Move the Hole!
If you’re not getting results, make a different kind of effort
I like what Edward deBono, the originator of “lateral thinking” once said about the phenomenon of creative people trying to get results, but coming up empty:
“If you are digging for oil and don’t find any, move the hole!”
Sometimes, it seems as if aspiring innovators get fixated on a particular approach and no matter what happens (or doesn’t), they just keep doing the same old thing over and over again even when experience reveals that their approach is not working.
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”
Of course, it’s always possible that other factors are at play:
1. Perhaps the hole you’ve dug is too shallow and success is only a few shovelfuls away.
2. Maybe you’re digging in the right place, but you’re using the wrong tools.
3. Perhaps, in your effort to find oil, you don’t see the gold coins you’ve stumbled upon because everything that is “not oil” is invisible to you.
