Other articles by Dale Dauten:

Corporate Curmudgeon: Creatively bear with Goldilocks managersCorporate Curmudgeon: Money addiction can wreck your lifeThe Corporate Curmudgeon: Assuming the worst? Lighten up!Corporate Curmudgeon: Post-employee firms look for talentCorporate Curmudgeon: Questions as important as answersThe Corporate Curmudgeon: Best clerks aren't sellers; they're giversThe Corporate Curmudgeon: No money? Find other means of motivationCorporate Curmudgeon: Motivating in new way might help keep peopleThe Corporate Curmudgeon: How low self-esteem can better your oddsCorporate Curmudgeon: Fear shows how Genghis earned name

Sales and Marketing
Davis Kitchens
Cabinet Sales Administrative & Professional
City of Benson
Planning & Zoning Director

"Actually, the less you think about how you can get something, like money, love, or laughter, . . . the faster it will come. Dwell upon the end result, not the hows."

That quote comes from one of the "law of attraction" disciples, Mike Dooley, who cheekily signs his messages as being from "The Universe."

I don't know about you, but the "law of attraction" (the idea that you envision what you want and the universe delivers it) strikes me as a kind of intellectual Chia pet, except with the law of attraction, you don't even need to add water. It's a wishing well without the well, and a rabbit's foot without inconveniencing the rabbit — just rub your hairy ambition.

What got me thinking about the "law of attraction" was working on an idea-generation project and observing a series of "hows" obstructing the creative imagining. Someone comes up with a vision for a new product or service — "Wouldn't it be great if . . . ?" — and then along comes someone with a pocketful of idea "how" Kryptonite: "How are we to do that? How are we going to get funding? How can we find the time?"

On the other hand, innovation requires more than a vision. The dreamer is never enough. There's the vision and the envisioning, the visionary and the envisioners. Two types of creativity and two sets of skills.

One of the great stories in the history of innovation (possibly apocryphal, but who cares?) is the moment when a Sony executive went to a design team and pulled from his pocket a block of wood, set it down and offered the team members the challenge to make an audiotape player the size of that piece of wood. That block of wood became the Sony Walkman.

In that example, we see the two types of creativity at work: To use the language of the "law of attraction," we have "the what" (the block of wood) and "the hows" (all the thousands of details involved in creating a portable tape player). Which is easier? Let's just agree that we won't belittle the "hows" in creating the Walkman.

Piers Ibbotson, who began doing corporate creativity training after having developed programs for the Royal Shakespeare Company, has written, " 'Freedom from all constraints' is not a help." That's true, because there are the two creativities — the "hows" of innovation need a destination.

In her new book, "Supercorp," due out in August, Rosabeth Moss Kantor of the Harvard Business School tells of an executive with Procter and Gamble who was trying to salvage some P&G brands struggling in the Brazilian market. Eventually, the manager told the production people that the market needed "an Armani for an H&M price."

(H&M is a line of inexpensive clothing, like, say, American Eagle.) Only she was talking about feminine-hygiene products and disposable diapers. What? No, how?

The goal was to be fashionable but inexpensive. Hmmmm. Impossible? Well, think of Volkswagen and Levi's. So it's possible. OK . . . but how? There's a question that someone, some angel of implementation, is delighted to be asked.

All of which brings us to a real law of attraction: We all long to be asked to do something so hard that we're not sure how we can do it. We came into a planet full of mystery and wonder, and without knowing it, we all yearn to be part of it, ache for a role in staging a tale of suspense.