Let’s begin with a mental challenge. Following will be a list of digits from 1 to 9. After analyzing the placement of the digits, your task is to determine the ordering system used to arrange the numbers. If you are serious about challenging yourself, don’t read beyond the numbers until you are satisfied with your effort so that the answer will not be spoiled.

8   5   4   9   1   7   6   3   2

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If you weren’t able to solve it, don’t feel bad, you are in good company as most cannot. If you did solve it, you may be a Mensa genius and never realized it, time to reassess! This puzzle is very telling about the way that we approach challenges. Given a list of numbers, your mind relied on old tricks and formulas, pretty much everything you could remember about numbers, to determine if there was a pattern or higher order. After a long struggle thinking this way, with no results, a conclusion has to be reached-you’re taking the wrong approach. Even if you have an advanced degree in chaos mathematics, thinking in terms of numbers cannot solve this problem.

But what if we tackled this problem in a completely different way and brought an entirely different perspective to the table? Here’s a different way to look at these numbers.

Eight   Five   Four   Nine   One   Seven   Six   Three   Two

Did looking at the numbers this way give you the answer? Maybe for a select few of you it did. The answer is-the numbers are listed in alphabetical order. I know, quite an evil thing for a person to do, especially to computer programmers. What was crucial for solving this puzzle was to bring a different perspective to the challenge, to see the challenge in a different light. This lesson applies to much more than Mensa puzzles that help plane flights to pass, it is universal to the challenges that we face daily in our professional and personal lives. Sometimes it just takes a fresh perspective and a new way of thinking to crack the code.

At Frink Inc. Advertising we like helping clients find solutions to their advertising, marketing and sales riddles. From the practical to the whimsical we can offer you fresh perspectives on how to deliver your message to the right audience effectively and efficiently.