What's Your Angle? Get fresh ideas when you change your perspective.

By consciously shifting your perspective, you counter normaltendencies to stick with what you know either because you believeyou're the expert or out of comfort with the familiar. Thistechnique has two benefits: It can generate a solution to animmediate need and cultivate a new habit of mind. The goal is tofind several alternatives in any situation.

To begin, start idea meetings with a quick exercise to helppeople practice looking at things in different ways. Take a picturefrom the newspaper, and ask people to come up with differentexplanations of what's happening in the picture. Thoughit's usually a fun exercise, the message is serious: You'resignaling to your team you want them to behave differently and topractice generating more possibilities.

Then take one of your products or services. Think about its mostcentral feature or what makes it successful. Then reverse it. Forexample, one of the basic assumptions about restaurants is thatthey sell prepared meals. What would a restaurant look like if itdidn't sell prepared meals? What if the customers cooked thefood? Another assumption is that restaurants are housed in abuilding. Maybe offering picnic baskets would be a good businessidea.