What If?

What If?  A simple question - with endless possibilities for answers.  The use of this question can open up so many opportunities for you and your organization. 

In a training class on Creativity the instructor posted several flipchart pages on the walls with one question at the top of each chart.  The one that intrigued me the most was "What if there were 48 hours in a day?  Wow - what a cool thought.  What if there were?  I would certainly spend about ten of them sleeping without any guilty feelings.  There would be time for everything including time to just sit there and do nothing more than enjoy the beauty of the world around me.  To have twice as much time as we have now.  Hmm.  "Oh the Places You'll Go" - as Dr Seuss says. 

Then we were instructed to write our own "What If?".  I wrote "What If I Went to Bed Early?". You can tell from the time of this posting that isn't happening tonight, but what would happen if I did?  I started with the negatives. I would miss my favorite late night show - The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. But the list quickly turned to positives.  Books would be written and lack of sleep wrinkles would disappear.  A smile crossed my face as I thought about the changes that would occur with a simple alteration of my sleep schedule.

What will you do with this question?  Use it for your own self discovery?  Share it with friends? What "What If" would you post in the lunchroom or on the agenda for your next meeting? What do you think would happen at work if you opened up the thinking process of your coworkers with that simple question? 

Try it and tell me what happens.