Thursday, December 17, 2009
Fresh Ideas
Tough times call for creative minds, so I conducted an experiment.
The setting: I invited a cross section of business leaders, creative professionals and entrepreneurs to participate in a prototyping process.
The focus: creating a resource for keeping our thinking fresh and flexible, in the moment and over time. A way to add some creative zest to our work.
The response: smart, talented colleagues and clients from fields including innovation, organizational development, sales and marketing, communications, executive administration and entrepreneurship worked with me to shape the focus, content and presentation of a new resource.
The outcome: Fresh Ideas. Fresh Ideas is a creative catalyst that is
Sustained: Every two weeks, for either six or twelve months, you receive an e-mailed issue describing a specific creative thinking strategy, examples of how it's been used, and ways to apply it yourself.
Informative: The strategies and examples within Fresh Ideas are drawn from past and current literature on creativity, leadership and innovation. The topics are purposefully eclectic, providing a diverse range of starting points.
Actionable: Each issue runs about 500 words, making it easy to absorb and apply quickly. Receiving content in small bites helps you build a habit of thinking more creatively; week after week, application after application, insight after insight.
Engaging: You can learn from others' experiences, and reinforce your own success, by joining the conversation at the Fresh Ideas: What Works blog.
Come take a look. You can preview and work with a few free issues of Fresh Ideas by clicking here.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Better Brainstorming: Charge Admission
Make the most of your time together by charging admission to the meeting.
Before holding the group brainstorming session, send a preliminary invitation to your targeted participants. Clearly define the challenge and why it's important, provide as much background information as you think they'll need, and describe what you'd like the brainstorming to produce.
Ask them to independently generate and post several initial ideas. Provide a posting venue they can easily access, such as a
- physical venue: using a centrally located whiteboard or flipcharts,
- public virtual venue: using a site like evernote or ning,
- private virtual venue: like your company intranet or a private LinkedIn group.
Review basic brainstorming etiquette and ask for their ideas by a specific date.
Those that post several ideas, review and build on the ideas already posted, and demonstrate good brainstorming etiquette by the date requested are admitted to the group brainstorming meeting.
The group's time is then used by invested, engaged thinkers to augment and improve their initial ideas.
This approach accommodates different thinking styles, builds in an incubation period, and optimizes the time spent thinking together.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Capitalizing on Conflict
all the brains we have,
but all that we can borrow. -Woodrow Wilson
Conflict signals the opportunity to learn. Your interpretation of another's behavior, message or intent may be correct, almost correct, or incorrect. Your conflicting point of view may be completely accurate, or may need to be updated.
One of the most impactful responses to conflict is listening.
When you recognize a discussion is entering the realm of conflict:
- Stop listening for correctness, or opportunities for rebuttal, and start listening for meaning.
- Summarize, in your own words, the other person's point of view. Ask if you heard it right.
- Wait for an answer. Make sure that a person that starts a sentence gets to end it.
- Don't give up if you don't get it right at first. The greater the distance between your mindsets the greater the opportunity for learning ... and the harder you may have to work.
- Ask what you got right, and what's off base.
- Pay attention to your emotions. A strong response to a conflicting point of view signals that a deeply held belief is being tested or denied. Check to ensure your nonverbals and word choices are helpful.
- Identify what you're learning. Understanding the other point of view doesn't mean you agree with it, just that you're hearing what's meant.
Most of us listen better once we feel understood.
So in addition to creating the opportunity to learn something new, listening in this way increases the likelihood you will be heard in turn.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Bend and Break and Recreate
For example,
Don't immerse yourself in a stubborn challenge. Distance yourself from it.
Creating physical or psychological distance can help us find creative solutions, by changing how we mentally represent things. Distancing from a time (projecting the challenge into the future) or probability (assuming success is more or less likely) perspective can also increase creative thinking.
Learn more about how psychological distance impacts creativity here.
Don't work to understand the challenge. Work to understand the context.
Design thinking helps would-be problem solvers avoid solving the wrong problem by immersing themselves in the world of the user before defining the problem to solve. Reading context clues and observing interactions within the environment can uncover more powerful needs.
Find resources and references for designing discovery strategies here.
Don't meet or exceed expectations. Recreate them.
If you want more of the same, keep doing and thinking what you're doing and thinking. Not everything needs to change. But if you want different results, consider ways to crack open new possibilities here.
At COMPIO, we have been busy prototyping new ways to deliver our services. Stay tuned for updates on what we're learning as we bend and break the rules that have guided our approaches.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Your Priorities Are Showing
Forced ranking is reactive, "With everything there is to do, what to do first?"
Priorities are pro-active; they're what you attend to while everything else waits.
To understand today's priorities, notice where you spend most of your time.
While you're busy with these things, you're setting aside other things.
Moving forward, ask yourself:
- How do I define success? This is a good question to revisit regularly.
- What am I doing that is getting in the way of my version of success? Find ways to stop doing these things, or do less of them.
- What will I do instead, to achieve more of this success? A priority is something you do, not something you intend. If you're not doing it, it's not a priority.
Monday, June 29, 2009
QuestionAble
In other words, create your own version of a Sky Planter :
When you change your focus
from "How to find a job?"
to "How to make it easy for a job to find me?"
or
from "How to use social networking"
to "How to network our various social groups?"
or even
from "How to build a better Swiss army knife?"
to "What could a Swiss army knife be used to build?"
you create a shift that creates new ideas.
So when you get stuck:
- List as many questions as you can about your issue.
- Twist these questions.
- And answer your twisted questions until the ideas start flowing again.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Can You See It?
Want to make your next presentation even more engaging and memorable?
Create your slide deck using pictures... only pictures.
Select a series of images that illustrate your point
(this will also help you focus your message).
Sequence the images so they tell a story.
And, as you speak, let the images carry your audience
from where they are
to where you want to take them.
Imagery kindles emotions, imagination and personal connections.
Your audience will be more engaged during your talk,
and remember the experience longer after they leave.
To play with this idea, you can:
- Watch National Geographic's David Griffin use this approach.
- Find free images at Wikimedia Commons and Google Images.
- Read Presentation Zen.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Uniquely Effective
"You are all unique and special, just like everyone else."
- Margaret Mead, anthropologist
Want to become even more effective?
Get very clear about how well today's work aligns with
- What you know you do best - the things that make you feel strong when you do them; and
- What matters most - the values and drivers that define "good work" for you; and
- The stressors that can push your buttons - triggering behaviors that derail your success.
How can you better understand your strengths, drivers and risks?
- Conduct an informal 360 feedback process, asking people who know you well to describe the most valuable things you do better than others, what they think keeps you motivated and productive, and what may be blind spots for you; or
- Do a self-audit, using a resource like the free Leadership Capital tool; or
- Complete a professional assessment and work with a coach to identify how your profile interacts with your goals.
What can you do once you're clear about your strengths, drivers and risks?
- Each week, spend a little more of your time on activities that use your strengths.
- Every day, work on responsibilities that relate to your interests and values.
- Over time, build habits that help you sidestep derailers while you bring more of your best to your work.
We each have the ability to be uniquely effective. The example we set can help others become so too.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
T-Shaped Thinking
The creative consultancy IDEO describes its best employees as "T-shaped." The horizontal line represents breadth of knowledge over many subject areas, and the vertical line represents depth of knowledge and experience in a specific field. Some of their superstars are F-shaped or E-shaped, with broad interests and depth in several fields.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Responding to Praise
- Maintain eye contact.
- Keep an open posture and an open mind as you listen.
- Don't question motive or accuracy.
- Just say "thank you."
That's it. No quips or self-effacing remarks. No need to agree or disagree.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Sifting Assumptions
Our understanding of the "givens" shapes how we solve our problems. These assumptions are also based on learning and experience, and put boundaries around the options we see.
- Laptop computers have keyboards.
- They have one screen.
- The screen flips up.
- We interact with software through the computer ...
- What if they didn't have keyboards? Then ...
- What if they had several screens? Then ...
- What if there were several screens ... and they interacted with each other? Then ...
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Got Stress?
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Shift Gears
- Write your challenge in the form of a question (How can we...?).
- Find a random image that has no relationship to your challenge.
- List your reactions to the image - whatever comes to mind.
- Re-read your challenge statement, and then one of your impressions.
- Assume the impression is a clue to a better solution.
- Write down every possible connection or idea that comes to mind.
- Move on to the next impression, and repeat as often as necessary.
Celebrating Well and Often
How well and often do you celebrate?
Celebrations are important during good times; and even more important during challenging times.
Taking time to appreciate what you have and what you've accomplished builds resilience, maintains momentum and helps you enjoy success as you create it.
When I asked clients to describe their favorite ways of celebrating, they described
- Activities connecting with friends.
- Closing the door and taking a minute to savor the accomplishment.
- Doing a mitzvah; a good deed for others that extends the good fortune.
- Analyzing what worked best, and replaying it in their minds.
- Going for a walk, playing music, making a toast, saying a prayer....
Monday, February 23, 2009
Positive Uses of Negative Spaces
In art, negative space is what you see around and within the subject of a piece. Negative space can be used dramatically and creatively.
In conversations, you can use the negative space by noticing what's not being said, or the question that hasn't been asked.
Strategically, the negative space holds opportunities created by unexpected or unwanted events. Notice the way future Speaker of the House Rahm Emanuel uses negative space when he says, ''You don't ever want a crisis to go to waste; it's an opportunity to do important things that you would otherwise avoid.'' And the way CMU professor Rami el Samahy, optimizes negative space when he encourages designers studying an urban area to stop trying to bring back those who've left - and start asking themselves what new opportunities the vacant spaces allow them to create.
When you're working on something important,
step back,
consider the context
and look for opportunities in the "negative space."
Heavyweight Challenges
leadership is hard,
innovations fail more often than they succeed,
and parenting is not for the faint hearted.
Heavyweight challenges require sustained, adaptive and often courageous effort.
What's the most difficult, enduring challenge you continue to pursue?
What values do your non-negotiable aspirations reflect?
Keep going and keep learning.
The greater the challenge
the deeper the insights,
the sweeter the victories,
the more confident your approach to accomplishing even more.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
A Notable Strategy
But it's important to note new ideas quickly, before losing them in the press of the day. Doing so creates a personal source book for future accomplishments.
Notable, a portable tool for catching and creating good ideas in the moment, is a thoughtful resource that grows in value with each entry. As you use Notable, or give it to others to use, you're reinforcing a practical, generative habit that has fueled the success of leaders throughout time.
Partnering for Productivity
Proctor and Gamble's "connect + develop" strategy was designed to leverage their R&D resources. They post their challenges on-line and elicit bids from others who can help them. This strategy has led to a dramatic increase in productivity and innovation success rates.
Define what you do best. Find ways to spend more of your time exercising those capabilities, and develop relationships with partners whose strengths complement yours. This strategy works on an individual, team and organizational level.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Experimenting with Success
Create a hypothesis, or even just an interesting idea, and test it - with the goal of learning something new and useful. Identify what you learned and let that shape your next experiment.
Generative Strengths
This applies on both a personal level and a business level.
Think about your best successes to date. What strengths supported each of them? Which strengths cut across most of them?
Which of your distinctive strengths will you use to create new forms of success?
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Failing Well
- Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team ... because he wasn't good enough.
- Elvis Presley got an F in Music.
- Winston Churchill finished last in his class ... and later remarked that the secret to success was "going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm."
Another notable Churchill observation: "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts." What historical heavyweight do you think persevered through the following?
- 1831: failed in business.
- 1832: lost his bid for a legislative seat.
- 1834: failed again in business.
- 1835: sweetheart died.
- 1836: had a nervous breakdown.
- 1838: lost his second political race.
- 1843: defeated for Congress.
- 1846: defeated for Congress.
- 1848: defeated for Congress.
- 1855: defeated for US Senate.
- 1856: defeated for Vice President.
- 1858: defeated for US Senate.
- In 1860 he was elected 16th President of the United States.
What types of challenges are worth pursuing even though you may fail?
COMPIO means "I accomplish." When you're ready to accomplish more, we're here to help.
Conceptual Creativity
Conceptual creativity is the engine of business innovation. It helps us solve problems in new ways - often by integrating current knowledge with new concepts. When Henry Ford wanted a faster, cheaper way to make cars, he combined his knowledge of automobile production with concepts from meat packing (assembly lines), the US Army (interchangeable mechanical parts), and cigarette production (continuous-flow production).
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Your Leadership Wake
"Mensch, was du tust, bedenk' das End; das wird die höchste Weisheit genennt."
("People, when you do something, think of the end result; that is the wisest approach.")
So, for centuries leaders have been working to "start with the end in mind."
Personal Leadership Link: Every conversation leaves an emotional aftermath - how do you want others to say they feel after spending time with you?
Coaching Point: What habit could you develop to create this kind of impact?
Welcome to Quick Notes
These "Quick Notes" were well received and their distribution list grew. Recipients often sent me replies containing feedback and their own ideas. I've started this blog to accomplish two aims:
- create a bank of past and current Quick Notes
- provide a forum for posting how you applied the prompts, ask questions, or share your own helpful resources.
I hope you enjoy these Quick Notes and find them helpful. Let me know what you think.
Here's to your continued success -