Common Characteristics of Visionaries

There are relatively few people that are universally regarded as visionaries.  These might include individuals such as Steve Jobs, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, the Wright Brothers, Charles Lindbergh, among others.  While universally acclaimed, they are often disregarded as super-talented genius, outliers that live outside of the range of normal human experience.  This essay seeks to discuss several of the main characteristics that these and other visionaries often possess.

Openness to Information

Visionaries possess an unusually large degree of openness to new information (this openness may or may not extent to people).  Some people, once they make up their mind, cannot be persuaded, nor do they continue to search for or take in new information.  Not so with visionaries, they are constantly searching for additional information, knowing that each new piece of information might yield an insight that helps solve a difficult problem or create the breakthrough needed for the next innovation.

Closely related to openness to information, visionaries typically exercise a low degree of deference to convention, historical precedent, or authorities within their domains.  While they seek to know as much as possible within their domains, they don’t defer to the judgments of the existing authorities within their domains.  By ignoring or purposeful violating norms with their respective disciplines, visionaries are able to experiment and try things that others overlook or aren’t willing to challenge.  As a result of their willingness to experiment and try things, they often are in the best position to make “breakthrough” discoveries or happy accidents.

Mental Sight

Because, at least in part, of their openness and lack of deference to authorities, visionaries possess the ability to see things with their mind (mind’s eye) often before others – sometimes long before others.  This might include certain observations that unlock the secret to understanding the natural world, trends that are still in their infancy stage (or that haven’t even begun yet), or the possibilities of new inventions, discoveries, products, or even new social or historical movements.

Visionaries are often marked by an unusual degree of sensitivity.  While this sensitivity can manifest itself as “quirkiness” or even in certain cases as mental illness (Van Gogh, Howard Hughes, John Nash), a high degree of sensitivity results in extra information being accessible to visionaries that others are not aware of.  Thus, the mark of a true visionary is that they can often see what others cannot.

Accurate Extrapolation

In some senses, visionaries seem to “see” the future.  With the exception of ancient and modern prophets (see other blog) who do, most visionaries don’t actually see the future.  What visionaries can do, however, is to build an accurate conceptual model of the future based on their keen understanding of the present.  And then (successful) visionaries bring that model into reality, creating the future.

Thus, the visionaries’ key ability is not their prophetic sight, but rather the gift to extrapolate (accurately) from the present into the future.   When accurate extrapolation is combined with the executive ability to carry out the vision, the visionary literally creates the future.  While there is some difference between the ability to accurately predict what is going to happen versus the ability to actual influence what will happen, possessing the former skill is helpful (and the first step) to developing the later skill.

Vivid Imagination

It should go without saying that the mark of a visionary is that he or she has a vision.  This is very much the end result of a strong and active imagination, one that the visionary has cultivated and nurtured very carefully.  Visionaries spend their lives following their dreams and seeking to bring them into reality.  In contrast, the masses turn off their imaginations as they mature, feeling that imagination is akin to child’s play.

Visionaries often reside in two worlds – the external world, the other being a rich internal world of ideas, pictures, and thought.  The reason why visionaries are so driven to carry out their dreams is because their dreams are so real and vivid (in their mind’s eye) to the visionary.  Thus, clarity of imagination leads to a compelling desire to carry out the vision.

Strong Conviction

Once a visionary has a worthwhile vision, the visionary must have strong conviction if the vision stands a chance at being brought into reality.  Certain visions are extraordinarily difficult to carry out and thus require an extraordinary strong belief in the vision and the visionary’s ability to carry it out.

Several specific traits support the development of conviction in a vision.  One such trait is the willingness to take (calculated) risks.  In order to form conviction, a visionary must be willing to lay it all on the line for a worthy cause.  Similarly, a certain amount of discontent with the status quo is necessary for one to be willing to lay things on the line.  In addition, an unconventional nature is somewhat helpful in that it tends to make one immune to negative social pressures that are experienced as naysayers constantly doubt the vision and the visionary.

Finally, visionaries often possess (but don’t usually discuss) a sense of personal destiny.  If you asked them (and they were honest), they’d admit that they always believed that they were destined to accomplish great things, even though they might not have known the details of how it was going to happen.  In some sense, this is necessary because the visionary needs to have a strong belief that they have the ability to carry out.

Persistence

One specific challenge unique to visionaries is best expressed by the warning label on a driver’s mirror, “objects in mirror are [further] than they appear.”  Because of the vividness of their visions, visionaries often underestimate the difficulty in bringing the vision into reality or the “distance” between the present and envisioned outcome (as the vision seems so close and obtainable to them).  The other challenge faced by visionaries is that they tend to have dreams that are larger and more difficult than average persons, and thus an extraordinary degree of persistence is required.

As a result, a high degree of persistence is absolutely critical to be a successful visionary.  Unabashed persistence allows the visionary to push through all difficulties, including the opposition of others, bad fortune, insufficient resources, or dead-ends.  In the end, the difference between a successful and unsuccessful visionary (who does not accomplish their worthy vision) often comes down to drive and persistence.

Visionary Thinking: Identifying your Creative Purpose

“Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements.” ~Napoleon Hill

This essay addresses creative purpose, the first of the five “P”s of visionary thinking – purpose, potential, possibility, picture, and path – leaving the remaining concepts to be addressed in future essays.  Creativity is a process whereby an idea is brought from its initial conception to fulfillment in reality.  Visionary thinking is one of the first steps (or thinking skills) in the creative process where one formulates an understanding of the desired result (leaving aside its actual achievement for future steps in the creative process).  Understanding the desired result is absolutely critical to its obtainment and constitutes your primary creative purpose.

Great ideas rarely come from nowhere.  If ideas can without being prompted, they would probably go unnoticed or unused.  Thus, in order to prompt a great idea, one must have a primary creative purpose that is truly compelling.  A creative purpose that is unclear or undefined can be transformed into a compelling one with a three-strep process that includes identification, clarification, and intensification.

Identification:

A creative purpose is the desired result to be obtained.  The actual creative problem, as will discussed later, is the “gap” or distance between the primary creative purpose and the present state of reality.  A creative purpose can include creating an entirely new work or solving an existing challenge.  For example, Michelangelo’s creative purpose was to paint an epic, awe-inspiring mural of the earth’s creation on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel.  Other creative purposes might include solving a difficult challenge, or improving a particular process.

In contrast to a primary creative purpose, your secondary creative purpose is the variety of reasons for wanting to obtain the desired result.  These secondary reasons can include personal values, or aesthetic, mental, social, emotional, career, societal, or financial considerations.  It is important to understand the secondary reasons because they can and should influence your primary creative purpose.  For instance, if your secondary reasons are essentially financially, you should choose a primary creative purpose that will best accomplish that objective.  Likewise, if your secondary purpose is mainly personal enjoyment, your primary purpose should reflect that as well.  If your primary and secondary purposes are in conflict, you will likely not make much progress towards your primary creative purpose until the conflict is resolved.

Clarification

When clarifying a creative purpose, it is important not to become overly committed to the initial formulation of the purpose.  After all, Albert Einstein emphasized the importance of defining a problem carefully, stating “[i]f I had an hour to save the world, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute finding solutions.”  Properly defining the creative purpose is one of the most important steps in the creative process because working on the wrong creative purpose is a colossal waste of time and the true problem is often not readily apparent.

The first step in clarifying a creative purpose is to review all relevant information related the situation prompting the creative purpose.  This might involve gathering data, facts, and other information about your present situation.  A good example of a highly clarified creative purpose was with Thomas Edison and his invention of the light bulb.  A review of the data would include the fact that other inventors had already demonstrated that the light could be generated from electricity and the many experiments by others with batteries, filaments, and vacuum tubes.  Additional data includes information about how the then existing commercial light system of gas and oil lamps was grossly inadequate and therefore ripe for disruption by a better invention.

The second step in clarifying a creative purpose is to review the secondary considerations supporting the primary purpose.  For instance, in the case of Edison, this would include the fact that he had recently been bested by Alexander Graham Bell, who produced and patented the first authentic transmission of human voice, the telephone.  Additionally, Edison formed the Edison Electric Light Company in New York City in 1878 with several financiers, including J. P. Morgan and the members of the Vanderbilt family.  Thus, Edison had strong secondary considerations to develop a working prototype as soon as possible to placate his financiers and with the race to patent the light bulb.

The third step is to develop alternative formulations of a creative purpose.  For instance, Edison’s initial creative purpose may have been to invent the light bulb.  But after reviewing information about the attempts by other inventors, Edison would have reformulated his creative purpose to invent a light bulb that would last sufficiently long enough to become commercially feasible.  After reviewing his secondary considerations, Edison would have refined his creative purpose to invent a commercially feasible light bulb and patent it before anyone else.

Due to a compelling creative purpose and tons of persistence, Edison succeeded in inventing a long-lasting light bulb in October 1879 with the first test of a carbon filament lasting 40 hours.  Early the following year, Edison continued to improve his now patented invention, using a bamboo filament that lasted a whopping 1200 hours.  Edison made the first public demonstration of his incandescent light bulb on December 31, 1879, in Menlo Park, bragging that “[w]e will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles.”

Intensification:

Once we have identified and clarified our creative purpose, we must make sure that it is sufficiently intense.  Legendary inventors like Edison had no problem developing a creative purpose that was sufficiently compelling to motivate them to action.  But for mere mortals like us, living in a world with many distractions, developing a creative purpose that is sufficiently compelling can be challenging.

Napoleon Hill taught that the key to achieving goals (or a creative purpose) is to develop “definiteness of purpose” and that “[a]ny dominating idea, plan, or purpose held in your conscious mind through repeated effort and emotionalized by a burning desire for its realization is taken over by the subconscious and acted upon through whatever natural and logical means may be available.”  Through this process, a creative purpose can be transformed into a compelling necessity, one that drives its creator to its achievement.

After all, Plato in The Republic aptly stated that “[n]ecessity … is the mother of invention.”  Plato did not say that a luke-warm wish, an ungrounded hope, a half-hearted desire would prompt invention.  Nothing short of necessity prompts innovation.

Necessity breeds innovation for several reasons.  First, necessity improves focus dramatically.  Individuals and organizations often have many competing objectives and goals.  Resources and efforts tend to get assigned across a number of different projects and objectives, and as a result, are spread thin.  The great thing about necessity is that is a great clarifier between the important and unimportant.  Necessity forces organizations and individuals to reallocate resources in order to achieve necessary objectives.

Second, when something is truly necessary, then people and organizations are willing to devote sufficient resources to solving the challenge and keep them committed for as long as it takes to succeed.  For instance, the creative purpose of the Manhattan project was to create the first atomic bomb to end World War II.  The project started small in 1939 but grew to employ more than 130,000 people and cost $2 billion (roughly $25 billion in 2011 dollars).  It is doubtful that the project leaders had to fight to keep their budgets during the final phases of the project.

Third, only when things are truly necessary are people willing to persist until they find a creative solution because quitting is not an option.  A good example of persistence is with Thomas Edison, who, when working to invent the light bulb, stated: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”  He further noted that “[o]ur greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.”

Fourth, necessity forces people to try new ways to solve problems by helping us break out of mental ruts and incentivizing us to try new things.  If one day you woke up and electricity was 20 times more expensive than normal, it is likely that you would find a way (or a hundred ways) to conserve electricity in your home.  Some of them might be true inventions while many would involve adopting best practices that were previously known but not adopted.

Fifth, when something is necessary, your brain works harder to find a solution.  The reticular activating system (RAS), the part of the brain that brings relevant information to your attention, is activated when something is truly necessary.  The RAS acts as a filter between the conscious and subconscious mind.  All day long you are saturated with information that is processed by your subconscious mind, but yet only a small portion of it comes to the attention of your conscious mind.  When you have a compelling problem, your RAS is activated and begins to search for information that might possibly be part of the solution.  When it finds the golden nugget, the RAS often brings the information to your conscious mind (often suddenly), sparking a great “Eureka!!!” moment.