Читать книгу The 7 Minute Leadership Handbook - Paul Falavolito - Страница 11

This might be my favorite leadership exercise to do. I love brainstorming and I love to do it with groups and I love to do it alone. For me, I use a variety of tools when I brainstorm. I am a huge fan of an app called Evernote and another one called Trello. They allow me to easily organize projects, thoughts, and ideas. It is very beneficial to get ideas out of your mind and onto paper, or in this case, a computer or phone screen. Whatever medium you use, when you see it, you hold yourself accountable to that thought or idea. You won't forget it.

A piece of paper or computer screen with my brainstorming ideas might look something like this. I start with a general idea or thought, and I write it at the top of the page. Then I write the most bizarre and wishful thing I can think of on the right side of the page and then I follow that up with the easiest thing to accomplish on the left-hand side of the page. The fun comes from connecting the easiest to the most out-of-this-world idea with other thoughts and ideas. When that is done, I will stop and look at the page and find the ones that are the most realistic to achieve with the resources I have or the resources that I need and I start to make the connection to the main idea on the top of the page. One of the other brainstorming sessions I like to host is gathering team members around a table and just making a single statement and letting everyone just speak out whatever comes to mind, regardless of how silly or impossible it sounds. It makes for a fun session with a lot of laughs and wishful thinking. You would be surprised how some of those wishful thinking ideas turn into realities when you put your minds and resources together.

Fourteen years ago during a board meeting, we were having a brainstorming session and singing the blues about not having as much money as we would like to have. We had some big projects and goals we wanted to achieve and some upgrades to some of the ambulance base resources. I can remember we desperately were in need of a portable generator. I made the comment out loud and word-for-word, it went exactly like this, "If we were smart, we would take every penny we have in the bank and hire an agent in New York and pitch them the idea of doing an EMS reality show, because the things that go on here would be very entertaining to the public." Of course, everyone laughed and said, "Great idea."But it wasn't going to happen. A little while later, I started doing these video blogs because I was traveling all over the country and I wanted work colleagues, friends, and family to see where I was and what I was doing. I created a YouTube channel and posted the videos. It became very popular pretty quickly. One specific situation occurred during one of our Search and Rescue training weekends.

In the Laurel Highlands, just east of Pittsburgh, is where we conducted our weekend training sessions. At the time, we had a thirty-four foot slide out FEMA trailer that we used as our Mobile Command Center. For this particular winter training weekend, Murphy's law was about to strike and strike hard. We towed the trailer up to the training site. The truck we used to tow the trailer broke down in the process, but we managed to get the trailer to the site and conduct the training. One of the guys drove the trailer back to Pittsburgh and dropped it off at the dealer to get repaired and we were told it would take a few days. The plan was to lock up and leave the trailer there when we were done. On the last night of training, something mechanical happened to the mobile command vehicle and we lost all power. All of the team members decided to leave the training a day early because we had no power in the command vehicle. Myself and one of the other team members decided to stay with the sinking ship. Of course it was freezing that night, and in an effort to create some kind of entertainment for ourselves, we decided to video the whole thing. The next day, the truck that had initially broken down was repaired early and came back to pick up the command vehicle. We returned back to the ambulance base cold and anxious to upload this new video. One week later, a U-Haul truck backed into the ambulance base and the driver was knocking on my office door asking me to sign for the delivery. We didn't order anything, and I couldn't figure out what it was. I went down to the garage and read the note on the packing slip. Enjoy your new portable generator and thanks for making us laugh on YouTube. It was signed the "X" family, White Oak, Pa. The generosity of people is truly amazing.