How many times have you participated in a brainstorming session, only to be underwhelmed by the utter lack of follow up? Unfortunately, in most businesses, this is often the norm. Here’s why: 1. The output of the session is underwhelming. 2. No one has taken the time, pre-brainstorm, to consider follow-up
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23 Reasons Why Nothing Happens After a Brainstorming Session
The root of the word “manager” comes from the same root as the words “manipulate” and “maneuver”, meaning to “adapt or change something to suit one’s purpose”. Although these words may carry a pejorative meaning, there is nothing inherently wrong with them. Indeed, into each life a little manipulation and maneuvering must fall. For example, if the door to your office gets stuck, a handyman might need to manipulate it to get it working again.
For decades, competitors and consumers have pondered how Apple has reached (and continues to reach) such heightened levels of success and innovation. But it only took Simon Sinek 18 minutes to explain it at a TED event. According to him, it’s all about the why , not the how, or what. Most computer companies start with claims that they make great products. Apple, on the other hand, tells you why they build computers. HINT: Feeling has a lot to do with it…
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First Why, Then How, Then What
If you are gearing up to run a brainstorm session, allow me to offer you one piece of advice: first diverge, then converge. Beyond the chips, coffee, and people arriving fashionably late, brainstorm sessions are composed of the two aforementioned “erges.” Divergence is the act of “getting out there” or what Webster refers to as “an infinite sequence that does not have a limit.” Go, Noah, go! It’s a deviation from the norm — kind of like your brother-in-law.
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First Diverge, Then Converge
If you’re interested in raising the bar for innovation in your organization, start listening more . Listening, quite simply, is the most powerful form of influence. Generally speaking, when we think of influencing others we are thinking about our ability to get others to think and act in ways we want them to, in ways that serve our interests and objectives. The influence process is most often conceived as the ability to provide compelling arguments — that is, arguments that are indisputable and indicate there is only one way to proceed. The influence process is seen as the ability to turn aside all alternative ways of thinking, to demonstrate their inadequacy in the service of making one’s own position more compelling. The ability to influence goes beyond the ability to make a compelling argument, of course. It can also involve the use of power, seduction, or fear to drive others to a particular outcome.
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Listening Is the Most Powerful Form of Influence
I just googled “definitions of innovation” and came up with 5,240,000 choices . Good luck reading them. For now, here are 10 I’ve gathered over the years that I like. How about you? And if you have a better one, let me know. “Change that creates a new dimension of performance.” – Peter Drucker “The ability to deliver new value to a customer.” – Jose Campos “Adapting, altering, or adjusting that which already exists for the sake of adding value.” – Anon “The managed effort of an organization to develop new products, new services, or new uses for existing products or services.” – Ricky W
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Definitions of Innovation
Face it. No matter how much we tell people there’s no such thing as a “magic pill,” we all want it. Well, I don’t have the magic pill, but I DO have something even better — a virtual potion that has the potential to free you up from bothersome obstacles and activate your inner manifester. All you need to do is read the list below, pick the CreativiTea you need the most, and drink deep. Then noodle on WHAT you can do to activate this quality in your life.
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101 CreativiTeas for the Knew Age
In today’s nano-second, downsized, caffeine-buzzed business world, corporations are increasingly demanding that “their people” redouble their efforts to find new and better ways of getting the job done. If this were the 1950′s, an efficiency expert might be called in, a bespectacled, uncharismatic gentleman with a fascination for predictability, order, and control. His motto? “A place for everything and everything in its place.” It wasn’t a great leap of faith for upwardly mobile managers to buy into this trendy “consulting service” since it seemed like such a safe way to yield increased productivity and reduced costs.
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Go Beyond Your Addiction to Incrementalism!
What do Henry Ford, Miles Davis, Thomas Edison, Confucius, Robert Louis Stevenson, Horace, Bill Cosby, Robert Kennedy, Sir Laurence Olivier, Thomas Watson, Beverly Sills, Douglas McArthur, Winston Churchill, Malcolm Forbes, John Barrymore, Paramahansa Yogananda, and Charles Kettering have in common? An enlightened view of what “failure” is.
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Failure Is Not What You Think It Is
“They watch your feet, not your lips.” — Tom Peters Yes, we know you want your organization to be more innovative. And yes, we know you want to improve your organization’s culture of innovation. The best place to start? With YOU. 1. Give up needing to be the smartest person in the room. 2. Seek out people who think differently than you do.
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41 Ways Business Leaders Can Foster a Culture of Innovation
As a resident of Woodstock, NY, I am proud of my town’s legacy of love, creativity, and compassion. The legacy continues on Friday 4/23. That’s when the Haitian People’s Support Project and Evelyne Pouget will be producing a fabulous concert and dance , in Kingston, NY, featuring Haiti’s #1 band Boukman Ekperyans — to raise funds for five Haitian orphanages. $25 at the door. $20 in advance. If you can’t attend, give anyway . The “Haitian News Cycle” is over, but not the need for food, water, infrastructure, and hope for the future.
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Innovating for Haitian Orphanages
A few months ago we asked our readers to tell us what they thought the most common high tech excuses were — the modern day, techno-centric equivalents to “The dog ate my homework.” We primed the pump with seven of our own. Here are the results: 1. “The server’s down.” 2. “You’re breaking up.” 3. “Your email ended up in my spam folder.” 4. “I’m out of range.” 5. “My laptop crashed.” 6. “I can’t find my Blackberry.” 7. “I forgot to recharge my battery.” 8. “I couldn’t open the attachment.” 9.
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The Top 18 High Tech Excuses
Recently, I polled 140 people to find out what they need “more of” in order to succeed with their various creative projects. The sixth highest rated item was IMMERSION. And then, this morning, noted in Drive, the Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us , I discovered a great example of how true this is: Once a quarter, software developers at the Australian company, Atlassian — for 24 hours — are allowed to work on whatever they want, in any way they want, with whomever they want. All the company asks is that people show what they’ve created to the rest of the company at the end of those 24 hours. They call these experiences “FedEx Days,” because people have to deliver something overnight. It turns out that those one-day bursts of intense, undiluted autonomy have produced more innovation and creativity than just about anything else the company has done. Photo
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You Want Results? Immerse!
Nowhere in the human psyche is the conflict between the need for independence and the need for support more pronounced than in the creative act, especially the very specific act of generating new ideas in a group — an activity that has come to be known as brainstorming . Historically, most people have believed that ideas come to them like bolts from the blue, flashes of inspiration that descend from the beyond — a dimension free of the laws of Earth. Even the modern dictionary speaks of ideas as “transcendent entities.” The implication of this way of thinking is that people need to be highly attuned in order to attract new ideas — becoming a kind of channel through which ideas flow. The importance of other people, in this approach, is almost non-existent.
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The Third Eye of the Brainstorm
One of the biggest obstacles to innovation in most organizations is the addiction to short-term results. Hustling, speed, and fire fighting rule the day — resulting in the kind of over-caffeinated efforts that make everyone cranky. Focusing on your next quarter, of course, is a necessary part of business. But not to the exclusion of the long-term. Someone’s got to focus on projects that won’t see the light of day for tree years… or five …. or ten. If you are serious about innovation, you will need to develop an Innovation Portfolio , one that includes short-term, mid-term, and long-term goals.
“Creativity is a lot like looking at the world through a kaleidoscope. You look at a set of elements, the same ones everyone else sees, but then reassemble those floating bits and pieces into an enticing new possibility. Effective leaders are able to shake up their thinking as though their brains are kaleidoscopes, permitting an array of different patterns out of the same bits of reality.” – Rosabeth Moss Kanter Thanks to Chuck Frey for the quote
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Kaleidoscopic Leaders
If you are reading this, please help me. I need your help! For the past eight days, I’ve been in Mexico, being deprogrammed. My captors are quite clever — latino ninjas, I believe. They never show their faces. But they are definitely having an effect on me. Two days ago, I completely lost my desire to log on to Facebook. I can’t remember any of my passwords. Or the name of my insurance agent. What in the world is happening to me
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SOS from Mexico!
These days, almost all of my clients are talking about the need to establish a culture of innovation . Some, I’m happy to report, are actually doing something about it. Hallelujah! They are taking bold steps forward to turn theory into action. The challenge for them is the same as it’s always been — and that is, to find a simple, authentic way to address the challenge from the inside out — to water the root of the tree, not just the branches. Guess what? Systems are not sufficient to guarantee change.
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Innovation from the Inside Out
If you want to CREATE something extraordinary, you’re going to need some of the spirit that Dean Schambach exudes. When the true force of creativity is burning bright in every cell of your body, all the rest will follow. Hats off to David McDonald , Woodstock filmmaker, for this pearl of brilliance
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Get Deeply In Touch With the Passion to Create!
There’s a simple reason why so many brainstorm sessions are a waste of time. The problem statement being pitched to participants is the wrong one. This is not surprising — especially when you consider how little time most facilitators put into preparing for a session. Here’s what happens: The person who calls the session is usually scrambling — overwhelmed, over-caffeinated, and running from one meeting to the next. Out of breath, they pitch the topic to the group, but the topic is either vague or secondary to a more essential challenge that remains unspoken. G.K. Chesterton, one of the most influential English writers of the 20th century, distilled the phenomenon down to 13 words. “It’s not that they can’t see the solution,” he said. “They can’t see the problem.”
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Want a Brainstorming Breakthrough? Get the Right Question!
