We’ll explore and deplore,
only that and nothing more.

I came across this quote towards the beginning of Alex Osborn’s book Applied Imagination, who was best known for coining the term ‘Brainstorming.’ He was also someone that believed in the need for thinking time. John C. Maxwell in Thinking for a Change advocates the same process. Both suggest the need for making appointments in your calendar for yourself, for just thinking, and keeping a notebook of your thoughts and ideas.

Anyway, back to the quote. I was really struck by it because it seemed to capture so much of what I hear from people these days, and I have probably been guilty of it too. We spend so much of our time and energy ‘fact finding’ or analysing that when it comes time for new ideas and imagination the metaphorical tank is empty.

I have also seen people staring blankly at mountains of data, knowing that it is telling them something but not being sure what it is or how to access it. It is almost as if the exploration has become an end in itself. I wonder what might happen if we spent more time on evaluation and elaboration.

What changes might we see?