they are meant to be, they have the potential to unleash our imagination and free up our creativity for problem-solving and learning. If we are wrestling with a complex challenge, looking at one aspect of it allows us to free our thinking and reasoning from the constraints of time. But at the same time, this kind of learning may detach us from reality, by abstracting the problem through a model, we lose direct experience, or feel, of the particulars.

For the author, it’s not a question of sitting around and wondering what to write; it’s a question of deciding which of the "far-fetched and absurd" ideas she’s going to try to tackle.

Imagination 101

Imagination is a cognitive process used in mental functioning to help us think about possibilities. It helps us consider problems from new perspectives.

To reduce complexity, we simplify ideas into models and develop tools to help us think through problems and frame complexity. They help direct our attention to what to do by when so that we can achieve predictable results. Using models alone, without our intuition and the visceral immediacy of putting our knowledge to the test has two disadvantages.

First, without direct experience, we are unprepared for variability in environmental conditions. For instance, we can try to solve gender inequality in the workplace (and society) purely with data, journal articles, and theory. But if we never interview those who have been impacted by harassment or discrimination and are now leaving the workforce, our lack of direct experience means our solutions will be well-meaning, but likely off-target.

Second, models separated from the experience are academic and untested. When we learn something new, there is a thrill to the actual doing which makes abstraction of the experience feel like a barrier. Models, as a gateway for experiences, should help us comprehend our experiences by showing us what to pay attention to, how to take action based on our understanding, and evaluate what we make.

As we gain more understanding of the terrain we are in and gain more proximity to the challenges we face, we adapt those models and begin to make our own—we use our imagination and start to play. When we go beyond the model, we truly start to wander and wonder. The tools we choose inform us about potential causality and relationships by suggesting alternatives to possible outcomes. Using theories and prototypes, we can imagine what we might encounter in our work, how our actions will impact it, and how to evaluate the possible outcome.

So how do we learn to increase our ability to use imagination in our work?

PRACTICE

Below is an exercise called Dreams v Goals. Typically, we are in one more or the other. The key to translating dreams into goals and remain flexible in pursuit of those goals, is practice. It is designed to practice flexing our ability to think openly (dreaming) and closed (goals) with greater fluency. This exercise can be applied to yourself but could be tailored toward specific projects. The key learning is to be able to brainstorm and execute with greater ease.

Prompt: Part I/The Work

Brainstorm a list of at least 25-75 or more dreams that give you excitement for the future.
Ask why? If you can’t explain why you want to be doing this dream then it can be a dream or goal, cross it off.
Ask 5 more questions:
- Is it really MY dream?
- Is it right or fair to all?
- Is it consistent with other goals?
- Can I emotionally commit to it?
- Can I visualize myself achieving this?
Ask 7 more questions: will it make me? (only one needed)
- Happier
- Healthier
- Prosperous
- Popular
- More at peace
- Security
- Better relationships?

Split remaining goals into small (< 1 month), medium (< 1 year), large > 1 year)

Prompt: Part II/Set good goals

Knowing what to do is completely different from doing it. Our internal narrative, the reptile brain, and fear of uncertainty sabotage our work. From the list in Part I, think through a goal that will make the most of your time in this program and something you are comfortable sharing. Remember “why” you are doing it and what your purpose is as this will get you through the rough patches.

Use ZigZiglar’s 7 steps to success:

Describe 1 goal for yourself (career or life) that you can share publicly.
List the benefits – what’s in it for me?
List the obstacles to overcome
List the skills and knowledge required
Identify the people and groups to work with
Develop a plan of action
Set a deadline for achievement

Reflect: Integrate

What is the difference between dreams and goals?
What thoughts and feelings come up as you fill out the goal template?
Provide short summary of what you heard from your peers and the impact the comments had on you.
What have you learned about your goal and yourself?

COMMIT

[ ] I commit myself to developing my fluency with open and closed thinking to stimulate imaginative problem-solving.

In her words…

Active involvement in certain movements “may be good for the movement, but it has yet to be demonstrated that it’s good for the writer.” —On Being a Woman Writer

“Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can't go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.” ― The Penelopiad

“The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise, you begin excusing yourself. You must see the writing as emerging like a long scroll of ink from the index finger of your right hand; you must see your left hand erasing it.” ― The Blind Assassin

“A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze.” ― The Handmaid's Tale

“War is what happens when language fails.”

“I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary.”

“When we think of the past it's the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that.” ― The Handmaid's Tale

“A word after a word after a word is power.”

“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”

“Another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.” — Cat's Eye

“In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.” ― Bluebeard's Egg

“Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. It's like the tide going out, revealing whatever's been thrown away and sunk: broken bottles, old gloves, rusting pop cans, nibbled fish bodies, bones. This is the kind of thing you see if you sit in the darkness with open eyes, not knowing the future.” ― Cat's Eye

“Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.” ― The Handmaid's Tale

“Don't let the bastards grind you down.” ― The Handmaid's Tale

“But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.” ― The Handmaid's Tale

“Better never means better for everyone... It always means worse, for some.” ― The Handmaid's Tale

“We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories.” ― The Handmaid's Tale

“If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next—if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions—you'd be doomed. You'd be ruined as God. You'd be a stone. You'd never eat or drink or laugh or get out of bed in the morning. You'd never love anyone, ever again. You'd never dare to.” ―The Blind Assassin

What we don’t see on the resumes we review or the job descriptions we want is the litany of emotional entanglements we bring to our roles, uninvited, to the team and organizations we work in. Alongside technical skills, people who can master a range of subjective skills are better able to influence, deal with ambiguity, bounce back from setbacks, think creatively, and manage themselves in the presence of setbacks. In short, those who learn lead.

Imagination 101

“Fiction has to be something that people would actually believe.”

Imagination 101

Imagination is a cognitive process used in mental functioning to help us think about possibilities. It helps us consider problems from new perspectives.

PRACTICE

COMMIT

FURTHER READING/WATCHING

In her words…