John Adair's 100 Greatest Ideas for Smart Decision Making

Idea 76: Imagination in action

Imaginative thinking is not limited to inventions. The detective and the manager are usually not inventing or making anything, but they are still thinking imaginatively. They are also linked in that they both have an adversary: the criminal in one case and competitors in another. Sportspeople and soldiers share that factor as well.

Again, let’s look at an example. When a famous football player is being praised for playing imaginatively, he is not being praised for fantasizing in his armchair or writing novels about football. Rather, he is seen to do things such as the following:

• In trying to get past the opposing player he doesn’t use the same move or swerve time after time – or he may do so three times just in ...