How to Achieve Your Targets Faster [Yes! And. Blog #183]

by | Mar 31, 2015 | Free Articles, Solution Focus, Tools

  Eight Steps to Achieve Your Targets Faster Do you have tough targets to achieve? How can you plan to achieve them faster in a less conventional way? This article provides you with an eight-step approach to use as an individual and it will take you about 90 minutes. Whilst developing an individual plan is a good thinking tool and starting point, I urge you to involve your peers or your team to develop the final plan. Involving others will broaden your perspective and enrich your planning. To illustrate the article, I use an adapted case study of a leader responsible for software testing in four countries, with teams brought together through mergers and takeovers. There were different tools and methods at each site and the leader had a target to integrate the country teams. The leader arranged for a set of workshops to follow these steps. Step 1: Identify Stakeholders First, identify who has an interest in your success, both internal and external. This may be customers, end users, regulators etc. In our case study the stakeholders were internal product managers and the end users of products. Let’s call them customers. Create a short profile for an example customer,e.g their job role, what they do  and the key issues they have. Step 2: Sense the Future Detail a preferred future by asking, “What will we be doing in future that will most benefit customers?” Instead of writing your description draw a picture. Drawing taps into different parts of the brain and broadens your perspective. In our case study, the leader described a view of what the customers would see when testing...

How Style Affects How You Innovate [Yes! And Blog #141]

by | Mar 28, 2015 | Collaborate, Develop Opportunities, Facilitate meetings, Innovate

How using different styles effectively can  enhance innovation… One of the activities I use at the start of innovation workshops or team workshops, is the cane activity (or “Get Caned” as I call it). This involves having two equal size teams either side of a long cane (I use a foldable tent pole) with the cane resting on each person’s index fingers. They must lower the cane to the floor from waist height, keeping their fingers on the cane at all times. This sounds very easy; if I say that groups usually take “five minutes plus” on their first run and are often standing on tip toes at times, you can sense it might not be. I give teams three attempts at it and usually they can reduce the time to less than a minute (the record being 25 seconds in my classes). Apart from being a useful team building exercise, I use it to bring out lessons about creativity and innovation. In the debriefing, one key lesson that emerges is about the different styles people have to tackle the challenge. Some are obvious; those who focus completely on the outcome and go for it, immediately shouting instructions seeking to use their intuition to work it out. Others want to break the rules “just drop it!” Some people are more experimental, “Let’s try this… that didn’t work, try this…” The rest observe how others do it and replicate what works. There is often frustration and the biggest lesson is that people tackle challenges in different ways (their style) and the team must listen and collaborate if they going to achieve the required...

Kintsukuroi and the art of Solution Focus [Yes! And Blog # 182]

by | Mar 13, 2015 | Free Articles, Overcome Challenges, Solution Focus

How a Japanese art form can enhance your business   The picture alongside [Source: www.kintsugi.jp through Pinterest] is of a broken vase that has been repaired with gold. Developed in Japan, making such a repair is known as  Kintsukuroi or kintsugi,  which is the art of healing broken pottery with lacquer and silver or gold. The philosophy behind this type of repair is that something should not be discarded just because it is broken. In fact, it is more beautiful for having been broken and repaired. I saw this on Pinterest and pinned it to my Think Innovatively board with this thought: How might you apply the principle of Kintsukuroi as a metaphor for repairing something that is broken in your business? You might consider this metaphor anytime something breaks; a process, a business (or personal) relationship, a bad media story. I feel it is a very solution focused metaphor to have your client focus on the damaged pieces as a resource (what they can build on), not on the damage (the problem), have them visualise how they might make it better and progress towards that better future. Is Kintsukuroi not a better metaphor than “fighting fires”? It is certainly more elegant. Have an elegant week. John Brooker I Yes! And. Think Innovatively. To receive regular articles, register at our website: www.yesand.eu and receive Section 1 of John’s book, “Innovate to Learn, Don’t Learn to Innovate”, with our compliments. We guarantee not to share your details. Or you might buy John’s book at Amazon now: “Innovate to Learn, Don’t Learn to Innovate.”  Read: www.yesand.eu and Facebook Talk: +44 20 8869 9990...