87 Communicate to Innovate

YES! AND… Creative Gorilla # 87 You need to communicate simply and frequently if you are to communicate effectively… “Many attempts to communicate are nullified by saying too much.” Robert Greenleaf (Researcher in to Leadership). “And not communicating them often enough…” John Brooker Have you something to communicate? Last Monday morning, I took the lift at the Judge Education Institute north of Beijing (a highly recommended training location). On the floor, beautifully woven in to the lush Chinese carpet in both Mandarin and English, was the name of the day; Monday. The next day, in a different lift, a different carpet informed me it was Tuesday. As I was in Beijing and seven hours ahead of my normal time zone, I found this incredibly useful because at 7 a.m. I was wondering what day of the week it was! I was delivering a Powerful Communication Course out there and I thought the carpet was a perfect example (if rather lavish!) of frequent communication, something that is vital in the implementation stage of the innovation cycle. And if we look at Kotter in his book Leading Change, it also meets a number of other criteria: It is simple (see quotation) It is repetitive / frequent It is a different location from the normal workplace (Kotter says “different forum”) so the message can be seen amongst all the clutter The carpet is just like a frequent advertising flyer! Kotter has a few more criteria and I have included these at the end of the article. So In the current economic climate, I do not recommend you go to your Chief Operating...