By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to help you re-frame your world view. Reading time: 3:02

Sometimes just a slight twist makes a big difference well beyond the Mobius Strip that doubles the life and usable surface area of a conveyor belt. Consider the art teacher who asked her students to re-frame their finished canvass with a quarter turn to the right. Then the ordinary square frame morphed into a diamond shape that more fully showcased the brilliance, the cut, the clarity, and the color of the students’ art.

That’s what leaders do. They twist and turn the frame around their reality to more fully engage others in a new reality that spawns a more empowering vision. They take your square view of your world and they give it a diamond setting. With a twist that dazzles.

Consider the way these two doctors framed their experimental treatment of cancer patients with the same four medications. One doctor squared his frame of reference and 22% improved.

Meanwhile the other doctor made a slight twist on his square frame and achieved diamond studded results in more ways that just the now diamond shape of his frame.

I’m Giving My Patients HOPE Not EPOH

More than three times as many (74%) of his patients improved. Why? The two doctors explore that issue just before presenting their findings at a major medical conferencel. The diamond-studded doctor says: “We’re both using Etoposide, Platinol, Occovin, and Hydroxyurea. You call yours EPOH. I tell my patients that I am giving them HOPE.”

Same vision. Difference focus that frames the drug treatments protocol in a more positive fashion and the result is a more positive response rate, according to author Norman Cousins, writing in his book Head First- The Biology of Hope.

Here’s another example of taking your square view of your world and giving it a slight twist and a clearer focus -an innovative diamond setting for your revised point of view.

What would you have done if you were leading US Government’s rationing of gasoline in World War II. You are running out of gasoline.

You are going to have to cut the weekly ration in half- at least if you are looking at that problem through your square box. Now one coupon would only be worth a half a gallon per week. Not good.

You knew the citizenry would be frustrated. After all they viewed the coupons as currency. Devaluing it would have undermined confidence.

But then you twist the square frame that you are viewing your problem through. Your square view turns into a diamond view. And now your diamond-setting view sparkles with an innovative light on the solution to the problem.

No need to CUT the ration in half. Just DOUBLE the duration. Now a coupon would be good for a full gallon of gas every two weeks. The government improvised and preserved the integrity of the value of the coupon.

Your perception -square or diamond- can either be a prison or a prism. It can either confine into prison or refine into a diamond or broadened. It can either square away what it is or sharpen the diamond view of what it could be. It all depends on how you want to frame your sense of reality. With a twist.

Today’s ImproveMINT

Reframe your focus to keep your leadership thinking in mint condition.

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