By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to extend your limited resources in tough economic times.

As a leader, you’re resourceful. Leaders use whatever resources are available in new and different ways. Even girdles: Doctors, seeking to construct the first artificial heart valve, needed a material that would have the same elasticity of the heart. They used the polyurethane material of a girdle to shape the innovation.

Call it wiggle room of another kind, the kind of wiggle room that innovative leaders bring to creative problem-solving. And how ‘s your wiggle room? Read on to enhance your resourcefulness.

Leaders use whatever resources are available in new and different ways. Even women’s skirts: Confederate troops in the Civil War were building an observation balloon. They needed 980 yards of silk material. Women in Savannah, GA donated their skirts for the silk to make the balloon.

Leaders are resourceful. They use whatever resources are available in new and different ways. Even diapers: Fire fighters noticed that everything in a dump burned except the diapers. They found out what chemicals comprised the diapers and used that chemical in a special spray as a fire-retardant to save homes from a wildfire in Florida.

Be resourceful and you could use the twisted sinew of a moose or a deer or the skin of a snapping turtle to become the bow as the innovative Chippewa Indians did.

Be resourceful and you could become like the mountain climber who brought only a small piece of tarp and two short ropes on mountain climbing exhibition. She took along a piece of dental floss and used it to extend the ropes to build a make shift tent between the trees.

Be resourceful and you could become like artist Benjamin West who used the hairs of a cat to make his own paint brushes.

Be resourceful and you could become like inventor Thomas Edison. He found a sewing thread in his wife’s sewing basket and improvised and it became a filament for the world’s first long-lasting light bulb.

So how resourceful are you? How many different ways can you problem solve? If there are 293 different ways to change a dollar bill with common coins, how many different ways can you change the way you use a diaper? Or a girdle? With your wiggle room.

Today’s ImproveMINT
Creatively use your existing resources to keep your leadership thinking in mint condition.

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