When Financial Advisors Bail Out
Wall Street bail out got you down? Frying over how quickly the value of your home is depreciating? Anxious about the worth of your shrinking stock portfolio? No need to freak out. Keep your chin up. And remember to laugh. All bubbles pop. What goes up must come down. It's a law of nature. Eventually, everything seeks its own level. Like Alec Baldwin, in this funny Saturday Night Live spoof of what's going on with the economy.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 02:05 PM | Comments (0)
September 26, 2008The Rise of the Innovation Ninjas
Every once in a while I come across a quote or excerpt from an article that I want to immediately post on the windshield of every client of mine. It cuts to the chase and lucidly states what I've been trying to say, in various Neanderthalic ways, all these many years.
Take Einstein for example: "Not everything that counts can be counted; and not everything that can be counted counts." Bingo! Bullseye! What a perfect way of explaining to a left-brained addicted world that metrics and analysis is not the only game in town.
And then there's Gary Hamel. He takes a bit more time than Albert to make his point, but hey, it's all relative isn't it? Check this out from the man behind one of my favorite business books of all time:
"Today, innovation is the buzzword du jour in virtually every company, but how many CEOs have put every employee through an intensive training program aimed at boosting the innovation skills of the rank and file? Sure companies have electronic suggestion boxes, slush funds for new ideas, elaborate pipeline management tools, and innovation awards -- but in the absence of a cadre of extensively trained and highly skilled innovators, much of the investment in these innovation enablers will simply be wasted."
"Imagine that you coaxed a keen, but woefully inexperienced golfer onto the first tee at Pebble Beach. After arming the tyro with the latest titanium driver, you challenge him to split the fairway with a monster drive. You promise the neophyte a $100 bonus every time he hits a long bomb that stays out of the rough, and another $100 for every hole where he manages to break par.
But what you don't do is this: You don't give him any instruction -- no books, no tips from Golf Digest, no Dave Pelz and Butch Harmon, no video feedback, and no time off to perfect his swing on the practice range. Given this scenario, how many 200-yard drives is our beginner likely to land in the fairway?
How long is he likely to stay avidly devoted to the task at hand? And what kind of return are you likely to get on the $2,000 you spent on a bag full of high tech clubs and the 450 bucks you shelled out for a tee time? The answers are: Not many, not long, and not much. And no one who knows anything about golf would ever set up such a half-assed contest.
"That's why I'm dumbfounded by the fact that so few executives have invested in the innovation skills of their frontline employees. The least charitable explanation for this mind-boggling oversight: senior managers subscribe to a sort of innovation apartheid.
They believe that a few blessed souls are genetically equipped to be creative, while everyone else is a dullard, unable to come up with anything more exciting than spiritless suggestions for Six Sigma improvements.
A more charitable reading: CEOs and corporate HR leaders simply don't know how to turn on the innovation genes that are found in every human being.
"Obviously, you can't teach someone to be an innovator unless you know where game-changing ideas come from. In other words, you need a theory of innovation -- like Ben Hogan's theory of the golf swing.
This is why, a few years back, I and several colleagues analyzed more than a hundred cases of business innovation. Our goal: to understand why some individuals, at certain points in time, are able to see opportunities that are invisible to everyone else. Here, in a pistachio-sized shell, is what we learned:
Successful innovators have ways of seeing the world that throw new opportunities into sharp relief. They have developed, usually by accident, a set of perceptual "lenses" that allow them to pierce the fog of "what is" in order to see the promise of "what could be." How? By paying close attention to four things that usually go unnoticed:"
1. Unchallenged orthodoxies -- the widely held industry beliefs that blind incumbents to new opportunities.
2. Under-leveraged competencies -- the "invisible" assets and competencies, locked up in moribund businesses, that can be repurposed as new growth platforms.
3. Under-appreciated trends -- the nascent discontinunities that can be harnessed to reinvigorate old business models and create new ones."
4. Unarticulated needs -- the frustrations and inconveniences that customers take for granted, and industry stalwarts have thus far failed to address."
Thanks Gary!
Clearly, what's needed these days are organizations full of Innovation Ninjas. Skillful, agile, perceptive, courageous, and highly trained individuals who know how to find their way through the seeming obstacles in the way in order to get a result.
These obstacles might be "internal" -- as in the outdated assumptions, paradigms, and habits of people with three letter acronyms after their name. OR the obstacles might be "external" -- as in an organization's funkadelic infrastructure, protocols, and processes.
But whatever the obstacles encountered (not counted!), our nimble ninjas of necessity manage to find their way to the goal. Imagine if you had hundreds of these people working in your company. Imagine you had thousands.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:57 AM | Comments (0)
September 24, 2008STICKY IDEA: The Post-It Note As Pure Entertainment
If you can spell "innovation," you've probably heard the story about the origins of the post-it note -- how it was an accident in one of 3M's labs and how Art Frye and others saw a market for something that didn't quite stick all that well.
Relax. I'm not going to tell that story again.
What I AM going to do is call your attention to the next creative use of the omnipresent post-it -- a use you are unlikely to have considered yet: the post-it as pure entertainment.
When you're done viewing the 3:19 video, take a few minutes to conjure up some non-traditional uses of your company's best (or worst) selling product. If you don't work for a company, think of some new uses for whatever product or service you are offering the world these days.
As one wise pundit put it, "Discovery is seeing what everybody else has seen, and thinking what nobody else has thought."
(Thanks to my very creative, 14-year old son, Jesse, for turning me on to this video).
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:26 AM | Comments (0)
September 20, 2008Create an Innovation Portfolio
One of the biggest obstacles to innovation in most organizations is the addiction to short-term results.
Hustling, speed, and fire fighting all too often rule the day -- resulting in the kind of over-caffeinated efforts that make everyone cranky and don't necessarily ensure that next quarter's output will satisfy your Board, stockholders, or key stakeholders.
Focusing on your next quarter, of course, is a necessary part of business. But not to the exclusion of the long-term.
Someone's got to be focused on developing projects that won't see the light of day for 3 years... 5 years.... or even 10 years out. That is, IF you want your organization to be more than just reactive.
If you are serious about innovation, you will need to develop an Innovation Portfolio, one that includes short-term, mid-term, and long-term goals.
Innovation doesn't happen quickly. It takes time.
If you plant an apple seed today, you're not going to get an apple harvest tomorrow... or next week... or next year. Pulling on the seedling or yelling at the tree to deliver apples faster isn't going to work.
Here's an exercise to create your Innovation Portfolio:
1. Define what you mean by "short-term," "mid-term," and "long-term."
2. Make three columns, headed by each of the phrases above
3. Jot down projects, ideas, and initiatives that fit into these three "time horizons."
4. Present this list to your team and get their feedback.
5. Tweak the list as needed.
And now for a joke to help you see the possibility of thinking more long-term...
So there are these three yogis meditating in a cave. They've been there ten years -- in silence the entire time.
One day, in the tenth year of their retreat, an albino mountain lion makes his way to the mouth of the cave and lets out an earth-shattering roar.
Five years pass.
The first yogi says "WOW!"
Another five years pass.
The second yogi, says, "Yeah, I know what you mean."
Five more years pass.
"HEY! If you guys don't shut up," says the third yogi, "I'm moving to another cave."
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 09:37 AM | Comments (1)
September 16, 2008INNOVATION is an INSIDE JOB
These days, almost all of my clients are talking about the need to establish a sustainable culture of innovation.
Some, I am happy to report, are actually doing something about it. Hallelujah! They are taking bold steps forward to turn theory into action. My hat is off to all of them -- and sometimes, my head. Nevertheless, the challenge remains the same for them as it does thousands of other forward-thinking companies and that is, to find a simple, authentic way to address the challenge from the inside out -- to water the root of the tree, not just the branches.
In other words, to get down to the essential DNA of what drives innovation.
In today's process-driven, OD-centric, Six-Sigma savvy organization, the tendency is to focus on systems as opposed to people -- as if systems were sufficient to guarantee change. Guess what? Systems are not sufficient to guarantee change. In the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes, "Systems die. Instinct remains."
One only has to tune into the latest Democratic or Republican spin doctoring to see the folly of our national addiction to systems. Both candidates promising change have a plan, a strategy, and a well-conceived policy. But history has shown that these are never sufficient.
This is not to say that organizations should ignore systems and structures in their effort to establish a culture of innovation. They shouldn't.
But alas, systems and structures all too often become the Holy Grail -- much in the same way that Six Sigma has become the Holy Grail.
Unfortunately, when the addiction to systems and structures rules the day, an organization's quest for a culture of innovation all too often degenerates into nothing much more than a cult of innovation.
Organizations do not innovate. People innovate. Inspired people. Fascinated people. Creative people. Committed people. That's where innovation begins. On the inside.
The organization's role -- just like the individual manager's role -- is to get out of the way. And while this "getting out of the way" will undoubtedly include the effort to formulate supportive systems, processes, and protocols, it is important to remember that systems, processes, and protocols are never the answer. They are the context, not the content. They are the husk, not kernel. They are the menu, not the meal.
Ultimately, organizations are faced with the same challenge that religions are faced with. Religious leaders may speak passionately, on Sundays, about the virtues their congregation needs to be living by, but sermons only name the challenge and remind people to experience something -- they don't necessarily change behavior. Change comes from within the heart and mind of each individual. It cannot be legislated.
What's needed, quite simply, in organizations who aspire to a culture of innovation, is an inner change. InnerVation is what I call it. People need to experience something within themselves that will spark and sustain their effort to innovate -- and when they experience this "something," they will be self-sustaining.
They will think about their projects in the shower, in their car, and in their dreams. They will need very little "management" from the outside. Inside out will rule the day -- not outside in. Intrinsic motivation will flourish. People will innovate not because they are told to, but because they want to. Open Space Technology is a good metaphor for this. When people are inspired, share a common, compelling goal and have the time and space to collaborate, the results become self-organizing.
In the case of my clients, the change they are seeking is "more robust innovation" -- the kind that favorably impacts the bottom line. What does this require? A favorable change within each individual employee. As above, so below. The "Holographic Universe," it has been called.
You can create all the reward systems you want. You can reinvent your workspace until you're blue in the face. You can license the latest and greatest idea management tool, but unless each person in your organization OWNS the need to innovate and finds a way to tap into their own INNATE BRILLIANCE, all you'll end up with is a mixed bag of systems, processes, and protocols -- the husk, not the kernel -- the innovation flotsam and jetsam that the next administration or next CEO or next key stakeholder will mock, reject or change at the drop of a hat if the ROI doesn't show up in the next 20 minutes.
You want culture change? You want a culture of innovation? Great. Then find a way to help each and every person in your organization come from the inside out. Deeply consider how you can awaken, nurture, and develop the primal need all people have to create something extraordinary.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 10:58 AM | Comments (6)
September 15, 2008A Wonderfully Refreshing Review of Awake at the Wheel
As you probably know by now, my book about the creative process -- Awake at the Wheel -- was published in May.
Like most new authors, it's appearance on the scene was a big deal for me. I checked my Amazon ranking five times a day. I did a bunch of interviews. I forwarded the good reviews to all my friends and family.
But after four months, a new book is no longer new.
Which is why yesterday was such a nice surprise. That's when I stumbled across the September 12th review of my book by someone I'd never heard of before, never sent a review copy to, never played the "you scratch my blog, I'll scratch yours" game.
There was something about the review that really touched me. Made me feel that all my howling at the moon was worth it.
So, thank you, Cristina Favreau, for your heartfelt, authentic, and very positive review of Awake at the Wheel.
I thank you. My publisher thanks you. And my fabulous publicist thanks you.
Like Og, you rock.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:52 AM | Comments (0)
September 13, 2008The Paradox of Innovation
My big insight about innovation these days would make Nobel Prize winner, Niels Bohr, proud. "Now that we have met with paradox," explained Dr. Bohr, "we have some hope of making progress."
Innovation is full of it -- paradox, that is.
On one hand, organizations want structures, maps, models, guidelines, and systems. On the other hand, that's all too often the stuff that squelches innovation, driving it underground or out the door. The noble search for a so-called "innovation process" can easily become a seduction, addiction, or distraction whereby innovation is marginalized, deferred, over-engineered, and worn like a badge.
True innovation is about allowing room enough for paradox to be a teacher and guide -- and to accept, at least for a little longer than usual, ambiguity, dissonance, and discomfort -- the age-old precursors to breakthrough. Remember, there's a big difference between Six Sigma and Innovation. Six Sigma is about reducing variability. Innovation is about increasing it-- and that often means allowing the kind of "messiness" that process-mavens interpret as a problem needing to be fixed, rather than a pre-condition to breakthrough and the resulting commercialization of that breakthrough that most people refer to as "innovation."
Yes, process, structures, systems are necessary, but they don't have to become overly pre-emptive. If you stay in an innovative mindset and can adapt to emerging needs, they will eventually become self-organizing when the soul of innovation is allowed to flourish.
Can we help the "innovation process" along with the right application of strategy, infrastructure, and planning? Of course we can. But beware! "Helping" the process too much often becomes counterproductive -- much in the same way that attempting to catch a milkweed floating through the air with a bold reach of your hand actually repels the object of your desire. Innovation Physics 101.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 02:24 AM | Comments (0)
September 08, 2008The Top Seven High Tech Excuses
One way to measure just how omnipresent technology has become in our lives these days is to notice the number of times our EXCUSES include a techno-bent.
In days gone by, breaking a commitment had far more of a human aspect to it, as in "The babysitter was late" or... "I got caught in traffic" or... "The dog ate my homework."
No more. These days, high tech excuses rule -- simple, and often untrue, ways of saving face (and maybe your job.) Here's some of the most common ones:
1. "The server's down."
2. "You're breaking up."
3. "Your email ended up in my spam folder."
4. "I'm out of range."
5. "My laptop crashed."
6. "I can't find my Blackberry."
7. "I forgot to recharge my battery."
I know I'm forgetting some. What? The first three people who send me a reasonable excuse get a free copy of my new book (unless I can think of a really good high tech excuse not to mail it.)
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:36 PM | Comments (9)
September 06, 2008Doing the Seeming Impossible
OK. Here's a wake up call for all of us who think our life or work challenges are impossible. Click below to see what this chap accomplished, then ask yourself whether or not what YOU'RE trying to accomplish (i.e. invent a new product, grow your business, make a new transition, establish a culture of innovation, forgive someone etc.) is really so difficult to pull off.
For more inspiration, click on the link below the YouTube video.
MORE INSPIRATION TO GO BEYOND THE "IMPOSSIBLE"
"Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it." - Goethe
"There is no such thing as a long piece of work, except one that you dare not start. - Charles Baudelaire
"What is now proved was once only imagined." - William Blake
"You must do the thing you think you cannot do." - Eleanor Roosevelt
"Genius is infinite painstaking." - Michelangelo
"A pile of rocks ceases to be a rock pile when somebody contemplates it with the idea of a cathedral in mind." - Antoine Saint-Exupery
"Whenever anything is being accomplished, it is being done, I have learned, by a monomaniac with a mission." - Peter Drucker
"No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered." - Winston Churchill
"If you can dream it, you can do it." - Walt Disney
"I am looking for a lot of people who have an infinite capacity to not know what can't be done." - Henry Ford
And here's an intro to my new book about a neanderthal who also accomplished the seeming impossible. Go for it!
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 08:35 AM | Comments (0)
September 02, 2008How to Increase Your Odds of Getting a Big AHA!
What is it that allows some people to get creative breakthroughs while others get only creative breakdowns -- alternately blaming themselves, society, their company, and their increasingly suspect astrological configurations?
Is it true that people who experience breakthroughs are "gifted"? Or are there other factors at work -- factors that we (the people) have more control over than we might think?
While nobody can deny that some people seem to be blessed with "creative leanings" (i.e. Mozart at 4), research has shown that anyone can increase their chances of coming up with new and original ideas -- even have the much sought after AHA! experience -- that is, IF they immerse themselves in the little understood process of creation.
Time and again, the literature bears this out: great creative breakthroughs usually happen only after intense periods of intention, immersion, struggle -- even madness.
It is sustained and focused effort towards a specific goal -- not luck, wishing, or caffeine -- that ultimately prepares the ground for creative insight.
This kind of effort does not always generate immediate results and sometimes leads people to conclude that it's just not in the cards for them.
Alas, they forget during their inevitable encounters with doubt, that the BIG AHA! is never far away and can happen at any time, any place, under any condition.
Let's take a look at some classic examples:
RENE DESCARTES
Recognized as the "father of modern science," Rene Descartes offers a very interesting footnote to the history of creative breakthrough.
An exceptionally gifted student in 17th century France, young Rene dropped out of school at the age of 17 upon realizing that the only thing he had learned was that he was completely ignorant. Law school proved no better, nor did a brief stint in the military, or an aborted career as a gambler.
Frustrated with the choices available to him, Descartes decided to retire at the ripe old age of 20. While his parents, teachers, and friends pleaded with him to change his mind, young Rene was adamant, and for the next two years did little else but stay in bed, read, think, dream, and write.
Curiously, one night in the second year of his retreat, Descartes had a dream in which the essence of what we now know as the "scientific method" was revealed to him.
In time, his discovery was shared with the scientific community and Western science had a new hero. Ah, the paradox of it all!
While scientists far and wide heralded Descartes for his contribution to Western, rational science, no one (in their right mind) would acknowledge that the root of Descartes' discovery (and indeed, the root of what most scientists today base their knowledge on) came to him in a dream - a non-rational, non-linear, altered state of consciousness in the mind of a dropout!
Descartes story is not at all uncommon.
The truth, the breakthrough, the AHA! came to him only after years of intense, conscious effort. Like ripe fruit, the answer made its appearance at the right time -- a time when he wasn't trying, but had let himself be receptive to the promptings of his own subconscious mind.
ELIAS HOWE
Elias Howe had struggled for years in his attempt to invent a lock stitch sewing machine. His early designs, though inspired, were flawed. Indeed, the needle he designed had a hole in the middle of the shank, which simply didn't work.
Then, one night, depressed at how slowly things were going, Howe dreamed he was captured by a bunch of savages who took him prisoner before the King.
"Elias Howe," screamed the monarch, "I command you upon the pain of death to finish this machine at once!"
Try as he might, Howe still could not find the solution. The King, making good on his word, immediately ordered his troops to take Howe to the place of "execution" (dream pun intended).
As Howe was being led away, he looked up and noticed that the spears the savages were carrying had eye-shaped holes near the top! Voila!
In a flash, Howe awoke, jumped out of bed, and spent the rest of the night whittling a model of the new, improved needle -- the design breakthrough that quickly brought his experiments to a successful conclusion.
RICHARD WAGNER
At the age of 40, Richard Wagner was going through a serious mid-life crisis. His artistic career was stalled, his marriage was falling apart, and his finances were in shambles. Desperate, he decided to travel, hoping to find some inspiration. Traveling, however, only tired him.
Then, one morning, just at the moment when he finally gave up on his frantic effort to invoke his muse, Wagner heard a musical theme in a dream -- one that was about to change his life and the history of music.
Explained Wagner, "After a night spent in fever and sleeplessness, I forced myself to take a long walk through the country. It looked dreary and desolate. Upon my return, I lay down on a hard couch. Sleep would not come, but I sank into a kind of somnambulance, in which I suddenly felt as though I were sinking in swiftly flowing water. The rushing noise formed itself into a musical sound, the chord of E flat major, whence developed melodic passages of increasing motion. I awoke in sudden terror, recognizing that the orchestral prelude to Das Rheingold, which must have lain long latent within me, had at last been revealed to me. I decided to return to Zurich at once and begin the composition of my great poem."
MOZART
A prodigy? Yes. Gifted? Yes. Unusually receptive? Yes. But also tuned in to the state of mind that preceded great creative breakthroughs.
Explained Mozart, "When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone, and of good cheer -- say traveling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep; it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence and how they come, I know not, nor can I force them. Those pleasures that please me, I retain in memory, and am accustomed... to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this or that morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it....agreeably to the rules of counterpoint, and to t he peculiarities of the various instruments. All this fires my soul, and provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodized and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it, like a fine picture or a beautiful statue, at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them.....all at once. What a delight I cannot tell! All this inventing, this producing, takes place in a pleasing lively dream...."
RUDYARD KIPLING
Many people who experience supernormal moments of great creativity report a willingness to let themselves be open to the non-logical, non-linear, and unexplainable promptings of an inner voice.
Maybe you call it a "hunch" or "intuition," but whatever you call it, know that paying attention to it is often the key to manifesting your vision or idea. Rudyard Kipling, the English writer, was very much in touch with this faculty.
"Most men," wrote Kipling, "keep their personal Daemon (guardian spirit) under an alias which varies with their literary or scientific attainments. Mine came to me early when I sat bewildered among other notions. 'Take me and no other,' it said. I obeyed and was rewarded. After that, I learned to lean upon him and recognize the sign of his approach. If ever I held back anything of myself (even though I had to throw it out afterwards), I paid for it by missing what I knew the tale lacked.....I took good care to walk delicately, lest my Daemon should withdraw. I know that he did not, because when my books were finished they said so themselves with almost the water-hammer click of a tap turned off........'Note here.' When your Daemon is in charge, do not try to think consciously. Drift, wait, and obey...."
AUGUST KEKULE
It is not only writers and composers that have creative breakthroughs. Molecular scientists do, too.
Notes the Flemish scientist, Kekule, "One fine evening I was returning by the last bus through the deserted streets of the metropolis, which are at other times so full of life. I fell into a reverie, and lo! the atoms were gamboling before my eyes. Whenever those diminutive beings had appeared to me before, they had always been in motion, but I had never been able to discern the nature of their motion. Now, however, I saw how frequently, how smaller atoms united to form a pair; how a larger one embraced two smaller ones; how still larger ones kept hold of three or even four of the smaller, while the whole kept whirring in a giddy dance. I saw how the larger ones formed a chain....I spent part of the night putting on paper at least a sketch of these dream forms."
Then, years later, the big illumination: "I turned my chair to the fire and dozed. Again the atoms were gamboling before my eyes. This time the smaller groups kept modestly in the background. My mental eye, rendered more acute by repeated visions of this kind, could now distinguish larger structures....long rows, sometimes more closely fitted together; all twining and twisting and snakelike motion. But look! What was that? One of the snakes had seized hold of its own tail, and the form whirled mockingly before my eyes! As if by a flash of lightening I awoke. Let us learn to dream, gentlemen."
Kekule had made a most remarkable discovery -- that benzene is a cyclic or ring structure and the carbon chain at the molecular core of the compound does indeed form a chain that "swallows its own tail".
TCHAIKOVSKY
OK, all you aspiring creators, how about a tip from the man who composed the Nutcracker Suite?
"Generally, the germ of a future composition comes suddenly and unexpectedly...It takes root with extraordinary force and rapidity, shoots up through the earth, puts forth branches and leaves, and finally blossoms....I forget everything and behave like a mad man. Everything within me starts pulsing and quivering. Hardly have I begun the sketch, before one thought follows another. In the midst of this magic process, it frequently happens that some external interruption awakes me from my somnabulistic state....Dreadful indeed are such interruptions....They break the thread of the inspiration."
To learn more about how to get breakthrough ideas, click here.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 08:08 PM | Comments (1)
