Are You Leveraging Your Creative Subconscious To Help Solve Your Most Pressing Project Issues?

In a program entitled ‘Achieving Your Potential and Investment in Excellence,’ that I attended when working for the Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO), leadership guru Louis Tice of The Pacific Institute introduced me to three principles that changed my life and my approach to teaching project planning. 

The most significant principle is that, in order to make bold plans, while you will need to ultimately locate the resources needed to carry out the plans, it is not necessary to have all the resources at your command before you make the plan.  Your creative subconscious will step in to help you complete the plans.

Your creative subconscious is like a fine ARCHITECT, using your thoughts and intentions and turning them into actions.    What is it you intend to accomplish with your project?  Like a fine ARCHITECT, your creative subconscious understands your vision and takes over and directs the implementation. 

Tice’s second principle is that a person moves toward and becomes like that which they think about.

So what was the third principle?  People act in accordance with the TRUTH as they believe it to be.  This is the reason that people bring different perspectives to a situation. 

Believing in one’s future by relying on your creative subconscious has many concrete manifestations. 

For example, did you ever feel stumped by a pressing problem, only to find the next day that you had some new approaches to the problem that did not seem at all plausible the previous day?

Or, when you get frustrated by a particular problem, you storm off and take a walk, only to find that you come back with a solution?

Or, when it seemed like no one could help you think clearly about solutions, a new contact entered your life who was able to help you break down the problem?

It’s all in believing that your creative subconscious is so powerful an architect that it holds answers that you never thought existed. 

So, as a project professional, consider your creative subconscious an integral part of your project team.  Give it a role and see how it contributes to your success. 

To paraphrase Albert Einstein, in the depths of crisis you will find opportunity.  The next time your project team or PMO faces a crisis, let opportunity prevail. Look to your creative subconscious for a solution. 

Thank you!