by John Brooker | Feb 15, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate
YES! AND… Creative Gorilla # 47 A blame culture is a fast way to dampen innovation and leads to a “no risk” environment. If we can learn from mistakes rather than seek someone to blame, we will have a much healthier culture … “It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone’s fault. If it was Us, what did that make Me? After all, I’m one of Us. I must be. I’ve certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We’re always one of Us. It’s Them that do the bad things.” Terry Pratchett, author in “Jingo How can you reduce the impact of a blame culture that stifles innovation? On Tuesday night I attended an Open University MBA Alumni evening. Jo Salter the speaker, was the first woman fast jet pilot in the RAF and she had some entertaining stories about her time in the service. She recounted one tale of inadvertently detonating some explosive charges on her Tornado by accidentally turning a switch the wrong way whilst preoccupied with her checks. To make matters worse, the ground crew were working on the aircraft when they detonated (the charges, not the ground crew). This was a potentially dangerous accident and something that she might easily have covered up (“it’s an unserviceable switch, Chief”) instead of admitting her mistake to the ground crew. However, it is one thing to tell the ground crew, quite another to reveal it to...
by John Brooker | Feb 14, 2012 | Innovate
YES! AND… Creative Gorilla # 46 It is difficult to drive innovation in some organisational cultures but there are ways to achieve it. “If something is too hard to do, then it’s not worth doing. You just stick that guitar in the closet next to your shortwave radio, your karate outfit and your unicycle and we’ll go inside and watch TV.” Matt Groening, cartoonist. The Simpsons How can you make innovation happen in cultures where it struggles to thrive? The Netherlands is very flat. Trust me; I have just spent a few days cycling round the “green heart” of Holland. It is very flat, very windy and a cyclist’s paradise. There are cycle tracks and cycle signposts all over, in towns and country. Where you have to use roads they put large cycle lanes down each side so the cars have to squeeze through in single formation. Everything appears geared (no pun intended) to the cyclist. Everywhere you look there are cycle racks, commuter cycle parks at the station and two storey cycle parks in Amsterdam. All full. Schoolteachers cycle past us, leading groups of children on bikes. Old ladies do their shopping on their bikes. Cycling is part of the culture. Whilst fighting a blustery headwind, I compared the Dutch infrastructure to Britain. Yes, we have spent (charity) money on a national cycle network, which is great if you want a cycling holiday but still leaves dangerous roads if you want to commute or go to the shops. We spend money on cycle lanes too; we have one near our house. It runs for 100 metres down...
by John Brooker | Feb 9, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate
YES! AND… Facilitate. Innovate. Transform – Creative Gorilla # 40 Involve people in exploring the problem as well as generating the solution. It is a much more effective way to tackle challenges… “There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advised” Gore Vidal ~ Artist Do you find people are reluctant to help you find or implement solutions? A colleague and I were running a pilot course on flexible thinking and communication recently. The client’s people, at times, have to take high risk decisions (i.e. someone might die if they get them wrong). During our pre-course investigations, a member of staff revealed one paradigm in the organisation: that our course was unnecessary because when it mattered, people were just told what to do. No need for creative thinking there. It was a valid point and caused us to reevaluate how we could position the course in the context of the organisation. With a bit of thought we developed a preliminary model with high and low “risk” and less and more “time” on two axes, making our best assessment of where flexible thinking and communication fitted. The model was unfinished and fuzzy. Rather than develop it further, we presented our 2 x 2 matrix as a problem to be explored during the pilot course and asked the delegates to consider it in the context of their organisation. Wow! What I thought would be a 5 minute conversation turned into 30 minutes of really fruitful discussion. We finished with an enhanced model, placing the course firmly in context and justifying the...
by John Brooker | Feb 4, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate
YES! AND… Facilitate. Innovate. Transform – Creative Gorilla # 35 Balance the need to avoid risk with the need to innovate… “There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work and learning from failure.” Colin Powell ~ US politician… Is your organisation successfully balancing its need to control risk with its need to innovate? Today, I went to church to see my son give his first public reading, prior to lighting the first Advent candle. Andrew read very well and following his reading, the priest, Father Robert gave a sermon. He spoke of people striving for perfection at Christmas and being mightily stressed by it. He reminded us that the pleasure comes not from the perfect turkey but from the social event of the meal. This sparked off a train of thought that led me to Google, (think of a search engine in reverse). Recently, a client with a group of his executives, kindly invited me on a tour of Google’s HQ near San Francisco. For someone like me, seeking examples of how organisations drive fluent thinking in to organisations, this was a dream place to visit. The Google trip showed many practical examples of how the organisation makes its environment one in which people are encouraged to relax, think and achieve. One example (which the sermon probably triggered) is the free food and drink of all types served in the cafeteria, incentivising people to stay on campus and encouraging them to talk. Our guide told us most business ideas have arisen from discussion over lunch; one way to feed innovation. Another interesting example was the pride...
by John Brooker | Feb 1, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate
YES! AND… Facilitate. Innovate. Transform – Creative Gorilla # 32 You’re never too old to innovate, but age is a great excuse to stick your head in the sand. “I never feel age…If you have creative work, you don’t have age or time” Louise Nevelson (Sculptress, aged 80) Are you writing off yourself or others as too old to innovate? I was facilitating a workshop recently when the discussion moved to innovation. One opinion was that “Most of us (“us” as in the people in the room) are too old to make this an innovative company; we need to bring in young managers at senior level.” As a facilitator, I do not involve myself in the content but when the point was raised I wanted to whisper “NO!” You might understand why people think innovation is for the young. People over forty…they’ve more important things to think about than younger workers… they’re set in their ways… the young have plenty of energy and more time to pursue new things… innovation needs young minds…only the young can understand these new gadgets…the young sense the new trends first… I can understand why people think it, but I don’t agree with it. The sceptic in me believes that “Sorry, I’m fifty, I’m too old for innovation” means: “I’ve never done innovation and now I’m fifty I can blame it on my age” This could be a light hearted pub conversation but in reality is very important. We have a rapidly aging population in the West. Our average age in the UK is 39. In the US it is 36 and in India, 25. [Source:...
