The Write Stuff
I don't usually use this space to promote my friends, but today I'm going to make an exception. My good buddy, Carl Frankel (Princeton graduate, Kingston, NY resident, journalist/writer extraordinaire) has just decided to offer his services as a ghostwriter to movers and shakers and I want you to know that.
Carl has written extensively on a number of subjects and is the author of two books -- Out of the Labyrinth and In Earth's Company -- a book, that according to one reviewer, "took the literature on sustainable development to a new level."
As an editor, Carl played a major role in shaping a book that won a national book award.
If you have a story to tell or ideas to share, Carl's your man. He brings more than three decades' experience to the table as a journalist, writer, and entrepreneur, provides great value, is easy to work with, and cuts to the chase with elegance.
I strongly encourage you to consider working with Carl to share your story with the world.
CONTACT: carlfrankel@gmail.com
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 04:25 PM | Comments (0)
July 30, 2011The Bridge Over the River Loan
![qq4dhbma[1].jpg](http://www.ideachampions.com/weblogs/qq4dhbma%5B1%5D.jpg)
Well, America's financial crisis has finally hit home for me. Today, as I was withdrawing money from my local ATM, the guy behind me -- shirtless and smiling -- asked me if I would be willing to give him a $5,000 "bridge loan" until September.
He goes on to tell me that he's in the process of selling his house and would definitely pay me back in six weeks. Maybe sooner.
Fasten your seat belts, folks! This is going to be an interesting ride.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:04 AM | Comments (0)
July 27, 2011HEY, PERFECTIONISTS!
I know you have a great idea. It's not only cool and unique, it's ready to pilot. You are SO CLOSE to getting it out the door, but... um... er...you keep... tweaking it.
Something in you thinks it's not good enough. You want more data. You want more feedback. You want more confirmation.
STOP THE MADNESS! Let go of your perfectionism. Try something. Anything! Or, as Will Rogers so elegantly put it, "Chaotic action is preferable to orderly inaction."
Free the Genie.
Here's the online version.
And a review of the tool.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 02:20 PM | Comments (1)
July 26, 2011The Big To Do
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 09:43 PM | Comments (0)
10 Tips for Improving Your RFP Process
Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Mitch Ditkoff. I am the Co-Founder of Idea Champions, an innovation consulting and training company headquartered in Woodstock, NY. We've been in business since 1986 and, since that time, have responded to more than 1,200 RFPs.
Along the way, we've noticed a curious trend.
Time and again, we've seen RFP-requesting companies get stuck with a vendor or contract that did not fulfill their needs because their RFP process got in the way -- a process that could have been a lot more effective if only it had been more open, honest, and complete.
And so, as a public service to you and all our other prospective clients, here are 10 simple guidelines to increase the odds of your RFP process getting you the kind of results you are looking for:
10 TIPS FOR IMPROVING YOUR PROPOSAL PROCESS
1. Be Prepared: The odds of us delivering a meaningful proposal to you increase exponentially in response to the accuracy and thoroughness of the input you provide.
If the person you report to has asked you to "google innovation consultants" and put five proposals on his/her desk by next Friday, make sure you are sufficiently briefed so what we deliver to you will be fully aligned with what you really need.
2. Be Clear About Deadlines: Is the proposal you are requesting really due yesterday? The first thing tomorrow? Two weeks from now? Please be willing to give us the scoop on when you really need it and we'll be happy to deliver it by then -- or sooner.
When you give potential vendors a fake deadline, it doesn't bode well for your future working relationship -- one that needs to be rooted in mutual trust, respect, and integrity.
And besides, unnecessarily stressing potential vendors may end up working against you, significantly increasing the odds of you receiving flawed, incomplete, or incomprehensible proposals.
3. Be Transparent: While your proposal process is your business, not ours, there is something to be said for letting us know how many other companies you've invited to respond. If you're asking another 25, our chances are 4% and we might decide not to throw our hat in the ring. Make sense?
If you already know you have only $2,500 to spend on your three-day event in Orlando, let us know that, too. This information will save us the time it takes to write a proposal you will never accept and you the time it will take to read it. Win/Win.
4. Be Ethical: If you are contacting us only to get some useful thought starters about your event or initiative and already know you will not be engaging our services, there's really no need to ask for a proposal.
Chances are good we'll be happy to talk with you about your event, anyway, just for the opportunity to spark a future business relationship with you.
We subscribe to the notion that the more you give, the more you get. But asking us for a proposal that has no chance of being accepted is really not playing fair.
Put yourself in our shoes. The Golden Rule applies.
5. Be Direct About What You're Asking For: If what you mean by "a proposal" is merely our fee, simply ask for it and we'll tell you. It will save us both a lot of time -- and more than a few trees.
If all you need is two pages' worth, mention that, too. If we give you ten and your threshold is two, both of us lose.
6. Be Honest: If you've already decided to engage the services of someone else, but need three competitive bids for "legal reasons," let us know. As part of our newly launched "Consulting Companies for a Proposal Savvy World" campaign, we'll send you -- within 24 hours -- our "They've Already Decided" proposal.
Much less work for us -- and no bad karma for you.
7.Keep Us Posted: At reasonable intervals, after we've submitted our proposal, please be willing to let us know where we stand.
If you haven't read our proposal yet, that's useful to know. If you can't find it, feel free to ask us to send another. If your conference has been canceled, we're just an email away. If you've decided to do it in-house, just holler. If budgets have been frozen... or your CEO has been indicted by the FTC... or you've decided that one of our competitors is the perfect fit, you know where to find us.
This information, delivered in a timely way, will allow us to release the dates we've been holding for you, significantly reducing the odds of you feeling guilty (or cranky) the next time we ask for an update.
8. Respond to Our (Infrequent) Emails: Often, when a prospective client asks us for a proposal, they ask us to "hold the date." This is perfectly understandable. It's common practice.
But sometimes another prospective client, the next day, will ask us for the same date. That's when we'll send you an email and ask for an update.
Since we will have given you the right of first refusal, all you need to do is let us know what's happening. Takes less than two minutes.
9. Provide Authentic Closure: Let's say you decide not to engage our services. Maybe you liked another consultant's approach better or decided to go with the low cost provider.
So be it. Your choice. No problem. Yes, we might be disappointed, but we'll get over it.
What's harder to get over is when there's no closure.
Of course, we realize you owe us nothing. You are not, by law, required to do anything after we submit our proposal. We also realize that your silence isn't synonymous with a lack of care. Indeed, sometimes it's the opposite -- since you may have grown to like us and don't want to be the bearer of bad news.
For us, bad news is better than none.
That's how we learn and, hopefully, get better at responding to your future requests.
And that's not all.
You get to maintain a positive relationship with a company (us) whose services you may want to engage in the future. You also avoid getting a bad rap among the other consulting companies with whom we are regularly in contact.
And we, of course, get the kind of feedback we need help us grow our business. How long does this closure effort take? Three minutes? Five? Ten at the most.
10. Consider Reinventing Your RFP Process: The above nine suggestions, of course, are only from our perspective. We're guessing there are at least a few other improvements you can think of that will significantly raise the odds of your future RFP process being more effective, efficient, and humane.
If you're stuck for fresh ideas about how to improve your RFP process, click here and conjure up some new ways you can change the game for the better.
A big thank you to Paul Roth and Val Vadeboncoeur for their sage input on this topic.
Idea Champions
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Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 02:15 PM | Comments (3)
July 22, 2011I Am Moving to a Blog Cabin
I see the future.
Everyone will have a blog. Every blogger's pet will have a blog. Every blog will have a blog. Every blog's blog will have a blog. No one will be reading any of these blogs because everyone will be too busy writing blogs. (Those with ADD will be tweeting).
Bloggers will occasionally visit other blogs, but only for the purpose of leaving comments that will direct readers back to their own blog.
Letter writing will become popular once again, gaining a new lease on life after the internet crashes repeatedly because of the profusion of blogs, tweets, and youtube videos created by 5-year olds, holographic spammers, robots, and terrorist groups.
Why all the blogging?
Because people want to connect. And WHY do people want to connect? Because there is a fundamental need inside each and every one of us to feel connected.
"Connected to WHAT?" is the question.
Most business leaders are likely to say something like "the marketplace," or "our customers" or "company values," but the real answer is far more fundamental -- your self.
Remember that? The part of you that doesn't have a title, a strategic plan, or a smart phone to keep it all together? That's where innovation begins -- from the inside out. And even more importantly, that's where the real experience of life begins.
Bottom line, for each of us to feel truly connected, we first need to connect with ourselves. Then, and only then, does it make sense to connect with others.
Otherwise, all our efforts to connect will be fundamentally flawed -- tinged with the slightly neurotic need for more approval, information, and virtual friends -- none of which are really necessary once we master the fine art of tapping into who we really are in the first place.
Sort of like putting the isness back in business.
And speaking of the future -- high rises are out. Blog cabins are in.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 05:32 PM | Comments (0)
July 20, 2011Treat Your Clients Like God!
At least once a week I am approached by a struggling entrepreneur and asked how I market my services.
More often that not, I blurt out any number of MBA-like platitudes.
But when I really stop and think about it, my answer morphs into something much deeper.
"I treat my clients like God."
Yup. That's my marketing plan. Plain and simple. I treat my clients like God.
After the proverbial blank stare, the cash-strapped entrepreneur before me relaxes and smiles.
Deep down in their entrepreneurial bones, what I'm saying makes perfect sense.
Treating your clients like God is the way to go -- not as some kind of clever way to get a competitive edge, but because that is what life is all about: Loving what you do. Being fully present. Seeing the beauty in everyone. Expressing your appreciation. Giving everyone the benefit of the doubt. And ultimately, doing great work born of a deep-seated gratitude for the opportunity to serve.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 05:55 AM | Comments (2)
July 19, 2011Musing on Virtual Collaboration
There's an infinite amount of extraordinary experiences you can manifest when you have an inspired vision, the right technology, and committed people willing to go for it. Turn up the volume!
How can you collaborate virtually to create big time results?
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 09:12 PM | Comments (0)
July 18, 2011You May Know Where Good Ideas Come From, But Do You Know Where Babies Come From?
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 09:10 AM | Comments (1)
July 17, 2011Unleash Your Inner Genie, Virtually
In olden times (pre-Starbucks, pre-Twitter, pre-Lady Gaga), the quickest way to get your wishes fulfilled was to rub a magic lamp and wait for the genie to appear.
Times have changed.
Now you need a life coach and a social media strategy.
Me? I long for simplicity.
Breakthrough is not about complexity. It's about getting out of your way long enough to arrive at extraordinary, new possibilities.
Which is why I'm thrilled to announce the launch of Idea Champions' new, virtual Free the Genie tool -- an engaging desktop tool that makes it easy for anyone with a challenge to generate, develop, and share their new ideas with others.
You've heard of the One Minute Manager? Well, this is the One Minute Innovator. Or five. Or ten -- depending on how much time you've got.
Intrigued? Please accept our gift of a free 15-day trial subscription.
So, go ahead. Rub our lamp. Kick our virtual tires. Do whatever it takes to free your genie.
www.freethegenie.com
Free the Genie cards
What organizations say about us
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:32 AM | Comments (1)
July 15, 2011We Need More Poetry!
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 we 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 (3)
July 11, 2011Where Good Ideas Come From
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:44 AM | Comments (4)
July 10, 201150 Awesome Quotes on Vision
1. "If you can dream it, you can do it." - Walt Disney
2. "Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, and magic and power in it. Begin it now." - Goethe
3. "The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it." - Michelangelo
4. "It's not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about?" - Henry David Thoreau
5. "You don't lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case." - Ken Kesey
6. "If you want to build a ship, don't herd people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
7. "Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside awakens." - Carl Jung
8. "The empires of the future are empires of the mind." - Winston Churchill
9. "Vision is the art of seeing things invisible." - Jonathan Swift
10. "Management has a lot to do with answers. Leadership is a function of questions. And the first question for a leader always is: 'Who do we intend to be?' Not 'What are we going to do?' but 'Who do we intend to be?' - Max DePree
11. "Vision without action is a daydream. Action with without vision is a nightmare." - Japanese Proverb
12. "The best way to predict the future is to create it." - Alan Kay
13."Where there is no vision the people perish." - Proverbs 29:18
14. "Vision without execution is hallucination." - Thomas Edison
15. "Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality." - Warren Bennis
16. "If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise." - Robert Fritz
17. "Create your future from your future, not your past." - Werner Erhard
18. "To the person who does not know where he wants to go there is no favorable wind." - Seneca
19. "You've got to think about big things while you're doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction." - Alvin Toffler
20. "To accomplish great things we must dream as well as act.: - Anatole France
21. "A possibility is a hint from God. One must follow it." - Soren Kierkegaard
22. "A leader's role is to raise people's aspirations for what they can become and to release their energies so they will try to get there." - David Gergen
23. "The very essence of leadership is that you have a vision. It's got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully on every occasion. You can't blow an uncertain trumpet." - Theodore Hesburgh
24. "Determine that the thing can and shall be done and then we shall find the way." - Abraham Lincoln
25. "Dreams are extremely important. You can't do it unless you can imagine it." -George Lucas
26. "Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements." - Napoleon Hill
27. "Pain pushes until vision pulls." - Michael Beckwith
28. "Vision animates, inspires, transforms purpose into action." - Warren Bennis
29. "The master of the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which; he simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he is always doing both." - Buddha
30. "Rowing harder doesn't help if the boat is headed in the wrong direction." - Kenichi Ohmae
31. "It's not what the vision is, it's what the vision does." - Peter Senge
32. "In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield." - Warren Buffett
33. "A leader will find it difficult to articulate a coherent vision unless it expresses his core values, his basic identity. One must first embark on the formidable journey of self-discovery in order to create a vision with authentic soul." - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
34. "The best vision is insight." - Malcolm Forbes
35. "You have to know what you want. And if it seems to take you off the track, don't hold back, because perhaps that is instinctively where you want to be. And if you hold back and try to be always where you have been before, you will go dry." - Gertrude Stein
36. "The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge." - Albert Einstein
37. "I try to learn from the past, but I plan for the future by focusing exclusively on the present. That's were the fun is." - Donald Trump
38. "Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world." - Arthur Schopenhauer
39. "People only see what they are prepared to see." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
40. "The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision." - Helen Keller
41. "Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion." - Jack Welsh
42. "A vision is not just a picture of what could be; it is an appeal to our better selves, a call to become something more." - Rosabeth Moss Kanter
43. "If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants." - Isaac Newton
44. "The future belongs to those who see possibilities before they become obvious." - John Scully
45. "If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours." - Henry David Thoreau
46. "Keep your eyes on the stars and your feet on the ground." - Franklin D. Roosevelt
47. "Looking up gives light, although at first it makes you dizzy." - Rumi
48. "You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus." - Mark Twain
49. "In order to be a realist, you must believe in miracles." - - David Ben-Gurion
50. "The real voyage of discovery consists of not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes." - Marcel Proust
Big thanks to Val Vadeboncoeur for locating most of these quotes.
Seize the Future
Free the Genie
Idea Champions
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Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 02:34 PM | Comments (3)
July 08, 2011Introducing Whatify
Whatify.org, a very cool online innovation magazine, has just published my Six Sides of the So-Called Box article (also, by the way, available as an interactive keynote, workshop, or cheese grater).
Check it out, along with a lot of other interesting articles by various mavericks, thought leaders, and unidentified flying consultants.
And while you're at it, here's a few simple things to noodle on before you die:
1. Who are you?
2. Why are you here?
3. How can you make your greatest contribution to mankind?
Six Sides on this blog
Need more time?
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:21 AM | Comments (0)
July 06, 201125 Awesome Quotes on Creativity
"The things we fear most in organizations -- fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances -- are the primary sources of creativity." - Alfred North Whitehead
"The chief enemy of creativity is 'good sense.'" - Pablo Picasso
"Everyone who's ever taken a shower has had an idea. It's the person who gets out of the shower, dries off and does something about it who makes a difference." - Nolan Bushnell
"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones." - John Cage
"As competition intensifies, the need for creative thinking increases. It is no longer enough to do the same thing better . . . no longer enough to be efficient and solve problems." - Edward de Bono
"I make more mistakes than anyone else I know, and sooner or later, I patent most of them." - Thomas Edison
"Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things." - Theodore Levitt
"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources." - Albert Einstein
"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep." - Scott Adams
"Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things." - Ray Bradbury
"Creativity is the sudden cessation of stupidity." - Edwin Land
"There's room for everybody on the planet to be creative and conscious if you are your own person. If you're trying to be like somebody else, then there isn't." - Tori Amos
"The key question isn't 'What fosters creativity?' But it is why in God's name isn't everyone creative? Where was the human potential lost? How was it crippled? I think therefore a good question might be not why do people create, but why do people not create." - Abraham Maslow
"To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong." - Joseph Chilton Pierce
"You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have." - Maya Angelou
"By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The non-existent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired." - Nikos Kazantzakis
"Creativity is discontent translated into arts." - Eric Hoffer
"A truly creative person rids him or herself of all self-imposed limitations." - Gerald Jampolsky
"Things are only impossible until they're not." - Jean-Luc Picard
"Anxiety is the hand maiden of creativity." - T.S. Eliot
"Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous." - Bill Moyers
"The new meaning of soul is creativity and mysticism. These will become the foundation of the new psychological type and with him or her will come the new civilization." - Otto Rank
"The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards."
- Arthur Koestler
"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see."
- Henry David Thoreau
"If you have nothing at all to create, then perhaps you create yourself." - Carl Jung
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Thanks to Val Vadeboncoeur for finding these great quotes.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 01:32 AM | Comments (3)
July 05, 201115 Awesome Quotes on Collaboration
1. "It is the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed." - Charles Darwin
2. "Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much." - Helen Keller
3. "If two men on the same job agree all the time, then one is useless. If they disagree all the time, both are useless." - Darryl F. Zanuck
4. "If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself." - Henry Ford
5. "Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than the one where they sprang up." - Oliver Wendell Holmes
6. "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." - Isaac Newton
7. "It takes two to speak the truth -- one to speak, and another to hear." - Henry David Thoreau
8. "If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas." - George Bernard Shaw
9. "Politeness is the poison of collaboration." - Edwin Land
10. "I never did anything alone. Whatever was accomplished in this country was accomplished collectively." - Golda Meir
11. "It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed." - Napoleon Hill
12. "No matter what accomplishments you make, somebody helped you." - Althea Gibson
13. "The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team." - Phil Jackson
14. "Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success." - Henry Ford
15. "The lightning spark of thought generated in the solitary mind awakens its likeness in another mind." -- Thomas Carlyle
Got others? Lay them on me!
This post is dedicated to Ramsey Margolis
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:27 AM | Comments (1)
July 04, 2011The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face
We now interrupt this blog about innovation and creative thinking to bring you a beautiful song by a relatively unknown singer, Daya Rawat. Hey, it's the July 4th weekend! No working! No heavy thinking. No planning! It's time to celebrate your independence!
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 06:00 PM | Comments (0)
July 02, 2011Dan Pink on Motivation 3.0
Here's a refreshing six-minute interview with Dan Pink (author of Drive and A Whole New Mind) on what it takes for organizations to go from Motivation 2.0 to Motivation 3.0
In other words, how to move towards a workplace environment that creates more soulful employee engagement.
If you're interested in exploring ways of providing employees more time to innovate on the job -- much like Google, 3M, W.L. Gore, and Atlassian have done, this is for you.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 09:28 AM | Comments (0)
