“How the ability to dream helps a business grow”, — write: epravda.com.ua
If you imagine two images – a technical specialist and a dreamer – it seems that they will be two completely different people. The first is based on logic and facts, completely rational, reasonable. The second – flies in the clouds, believes in the impossible, ignores reality. But in fact, none of the technology we use today would exist without a dream. Warren Buffett calls himself not too smart for not investing in Amazon in 1994. Someone who invested $1,000 in the company’s shares in 1997 would now have $1.4 million. Today, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is one of the richest people on the planet, but twenty years ago he had only a dream that no one believed in. It was not only Buffett who refused him. Bezos was desperate for investment, but investors simply closed the door in front of the nose of the online bookstore. Just twenty years ago, businessmen could not believe that a buyer would be ready to order a product while sitting at home. But Bezos believed in what he clearly saw in his dreams. That is why he continued to knock on doors in search of money for his business.Advertisement: A similar story happened with the company Uber. The idea of their founders Garrett Kemp and Travis Kalanick was once considered too innovative. Steve Jobs, who founded Apple back in 1976, also heard constant rejections. All these dreamers are united by the fact that their dream was stronger than a hundred rejections, humiliations or ridicule. The dream gave each of them the strength to move on, to study and improve, to think about solving problems and not to give up. It turns out that every successful technical genius had more than logic, rationality and dry facts. Each of them knew how to fly in pink clouds and drew energy there to act.Advertisement: Walt Disney Technology Disney proved that the impossible was possible long before Bezos and Jobs. Walt was born in a small American town, where at school the teacher called the boy “the second dumbest in the class.” But that didn’t stop Disney from going to Hollywood with only forty dollars, a pencil and a dream. Last year, the company celebrated its centennial, but once Walt heard rejection after rejection. Investors did not see how animation could be capitalized. The studios could not appreciate Walt’s creative approach and believed that the cartoons could only be a warm-up for the audience before the release of the film. So Walt proved that his animation could be more interesting than the movie he was supposed to warm up. This happened after five years of the company’s work, when moviegoers were delighted with “Steamboat Willie” about Mickey Mouse. Later, a researcher of successful behavioral strategies, Robert Dilts, studied the reasons for Disney’s success. It turned out that one of the most important factors that helped Walt was the ability to dream. Disney himself once said, “If you can imagine it, you can do it.” Dilts modeled step-by-step the behavior of a genius while creating his products, which later brought in big profits. He discovered that the animator had three states – a dreamer, a realist and a critic. Each part of the personality was responsible for its own part of the project. According to the legend, the company’s employees were later seated on three different floors, depending on their type of activity. On the floor of dreamers, the craziest ideas were generated, on the floor of realists they built plans for their implementation, and on the floor of critics they found gaps in the plans of realists. Being isolated from each other allowed the workers to do their best work. Dreams did not shatter against merciless criticism or the harsh reality of realists. On their floor, dreamers could draw on the walls, be creative, look at the clouds from the panoramic windows and allow themselves to go beyond the limits of the possible. Robert Dilts developed a coaching technique that allows an individual to activate these three states in himself and build his own plan for the implementation of an idea. Today, this technique is often used by coaches. Why is it useful to develop a dreamer? Today, there are practically no educational programs that teach how to dream. IT courses teach programming languages, but they don’t teach you to close your eyes and imagine the impossible. But the further we can escape from reality into the depths of our fantasies, the more creative solutions we can get from the depths of our subconscious, from a world where nothing is impossible. These decisions will then help change reality. By developing the ability to dream, we can do everything – bring victory closer, reduce the amount of evil, overcome incurable diseases, and turn Ukraine into a prosperous state. There are a lot of rational technicians on the market today, but what we lack are technicians who have the courage to dream.