Incredible.  Unbelievable.  Astounding.  Flabbergasting.  Shocking.  As the English would say, I was “gobsmacked”.  Actually to be honest, I was a little freaked out.

How on earth was he able to do this?  I couldn’t come up with any rational explanation for how he could do what he just did.  I couldn’t process what I was seeing and hearing.  What he was doing was impossible.

Kevin Viner, a mentalist, magician and illusionist extraordinaire, was performing at a large Texas leadership conference I was recently involved in.  He was doing things that truly seemed impossible.  He pulled a man out of the audience, handed him a Yellow Pages, asked him to flip open to any page, and tell him what section it was.  The man was then instructed to pick any phone number on the page.

Kevin then wrote the exact phone number on a flip chart for all to see.

Impossible.

He picked a person from the audience who knew the exact time their child was born.  He then accurately ‘guessed’ the time of day the child was born and the name of her child.

Impossible.

He asked who had a $20 bill in the audience.  He picked one person and asked them to come up on the stage.  He told us how bills have different numbers depending on where they come from.  He asked where this person got this particular $20 bill.  Las Vegas.  He began to write the number of the bill on the flip chart just below the phone number from the phone book.

He asked her if that was the number.  No it wasn’t.

“Oh, I just realized I need to add these two together to get the correct number.”

He then added the phone number to the erroneous $20 bill number he wrote under it.  The 2 numbers added up precisely to the number of the audience member’s $20 bill.

Impossible.

Illusion after illusion.  Trick after trick.  The more he did, the more freaked out I got.  This was impossible – how is he doing this?

He was shattering my paradigm for the impossible.

The grand finale of the show was incredible.  He chose one audience member to stand up.  He flipped through a small book with a drawing of a different sport on each page.  The audience member was instructed to randomly select one sport.  Bowling was chosen.

He then asked another audience member to come up on stage.  He instructed her to take any of the four felt pens in a small cup and do the following: write “Bowling” at the top of the page in whatever color she wanted.  Draw a bowling ball under it in another color.  Draw a lane under it in a third color.  Then draw something else, I can’t remember, at the bottom of the page in a fourth color.

She then showed it to the audience:  green “Bowling”, orange bowling ball, purple lane, red something else at the bottom.

He then went to the side of the stage and picked up a large sketch pad that had been sitting there the entire time.  He opened it up to reveal a picture he had drawn before the show of exactly that which this woman had just drawn.  And, from behind the sketch pad he dropped an orange bowling ball onto the stage.

Impossible.

So what is the leadership message here?  It is simply this:

“Impossible” is often not a fact, it is an opinion.

It has been said that every worthwhile advancement in the world was considered to be impossible before it was accomplished.

What are you facing right now that appears to be impossible?  Have you looked at it from multiple perspectives?  Have you attempted myriad different ways to accomplish your desired outcome?  Or, do you keep repeating the same thing over and over again with the same poor results?

Tales are told of how Steve Jobs would throw a challenge at his people and instruct them to create a solution.  They would respond with, “That’s impossible”.  He wouldn’t accept that and exhort them to find a way to make it possible.

What you consider impossible may very well not be.  Challenge your paradigm, and challenge those of your people.

Remember, “Impossible” is often not a fact, it is an opinion.