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What do Mozart, Freud, Leonardo da Vinci, Einstein, Artistote, Walt Disney and… Robert Dilts have in common? While the former are unanimously recognized as great creative geniuses, the latter, an NLP specialist, has examined their way of thinking in an attempt to define their “genius strategy”. The result is a series of books published by Desclée de Brouwer (in French), and a very popular theory among coaches: the Walt Disney strategy. Everything has already been said and said again about this method, but it’s still worth trying out if you want to effectively combine creativity and practicality…
In his book Mozart and Disney: Strategies of Genius, Robert Dilts seeks to model the creative workings of both composer and producer. He discovers that they both listen to their dreams, which they then manage to transpose into reality. Walt Disney summed up the operation as follows: “ To achieve something truly extraordinary, start by dreaming it. Then wake up calmly and go straight to the end of your dream, without ever getting discouraged. “Breaking down the creative process of the Disney empire’s creator, Robert Dilts concludes that there was not one Walt, but three: the dreamer, the realist and the troublemaker…
“There were actually three different Walts: the dreamer, the realist, and the spoiler…”
Robert Dilts
This observation has given rise to a method that is the talk of the town among coaches: the Disney strategy. Depending on requirements, it can take the form of a role-playing game to move an entire team forward, or be applied to individual reasoning with equal success. Without going into too much detail, it is based on three sequences that cover the different facets of Mickey’s father:
1/ THE DREAMER: To begin with, you need to start by dreaming your project, without worrying about limits or constraints. It’s all about giving free rein to your creativity. Let go and dare to follow your wildest ideas…
2/ THE REALIST: The second stage marks a return to pragmatism and concreteness, without going into too much detail. This is the time to turn even the most far-fetched ideas into real possibilities, for example by laying the foundations for a storyboard.
3/ THE CRITICAL: It had to happen, so now’s the time to look at your ideas from an organizational and budgetary angle, even if it means playing devil’s advocate when necessary. But this stage should enable us to take the project forward by taking stock and fine-tuning the details, without calling everything into question…
In the case of team role-playing, you can “rotate” the project several times between the three parties, taking care that each advances the idea without distorting it. In this way, we overcome the traditional opposition between the creative and the pragmatic to achieve an astonishing result!
While some coaches present this method as the magic solution to all creativity and management problems, I think it really does have the merit of unblocking critical situations. So the next time you’re stagnating on an idea that’s not moving fast enough, instead of procrastinating by taking a trip to Disneyland or going to see the latest Star Wars movie, get the Walt Disney reflex and simply start by closing your eyes and
dream
…
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