The boogey man

One of my relatives occasionally drives me mad with his worrying: How would it look if he failed? What would his wife say? What if he didn’t like it?

His worrying almost always takes the same form.

1. Identify the worst case outcome (usually a combination of bankruptcy/divorce courts/public ridicule).
2. Don’t explore it any further (eek, ears closed, ears closed).
3. Plot any course that avoids this scenario (and I mean any course).

I call it “The boogey man”. It’s the scary thing in the corner until you turn the light on.

And you can turn the light on by saying “so what“.

But I have looked at that before, the military thinking technique of asking “so what” and following the chain of inference until you come across the facts of the matter.

Since every day we have doom and gloom in the newspapers, I thought it was timely to remind you of another technique that can be used in conjunctions with my “so what” technique. DeBono’s six thinking hats. In my words:

• White – The facts, what we know and what we don’t.
• Red – The feelings, recognising how we feel about the situation.
• Black – What bad things can happen?
• Yellow – What good things can arise from this?
• Green – What creative thoughts can we have about this?
• Blue – Is our thinking robust about this?

So some yellow hat thinking about the current doom and gloom.

Yesterday’s SmartCompany says one third of SMEs will cut jobs in 2009 – cool, plenty of good people spilling into the marketplace.

Gold Coast developer Raptis Group finally collapses – good news if you’re a liquidator, good news if you want to pick up a property cheap.

Economists mixed on outlook for house prices – cool; uncertainty in the market place leads to opportunity. Maybe time to launch a newsletter on property opportunities?

Be prepared for four months of pain, said Robert Gottliebsen – cool. Low staff morale in the big stores makes it easier for small boutiques.

The dark boogey monster forest? A land of opportunity!

Brendan Lewis is a serial technology entrepreneur having founded : Ideas Lighting, Carradale Media, Edion, Verve IT, The Churchill Club, Flinders Pacific and L2i Technology Advisory. He has set up businesses for others in Romania, Indonesia and Vietnam. Qualified in IT and Accounting, he has also spent time running an Advertising agency and as a Cavalry Officer with the Australian Army Reserve