by John Brooker | Apr 30, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate
YES! AND… Collaborate. Innovate. Transform – Creative Gorilla #110 You must ensure everybody involved in tackling a situation understands it. This is essential if you wish to find a long lasting solution… “It was some relief for Morse to recognise the fair countenance of reason once more, and she greeted him serenely when he woke, clear headed, on Monday morning and told him that it would be no bad idea to have a quiet look at the problem itself before galloping off towards a solution.” Colin Dexter, author in “Service of all the Dead” Chapter 12 Are you tackling the right problem? In an Internet chat room recently I noticed an elderly lady had posted a problem she wanted help with. Essentially, she wondered what she could do next in her life to give it some more challenge. (Which I agree is more of an opportunity than a problem). Very soon, up popped a response from a contributor advising her to take up painting “because that’s what my grandmother did”. All credit to this respondent for contributing and I am sure they had a positive intent but… already someone had come up with a solution and we knew little about the situation, other than the lady was elderly. Yes, it may well have been exactly the right answer, but equally it may have been completely wrong. This reminded me so much of what often happens in organisations, “Here are some symptoms of a problem;” “Aha, here’s a solution we used before on a similar issue”; put it in to action and voila! The problem reappears a few weeks later...
by John Brooker | Apr 28, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate, Tools
YES! AND… Collaborate. Innovate. Transform # 108 How to use Creative Solution Finding in virtual meetings? “I think they should consider giving Oscars for meetings: Best Meeting of the Year, Best Supporting Meeting, Best Meeting Based on Material from Another Meeting.” William Goldman, Novelist How can you facilitate a virtual “creative solution finding” session? One of the toughest meetings in which I was involved was a teleconference. I was in Lagos on a mobile telephone at 4.00 a.m. People were calling in from Asia, Europe and the US. It was difficult to understand who was speaking or what they were saying and I swear after ten minutes I heard a gentle snoring. It might have been me. I was reminded of this when I received a note from a fellow Gorilla this week, with background and a question as follows: “I have a new team of 5, situated in 3 locations (2 locations in Sweden, 1 in the UK). We get on really well. We regularly use audio with netmeeting / webex conferences and we can do 3 way video conferences. What ideas do you have for creative problem solving in a less than ideal physical set-up? I like a challenge and this article is my response. It is longer than the norm, please forgive me, I trust you will find it worthwhile. My first thought was that there are companies that specialise in web meetings and they have some great new technology. However, I set the scope of the challenge as a team working with little budget; they cannot use an external resource and must use the available technology as...
by John Brooker | Apr 27, 2012 | Innovate
YES! AND… Collaborate. Innovate. Transform – Creative Gorilla #107 How might you use prizes to inspire innovation in companies? “Proactive prizes are phenomenally powerful tools. They circumvent bureaucracy, investment anxiety and, where necessary, ideology. They exploit the human will to take part, compete and win.” Bryan Appleyard, Journalist: “The mother of invention: cash” UK Sunday Times News Review, 13 December 2009. How might your organisation use prizes for innovation? In 1714, the British government offered a £20,000 Longitude Prize, for “a simple and practical method to determine a ship’s longitude”. The eventual winner, John Harrison, started work in 1730 and eventually received his prize (or part of it) in 1773! Despite Harrison’s experience, journalist Bryan Appleyard writes that prizes for innovation are still popular. (Please see the source in the quotation above. Unfortunately, the article is not available on the “TimesOnline” website). In his article, Appleyard cites (among others): The Ansari X $10million prize for the development of a private sector spacecraft (now put in to production for Virgin Galactic) The DARPA $40,000 prize for finding ten red weather balloons across the USA, an experiment to test the power of networks for gathering accurate information The Mprize, an unknown amount to develop a longer living mouse Agencies use these prizes to promote innovation in a cost effective way. As the promoters of the Mprize state on their site, “The Mprize springs from a simple truth: The greatest innovations in human history have always been fueled by three things … competition, imagination, and the entrepreneurial spirit.” So prizes work, however, the prize that interested me most was a $1 million prize offered by Netflix, a DVD distribution web site. Its prize was awarded...
by John Brooker | Apr 26, 2012 | Innovate
Yes! And… Creative Gorilla # 106 Do we need to rethink how we value time for innovation in organisations…? “I would like to propose a large (think Stonehenge) mechanical clock, powered by seasonal temperature changes. It ticks once a year, bongs once a century, and the cuckoo comes out every millennium” Danny Hillis, Computer Scientist. To see how it has progressed, click here Do you have time to think? I met a business associate the other day for a coffee and a chat. We were discussing his new role and he said that the day before, he had got up at 4 a.m. for a flight to Berlin, had spent all day in negotiations and arrived home at 9.00 p.m, very tired. “You just don’t get any time working in an organisation any more,” he said. Keep reading! I am not going to get in to the work / life balance discussion which has already laid waste to a few forests! My perspective is that we need… a new currency. No, not a replacement for the Euro, Dollar or Pound, that are issued by central banks. This currency is based on the value of time. A currency must have a name and as this is my concept, I named it the Thunk, the value of time. I reasoned that I value time in business because it enables me to think clearly and when I have been thinking, I will often say, “I have had a good thunk about this”. You may say my grammar is appalling, but the Oxford dictionary tells me that “Thunk” is an informal or humorous past...
by John Brooker | Apr 25, 2012 | Innovate
Yes! And… Creative Gorilla # 105 Social Media is changing the way we do business. How might you benefit from it?… “The advent of Social Networking and Social Media has been the biggest boost for individuals to take responsibility for their personal brand.” Penny Power, Author of “Know Me, Like Me, Follow Me” How can you make the most of Social Media as a creative leader? Last week, I attended an excellent retreat led by Thomas Power, the Chairman of Ecademy and a world authority on Social Media. I and nine others were introduced to or updated on the power of Social Media and how we can use it to build our personal brands and companies. Social Media is media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. {For more of the definition, visit Wikipedia here, or Google: Social Media Definition. There are a number of them] I have always been a little sceptical about Social Media and went along because, as a creative leader like you, I had an open mind. In reality, I didn’t understand it; it was a revelation for me to end up so excited and humbled at the same time! So After four days of reflection I assembled some learning points which I would like to share with you. These are my own, others attending and Thomas, may have obtained a different interpretation. The world is moving / has moved this way and individuals and companies need to be part of it – it is no longer optional People in organisations should understand that they can use...
