5 Questions with James Bannerman

Logan Sinclair are proud to be working with Mindful Chef on our 5 Questions series.

During the coronavirus pandemic, Logan Sinclair wanted to offer some assistance to healthy eating and wellbeing to help everyone through this difficult time. By working with our friends at Mindful Chef, who offer fresh, delicious, nutritionist-designed recipes delivered safely to your doorstep, Logan Sinclair can offer the code LSS10 which will give £10 off your first 2 boxes. Please use the link www.mindfulchef.com/LSS10 to apply the discount automatically.

James Bannerman is a Creative Change Agent who combines creativity with psychology to help businesses innovate and perform more effectively in a rapidly-changing world (eg. Aston Martin, Disney, Duracell, the European Space Agency, Schroders and Unilever). He is also lectures on ‘innovation, creativity and enterprise’ and is the best-selling author of two books designed to help people think more laterally: Genius! and Business Genius! (both published by Pearson).

Over the stay at home period, what ideas or reflections have emerged that have surprised you? 

I have probably been most surprised by the ‘domino effect’ of Covid-19. I still find it mind-blowing that such a tiny virus – about a thousand times thinner than a human hair – can have ended up having such a massive impact upon so many people’s lives and livelihoods from Italy to Iran and Brazil to the USA, resulting in the collapse of airlines like Flybe, fish returning to the canals of Venice after a sixty year absence, and Eric Yuan (the founder of Zoom) making almost $ 4 billion in three months. I have also been happily surprised to see how imaginative, adaptable and resilient human beings can be in a time of crisis, linked to the principle of ‘we cannot always direct the wind but we can adjust the sails.’

What is the most powerful effect you can have on another person?

If I was to sum it up in one word, I would say ‘inspiration’. I genuinely think that the most powerful effect you can have on another person is to inspire them. This is why the best teachers tend to be the most inspirational teachers and the best leaders tend to be the most inspirational leaders. My PhD research on lateral thinking, for example, has examined inspiration in depth, and the reason inspiration is so powerful is this: Thomas Edison – the inventor of the light bulb - is reputed to have once said that ‘The Origin of Genius is 1 Percent Inspiration and 99 Percent Perspiration’. What Edison overlooked, however, is that it is invariably the 1 Percent that drives the 99 Percent. In other words, it is inspiration that keep us going even when we have lost our mojo and are tempted to give up; it is also inspiration that helps us to reach further and achieve more, for as Michelangelo once said: ‘The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.’

Do you have a mantra, ritual or daily practice?

I do not have a specific mantra, however, I once read that starting one’s day with a negative attitude is like driving a car with a flat tyre – i.e. it will not get you very far – so I often use Tony Robbins’s ‘7 Power Questions’ to focus on the positives in my life and the positives of what lies ahead, which are as follows: what are you most ‘Happy’ about in your life right now, ‘Excited’ about, ‘Proud’ about, ‘Grateful’ for, ‘Enjoying’, and ‘Committed’ to? I also used to do karate many moons ago, and I have found that zen meditation and visualisation techniques in the evenings can help to calm and settle my mind at the end of a busy day, especially if I want to ensure a good night’s sleep.

How do you keep your mental health in check?

Years ago, when I trained as a clinical psychotherapist, I learnt how important it is for us to feel our feelings, instead of continually trying to run away from them or trying to mask them behind a brave face. During this lockdown, therefore, one of the things I have found most helpful - from a mental health perspective - has been to keep reminding myself that it is perfectly ‘ok’ to feel sad and angry about the evaporation of the old normal, and to feel anxious about ‘what happens now?’ and ‘what happens next?’ Beyond this, I used to be an international songwriter and cartoonist, so I find that playing music can be amazingly therapeutic, and visual thinking techniques can also be incredibly useful for generating new ideas and with strategising for the future.

What are you grateful for?

It is often so easy in our hectic day-to-day lives to take things for granted, from health to friendship and love to freedom. With this in mind, if there is one thing that I am particularly grateful for - to have emerged out of this tragic 2020 pandemic – it has been the gift of time: the time to re-think, re-frame, and re-prioritise. I live in London, for example, and when the lockdown started it literally felt like someone had pressed the ‘pause’ button on a TV remote control. I started to notice things that I normally do not notice, because there was no traffic, no noise (other than the birds singing), and no flights to catch. Also, like everyone else, I am immensely grateful to the NHS and other key workers who have been working tirelessly to keep us safe. A neighbour friend of ours is an anaesthetist at a London hospital - who has been working night and day to support patients with Covid-19 – and the socially-distant conversations I have had with her about her experiences have not only been humbling; they have also helped to lend perspective.