Use the four ways of interacting

Chilly Gonzales, the Canadian pianist composer, describes four ways of interacting with his piano music: passively, actively, emotionally and communally.

• Passively interacting involves listening to the music in the background and appreciating the overall ambience that is created for you. 
• Actively interacting involves listening carefully to the music and analysing the detail that is revealed to you.
• Emotionally interacting involves listening to the music and experiencing the feelings that are encouraged within you.
• Communally interacting involves playing the music so that, through your performance of his music, the composer can directly share some of his feelings and sensations with you.

Adopt and adapt the above ways of interacting to both enhance your understanding of problems and improve the effectiveness of your solutions. 

Interact with a problem or its solution passively. Place it in the background of your day-to-day work and activity, and allow time for its overall look, feel, shape and impact to soak into your mind. Help this process along a little by sketching a Mind Map of the key characteristics of the problem or solution, putting it on a wall nearby and reflecting upon it between tasks. 

Interact with a problem or its solution actively. Place it in the foreground of your day-to-day work and activity. Give yourself time to analyse its details and how they combine to contribute to its overall look, feel, shape and impact. Help this process along by using tools such as Forcefield Analysis and Ishikawa Diagrams to analyse the problem or solution.    

Interact with a problem or its solution emotionally. Give yourself time to explore and express your emotional reactions to its overall look, feel, shape and impact. Help this process along by using tools such as the PINC Filter and the Six Thinking Hats, which provide structured space for the expression of feelings and intuitions.    

Communally interact with a problem or its solution. Make time to share in others' perceptions of its look, feel, shape and impact. Help this process along by frequently creating windows for inspiration that will help you think and perceive flexibly and creatively.