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Listen for Ideas In my office I have always made myself accessible; I have always insisted upon this, to the extent often of not allowing my staff, or of not waiting for them, to vet strangers who came to see me before permitting them to come into my office. It is surprising the things that have sprung from this, the surprising things I’ve learned. I am always curious, always hopeful. I still often duck out of an office meeting to see what some visitor looks like and to find out what he wants. Likewise, I take quite a few tele-phone calls if my secretary happens to be busy or out of the room for the moment; I have told the switchboard that if there is not one of my personal staff to answer a call, to put it straight through to me. I don’t want any information or opportunity to go elsewhere just because no one could take a call. I try to make friends wherever I go and it is my fond belief that I usually succeed.The way I look at it, everyone has an idea and one in a dozen may be a good idea. If you have to talk to a dozen people to get one good idea, that isn’t wasteful work. People are continually passing things on to me, because I have given them to believe that I will be inter-ested, I might even pay for it! Sometimes, usually when it is least expected, something comes up that is touched with gold. Roy Thomson was full of questions on every subject. His interest was like a perennial spring: it flowed from the hope that the companion of the moment might add information to some current concern, or even reveal some world that Roy had not so far entered. He personified the Turkish proverb: ‘Listening requires more intelligence than speaking.’ That may, however, be overstating the case. The ability to talk well and the ability to listen are, in fact, clearly related. As 47 The Art of Creative Thinking Peter Ustinov once said to me, ‘There is no point in talking without listening.’ A person who listens because he or she has nothing to say can hardly be source of inspiration. The only listening that counts is that of the talker who alternately absorbs and expresses ideas. 48 Listen for Ideas KEYPOINTS A childlike curiosity and an open mind, backed up by sharp analytical skills and a sensitive judgement, are the essential prerequisites for being a good listener. Your priority must always be to achieve a grasp of the nature and significance of what is being said to you. Ask questions to elicit the full meaning. Understanding comes before evaluation. Listen for ideas, however incomplete and ambiguous, as well as for potentially relevant facts and information. ‘My greatest strength as a consultant,’ Peter Drucker once told me, ‘is to be ignorant and ask a few questions.’ Never miss a chance to shut up. The word listen contains the same letters as the word silent. ‘It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the province of wisdom to listen’, said Oliver Wendell Holmes. Give every man your ear, but few your voice. William Shakespeare 49 10 Reading to generate ideas The use of reading is to aid us in thinking. Edward Gibbon ‘I love to lose myself in other men’s minds’, wrote Charles Lamb. ‘When I am not walking, I am reading; I cannot sit and think. Books think for me.’ For many people, reading and research is more a device for avoiding thought rather than as an aid to it. But reading for diversion or entertainment, or reading merely for informa-tion, is different from reading for idea generation. What kinds of reading will develop your creative imagination? 51 ... - tailieumienphi.vn
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