Report 103
Your newsletter on applied creativity, imagination, ideas and innovation in business.
Wednesday 19 December 2012
Issue 219s
Hello and welcome to another issue of Report 103, your twice-monthly (or thereabouts) newsletter on creativity, imagination, ideas and innovation in business.
As always, if you have news about creativity, imagination, ideas, or innovation please feel free to forward it to me for potential inclusion in Report103. Your comments and feedback are also always welcome.
Information on unsubscribing, archives, reprinting articles, etc can be found at the end of this newsletter.
Note
Most articles in this issue of Report 103 can also be found in the archives together with dozens more articles, papers and thoughts.
In this issue of Report 103
- Job Pressure, Priority and Innovation
- Hiring Creative Employees
- Innovate Innovation in 2013, Please!
Also some self promotional stuff about anticonventional thinking....
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Happy Holidays
I wish you, your family and everyone special to you very happy holidays and a remarkable, successful and innovative new year! If you celebrate Christmas, may yours be a merry one. This will be my last newsletter in 2012. But expect to read more from me and others in 2013!
Jeffrey Baumgartner
Job Pressure, Priority and Innovation
By Jeffrey Baumgartner
I have been corresponding with a chap involved in an interesting new company in Ethiopia. He asked me the following question, "...as the team is an ad-hoc one, sometimes our progress stands in the middle of the road due to pressures and priorities from other job responsibilities." I hear this kind of question often. It is also sometimes formulate as "I don't have time to innovate". There are two reasons many employees in many organisations feel this way: mixed messages from top management and the vagueness of innovation.
Mixed Messages from Top Management
Most CEOs and their immediate underlings like to talk about how important innovation is to their companies. However, not all of them demonstrate this importance. If a CEO participates in generating ideas; personally acknowledges development, testing and implementation of innovative ideas; and accepts failure (ideally, she reward it) as an inevitable component of innovation, then employees know the CEO really means it when she talks about the importance of innovation. However, if a CEO talks about innovation, but discourages creative ideas, fails to authorise the launch of innovative projects and flings managers, of failed projects, out of her 12th floor window, then it is clear to employees that actually participating in innovation projects is a risky career move. Most people will avoid such projects and find an excuse not to have time to innovate. Of course most senior managers fall between these two extremes. However, if a CEO and other top managers really do want their businesses to innovate, they need to become more personally involved in the innovation process. They need to demonstrate that they are actively participating in their own company's innovation process.
Vagueness of Innovation
The second reason employees are reluctant to prioritise innovation is because being innovative is a difficult to define. Consider this: if I were to demand that you go innovate right now, what would you do? If your boss told you to innovate, what would you do? Often it is unclear. The word innovate is so vague. Indeed, if you were to stop two innovation consultants at a conference and ask them to define the concept, they'd probably come up with different definitions! If experts on the subject cannot agree on its meaning, how can people whose job descriptions are about marketing, operations, accounting or sales know what it means? In my experience, the word "innovation" is too often used when the speaker really means "creative". Having and developing ideas is about creativity. Yes, it is part of the innovation process. But it is not being innovative. Nevertheless, simply telling employees to have ideas is not a great deal clearer than telling them to innovate.
Even where businesses have clearly defined what they mean by creativity and innovation, being creative or innovative is still vague. If you have to compile the 2012 sales figures into a PowerPoint presentation, you have a clearly defined goal. You know how to do it and will know when it is finished. If you are told to spend 10% of your time being creative, then it is a lot harder to know if you are accomplishing your task. I generally think most creatively when I am taking a relatively long walk. Though most managers would not perceive going out for a walk as doing work. Some people have their best ideas in the bath or shower. Can you imagine claiming bath time as company innovation time?
Be Less Vague
If the problem is that you are being too vague about how you want your employees to innovate, then there is an easy solution. Be less vague. Top management should make it clearer what they mean by innovation and how people should do it. Do they want ideas? If so, in what format? How should they be submitted? What happens to them? Frankly, I do not think ideas should be a metric. When they become the metric, people focus too much on generating ideas for the sake of generating ideas rather than generate ideas for the sake of implementing them. I know a lot of companies that have databases full of ideas, but are struggling to innovate!
I would recommend that rather than demand the teams come up with 10 ideas per month, they be expected to submit one innovative project proposal per month. The proposal should include an outline, an explanation of the benefits the project would bring (probably profit, but not necessarily), an explanation of why the project is innovative and a description of the initial steps that would need to be taken to develop the project towards implementation.
Be Creative
However, my suggestion is a generic one. Instead of following it, why not use a little creativity? Define your organisation's strategy. Now question that strategy. Is it unique to your company? Or is it so generic that it would be true of 100s of other companies? If it is too generic, you need to define better your strategy. What makes your product and company unique in your market? Why should customers buy from you rather than me? Ask what you would like your strategy to be. How would you like to be seen by your customers? How is your company actually seen by your customers?
Once this vision is clearer, then define how innovation fits into that strategy. Innovation should become a tool for achieving strategic goals. If your company makes drinking glasses and your strategy is to make wine glasses that never break, then you presumably need to innovate primarily to build stronger glasses. Secondly, you need to come up with attractive, up-to-date new designs that are nevertheless as unbreakable as possible.
Once this is done, it should be relatively easy to define what you expect individuals and teams to do in order to contribute to innovation. And "contribute" is a key word here. Your company innovates, Individuals and teams contribute to that innovation. As a business leader, you should not tell your people to innovate and hope for the best. You should clarify what innovation means to your company, you should lead the process and you should tell your employees how they are expected to contribute to that innovation process and why.
Once you do this, you can be sure people fill find time and prioritise their innovation contribution.
Learn an Alternative to Brainstorming that Works!
If you are frustrated with non-productive brainstorms, if your business collects lots of ideas but innovates few of them, if you believe there must be a more effective way to harness the creativity of you and your colleagues, then you should learn about anticonvention thinking (ACT). It's a new, effective and easy to learn approach to creativity that results in an action plan rather than ideas. ACT goes counter to almost everything you've ever learned about brainstorming. It also works! Learn more or contact me to talk about your needs.
Hiring Creative Employees
By Jeffrey Baumgartner
Are you looking to hire creative employees at your company? If so, allow me to propose some characteristics you can advertise for and look for in order to find true creative thinkers. However, I also have a warning for you. But first, a little background.
I've been reading and hearing a lot about how companies are looking to hire creative employees. But, the job advertising I see does not reflect that. Most knowledge workers are expected to follow a rather narrow career path defined by the position they seek. Typically, that will involve a degree in a relevant field, ideally an advanced degree and similar work experience.
The individual fulfilling the job description is likely to be competent. But there is no guarantee that she will be particularly creative. Moreover, her background will be so similar to that of people already working in the division that she will be unlikely to bring much diversity of thought to the division. Diversity of thought help in collaborative creativity. The more diversity you have in a group, the more raw material you have for creative ideas.
If you want to find and hire exceptionally creative people, you need to find people with diversity in their backgrounds. This is not only a sign of creativity, but it also indicates a potential employee with more diversity of experience, knowledge and thought than the person who has followed a clearly defined career path.
Diversity and International Experience
The most important thing you should look for is international living experience. Not international travel, but living and working (or studying) experience. Research1 has demonstrated that living overseas boosts permanently an individual's creativity. Indeed, it is to the best of my knowledge, the only proven way to boost permanently creativity. So, look for foreigners living in your country as well as nationals who have lived and worked overseas. Presumably, though it has not been tested, multiple international stints and living in very different cultures further enhance creativity.
Second best characteristic to international experience is diversity of experience. Rather than look for people who have followed a very narrow career path, look for people who have had more varied experience. Look for people who have done work significantly different to that of the position you are seeking to fulfil. If you want an IT manager, someone who has spent two years selling furniture or a year teaching skiing in addition to some IT experience is likely to be more creative than someone who has only had IT experience. Moreover, she will bring diversity of thought to the IT department -- and that boosts collaborative creativity.
Aside from work experience, look for evidence of diversity and unusual points in education, hobbies and elsewhere. A marketing manager who has a degree in philosophy followed up by an MBA will probably be more creative than the marketing manager who has a business administration degree and an MBA. She will certainly bring new perspectives to the marketing department.
Humour
Having an original sense of humour -- that is, being able to make jokes or be funny on your own, rather than repeating well known jokes -- is an indicator of creativity. Humour is about seeing things in unusual ways that are unexpected. To be able to to do that requires creativity. This does not mean every creative person has a sense of humour. Many do not. But anyone with an original sense of humour is almost certainly very creative.
Having a sense of humour will probably not be apparent in an applicant's CV and most people believe they have a sense of humour. But if the applicant keeps a blog, is active on Twitter or participates publicly in other social media where she demonstrates an original sense of humour, she is probably more creative than most.
Rebelliousness
Highly creative people tend to be rebellious. They think differently to averagely creative people, they tend to do things in unconventional ways and they are not afraid to provoke others, including senior management. This is not usually because they choose to be rebellious. Rather, highly creative people think differently and make decisions differently than do averagely creative people. Often, highly creative people are blind to the relevant conventions. They are likely to believe their ideas are better than more conventional ideas.
This means that if you really want to hire highly creative people, you should be looking for evidence of rebelliousness. However, this characteristic is unlikely to be mentioned in the prospect's CV for obvious reasons. It is a characteristic you will need to identify through interviews and perhaps by looking at the prospective employee's profile on social media. Unfortunately, rebelliousness does not necessarily indicate a creative person. Some people are rebellious for other reasons. So, hiring a rebellious person does not guarantee she will make a creative contribution to your company. Rather, it should be considered along with other characteristics I have described here.
Of course, hiring rebels should also give you pause for thought. Hiring highly creative people will almost certainly result in hiring rebels, people who will not easily conform to your company's social culture; people who may be critical of their managers and the way you do things in your company; people who believe they know better than you and your managers. Sometimes, the rebels will be wrong. Other times they will be right. But you need to ask yourself: do you really want creative employees so badly you are willing to accept the consequences of having a number of highly creative rebels in your organisation.
Because, make no mistake, rebels or not, highly creative people are by definition different to the average person. They think differently. They do not conform. They may be rebels. They will certainly become frustrated and leave if you ignore their creative ideas and stick to safer, less creative ideas that are also less risky.
Different
That pretty much sums up highly creative people: they are different. They will have different backgrounds to averagely creative people -- and that background may very well include international living and working experience. They will behave differently to averagely creative people and they will offer different results: creative results. If you keep this in mind, it will not be hard to find and hire creative people. The challenge will be challenging them sufficiently to keep them!
References
1) William W. Maddux and Adam D. Galinsky (2009) “Cultural Borders and Mental Barriers: The Relationship Between Living Abroad and Creativity”; Journal of Personality and Social Psychology; Vol 96, No 5, pp 1047- 1061). Download as PDF from http://www.apa.org/journals/releases/psp9651047.pd
Innovate Innovation in 2013, Please!
By Jeffrey Baumgartner
There is a business sector that desperately needs a shot of innovation. This sector does a great deal of business based on an unchanged process that is over 50 years old and which has been proven again and again to be ineffective. Nevertheless, consultants within the sector insist on continuing to use the process and deny the science that demonstrates the process's failures. This sector also uses a number of other tools and processes that are decades old and have not been updated. The business sector in question, I am sorry to say, is innovation consultancy and services! Fortunately, if ever there was a sector with the wherewithal to become more innovative, it is surely this sector!
Yes, it is ironic that a business sector that tells its clients that they need to improve their businesses through innovation is failing to apply innovation to itself. But I have seen little evidence of innovation in the field. I have even asked consultants, via various Linked In Groups related to innovation as well as on Twitter, to share how they have innovated their businesses in 2012. Aside from a couple of people who have changed their own lives, I have received no responses. Admittedly, mine was a limited survey -- I am still hoping to be proven wrong.
The 50 year old process that has been proven to be ineffective is brainstorming. Almost since it's introduction by Alex Osborn, it has been shown to be flawed. Nevertheless, it is probably the most widely used tool in innovation today. Brainstorm facilitators continue to defend it and use it, in spite of the mountain of evidence against its effectiveness. One consultant, defending brainstorming on his blog, admitted near the end of the post that ideas generated in his brainstorms were very seldom implemented. But he blamed his clients, rather than the method, for that.
Indeed, in my experience, brainstorms very rarely lead to the implementation of creative ideas (indeed, I often ask this question when I lead workshops and talks). Brainstorms usually just lead to a lot of ideas. When a brainstorm does lead to an idea that is implemented, it is often because the idea has been developed prior to the brainstorm -- and the brainstorm is simply used as a method to legitimise the idea's creativity.
Other processes and tools used in the field of creativity (which is part of the innovation process) and innovation include TRIZ (which is also over 50 years old), mind-mapping (nearly 40) and a number of techniques promoted by Edward De Bono in the 1970s. I have not studied these processes in detail, so will not comment on their effectiveness. Nevertheless, any business process should be evaluated regularly and improved or replaced through innovation.
My Innovation
In my own defense, as someone active in the field of innovation, I have worked on two innovations in 2012, one big and one small. Firstly, and most importantly, I have continued developing and refining anticonventional thinking (ACT), an alternative to brainstorming that I developed last year. In 2012, I have demonstrated ACT in workshops, conferences and presentations. As a result of seeing the method in action and seeing how people grapple with the technique, I have refined it, improved it and simplified it into an easy to follow 4-step process. If you look at the ACT process, you will see that it differs considerably from brainstorming in almost every aspect. ACT is based on three areas:
- The latest research into individual and collaborative creativity.
- How highly creative people like artists and writers (I have worked in both areas and am an artist by training) collaborate on creative projects. It is nothing like brainstorming.
- How people achieve goals (if brainstorming does not result in implemented ideas; we need to find a method that is more likely to succeed in this respect).
Linking achieving goals to ACT, in particular, has been a development in 2012. However, there have been numerous other small improvements following each demonstration of the method.
Aside from ACT, I have also collaborated with concert violinist Olga Guy to create a unique ideation and inspiration method: A Journey through the Imagination with Bach. This combines, meditation, complex classical music and ideation to help people journey into their imaginations. Essentially, the process works like this: using techniques inspired by Buddhist meditation, I relax the audience and put them into a semi-meditative state. I then walk them through their logical minds to their imaginations where I tell them that Johann Sebastian Bach will take over. At this time, Olga begins playing Bach's violin sonatas. This all happens while participants are in a highly relaxed, meditative state.
Our experimental debut, at the Brussels Imagination Club, was successful. Although it was our first go (the Imagination Club is a venue for trying out new ideas), the results were impressive. Participants were astounded by the number of ideas that came to mind and the experiences they had with Bach. One person emailed me the next day to say she had woken in the morning full of inspiration on how to solve a work problem that had been vexing her for a long time.
Sadly, however, few clients have shown any interest in the Journey.
In addition to these innovations in my own business, I continue to co-manage the Brussels Imagination Club, providing a venue were facilitators and trainers can experiment with new techniques and concepts in a receptive environment, before an international audience of intelligent, creative people. However, this is about facilitating the creativity of others -- though I occasionally test new ideas at the club.
Your Innovation?
Surely, I am not the only creativity and innovation service provider who has innovated in 2012. Have you? If so, why not share your innovations with the readers of Report 103? Write me and tell me about your innovation. I'd be happy to include it in this newsletter, if appropriate and, of course, if you permit it.
In any event, if you are a consultant in the field of creativity and innovation; if you are telling your clients that they need to innovate in order to survive, then you should be practicing what you preach in 2013. Review your business model, the tools you use and how you deliver your services. And ask yourself how you can radically improve your business in 2013. Ask yourself, how you can innovate in order to deliver more value to your clients.
And, if in your review, you find yourself saying "my business model has worked for years, there's nothing wrong with it"; "brainstorming works for me, the criticism is wrong"; or "I don't know how to innovate in my business" then ask yourself how you would respond to a client who said these things to you. Be your own client.
Let us make 2013 the year we innovate innovation!
ARCHIVES
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Happy thinking!
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