The chairperson immediately acknowledges the suggestion and its worth, and says, ‘Hold that thought. Talk with me after this meeting.’

• The chairperson asks the group to table its agenda and applaud the suggestion — announcing that immediate plans will be made to consider the idea further.

• If there is a vice-chair present, the chair turns the meeting over to him/ her and takes the interrupting problem-solver out for a one-on-one consideration of the idea. The chair then sends word to the vice-chair that another meeting will be scheduled in the near future.

These approaches applaud the value of the idea, while acknowledging the worth of other employees’ time. Of course, meeting interruptions aren’t the only challenging aspects of the oddball’s personality. One employee had an abiding fear of forgetting appointments, so he strung a clothes-line across his office and used clothes’ pins to hang up reminders of his ‘important encounters’. This aberration naturally was met with a sneer from a strongly left-brain fellow employee who said: “That looks as if he’s doing the weekly wash!”

Members of both sexes occasionally burn incense, do Yoga poses, sit in meditative positions. They claim these approaches help them relieve stress, lower their brainwave frequencies to a more creative level and induce best thinking.

Anyone who reads literature on the encouragement of creative thought will realise that there are many paths to Eureka! Human brainpower is undeniably the treasure capital of the future. It comes in many forms, sizes, flavours and wrappings. So let’s not judge the gift by the gift box.

So, if you are in a management position, continue to appreciate your less colourful cohorts. They may think more slowly, more predictably. They may be your safekeeping group. You will need those too.

But if you hope to run alongside or surpass the leaders, you will require the leap-the-steps thinkers, the interrupters.