Leading by scenarios: Learning from the kids

I came across this exercise conducted by Sonali, a friend of mine who caringly teaches kids under 10, where majority of them are from rural background. Kids were told to write a story/essay on their village and then draw it out. Results were surprising. Story-telling, could be so telling...I knew but this was illuminating... Look at how vivid and clear imagery do kids carry, of their village-

Now look at the second one. This kid is from a village called Vashi, which actually has been gobbled up by the expanding city of Mumbai and one can see the multi-storey apearing in the picture. There is a train station in which three trains are standing.

These two images below, show how a village by the highway appears to a kid. Kid could see the jungle thick with trees beyond the village, and a highway divides the jungle and the village. Along the highway there are many restaurants....(you can see the chairs and the table)..even the milestones and direction boards are visible here.

This kid shows a temple which has lots of stairs to climb, as an important element of the village. One can see another temple in the background. Roads are more clearly marked and houses are relegated to side elements here.

This kid draws out her village as the one full of houses...no trees, only jungle of buildings ...one can see a church in the side. Houses are also multi-storied and not huts. There are no clearly demarketed roads like in the earlier cases. It appears to be more of a case of a 'slum' or some ghetto areas of city depicted rather thn a village.

What clicked in my mind is that the way child can be so illustrative about his/her imagery if once queued with words, the same way designers can pick-up better concepts, they can conceptualise better if brief is told as a scenario, rather than what many of us are familiar with.

I am sure some of the best leaders in the world also rule through 'scenarios' rather than 'instructions'.