27 Use Metaphors to Facilitate Transformation

YES! AND… Facilitate. Innovate. Transform – Creative Gorilla # 27 Metaphors are a great tool for transformation and innovation. Are you using metaphors to their full power? “The metaphor is probably the most fertile power possessed by man.” Jose Ortega y Gasset (1883 – 1955) Spanish philosopher “Tim, you’ve changed. You’re caring. Giving. You’re… loving. And you’ve got a termite coming out of your ear.” TV Programme Home Improvement; script We were driving round the Shamwari Game Reserve in South Africa, when our ranger stopped at a termite hill. “This one is dead” she remarked. “The aardvark (anteater) has burrowed in to feed on the termites and has rooted out the queen along with the others. Without the queen, the colony dies within weeks.” As we drove on I considered that if the aardvark had been brighter, he could have had an endless supply of food, as the queen produces twenty thousand eggs a DAY. I wondered too if we couldn’t use this as a metaphor for some organisational interventions. In a bid to capture the most “termites”, e.g. obtain greater productivity, from the “termite hill” i.e. the organisation, the “aardvark” i.e. management, destroys the “queen” that sustained it, e.g. its creative staff? Having pondered that, I got on with my holiday! So Metaphors are a powerful way to view a situation. Zoltan Kovecses explains in his book (“Metaphors. A Practical Introduction”) that the metaphor has a target (e.g. the organisation) and a source (e.g. the termite hill). You compare the characteristics of the source (e.g. aardvark eats queen) with the characteristics of the target to visualise the target, (I’ll let you imagine your...

21 Find the Qualities of a Creative Leader

YES! AND… Facilitate. Innovate. Transform – Creative Gorilla # 21 Creative leaders have a number of qualities, what do you think they are? “She accomplished more in her 28 years than most people do in a lifetime” Patrick Leahy US Senator Browsing at the station newsvendor at St Paul’s, the leader article in the Independent stood out. A “framed” photograph of a young woman who was not a celebrity, but one whose life we should celebrate. Maria Ruzicka was the unlucky victim of a bomb in Iraq and someone who, from the evidence in the article and whatever your political views, could teach us lessons about the qualities of being a creative leader. Try to pick them out in this brief story. Maria was an American aid worker in Iraq. She was driven by a simple premise: if the US caused suffering it should try and help the innocent people who suffered. As such, she established a charity, CIVIC, to provide relief for the innocent victims of the war. She negotiated government bureaucracy in Washington and personally lobbied senators to secure $10 million funding to help people who had lost the family breadwinner. In Iraq, she cultivated those US officials that decided who would receive compensation, to speed compensation to the right people. In addition, she used her prodigious energy to successfully pester diplomats for aid, cajole journalists for promotion and to console victims who considered her a warm and open hearted person. So What qualities did you identify? I identified these: A strong set of values A clear premise on which to work Vision – a well defined goal Self confidence...

20 Balance operation and innovation

 YES! AND… Facilitate. Innovate. Transform – Creative Gorilla # 20 How do you obtain the right balance of operation and innovation? “This coffee plunges in to the stomach…. the mind is aroused and ideas pour forth like the battalions of the Grand Army on the field of battle. Memories charge at full gallop… the Light Cavalry of comparisons deploys itself magnificently, the artillery of logic hurries in with their train of ammunition and flashes of wit pop up like sharp shooters.” Honore de Balzac, Author and Journalist “So was that decaffeinated coffee you had, Honore?” John Brooker  Is your organisation balancing operation and innovation correctly? In my office I start up my brand new (expensive) computer. It has a noisy fan. Box it up and return it. Fan replaced, I fire it up. No sound and the memory reader doesn’t work. I wonder at the money they spend on advertising when they can’t get the basics right. In my car I drive in to a motorway service station to buy a coffee. The billboard adverts extol the virtues of their Italian coffee. “A decaff coffee to take away please.” “Sorry” says the lady behind the counter, “we haven’t got any lids.” “No lids?” I reply, bemused. “No, we’ve only got six cups left too.” I think she is proud of that. Pushed for time and not wanting hot coffee in my lap, I leave without coffee and muse on the logistical planning that leaves a coffee store without the basic needs to trade. After twenty articles, most of you will realise I am a raving fan of creative thinking and innovation....

11 Create Meetings with More IMPACT

YES! AND… Facilitate, Innovate, Transform – Creative Gorilla # 11 Here are five principles to help you design meetings with more impact… “The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity” Ascribed to Dorothy Parker, Novelist   Do you want your meetings to have more impact? Hi! It’s a beautiful sunny day here in London, glorious spring weather. I am just back from a two hour bike ride and I feel great. I did some exploring, ventured down some new “secret” paths that I had not noticed before, saw stunning scenery and even met a number of people who replied to my, “Good morning”. I was whipped by stinging nettles, shaken to bits on bridleways (horse tracks) and stuck in mud in a hoof hole, but I came back energised, uplifted and so raring to go, I am writing this in my cycle shorts. You know that feeling? Like when you come out of meetings? Energised, uplifted, motivated! Or maybe not. More likely you come out bored, listless and seeking caffeine to change your state. It doesn’t have to be that way. Meetings are something I have thought about a lot this week as I redesigned my “Training with More Impact” course and designed a couple of workshops for clients. The course is based on five principles, which I have adapted over the years from various aspects of accelerated learning and brain friendly (see www.kaizentraining.com) training. Whilst cycling, I reflected that meetings are about learning too, at least they should be. Therefore, it would be useful to share these principles with creative leaders like you, so...