Creative Thinking to deal with COVID19

I’ll start by saying that I have no creative solutions to COVID19 but I can offer a couple of brainstorming tips on how to go about being creative.

In Zen Buddhism the following statement is almost a truism. It goes like this: “If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything, it is open to everything. In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.”

This quote above is attributed to Shunryu Suzuki who was a Zen Master and author of the book: Zen Mind Beginner’s Mind.

The above concept is illustrated by the story of how exterior elevators came into existence. There was a hotel which needed an additional elevator and many well-informed experts and architects were consulted. They all come up with detailed plans which involved shutting down the hotel, drilling holes in the building, making structural changes and laying off the employees for some length of time. Then a janitor who was listening to the discussion asked them a simple question: “Have you considered building the elevator on the outside of the hotel.”

The full story is given in the following link:

https://www.grandforks.af.mil/News/Commentaries/Display/Article/763784/leadership-lessons-listen-to-the-janitor/

 When I was studying to be an accountant, I came across the concept of having a multidisciplinary team to do audits. Audits are not just confined to financial books and records. Sometimes audits can be of management policies and so on. I was never a part of such an audit in my career and whenever I suggested this idea in a couple of job interviews, I was pretty much laughed out of the room. It did not help that I was not very competent as a Chartered Accountant but that is another story.

I can suggest this concept to the government. Do not get the views of just the medical experts in searching for a cure to COVID19. Form a multidisciplinary team to look into the problem. It is possible that a non-medical person may be able to come up with a solution.

There is also the insight attributed to Albert Einstein. I have referred to this story in one of my earlier articles. Albert Einstein said that if he had one hour to solve a problem then he would spend 55 minutes framing the question which needs to be asked. Once the right question is clear in his mind it would not take more than 5 minutes to find the answer.

I’ll end here. Hope somebody is able to make use these brainstorming tips to finally deal with COVID19.

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