Two weeks ago, we started to discuss the first three out of five Xploration tools that you can use to check the reality of something: standard reality checks, belief checks and assumption tests. Today, let’s complete our discussion on reality checks by looking at two other techniques that I call “Break rules for fools” and “The sacred cow slaughterhouse”.

4. Break rules for fools

Most rules are initially made for reasons that make a lot of sense — just imagine a football match (or any other game) played without any rules. No wonder that we follow these rules. But time passes, and things change. And, as we have discussed before in this column, over the past two decades our personal lives as well as the business world have changed enormously. Now, because we live in times of exponential change, it is likely that the original reason for imposing a number of rules may no longer exist. However, because the rules are still in place, most people uncritically continue to follow these nonsense rules. (Here, realize that under the heading “rules for fools”, we are not only talking about rules in their truest sense of the word, but also about related concepts like laws, regulations, policies and guidelines.)

My tips:

• If you are an individual, and you come across a “rule for fools”, be courageous and challenge it by choosing one of the following four strategies: (a) Deliberately break the rules — and deal with the consequences; (b) Find or create an opposite rule that stands diametrically opposite to the original one; (c) Create a special case where the bothersome rule doesn’t apply; (d) See if you can eliminate the key circumstances that trigger the rule to circumvent it. Be creative and flexible in finding the best way to get beyond the rule.
• If you are a business leader, consider creating the following new rule in your organization: “Every rule here can be challenged except this one”. Then encourage and reward your employees to flag up all rules for fools. Lead your firm in the spirit of Thomas Edison: “Surprises and reverses can serve as an incentive for great accomplishment. There are no rules here, we’re just trying to accomplish something”.
• Refuse to follow any unethical rule or policy in the spirit of Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” Ask yourself if the rule makes sense or not — and if not, don’t follow it. Remember that in history, many crimes against humanity have been committed under the protection of laws and edicts; so don’t cite the laws of society or rules of your company to justify your wrong actions…
• Another thing that you can do as a business leader is to bring in a creativity consultant to act as fool. Traditionally, a fool could be found at the court of every king, emperor or pharaoh. Under the protection of the fool’s cap, he could parody any proposal, challenge assumptions and the prevailing mindset at court, waking the ruler out of conventional thought patterns and protecting him from dangerous groupthink. Every smart ruler in history held his court fool in high esteem, so consider bringing in a creativity consultant as a “modern-day fool” to check out the thinking at your “corporate court”. Or give yourself a license to “be foolish” and ask “foolish” questions that cut through to the core of a situation.

5. The Sacred Cows Slaughterhouse

Do you recognize the following configuration of letters? Q W E R T Y U I O P. Take a moment to think about this question, as we will come back to it later.

What is a sacred cow? According to Wiktionary, it is something that cannot be tampered with, or criticized, out of fear of public outcry. Some old ideas or concepts have been so successful that they have become immune to criticism, that they have become “sacred cows”. The Ptolemaic model of the world as the center of the universe was a sacred cow for many centuries, and so were Isaac Newton’s mechanical laws for the world of physics. Now slaughtering a sacred cow means falling out of love with a once cherished but outdated idea to give you the freedom to look for new, better ideas. Galileo Galilei and Nikolaus Copernicus slaughtered the Ptolemaic model with their realization that the earth moves around the sun, and Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity did the same to the Newtonian worldview of physics. And so it goes.

Now let’s return to our earlier question. QWERTYUIOP is the upper row of signs on a computer keyboard. Now do you think that is the most efficient keyboard configuration? You should say: No. In fact, this configuration was developed in 1870 to slow down fast operators to prevent typewriter keys from jamming. Nowadays, we mostly use computers instead of manual typewriters, and the keys of the computer obviously don’t jam. But QWERTYUIOP continues to be used even though faster configurations are available.

My tip: Develop an eye for spotting sacred cows. With all the technological progress and changes in the world, there are plenty of sacred cows to be sent to the slaughterhouse to make life simpler or give you space for the new. For instance, a few months ago, I decided to slaughter the sacred cow watch. I no longer wear one, as anyone can do without a watch if you have a mobile phone.

Conclusion: Doing reality checks, testing assumptions, breaking rules for fools, and slaughtering a sacred cow whose days have come are common strategies of an accomplished creative thinker. Always remember the words of great Spanish artist Pablo Picasso: “Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.”

© Dr. Detlef Reis 2008. This article was published in parallel in the Bangkok Post under the title “Time to put some sacred cows out to pasture” on 28 August 2008.