Look at this picture and tell me about it.  I am seeing the same picture as you – right?…no wrong. The picture may be the same to both of us, but what you see or I see are likely to be very different. Some of us will tell you about the mayonaise, the 3 cans of lager, the tomato puree.  Others the Branston pickle jar by its top. Some will mention the large cat. They may or may not tell us it is ginger. Some will tell us about the cat who has broken into a fridge or is peering into a camera just before it leaps?

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is the most widely used personality profiling indicators in the world.  (I happen to be a practitioner). It examines and evalauates our preferred style of dealing with the world and the people in it, and identifies our preferences on four dimensions.  The dimension relating to how we prefer to take in information is the Sensing-lntuition dimension. Those who have a preference for sensing prefer to take in information through what we would call the normal senses, to find out what is actually happening, recognising the practical realities of situations and seeing things “as it is”. Those with a sensing preference will be more likely to tell you literally what is in the picture (a ginger cat, the number of cans of lager etc). In contrast, those who prefer intuition have a preference for taking in the big picture, focussing on the relationships and connections between facts &  information rather than the information itself, seeing new possibilities and new ways of of doing things. They are more inclined to see things in the picture that are not literally there, like how the cat got in the fridge, what he might do next, or even what the cat is thinking.

Everyday we see or experience things, often we are exposed to the same thing as others. Then we mistakenly believe we are looking at a situation (or a picture) and normally assume that you are seeing similar things to everyone else. My stimulus is not the same as your stimulus. My answer to the same question will not necessarily the same as yours. The general population is over 75 per cent sensing with a minority being intuitive. People who have a natural tendency to see the more lateral and unusual connections are harder to find.  They will also normally be in the minority in most companies, teams, meetings and discussions. Intuitive perception can often find itself having a harder job getting heard.

So here is the bad news. New insight and ideas are hard to find anyway. To make it harder, we often exhibit this default myopia that not only makes it harder to see them, but harder for them to be recognised when they appear. We  can blind side ourselves to other perspectives and new ideas. We also can, some people in particular, discount what others see. Or worse, put them down for seeing it and saying it.  Because we don’t see what they see in the information – how can it be there?  In organisations that recruit to type the difficulty is even greater. More people see the same way. The culture over time shifts to seeing what it wants to see – and what they see is the same thing.  Those who may see things differently find it hard to get heard, they get seen as the weird sheep and commonly leave. When companies get to a situation where they can’t imagine what can come around the corner – because they cannot actually see it – it is often close to the moment when they get run over.

Now the good news and there are 5 bits of it:

1. We don’t work alone or have to look at things, or generate ideas just from our own perceptions. Stimulus combined with a fresh perspective is a potent recipe. Some perspectives you may not  like.  Some you may disagree with.  Some may not work. But you now have other alternatives to build on your thoughts or to provide the stress test to them.

2. Sensing & Inuition are preferences not fixed setttings in our personality.  We can all choose to act out of preference or appreciate those who can see things differently to us. Sensing & intuition are both fantastically useful in evaluating situations & coming up with new ideas. People with an intuitive preference can still sense and people with a sensing preference still exhibit intuition. They may find it not as natural to do, but they can still do it. We all sense when we do things like taste food, notice a stoplight or memorise a speech. We all use intuition when we do things like get stuck and come up with new ways of doing things, think about future implications for a current action, perceive an underlying meaning in what people say or do, or  see a bigger picture.

3.  Sensing + Intution – when we see each others perspectives, can make for biggest or most numerous of ideas. It is a mistaken belief to see those who have an intuitive preference as the only source of new inspiration.  They may be more likely to see the bigger picture, but they are also less likely to see what is under their nose. Is the idea for Google based on sensing or intuition. Of course, its based on both.

4. Breaking the habit of seeing the world only from your perspective can be done in minutes not days. When teaching people about facilitation techniques one of my favourites is to ask a group (say 10 people) to close their eyes for 30 seconds.   I ask them to think about “what have a cat and a fridge have got in common?”. (I’m not sure where I got this question from). Having done it, I then also ask them to guess how many different answers will get from the group in total. At most people guess about 10. The reality is normally way more than 10 – frequently 20. If you also allow the suggestions made to stimuluate others “both have feet”, makes someone else think “both have a tail” (the flex on the fridge), in a few minutes you can have 30 connections. The most bizarre of which to date was “you find them abandadoned in unkempt gardens when they are dead”. That came from a Finance Director.

5. The more you or a company does it – the easier it gets to do. You may ask why  30 connections for a cat and a fridge of any use to you or your business? The cat & the fridge exercise is an illustration of what can happen if, even for short time, a situation is created where people are forced to suspend their own perceptions and use a combination of their different perceptions to look at a stimulus. This is just brilliant news. Just do the maths. If 12 of us all saw the same two things in a stimulus the total answer would be 2.  If 12 of us all saw 2 different things in stimulus the total would be 24.