Mother Teresa on Innovation (and Life)
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; BE KIND ANYWAY.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends, and some true enemies; BE SUCCESSFUL ANYWAY.
If you are honest and sincere, people may deceive you; BE HONEST AND SINCERE ANYWAY.
What you spend years creating, others may tear down overnight; CREATE ANYWAY.
If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous; BE HAPPY ANYWAY.
The good you do today, will often be forgotten tomorrow; DO IT ANYWAY.
In the final analysis, it's between you and God; IT WAS NEVER ABOUT YOU AND THEM ANYWAY.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 02:42 AM | Comments (1)
August 22, 2009INNOVATION: It's About Time!
During the past few years I've noticed a curious paradox heading its ugly rear among business leaders tooting the horn for innovation.
On one hand they want the rank and file to step up to the plate and own the effort to innovate.
On the other hand, they are unwilling to grant the people they are exhorting any more TIME to innovate.
Somehow, magically, they expect aspiring innovators to not only generate game-changing ideas in their spare time, but do all the research, data collection, business case building, piloting, project management, idea development, testing, report generation, and troubleshooting in between their other assignments.
Tooth fairy alert!
This is not the way it happens, folks! Not only is this approach unreasonable, it's unfair, unbalanced, and unworkable...
You cannot shoehorn game-changing innovation projects into the already overcommitted schedules of your overworked workforce.
If you do, it won't be innovation you'll get, only half-finished projects and a whole lot of cranky people complaining to you in between meetings.
Aspiring innovators don't need pep talks. They need TIME. Time to think. And time to dream. Time to collaborate. And time to plan. Time to pilot. And time to test. Time to tinker. And time to tinker again.
That's why Google and 3M give its workforce 20% of their time to work on projects not immediately connected to its core business. That's why W.L. Gore gives its workforce a half day a week to follow their fascinations. That's why Corel instituted it's virtual garage program.
"Dig where the oil is," Edward deBono once said. Indeed! And where is the oil? Right beneath the feet of each and every employee who is fascinated by the work they do, aligned with their company's mission, and given enough time to make magic happen.
Need proof? 50% of Google's newly launched features were birthed during this so-called "free time" -- midwived by engineers, programmers, and other assorted wizards happily following their muse.
The fear? If you give people "freedom" they'll end up playing video games and taking 3-hour lunches. Alas, when fear takes over, folks, (the same fear Peter Drucker asked us all many years ago to remove from the workplace), vision is supplanted by supervision and all his micromanaging cousins.
Time to innovate is not time wasted. It is time invested.
Freedom does not necessarily lead to anarchy. It can lead to breakthrough just as easily.
Remember, organizations do not innovate. People do. And people need time to innovate. Time = freedom. Freedom to choose. Freedom to explore. Freedom to express. And yes, even freedom to "fail."
If you've hired the right people, communicated a compelling vision, and established the kind of culture that brings out the best in a human being, you are 80% there.
Now all you need to do is find a way to give your people the time they need to innovate.
(And hey, if you've found a way to do this successfully, let us know and we'll share the results with Heart of Innovation readers some time soon.)
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:36 AM | Comments (4)
August 20, 2009Suspend Logic, Linearity, and Analysis!
Perhaps Einstein said it best when he declared "Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted."
He was referring, of course, to the part of the human being that knows intuitively -- the part that is tuned in, connected and already creative. Kids live in this place. The rest of us only visit, preferring the left-brained world of rationality, logic, linearity, practicality and analysis.
On some primal level, we're all from Missouri. We need proof. And while there's nothing wrong with gathering data, the addiction to it subverts our ability to be creative.
We all know this. That's why we go to the movies, the pub, watch TV, read novels, dial 900 numbers, and daydream. We seek an altered state -- one that is free of the normal gravity of daily life...
That's why movie makers ask us to suspend disbelief. That's why brainstorm facilitators ask us to suspend judgment. That's why women (innately intuitive as they are) ask the men in their lives to stop being so damn practical for a change and actually feel something.
It is in this state of suspension that our innate creativity is free to rise to the surface -- over, under and around all of the left-brained guardians at the gate.
And so... if you want to really birth a BIG IDEA, you too will need to enter into this state -- at least in the first phase of your new venture. Suspend judgment. Suspend evaluation. Suspend your addiction to the practical.
What exists on the other side is fuel for the fire of your untapped creativity.
What can you do this week to suspend practicality, logic, and rationality in service to birthing your BIG IDEA?
Excerpted from Awake at the Wheel.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 02:51 PM | Comments (0)
August 14, 2009What Do You Need to Remember?
Poetry, like looking up at the moon instead of down at a Blackberry, is all too rare these days. We need more poetry! We need more poets! We need more business people willing to express their "softer" side on the job -- especially if they want to raise the bar for creativity and bold new ideas. We also need more YouTube videos like this one featuring the delightful words of Poet Laureate Billy Collins. Go, Billy, go!
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 02:10 AM | Comments (1)
August 10, 2009The Top Ten Learning Tools on the Web
Click here for the Top Ten Learning Tools on the web as compiled by the fabulous Jane Hart, Social Media and Learning Consultant.
If you've never seen Jane's E-Learning Pick of the Day site, check it out immediately (or at least by 3:30pm) and discover an extraordinary web resource -- especially if you just can't seem to catch up with all the latest and greatest apps, websites, tools, blogs, and digital goodies.
Last year Jane featured one of our online creative thinking tools. And I'm not talking hammer, chisel, or screwdriver.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 01:30 AM | Comments (0)
It's a Wonderful WorldYour cash flow's in the toilet. Your boss is in distress. Your car is in the shop. But still it's a wonderful world. Today, focus on what's good about your life. See the cup as half full. Count your blessings. Unplug from the madness... and enjoy the puppet show below.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:49 AM | Comments (0)
August 08, 2009Howling Thomas Wolfe
I can't recall reading anything as moving about being at the creative crossroads as the following passage by American novelist, Thomas Wolfe. If you feel like you are on the cusp of a breakthrough (or need to be), this one's for you...
"During this time I reached that state of naked need and utter isolation which every artist has got to meet and conquer if he is to survive at all.
Before this I had been sustained by that delightful illusion of success which we all have when we dream about the books we are going to write instead of actually doing them.
Now I suddenly realized that I had committed my life and integrity so irrevocably to this struggle that I must conquer now or be destroyed.
I was alone with my work and knew that no one could help me with it no matter how much anyone might wish to help...
For the first time I realized another naked fact which every artist must know, and that is in a man's work there are contained not only seeds of life, but the seeds of death, and that the power of creation which sustains us will also destroy us like a leprosy if we let it rot stillborn in our vitals. I had to get it out of me somehow.
I say that now. And now for the first time, a terrible doubt began to creep into my mind that I might not live long enough to get it out of me, that I had created a labor so large and so impossible that the energy of a dozen lifetimes would not suffice for its accomplishment.
During this time, I was sustained by one piece of inestimable good fortune. I had for a friend a man of immense and patient wisdom and a gentle but unyielding fortitude.
I think that if I was not destroyed at this time by the sense of hopelessness which these gigantic labors had awakened in me, it was largely because of the courage and patience of this man.
I did not give in because he would not let me give in, and I think it is true that at this particular time he had the advantage of being in the position of a skilled observer at a battle, covered by its dust and sweat and exhausted by its struggle, and I understood far less than my friend the nature and progress of the struggle in which I was engaged.
At this time there was little that this man could do except observe, and in one way or another keep me at my task, and in many quiet and wonderful ways he succeeded in doing this.
I was now at the place where I must produce.
Even the greatest editor can do little for a writer until he has brought from the secrete darkness of his own spirit into the common light of the day the completed concrete accomplishment of his imagining.
My friend has likened his own function at this painful time to that of a man who is trying to hang on to the fin of a plunging whale, but hang on he did, and it is to his tenacity that I owe my final release."
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 03:24 AM | Comments (0)
