Sherpa Alliance

Our organizational agility depends upon our mental agility, individually and collectively, to be able to pivot our breakthrough thinking in creative ways, unlocking new perspectives, possibilities and options. As we expand beyond the simple approaches outlined in The Power of 3, it is useful to think of mental agility in three progressive categories:

• Turning things upside-down, back-to-front and inside-out
• A Geodesic Sphere
• TheBrain.com Mind-mapping

Turning things upside-down, back-to-front and inside-out
The techniques outlined in the Power of 3 help us get limbered up to be more mentally agile.  Progressing beyond these, when faced with a complex issue, it is often useful to next ask the following questions:

• How might I turn this issue upside-down and what do I see differently when I do?
  • the top becomes the bottom
  • below becomes above
  • the ceiling becomes the floor
• How might I turn this issue back-to-front and what do I see differently when I do?
  • the back becomes the front
  • far becomes near
  • behind becomes in-front
• How might I turn this issue inside-out and what do I see differently when I do?
  • inside becomes outside
  • inward becomes outward
  • finite becomes infinite

A Geodesic Sphere
The 3-D technique outlined in the Power of 3 helps us take the first step into multi-dimensional space and the ability to look orthogonally, through different windows.   Instead of a cube, with 4 sided square windows, imagine instead:

• A pentagon with 5 sided windows and the geometric space they would make
• A hexagon with 6 sided windows and the geometric space they would make
• A heptagon with 7 sided windows and the geometric space they would make
• An octagon with 8 sided windows and the geometric space they would make
• … and so on

As we add more and more sides, we progress towards the extreme of perfect sphere.  Stopping short of that a little, we get to the concept of a Geodesic Sphere.  A near sphere, but still with a large number of identifiable windows (like the facets of a jewel) which we can look through, each of which looks from a slightly different 3-Dimensional angle.

The idea of a Geodesic Sphere helps us have the mental agility to look at an issue from many, many angles, to sculpt a fully rounded and multi-dimensional appreciation of the issue.

TheBrain.com Mind-Mapping
Mind-mapping is a well established technique of mental agility, for unraveling, exploding and exploring the threads of an issue in a way that is aligned with the physiology of how the brain works.  If it isn’t a technique you use, you should experiment with it, at least at a basic level (Mind Map).  Over the years, advances have been made with software tools, which provide intermediate and advanced functionalities,  to fully leverage the power of this approach, individually and collaboratively.
Then the next level of mental agility comes with a new form of mind-mapping from TheBrain.com which allows you to dynamically shift your center of attention and (even more so like the physiology of the brain) reconfigure the mind-map around this center of attention.  This models, and helps us limber up, our next level of mental agility, which seems so relevant to our challenge these days:

• Mind-mapping out from one issue as the node at our center-of-attention and creating an expansive array of new ideas 
• Then holding any one of those new ideas as our center-of-attention and asking which other nodes (i.e. other issues) this is already connected to
• And expanding our outflow of ideas around this new center-of-attention
• And so on, and so on, and so on, in a very mentally agile manner.

That’s what our work is about.  Helping CEOs, executives and their teams have the mental agility needed at the core of their organizational agility - being able to look at their journey as a business from all the angles needed these days to be fully in the driving seat.  Its like having a mental-gym.  We provide the exercise equipment you need, in the form of a concept-suite, model-set and tool-box, to have a good work-out with your mental agility as the core of your organizational agility.