By Michael Michalko
Walt Disney was a high school dropout who was fired from his first job on a newspaper because he lacked imagination. Over the next few years, he suffered several business disasters and bankruptcy. But he overcame his personal and financial challenges by using his imagination to create an entertainment empire that has touched the hearts, minds, and emotions of all of us.
I learned imagineering from Walt Disney. The term “imagineering” combines the words “imagination” and “engineering” and basically means engineering your dreams and fantasies into something realistic and possible. Imagineering helped Walt Disney transform the dreams, fantasies, and wishes of his imagination into concrete reality.
Disney’s imagineering strategy involved exploring something using three different perceptual positions each using different strategies: the dreamer, the realist, and the critic. A dreamer and realist can create things, but find that a critic helps evaluate and refine the final products.
Following are descriptions of each strategy.
Dreamer: A dreamer spins innumerable fantasies, wishes, outrageous hunches, and bold and absurd ideas without limit or judgment. Nothing is censored. Nothing is too absurd or silly. All things are possible for the dreamer. To be the dreamer, ask, “If I could wave a magic wand and do anything I want, what would I create? How would it look? What could I do with it? How would it make you feel? What is the most absurd idea I can conceive?”
Realist: The realist imagineers the dreamer’s ideas into something realistic and feasible – figuring out how to make the ideas work and then sorting them in some meaningful order. To be the realist, ask, “How can I make this happen? What are the features and aspects of the idea? Can I build ideas from the features or aspects? What is the essence of the idea? Can I extract the principle of the idea? Can I make analogical-metaphorical connections with the principle and something dissimilar to create something tangible? How can I use the essence of the idea to imagineer a more realistic one?”
Critic: The critic reviews all the ideas and tries to punch holes in them by playing the devil’s advocate. To be the critic, ask, “How do I really feel about it? Is this the best I can do? What can make it better? Does this make sense? How does it look to a customer? A client? An expert? A user? Is it worth my time to work on this idea? Can I improve it?”
Imagineering at Work?
Suppose your challenge is to improve morale at work. The Dreamer comes up with these three ideas:
- Create a “happy” pill that makes people feel happy and positive. Provide them free to employees.
- Pay people to stay at home.
- Give everyone a company car of their choice.
The Realist studies the ideas of the Dreamer and tries to work them into something practical – examining the principle and then trying to create metaphorical-analogical connections with something in his or her own experience.
- The “happy” pill – The essence of the Dreamer’s idea: The “happy” pill aims to improve an employee’s attitude. How can this be made into a benefit? How are attitudes adjusted? The Realist’s imagineering: Bring in motivational speakers to speak during catered in-house lunches. Bring in a masseur once a week to give back massages. Bring in a facilitator to give attitude adjustment exercises and produce role playing skits. Encourage employees to take evening or weekend courses in art, sculpture, crafts, woodworking, creative writing, and so on. Pay the tuition and provide a room where employees can display their creative products. Have each employee bring in an object for their desk that symbolizes something important about them (e.g., a crystal ball that represents forward-looking vision, jumper cables to represent a person who jump starts others, a can of WD-40 representing someone who is called upon to do many different things, etc.).
- Pay people to stay at home – The essence of the Dreamer’s idea: The core of this idea is “at home.” What do people do when they stay home? They work on their house, household projects, remodeling, painting, landscaping, and gardening. How can this be made into a benefit? The Realist’s imagineering: 1) Offer the employees the services of a handyman as a benefit. The employee pays for materials, while the employer pays the handyman to fix sinks, hang wallpaper, and so on. 2) Provide the services of a real estate consultant who will offer suggestions on how employees can upgrade their houses and property to increase the value of their assets.
- Company car – The essence of the Dreamer’s idea: This idea aims to provide something related to cars or transportation. What are some aspects of cars that can be engineered into ideas? The Realist’s imagineering: 1) Make a fiscal arrangement with a youth group to come once a week and wash all the employee cars at the company’s expense.The cause should be a tax-deductible one. 2) Create an incentive system where points are awarded for exceptional performance. When so many points are accrued, award the employee with a gift certificate for gasoline or routine maintenance from a local garage. 3) Make a company car available for employees to use while their cars are being serviced or disabled. 4) Provide a company-designated driver for Friday and Saturday evenings. Employees who’ve imbibed too much can call the driver. The driver drives them home and then drives them back to their car the next day.
Suppose your challenge is to increase the number of sales calls. The Dreamer comes up with the idea that the salesperson gets a commission for every call made – regardless of whether a sale is made. In fact, you reward rejections.
The Realist considers the Dreamer’s idea and hones it so that – every time a salesperson gets a “no” – it gets tracked and recorded. At the end of every week, the person with the most nos receives a $100 gift card. This might sound crazy, but you get a lot of nos when doing sales. The more nos you get, the closer you are to getting a “yes.” The prize for getting a “yes” is way larger than $100, so you still wanted to get “yes.”
Put your imagination to work. What is your dream? Now imagineer it back to a realistic idea.
Michael Michalko is the author of Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative Thinking Techniques and Cracking Creativity: The Thinking Strategies of Creative Geniuses.
