Illuminate: Harnessing the Positive Power of Negative Thinking
These days, all you hear about is the power of positive thinking. The buzzword of the day is PMA, or "Positive Mental Attitude." But the problem with focusing on the positive is that it often leads us to ignore the negative—and that just makes tough problems more difficult to solve. Real success in business or in life requires us to acknowledge the negative if we want to turn it into a positive.Illuminate shines a light on the negative results of all this positive thinking. It's a story about solving problems by choosing not to ignore them. It's about accentuating the positive while tackling the negative. It's about fostering a healthy, functional business environment and creating a culture that allows for open expression and the sharing of ideas—especially when those ideas are negative in nature.In this enlightening business fable, you'll meet Jon, a mostly successful businessman whose mantra is the power of positive thinking. Though he has worked hard to build a positive work environment, Jon learns the hard way that—though positive thinking is great—it's the right kind of negative thinking that gets seriously positive results.Jon's story offers a methodology and a philosophy for dealing with negative situations and conditions in a strictly positive manner. It presents an effective three-step process for confronting, examining, and fixing any problem your business faces. The result is an organization able to look at itself honestly and stay alert to possible threats and negative situations. Only by illuminating problems can we solve them. This book presents a structured methodology for proactively tackling thorny problems with critical, analytical thinking. So stop sticking your head in the sand. Illuminate your problems and you'll discover new, creative solutions, avoid unwanted surprises, and achieve positive, sustained success.