Eureka!

When that ancient Greek, Archimedes, dipped his toe into the bath tub he yelled ‘eureka!’

He made a major discovery. Something about displacement of water so I won’t bore you with the details but he was a very happy chappie.

I had that experience a while ago, a toe dipping eureka moment.

It happened in 2008 on the way home from Seymour, a township 98 km north of Melbourne, Australia.

Sue and I had just attended a four day conference, Faciliitating Social Change, as participants. Usually we work as facilitators and it was a refreshing change to sit back and learn from others.

Anyway, we were driving along the country road enjoying the scenery and talking about the conference. Sue mentioned the word ‘circle’ and I said ‘oh, that’s a bit like Pakua (internal martial art) where you walk the circle’.

Sue said ‘tell me more’. So we discussed Pakua, circle walking, Tai Chi and values in general.

We then both had a eureka moment because we felt we were onto something.

As we entered the township of Yarra Glen, we headed for the nearest cafe. We ordered our drinks, a cappucino and a strong Latte, and found the nearest table outside and started to brainstorm the possibilities of the ‘circle’.

After several drinks, and scraps of paper with our hastily scribbled notes and diagrams we came up with basis of our own business model ‘AQ-KQ’. AQ stands for Appreciative Intelligence and KQ stands for Kinaesthetic Intelligence.

Below is the final copy of what we discovered. We used a simplified version of the Pakua octagon symbol and altered or added some terms that represent our values and experiences.

Everyone has eureka moments and when they occur it is a terrific experience.

So thanks Archimedes, for the term eureka.

Without it we may have had just another ‘oh, yeah, not a bad idea’ moment.