by John Brooker | Mar 12, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate
YES! AND… Creative Gorilla # 72 Having creative ideas is only useful if you can communicate them well… “At some later date, in perhaps some less guarded moment, we will really get to know what the master of Old Trafford thinks of promotion to one of the key jobs in world football by friendship with the owner, by bartering the post of director of football, the most redundant job in any corner of the game where a degree of success has been achieved under a strong manager, for the top position so recently occupied by a man whose record of achievement, relative to his successor was so far in to another league it was almost beyond measurement.” Sports Columnist – UK Newspaper Do you have creative ideas but struggle to communicate them? Did you read the quotation above? Did you understand it? Did you give up after a few lines? Recently, I developed a course on “Powerful Communications” which is a key part of innovation. As part of the course, I ran a five minute exercise on the Solutions Focus principle “Language – Simply Said” or, “Use $5 words not $5000 words” (In the course I swapped pounds for dollars to make it simpler still for my British audience). As seems to happen regularly (Jung called it “synchronicity” or the coincidence of events that seem related, but are not obviously caused one by the other), just as I was looking for an example of difficult language, I opened the newspaper whilst on the train to find the example I quote above. I read that passage at least five times...
by John Brooker | Mar 9, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate
YES! AND… Creative Gorilla #69 By altering the concept, you can generate new ideas… ”There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept.” Ansel Adams, photographer Have you some concepts you might challenge? If you have ever travelled by train, you will likely empathise with my thoughts as I sat on a Metropolitan Line tube train in to London, one which appeared to be auditioning for a bit part in the World’s Slowest Railway Journeys and watched as a fast train sped past mine. “I’ve paid only a few pence less than them,” thinks Grumpy Old Man, “they leave from a more distant station and get in earlier…that’s not fair!” That led me to think about how Transport for London charge for Tube travel, which is based on the concepts of distance and the time of day you travel. I pondered over alternatives to these concepts, e.g. cost per “kilometre minute” but it was all a bit fuzzy and the slow motion of the train led me to doze. Cut to a Flexible Thinking course I was running recently, a few weeks after my train journey. The group used “Super Heroes”, where people adopt the viewpoint of a Superhero to generate ideas, as a technique. Andrey, a participant, decided to use “Dash”, the speedy little kid from “The Incredibles” as his Super Hero. His idea was that you could use an electronic chip to measure the speed Dash travelled between two points. That was the “Eureka” moment for me and my fuzzy pricing concept. With 3 million London commuters using Oyster Cards (these use contactless chips,...
by John Brooker | Mar 8, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate
Creative Gorilla #68 If you are careful about the rules and policies you set, you can help stimulate innovation… “As innovation is hard to micromanage, the best policy is to attract smart people and get out of their way!” Edward L. Glaeser ~ Glimp Professor of Economics and director of the Rappaport Institute at Harvard University Are you getting out of the way of your smart people? Taking a paddle on the Internet recently (at my line speeds it’s hardly surfing), I found an article in the Boston Globe by Edward Glaeser, a Profeesor of Economics at Harvard University. In the article he outlines how Massachusetts might reinvent itself again and how the state government could help or hinder this. His driving idea is that the government should have policies to attract smart and talented people and then get out of their way so that they can innovate. Unfortunately recent government policy has had the reverse effect. They introduced onerous business regulations that deterred organisations from setting up in the state and heavy taxation for high earners, which drove them away. It reminded me of a workshop that I ran which we designed to encourage individuals to be more innovative. It was a young, enthusiastic and talented group and a significant number cited company rules and bureaucracy as a deterrent to their innovation, this in a company that positively encourages innovation! So If you work in an organisation, it probably invests a great deal to attract, keep and develop talented staff. Unfortunately, it doesn’t cost much to set up the needless rules and policies that then drive them...
by John Brooker | Mar 5, 2012 | Innovate
YES! AND… Creative Gorilla # 65 If you quash valid discussion in the workplace, you run the risk of making sub-standard decisions… “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.” Dale Carnegie, US Philanthropist Are you encouraging full discussion in your organisation? I love a good discussion. Recently, someone started talking to me about global warming and the impact people are having on the climate. I listened quietly to them and when they had finished I mentioned, quite light heartedly, that although I see great merit in recycling and reducing emissions, I am an agnostic on the topic of human affect on the climate, having read a lot of arguments both for and against. I waited for their response, instead their face set quite hard and not wishing to escalate discussion to argument, I quickly changed the subject. It struck me afterwards that in the “debate” about global warming there is a tendency for the opposing sides to try to stifle the debate. They ridicule commentators with opposing viewpoints or focus on their “hidden agendas” rather than the merits of their arguments; supporters of global warming theories are “scientists seeking more research funding” and detractors are “paid lackeys of the oil companies”. The only affect such criticism has is to stifle useful debate. So So what is your team or organisation’s equivalent of “global warming”? Are individual viewpoints stifled because they question the company’s strategy, policies or decisions or because the person has little political influence? Does argument descend into ridicule of the individual? I agree that at some point discussion must stop and action...
by John Brooker | Mar 2, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate
YES! AND… Creative Gorilla # 62 Encourage people to think they are innovative and there is a good chance they’ll innovate. “If you can put the mind in a healthy place, you can have dramatic physiological consequences.” Ellen Langer, Professor of Psychology, Harvard University Could you improve your business by encouraging a change in mindset? One of the pleasures of travelling is that I get to read the newspaper at breakfast. Reading the South African version of the Sunday Times the other week I came across an article about a piece of research conducted by Harvard University. In essence it said that if you imagine that you are losing weight, you will, as long as you do some exercise. The researchers noticed that housekeepers in hotels were less healthy than expected even though they exceeded the daily recommended exercise limits. To establish if a change in mindset might make a difference, they divided the staff into two groups. They told Group 1 that their work gave them enough exercise to lose weight and keep fit and explained how many calories they should burn a day. They told the Group 2 members nothing. People in Group 1 lost an average of 1kg each in a month with other significant benefits. The Group 2 individuals had no change. What a great result, albeit with the caveat that just changing the mindset is not good enough, you do have to do some exercise as well. (Sorry to all of you dreaming away 10 kilos of surplus energy stores whilst stirring your tea). The cynic may say that by focusing a person’s mind...
