The Ultimate Offsite
Just in case you've been in a coma these past few years, allow me to break the news to you: the spirit in the workplace movement is rapidly gaining momentum.
Untold thousands of dissatisfied US workers are making their way to ashrams, retreats, and yoga centers for something they just can't seem to find at work -- peace of mind.
Overworked, under-appreciated, and newly inner-directed, they are looking for something far beyond the next quarter -- something timeless, sacred, and completely immune to credit default swaps.
That's the good news. The bad? Many of our peace-seeking brothers and sisters seem to be falling prey to the "Starry-Eyed-Syndrome" -- that curious set of behaviors that surface whenever a well-intentioned, but time-crunched person unknowingly associates a place with an experience.
And so, it is with great respect to your personal God, your yoga mat, and your favorite tax-deductible charity, that I humbly offer you the following soul-saving tips should you ever decide to visit (or move into) the spiritual retreat of your choice.
Take what you can, leave the rest, and remember -- it's not whether your shoes are on or off, but if your heart is open.
THE 10 COMMANDMENTS FOR VISITING A SPIRITUAL RETREAT
1. Do Not Change the Way You Walk
Most visitors to a spiritual retreat think they have to change the way they walk if they are truly going to have a meaningful experience. Somehow, they believe there is a direct correlation between the way they move their feet and the amount of "grace" or "blessings" about to enter their lives.
The "spiritual walk," is actually a not-too-distant cousin of the "museum walk," the curious way a person slows down and shuffles knowingly, yet humbly, past a Monet (or is it a Manet?), silently getting the essence of the Masterpiece even as they move noddingly towards that incomprehensible cubist piece in the next room.
If you like, think of the spiritual walk as the complete opposite of the on-the-way-to-work-walk or the exiting-a-disco-in-New York walk.
Simply put, the spiritual walk is a way of moving that practitioners believe will attract small deer from nearby forests -- deer that will literally walk right up to them and eat from their hand -- more proof to anyone in the general vicinity that they are, in fact, enlightened souls, humble devotees, children of God, or the so-far-unacknowledged successors to their guru's lineage.
Ideally, the spiritual walk should be taken in sandals, though Reeboks or Chinese slippers will do in a pinch. Cowboy boots are definitely out, as are galoshes, high heels, and Chuck Taylor Converse All-Stars.
2. Do Not, Under Any Circumstances, Succumb to the Spiritual Nod
Closely related to the spiritual walk, the spiritual nod is routinely practiced in retreats the world over. And while no one completely comprehends it's divine origins, many believe it began when a blissful brother simply forgot the name of his roommate on his way to the bathroom.
Instead of issuing the familiar Sanskrit phrase of the week, our trend-setting friend simply tightened his lips, looked at the ground and... well... nodded.
Now, every time you walk by someone at the ashram, you are half-expected to flash them the nod, the non-verbal equivalent of "Hi! I know you know, and you know I know, and you know that I know that you know, and in my knowing, I know that I know you know, and by so knowing, need not speak, since words are finite and cannot express the knowingness which the two of us (being one) share from such a knowful place. Know what I mean?"
3. Do Not Judge Anyone, Including Yourself
This is the hardest of all commandments to obey. Why? Because spiritual environments not only bring out the best in people, they also bring out the worst. And while the worst is often more difficult to detect than the bliss of people wanting you to notice how blissful they are, the higher you get, the easier it is to notice -- that is, if you are looking for it.
Of course, it would be very easy to spend your entire spiritualized retreat noticing all the subtle ego trips going on around you. Resist this temptation with all your might!
Do not, I repeat, do not, focus on the stuff that would make good material for this article. You have no right. In fact, you have absolutely no idea why anyone is there, what their motivation is, or how they will learn the kinds of lessons you are absolutely sure they need to learn.
In reality, you are most likely seeing your own projections -- those disowned parts of your self that you've refused to acknowledge all these years...
Your spiritual groupie, your brownie point collector, your junkie for more experience, your suburban yogi , your guilty seeker of God, your con man, your eunuch, your resolution maker, your ass watcher, your closet fanatic, your glutton for humble pie, your too poetic definer of ecstasy, your flaming bullshit artist, your know-it-all, your have-it-all, your spring-headed bower towards anyone with more than two devotees.
All of them are you! Every single one of them! Don't judge them. Love them! Bring them tea! Rub their feet every chance you get!
4. Do Not Think That This Is the Only Place Where It Is Happening
Spiritual retreatants have a marked propensity to think that the grounds they inhabit are somehow more blessed than any place else on earth -- that they are privy to a special command performance by God, revealing himself in thousands of exotic ways for those lucky enough to be there, while thousands, nay millions, of George Bush-like souls are stumbling around in uncool places recently vacated by the Power of Life so a very cosmic thing can happen here and only here this weekend.
Life, in fact, is often perceived as so good in the "Center," that the rest of the world becomes eerily cast as the "booby prize."
Indeed, to new age seekers, everything else is simply referred to as "the world," much like Manhattanites speak of New Jersey. In short, the new age retreat comes to represent all that is good -- about God, about the Guru, about life itself.
Somehow ("and I don't know how, but you could ask anyone who was there this weekend") flowers seem sweeter there, the moon seems fuller, the air seems cleaner. Even the bread tastes better. If you glimpse a shooting star at night, it's the "guru's grace." If you see a double rainbow, it's directly over the meditation hall.
I guess it's all in how you look at it. The same shooting star convincing you that your guru is, in fact, the Supreme Guru, was also seen by a plumber named Leroy who just happened to be drinking a beer in between innings of the Mets game. His conclusion? The Mets were gonna win 20 of the next 25 and bring the pennant home to Flushing!
What do the signs in the sky (or what we perceive as signs) really mean? Isn't the whole world our ashram? Isn't the real issue one of appreciating what is happening all around us? The flowers? The stars? The beggars asking for spare change?
Flowers aren't any sweeter on retreat. It's our willingness to breathe deeply and enjoy them that's different. What's stopping us from being in this place right now? What's stopping us from realizing that the very ground beneath our feet is the promised land -- wherever we happen to be at the time.
5. Don't Put a Red Dot on Your Forehead If You Don't Want To
Unless you've been living in a trailer park your whole life, you probably already know what the red dot thing is all about. That's right. The third eye. The sixth chakra. High holiness. INDIA!! While sometimes mistaken for a beauty mark or a random bit of watermelon, the little red dot is actually a useful reminder to focus one's attention on the space between the eyebrows, which, for some people, is where God lives (or if not lives, at least vacations). Nothing wrong with that, now is there?
Still, you have to concede that the third eye isn't the only spot on the human body that's sacred. What about the earlobes? The belly button? The nipples? They come from God, too -- not too mention chakras #1 - 5 and the highly under-represented center of consciousness at the crown of the head. Sacred, every one of them!
Don't you think that, if the body is the temple of the soul, it follows that our entire physical structure is sacred? Shouldn't we be covered from head to toe with little red dots? And if so, why is it that we routinely quarantine people with measles -- the very people who have selflessly chosen to manifest disease just to remind us to honor our body's ultimate holiness?
6. Play With the Children
The only sentient beings free from the collective mentality of spiritual seekers are the children. Children visiting "holy places," in fact, behave the same way the world over no matter what adjectives their elders use for the unspeakable name of God. When they're hungry, they eat. When they're tired, they sleep. They cry when they want to, laugh for no reason, consume ice cream without guilt, and rarely wonder why your picture of the Master is bigger, newer, or better framed.
7. Fart At Your Own Risk
If you fart, and there's no one around to hear it at the ashram, did it happen? And if it did happen, does that mean you've been disrespectful? Is the resident Guru able to hear you? And if he or she is meditating, out of the country, or dead, is their guru or their guru's guru able to hear you? And if so, so what? Will you be reborn as a gerbil? Does the Guru fart? And if it's OK for him or her to pass wind, why not you?
OK, so it's their place and you're a guest. But after all, aren't we all guests here? Even the Guru? Who do they answer to? And if it's not the same one you're answering to, what the hell are you doing getting up at five in the morning and sitting in the lotus position?
Maybe the real question isn't whether or not it's permissible to fart on holy ground, but how you fart. For instance, if you're farting out of a blatant disregard for the Master's teachings or the sincerity of his or her followers, you might want to reconsider where you're coming from. However, if your farting is just a random release of gas, relax! Give yourself the benefit of the doubt. You see, a typical visit to a spiritual center quickens one's ability to "let go" -- so what you call "farting" may, in fact, be a timely sign of your evolving spiritual condition.
8. Do Not Think You Are Higher or Lower Than Anyone Else
One of the favorite pastimes of people visiting a spiritual retreat is comparing themselves to everyone else. "See the guy over there carrying firewood? He's a very old soul -- way older than me. Been on the path for years. And that dude laughing hysterically in the corner? That's Shiva. Oops, he can probably see through me, maybe I better walk around the other way."
Want to save yourself some time? Don't try to figure out how "on the path" anybody else is. It's impossible. Stare into the eyes all you want, watch for tell-tale signs of liberation, but when it comes right down to it, the only conclusion you'll reach will be your own -- one that may have absolutely nothing to do with the anything but your own projections.
Face it, how accurate is your assessment going to be when 99 percent of humanity couldn't tell that the carpenter from Galilee had something special going for him?
Indeed, it's not at all unlikely that the beer-bellied, first-time visitor you met this morning at the ashram is, at this very moment, being treated like a spiritual mongoloid by everyone who meets him (repeatedly being asked if "this is your first time") when, in fact, the beer-bellied, first-time visitor is actually the reincarnation of Buddha.
9. Do Not Think That You Are Going to Get Something
Many people visit a a spiritual retreat because they want to get something. They want "clarity" or "contentment," "enlightenment" or "grace," "blessings" or "peace of mind." At the very least, they want their business to improve or their marriage to be saved.
Alas, they miss the point completely: If you try to get, you will lose, left only with the sinking feeling of having just bought $300 worth of lottery tickets only to learn that some electrician from Staten Island just won the whole thing.
Look, it's really very simple. You don't go to a spiritual center (or a Big Time Teacher, for that matter) to get. You go to give, to let go -- to relax your grip on the very thing that's been separating you from getting all these years: Your grasping. Your fear. Your well-rehearsed strategy to realize God.
10. Do Not Feel Compelled to Change Your Name
OK, so your name is Joey. Ever since you were knee high to a jar of Cheese Whiz, everyone called you Joey -- as in, 
"Hey, Joey, what's goin' down, bro'?" Yeah, you grew up in Brooklyn, cut school once a week, and dated a chick named Angela with very big boobs.
Great. So, here you are at the ashram and ba-bing, you run smack into a bunch of dudes with names like Arjuna, Govinda, Namdev,Shanti, Krishna. "Hey," you think to yourself, "maybe they got something I don't."
Guess what? They do. They have spiritual names given to them by their Guru -- names that make their mothers somewhat close-lipped around the canasta table. And while these names are clearly given with a purpose, the fact of the matter is -- they are irrelevant. Do you think the people in India who have spiritual experiences get their names changed to Eddie, Gino, Stacey, or Shirley ?
Hey, what difference does it make? You are not your name -- even if your namesake was enlightened. It doesn't matter what they call you, when it's time to go, you're gone.
The only name worth knowing at that time is God's name -- and that, my friend, no matter how many mantras you've memorized, can never be pronounced.
It's All WITHIN You!
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 10:48 PM | Comments (0)
October 30, 2011100 Awesome Quotes on What It Really Takes To Innovate
1. "I want to put a ding in the universe." - Steve Jobs
2. "Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them." - Alfred North Whitehead
3. "Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next." - Jonas Salk
4. "If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong." - Charles Kettering
5. "Security is mostly a superstition. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing." - Helen Keller
6. "If you can dream it, you can do it." - Walt Disney
7. "You can't solve a problem on the same level that it was created. You have to rise above it to the next level." - Albert Einstein
8. "Do not fear mistakes. There are none." - Miles Davis
9. "The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect, but by the play instinct arising from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the object it loves." - Carl Jung
10. "There is only one thing stronger than all the armies of the world: and that is an idea whose time has come." - Victor Hugo
11. "If you lose the power to laugh, you lose the power to think."
- Clarence Darrow
12. "Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen." - John Steinbeck
13. "To accomplish great things we must dream as well as act." - Anatole France
14. "It is the essence of genius to make use of the simplest ideas."
- Charles Peguy
15. "There's no good idea that cannot be improved on." - Michael Eisner
16. "We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are." - Anais Nin
17. "We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything."
- Thomas Edison
18. "The best vision is insight." - Malcolm Forbes
19. "Genius is infinite painstaking." - Michelangelo
20. "Nothing will change the fact that I cannot produce the least thing without absolute solitude." - Goethe
21. "Neither a lofty degree of intelligence, nor imagination, nor both together, go to the making of genius. Love, Love, Love. That is the soul of genius." - Mozart
22. "Swipe from the best, then adapt." - Tom Peters
23. "Give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself." - Robert Louis Stevenson
24. "You can expect no influence if you are not susceptible to influence." - Carl Jung
25. "Whether or not you can observe a thing depends upon the theory you use. It is the theory which decides what can be observed." - Albert Einstein
26. "Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it." - Goethe
27. "Sit, walk, or run, but don't wobble." - Zen proverb
28. "The greater the contrast, the greater the potential. Great energy only comes from a correspondingly great tension of opposites." - Carl Jung
29. "We don't know who discovered water, but we're certain it wasn't a fish." - John Culkin
30. "I will act as if what I do will make a difference." - William James
31. "There is no such thing as a long piece of work, except one that you dare not start." - Charles Baudelaire
32. "What is now proved was once only imagined." - William Blake
33. "Remember, a dead fish can float down a stream, but it takes a live one to swim upstream." - W.C. Fields
34. "99 percent of success is built on failure." - Charles Kettering
35. "If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail." - Abraham Maslow
36. "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts." - Albert Einstein
37. "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." - F. Scott Fitzgerald
38. "The ultimate creative thinking technique is to think like God. If you're an atheist, pretend how God would do it." - Frank Lloyd Wright
39. "I start where the last man left off." - Thomas Edison
40. "Never confuse motion with action." - Ernest Hemingway
41. "The greatest invention in the world is the mind of a child." - Thomas Edison
42. "No matter how well you perform, there's always somebody of intelligent opinion who thinks it's lousy." - Sir Laurence Olivier
43. "You must do the thing you think you cannot do." - Eleanor Roosevelt
44. "I'll play it first and tell you what it is later." - Miles Davis
45. "The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away." - Linus Pauling
46. "Discovery is seeing what everybody else has seen, and thinking what nobody else has thought." - Albert Szent-Gyorgi
47. "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
48. "Without a deadline, baby, I wouldn't do nothing." - Duke Ellington
49. "You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take." - Wayne Gretzky
50. "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few." - Shunryu Suzuki
51. "Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity." - General George Patton
52. "The man with a new idea is a crank - until the idea succeeds." - Mark Twain
53. "A problem well stated is a problem half solved." - Charles Kettering
54. "The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil." - Thomas Edison
55. "Don't be afraid to take a big step when one is indicated. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps." - David Lloyd George
56. "The silly question is the first intimation of some totally new development." - Alfred North Whitehead
57. "A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor." - Victor Hugo
58. "Money never starts an idea; it is the idea that starts the money." - William J. Cameron
59. "Systems die; instincts remain." - Oliver Wendell Holmes
60. "You will never find the time for anything. If you want time, you must make it." - Charles Burton
61. "Whenever anything is being accomplished, it is being done, I have learned, by a monomaniac with a mission." - Peter Drucker
62. "One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive one." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
63. "The lightning spark of thought generated in the solitary mind awakens its likeness in another mind." - Thomas Carlyle
64. "I failed my way to success." - Thomas Edison
65. "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead
66. "The way to succeed is to double your failure rate." - Thomas Watson, (Founder of IBM)
67. "Innovation opportunities do not come with the tempest but with the rustling of the breeze." - Peter Drucker
68. "The enterprise that does not innovate ages and declines. And in a period of rapid change such as the present…the decline will be fast." - Peter Drucker
69. "You can only be as good as you dare to be bad." - John Barrymore
70. "No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered."
- Winston Churchill
71. "Conclusions arrived at through reasoning have very little or no influence in altering the course of our lives." - Carlos Casteneda
72. "After years of telling corporate citizens to 'trust the system,' many companies must relearn instead to trust their people - and encourage their people to use neglected creative capacities in order to tap the most potent economic stimulus of all: idea power." - Rosabeth Moss Kanter
73. "If the creator has a purpose in equipping us with a neck, he surely would have meant for us to stick it out." - Arthur Koestler
74. "If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself." - Rollo May
75. "Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have." - Emile Chartier
76. "There's always an element of chance and you must be willing to live with that element. If you insist on certainty, you will paralyze yourself." - J.P. Getty
77. "Almost all really new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are just produced." - A.N. Whitehead
78. "Our best ideas come from clerks and stockboys." - Sam Walton
79. "The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge." - Albert Einstein
80. "Every act of creation is, first of all, an act of destruction." - Pablo Picasso
81. "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana." - Groucho Marx
82. "Imagination is more important than knowledge." - Albert Einstein
83. "Genius, in truth, means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way." - William James
84. "Vision is the art of seeing things invisible." - Jonathan Swift
85. "The best way to predict the future is to create it." - Alan Kay
86. "If you go to your grave without painting your masterpiece, it will not get painted. No one else can paint it." - Gordon MacKenzie
87. "Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most." - Fyodor Dostoevsky
88. "There is a vitality, a life force, that is translated to you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium, and will be lost." - Martha Graham
89. "We have approximately 60,000 thoughts in a day. Unfortunately, 95% of them are thoughts we had the day before." - Deepak Chopra
90. "Confusion is a word we have invented for an order that is not yet understood." - Henry Miller
91. "I refuse to be intimidated by reality anymore. What is reality? Nothing but a collective hunch." - Lily Tomlin
92. "Now that we have met with paradox we have some hope of making progress." - Niels Bohr
93. "Microsoft is always two years away from failure." - Bill Gates
94. "We've reached the end of incrementalism. Only those companies that are capable of creating industry revolutions will prosper in the new economy. - Gary Hamel
95. "If I have a thousand ideas and only one turns out to be good, I am satisfied." - Alfred Noble
96. "I've been doing a lot of abstract painting lately, extremely abstract. No brush, no paint, no canvas, I just think about it." - Steven Wright
97. "You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new." - Steve Jobs
98. "I am looking for a lot of people who have an infinite capacity to not know what can't be done." - Henry Ford
99. "You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can't get them across, your ideas won't get you anywhere." - Lee Iacocca
100. "I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones." - John Cage
Idea Champions
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Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 10:48 PM | Comments (5)
Act As If!
Do you know what the opposite of a "professional" is?
A "con-fessional."
And, at the risk of being unprofessional, here's mine:
One of the great secrets to manifesting anything on planet Earth is to act as if -- to proceed in the spirit of already having succeeded -- or what Steven Covey refers to as "beginning with the end in mind."
Why is this important?
Because you already are what you profess to be, even if it's not apparent yet.
This state of mind, which is the polar opposite of doubt, could easily be construed to be some kind of con game. But it's not.
In a con game, the intention is to deceive -- to manipulate others by pretending to be something you're not.
When you act as if, you are simply being that which you already are, but hasn't manifested yet.
You are, as described in the introduction to Awake at the Wheel, the IDEA of something not yet fully embodied.
The intention, always, in the game of creation, is never to deceive, but to CONCEIVE -- to bring into being a positive, life-affirming outcome.
When you, with integrity, act CONFIDENTLY (from the Latin "con-fide" -- meaning "with faith"), you are not playing a "confidence game" -- you are jump starting the creative process.
Got it? Good.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
1. Suspend all doubt.
2. See your BIG IDEA as already manifested.
3. Fully express yourself from that place -- with authenticity, style, and a good sense of humor.
Excerpted from Awake at the Wheel: Getting Your Great Ideas Rolling (in an uphill world).
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 02:17 PM | Comments (5)
October 28, 2011This Just In! The Turbo Encabulator!
There's a reason why the expression "ideas are a dime a dozen" is so popular. Because it's true. Everyone and their mother has ideas. Where the rubber meets the road is HOW those ideas are communicated. When it's done well, magic happens. When it's not...
How can your organization improve it's idea pitching process?
Big thanks to Brigitta Rubin for the heads up!
Idea Champions
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 08:39 PM | Comments (0)
October 27, 2011Five Ways to Jump Start a Culture of Innovation
Trying to create a culture of innovation is a daunting task for even the most committed organization.
Cultures take decades to form. Changing them is not an overnight phenomenon, no matter how many outside consultants you've gotten on the case. You might as well try to end world hunger or wipe out Aids overnight. It's gonna take a while.
But if you and your colleagues are game, culture change is possible. The question, of course, is where to begin?
Starting is always the hardest part. And, in the absence of clarity about where to start, procrastination creeps in -- and nothing changes.
OK. Enough preamble. Here are five ways to get started. Pick one or all five -- and don't forget to enjoy the process.
1. Name the Beast: If you want to change something, you will need to begin by understanding the current reality of that which you attempting to change. Make sense?
If you're getting into a new market, for example, you'd expect to do some competitive intelligence gathering, right? And if you've decided to parachute into Iran, it would make sense to do some diligence, before hand, no?
Same with the effort to foster a culture of innovation.
Get closer to the problem. Talk to people. Survey your workforce. Get everyone talking -- not just the C-Suite folks, but the people in the mail room, too.
Get off of the generic, politically correct stand that may be ruling the day and get down to the bones.
Then, when you make your case, more formally, you'll have some meaningful ground to stand on -- and the people listening will listen deeper than if you merely showed up one day with a few powerpoint slides, an anecdote from Google, and your newly expressed burning passion for the cause.
2. Set the Expectation: You get what you expect. That's the deal. Psychology experiment after psychology experiment has borne this out again and again.
You need a very strong intention to do this work and then you need to communicate it in a way that is compelling.
Your workforce needs to understand this is not the job of senior leadership, or HR, or R&D. It's everyone's job. Only when a critical mass of people in your organization embraces this effort will anything substantial happen.
If not, you will be wasting your breath -- and their time.
3. Define Innovation: Google "innovation" and you'll find thousands of definitions.
What do you mean by "innovation?" What is your definition? How do you want people thinking about it?
Is it incremental innovation? Disruptive innovation? Product innovation? Process innovation? Or is the whole thing really just a secret code for "cost cutting?"
Before anything significant can happen, you'll need to get aligned with your senior team about what, precisely, you mean by innovation -- and then communicate that, with some passion, to the workforce.
4. Frame the Challenges: OK. Let's say you want a sea change of innovation within your organization. Great. But in what specific domains? What are the specific challenges people can get their arms around and actually focus on?
As Charles F. Kettering once said, "A problem well-defined, is a problem half solved."
Towards that end, you and your team will need to dive in and start framing the problem. Not vaguely. Not generically. Very specifically. The clearer you are about communicating the domains in which you are asking people to innovate, the more results will show up.
The framing of the challenge, however, is not just your job. You'll need to invite others to get into the act.
If you've done your "name the beast" effort (see #1), this should be relatively easy.
5. Acknowledge What's Already Working: Lots of organizations who dive into the deep end of "culture change" have a tendency to get a sudden case of amnesia when it comes to their corporate history.
Inspired by the promise of the new, they forget to acknowledge the old -- paying precious little attention to what's already working well.
There are a ton of best practices already going on in your organization. There are many inspired "pockets of creativity" where turned-on-teams are doing exactly what they need to do to succeed.
The only thing is: very few people in the company know about this.
Everyone is so enmeshed in their own silos, that they have no clue what innovation-friendly behaviors are alive and well just down the hall -- behaviors they can learn from, adapt, and get rolling within their own spheres of influence.
Building on past successes will not only encourage people, it will guide their journey forward in ways that are empowering, uplifting, and real. And while you're at it, don't forget to routinely acknowledge current successes, as well -- the good things that happened today.
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Thanks to Tim Gallwey for his refinement of #5.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 02:58 PM | Comments (0)
October 26, 2011The Divided Brain
Excellent TED presentation by Iain McGilchrist on the two sides of the brain, beautifully animated by the wizards at RSA Animate.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:49 PM | Comments (0)
October 25, 2011Brainstorming vs. Braincalming
If you work in a big organization, small business, freelance, or eat cheese, there's a good chance you've participated in at least a few brainstorming sessions in your life.
You've noodled, conjured, envisioned, ideated, piggybacked, and endured overly enthusiastic facilitators doing their facilitator thing.
You may have even gotten some results. Hallelujah!
But even the best run brainstorming sessions are based on a questionable assumption -- that the origination of powerful, new ideas depend on the facilitated interaction between people.
You know, the "two heads are better than one" syndrome.
I'd like to propose an alternative for the moment: "two heads are better than one sometimes."
For the moment, I invite you to consider the possibility that the origination of great, new ideas doesn't take place in the storm, but in the calm before the storm... or the calm after the storm... or sometimes, even in the eye of the storm itself.
Every wonder why so many people get their best ideas during "down time" -- the time just before they go to sleep... or just after waking... or in dreams... or in the shower... or in the car on the way home from work?
Those aren't brainstorming sessions, folks. Those are braincalming sessions. Incubation time.
Those are time outs for the hyperactive child genius within us who is always on the go.
Methinks, in today's over-caffeinated, late-for-a-very-important-date business world, we have become addicted to the storm.
"Look busy," is the mantra, not "look deeply."
We want high winds. We want lightning. We want proof that something is happening, even if the proof turns out to be nothing more than sound and fury.
High winds do not last all morning. Sometimes the storm has to stop.
That's why some of your co-workers like to show up early at the office before anyone else has arrived. For many of us, that's the only time we have to think.
"The best thinking has been done in solitude," said Thomas Edison. "The worst has been done in turmoil."
I'm not suggesting that you stop brainstorming (um... that's 20% of our business). All I'm suggesting is you balance it out with some braincalming. The combination of the two can be very, very powerful.
HERE'S A FEW WAYS TO GET STARTED:
1. In the middle of your next brainstorming, session, restate the challenge -- then ask everyone to sit, in silence, for five minutes, and write down whatever ideas come to mind. (Be ready for the inevitable joking that will immediately follow your request). Then, after five minutes are up, go "round robin" and ask everyone to state their most compelling idea.
2. Ask each member of your team to think about a specific business-related challenge before they go to bed tonight and write down their ideas when they wake up. Then, gather your team together for a morning coffee and see what you've got.
3. Conduct your next brainstorming session in total silence. Begin by having the brainstorming challenge written on a big flip chart before people enter the room. Then, after some initial schmoozing, explain the "silence ground rule" and the process: People will write their ideas on post-its or flip charts. Their co-workers, also in silence, will read what gets posted and piggyback. Nobody talks.
It's your decision, at the end of the idea generating time, if you want the debrief to be spoken -- or if you want people to come back the next day for a verbal debrief.
"Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Idea Champions
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The Virtual Option
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Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 10:23 PM | Comments (4)
October 24, 2011Innovating Is Just Like Dancing
Whatever your innovation goals are for 2012 -- take a cue from the Nicholas Brothers. If you can innovate as well as they can dance, you are home free. Check out their timing, synchronicity, flexibility, creativity, and style -- all clues about to how to deliver an extraordinary outcome.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 03:27 PM | Comments (1)
October 23, 2011Innovation Often Begins with a Feeling
If you want to innovate, put aside your Six Sigma charts and graphs for a moment and tune in to that still, small voice inside you -- often called intuition. It's trying to tell you something. What?
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 04:51 PM | Comments (1)
October 21, 2011Who Says Miss America Candidates Don't Know Their Stuff?
This is a spoof on the goofy ways in which Miss America candidates have answered serious questions in the past. Very funny.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 06:04 AM | Comments (0)
October 20, 2011Drive Fear Out of the Workplace!
As I understand it, Peter Drucker (world class management guru) was totally committed to driving fear out of the workplace.
He knew (as you do, on a good day) that you cannot have a successful business if fear is running the show.
Fear constricts. Fear depresses. Fear limits the amount of options you have because survival rules the day -- and when survival rules the day, we end up operating like Neanderthals -- perceiving everything as a threat to our well-being.
What's fascinating about this is that all of us, at some level, are afraid -- and we end up bringing our fear into the workplace.
What kind of fear?
Fear of change. Fear of making a mistake. Fear of failure. Fear of being dominated. Fear of being judged. Fear of feedback. Fear of disappointing others. Fear of being overwhelmed. Fear of commitment. Fear of being manipulated. Fear of working hard and having nothing to show for it. Fear of losing your job. Fear of being penniless. Fear of other people. And on and on and on...
Well, then... what to do with all this fear business?
First off, recognize that you (and everyone else around you) is human and, as such, is subject to fear (and fear's second cousins -- anxiety, worry, discomfort, nervousness, agitation, and projection).
Secondly, realize that fear ("False Evidence Appearing Real") is not who you are and not what you want and that it is definitely possible to go beyond it.
And thirdly, do what you can to find the place inside yourself that is free of fear -- the place of faith, confidence, relaxation, clarity, innovation, trust, and resilience.
If you can't find it (and some days it ain't easy), connect with a co-worker, friend, or teammate and air it out. Don't keep your fear bottled up. It will eat you alive from the inside.
Remember, if you are feeling fear, acknowledge it. As Fritz Perls once put it, "Awareness cures." Just being aware of the fact that you are feeling fear, is the first step towards it dissipating.
And remember this: Fear is not necessarily a bad thing. It can also serve you.
Indeed, it was very useful for our Neanderthalic ancestors to feel fear from time to time. Why? Because it alerted them to real danger that needed to be dealt with. It got their adrenelin pumping enough to run from the saber-toothed tiger.
The fact that you are feeling some fear today may simply be due to the fact that you are actually sensing danger (i.e. funky business systems, bad accounting, lack of budgets, poor teamwork, old mindsets) that will eventually bring your business down unless something useful is done. So, that's a good thing.
But it's only a good thing if you let the fear you are feeling translate into intelligent action. Otherwise, you run the risk of being gobbled up by your fear which only leads to crappy feelings of powerlessness, hopelessness, and overwhelm -- not exactly the drivers of innovation and success.
Of course, if there is no saber-toothed tiger (down the hallway, around the corner, in the next office), then there's really no reason to be afraid, is there? If the saber-toothed tiger is only in your mind, you have the option to dismiss it. "Down boy!"
A QUICK GUIDE TO GOING BEYOND FEAR:
1. Acknowledge it.
2. Write down what you are afraid of (or anxious about).
3. Tell someone (a friend, teammate, your boss, your FB friends).
4. Item by item, come up with a game plan for what you (and your company) can do to address the root causes of what it is that is sparking fear in you.
5. Acknowledge your successes each time your fear subsides and is supplanted by relaxation, ease, insight, breakthrough, and success.
OK, oh brave readers of this blog, what else can you do to transmute your fear into breakthrough? Tell us. Leave a comment. Share your wisdom with us.
If we get enough juicy suggestions, we'll publish something like "50 Awesome Things You Can Do to Go Beyond Fear."
Who We Are
Companies that have not been afraid to hire us
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 10:25 AM | Comments (0)
The Origins of the Stop Sign
I've been doing some fascinating research lately on the origins of common objects in our lives -- things we see daily, but often take for granted.
Like the Stop Sign, for example.
Most people think the Stop Sign was created to regulate traffic. Not true.
According to Dr. Ellison Burke of the Global Institute for Slowing Things Down Before You Hurt Yourself Badly, the origin of the Stop Sign has nothing to do with traffic -- and dates back several thousand years.
Historical references to the Stop Sign have been noted in more than 27 civilizations, most notably Babylonia, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Sumeria, Crete, Rome, and the Han Dynasty.
According to social scientists, each of these civilizations experienced one or more periods of rapid growth now referred to in the literature as "Societal Acceleration Syndrome" -- the way in which daily transactions speed up in proportion to a civilization's escalating Gross National Product.
In other words, speed has become one of the most statistically predicable indicators of a civilization's development and, as I will get to later in this posting, eventual decline.
My research doesn't end here, however.
In each of the above-mentioned civilizations, there have always been a small, but vocal, group of citizens who -- concerned about the quickening pace of daily life -- have warned about this phenomenon.
Indeed, a joint longitudinal study conducted by the Yukon Archeological Institute and the Asian Society for Shorter Haiku, has revealed that this "small, but highly committed group of citizens" has made repeated efforts to diffuse their respective society's "escalating addiction to velocity."
In Sumeria, for example, a fringe group of philosophers and poets routinely posted "Styopsian" signs at strategic intersections throughout the country -- not to stop traffic, but to stop unnecessary "mind movement."
Their effort resonated with the citizenry and eventually led to the widespread appearance of what modern day sociologists now refer to as "stop signs" -- in urban centers, small villages, cattle crossings, universities, and even cornfields.
One of the most curious facts I've unearthed in my research is this: For the past 2,000 years, Stop Signs, regardless of the country of origin, have always been octagonal.
Apparently, each side of this iconic 8-sided, cross-cultural symbol of hoped-for stillness, has been imbued with a secret teaching of great import:
1. Slow down
2. Pay attention
3. Look around
4. Pause
5. Look within
6. Breathe deeply
7. Appreciate
8. Move consciously
And so... the next time you see a Stop Sign, you may want to remember that you are in the act of receiving a very ancient message -- one that preceded Starbucks, Twitter, YouTube, MTV, and email by thousands of years.
Next week... the YIELD SIGN.
ED NOTE: It has recently come to my attention that some readers of this blog have questioned my research methods and the veracity of my findings. A quick Google search of "Dr. Ellison Burke" and the "Global Institute for Cross-Cultural Studies," they claim, reveals not a single link. Frankly, I am baffled by their assertions and have assigned five of my brightest research assistants to get to the bottom of this immediately. In the meantime, you may want to contemplate the semi-ancient words of modern day social scientists, Simon and Garfunkel:
"Slow down, you're moving too fast. Ya gotta make the morning last..."
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:12 AM | Comments (4)
October 19, 2011Stocks Are Not the Only Thing That Appreciate
I have been an innovation consultant since 1986 and have worked with hundreds of organizations in more than 15 industries. The products and services of my clients have all been different -- as have their acronyms, mission statements, and cafeteria food.
But they all have one thing in common -- and that is a pronounced tendency to undervalue the power of appreciation.
Sure, they give out gold watches and Employee of the Month awards, but the simple act of acknowledging and appreciating each other on a daily basis is in woeful short supply.
The reasons are many.
Too many managers have come to believe that the expression of appreciation will be counterproductive, leading to a self-satisfied workforce -- a workforce that will be entitled and unmotivated.
The perceived lack of time is another reason.
Most people's plates are so full these days that the time and attention it takes to acknowledge another for their efforts is considered a luxury that cannot be afforded.
A third reason?
The majority of people who work in an organization do not know how to appreciate others. It is not, shall we say, their default condition.
Why should this matter to your organization?
Because there is a direct correlation between appreciation and success. The more appreciation, the more morale improves and the more moral improves, the more willing people are to go the extra yard.
Indeed, recent U.S. Department of Labor data shows that the number one reason people leave their jobs is that they do not feel appreciated. When you quantify the cost of recruiting, orienting, and training people, that adds up. Big time.
Further research has revealed that companies that effectively value and appreciate their employees enjoy more than triple returns on equity and assets and achieve higher operating margins than companies that do not.
Time and again it has been proven: money is not the key driver of employee satisfaction. It is the experience of being appreciated.
"Celebrate what you want to see more," advises management consultant, Tom Peters.
"Appreciate everything your associates do for the business," advised Sam Walton, former CEO of Walmart. "Nothing else can quite substitute for a few well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise."
Mother Teresa agrees: "There is more hunger for love and appreciation in this world than for bread."
The paradox?
Business leaders want their stocks to appreciate, but they don't see the relationship between rising stock prices and the rise in employee performance that comes from employees being genuinely appreciated.
In what ways can YOU lead the charge by authentically expressing your appreciation to someone with whom you work?
GOOD NEWS: I will be giving two keynotes, this week, at Mitre, on this very subject. Contact me if you'd like to get the ball rolling in your organization.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 01:24 PM | Comments (2)
October 18, 2011100 Reasons to Go Within
Since the beginning of time, and even last Thursday, there have always been inner-directed people living on planet Earth -- sincere seekers of truth who realized that the business of life wasn't necessarily a life of business.
They wanted more out of life than stock options, a corner office, and a 401K.
Some of these people radically turned away from the marketplace and ended up in caves, forests, or spiritual retreats. Some sought the guidance of Great Masters. Others, stayed closer to home and simply checked out their nearest yoga class.
Have you ever wondered why people make this choice -- what moves a person to go beyond business as usual and turn within? Well, I have -- and here they are -- 100 of the most common reasons.
Yours may be on it. If it isn't, just let me know and I will add it to the next edition.
100 Reasons to Go Within
1. You just lost your job.
2. Oprah told you to.
3. Your 401K is now a 101K.
4. The world always seems to let you down.
5. You're not getting any younger.
6. You've always been curious about this "going within" business.
7. Someone you love just died.
8. You think the Dalai Lama is cool.
9. You read it in a book.
10. Your girlfriend ran away with your therapist.
11. Your house just burned down.
12. Watching Dancing With the Stars no longer does it for you.
13. You're an unhappy atheist.
14. You've recently been diagnosed with a terminal disease.
15. You're about to have a root canal.
16. Your three-year plan has revealed itself to be a total charade.
17. It's free.
18. You have a living Master who keeps reminding you to go within.
19. Your wife, husband, kids, and hair have all left you.
20. You like what Jesus had to say about it.
21. There's no time like the present.
22. You had a near death experience a while ago, but could never figure out how to stay in that blissful place.
23. Your team just lost the Big Game and you realize that everything you give yourself to in this world eventually disappoints.
24. You're stuck in traffic
25. You're on your death bed
26. You're on vacation
27. Inner space is a lot more interesting than outer space.
28. Space is curved. If you looked long enough through a powerful enough telescope, you'd end up seeing your own butt.
29. You've always been fascinated by the lives of sages, saints, and monks.
30. Nothing else seems to be working for you.
31. You want to build your house of bricks.
32. You've seen Avatar twice.
33. You always knew that going within was important.
34. You finally figured out that the entire world is your projection and the flickering images on the screen aren't the only thing to focus on.
35. There's nothing good on TV.
36. You lost the remote.
37. You lost your way.
38. You read Siddhartha.
39. You'd rather have your own experience than read about someone else's.
40. You love George Harrison.
41. You want to lower your stress.
42. Googling it didn't get you anywhere.
43. You don't believe your own story anymore. (And you're tired of telling it).
44. You realize that your personality is a complete fabrication and you want to find out who (or what) exists behind the mask you call your "self."
45. Your best friend suggested it.
46. You're the reincarnation of Shiva.
47. You're the reincarnation of Shiva's chiropractor.
48. You keep wondering why the spelling of "Shiva" and "Yeshiva" are so similar.
49. You've always favored silence and simplicity.
50. When you go to a video store, it takes you a long time to find anything you want to rent.
51. You once heard Prem Rawat talk about it and it sounded really good.
52. You went on a retreat last month and, even though the people there seemed to be completely full of themselves, smiled too much, and didn't have a sense of humor, you liked the way you felt when you weren't busy judging them.
53. It's good for your blood pressure.
54. You'd rather be on the inside than the outside.
55. The Dow is down (but not the Tao).
56. Your server is down.
57. All roads lead to Om.
58. You don't want to end up like the musk deer who wanders forever in search of the intoxicating fragrance that emanates from its own navel.
59. You prefer Rumi, Hafiz, and Kabir to Lady Gaga.
60. For thousands of lifetimes this is what you've done.
61. Your moon is in the House of Pies.
62. You want to find out what Prem Rawat meant when he said that "there are a lot of people who know there is a drop in the ocean, but only a few who know there is an ocean in the drop."
63. You want your mojo back.
64. Face it. You're just not that happy with your current state of affairs (even though you always tell people you are "fine" when they ask you how you are). It's kind of like you have a low grade virus or know there is a party going on nearby that you haven't been invited to and can't figure out why.
65. The happiest moments of your life have been listening to your Master speak about the beauty of going within.
66. You want shelter from the storm.
67. You've always sensed there was something universal inside of everyone -- far beyond religion or philosophy -- and you want to know what it is.
68. You read Be Here Now many years ago.
69. You're tired of waiting for Christmas, retirement, or a positive cash flow.
70. You've heard there's is at least one living Teacher who can show you how.
71. You'd rather know the "I" than the iPhone.
72. Three magi from Jersey City just showed up at your door. They are each holding a large pepperoni pizza and telling you that you better go within or they're gonna break your kneecaps.
73. Hey, if it doesn't work out, you can always get back into that network marketing thing.
74. Your favorite part of every meal is grace.
75. You don't need any credentials.
76. It's sugar free.
77. Some time ago, for no apparent reason, you experienced a profound sense of gratitude, expansiveness, and joy. Everything made perfect sense. Alas...that feeling came and went. Now you want to get it back.
78. Rush Limbaugh has nothing to do with it.
79. It's non-caloric.
80. Every time you go to a bookstore, you find yourself wandering around the spiritual section.
81. When you were a little kid you alternated between feeling like an orphan and a visitor from another planet. You always wanted to "go home." Now you understand that home is not a geographical place, but a state of consciousness and "going within" has something to do with it.
82. Sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll took you only so far.
83. You realize that Buddha, Jesus, Krishna, and Lao Tzu can't all be wrong.
84. Your most favorite people on planet Earth have all committed to this journey.
85. You understand that to "go within" you don't need to give up bowling, poker, steak, sex, baseball, beer, crossword puzzles, scrabble, sushi, cappuccino, square dancing, break dancing, blogging, basketball, William Burroughs, designer jeans, Otis Redding, jello, science fiction, bonsai trees, tweeting, fruit loops, weightlifting, jazz, bargain hunting, coin collecting, the Kabaalah, dirty jokes, making fun of politicians, arm wrestling, Bruce Lee, Lee Marvin, Marvin Gardens, toasted marshmallows, and googling your own name when no one is watching.
86. You don't want anything else.
87. You realize that if you can't be happy in your own skin, nothing else is ever going to matter.
88. Your favorite songs are all love songs.
89. You feel a deep thirst within that cannot be quenched by anything else.
90. You want to.
91. You have to.
92. It's time.
93. You know that God is within and you would like to make his/her/its acquaintance.
94. Did I mention that you're not getting any younger?
95. Tick tock tick tock.
96. You're tired of the rat race.
97. You've been looking for love in all the wrong places.
98. You're almost coming to the end of this list.
99. You're almost coming to the end of your life.
100. Rush Limbaugh has nothing to do with it.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:58 PM | Comments (1)
October 17, 2011The Value of Nothing
When children are born prematurely, they're placed in incubators. When fields stop producing, farmers let them lay fallow. When baseball players are in a prolonged slump, they're given a day off.
It's the same with innovators -- or should be.
They, too, need to incubate. They, too, need to lay fallow. They, too, need time off. You already know this. That's why you often choose to "sleep on it" before making a big decision.
Pausing isn't procrastinating. It's an act of renewal -- a chance to relax and let your subconscious shine -- a phenomenon that's all-too-rare these days -- especially in organizations where everyone is overworked, overwhelmed, and over-caffeinated.
Face it. Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing.
THE TECHNIQUE
1. The next time you are working hard, but getting no results -- notice it.
2. Take a break.
3. Breathe.
4. If you feel the urge to produce, let the urge pass.
5. During this time, notice the ideas that come to you -- and write them down.
Excerpted from Awake at the Wheel.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 10:24 PM | Comments (1)
October 16, 2011We Want Your Big Fat Opinions!
There are a few things that readers of this blog have in spades: curiosity, passion, a fascination for innovation, and a good sense of humor.
There is one thing they don't have (or, at least, not much of -- and that is time).
Which is why we (Idea Champions) have decided to translate a number of our highly regarded workshops and trainings into online webinars. Which ones? Well, that's for YOU to decide.
Based on the feedback we receive, we'll pick the five most popular and kick our development process into ultra high gear.
And don't worry, you don't have to work in a big organization to sign up. We'll also be offering a series of open enrollment webinars -- priced just right for these financially meltdowny times.
Your next step? Let us know what you think. That's it.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:06 AM | Comments (0)
October 15, 2011How 13-Year Olds Can Wipe Out Terrorism
OK. I know this headline seems bold. Even presumptuous. But bear with me. I'm inspired. And even more than that -- on the brink of a breakthrough
But first, some back story...
A year and a half ago, my awesomely cool, smart, and creative daughter, Mimi (in the orange glasses above), turned 13 and invited 12 of her girlfriends to our house for a celebrational sleepover.
The first 30 minutes were great as each girl, gift in hand, was dropped off by a parent, who, upon surveying the room, offered my wife and I a glance of great compassion as if to say "Better you than me."
The girls? Don't ask...
They talked. They texted. They talked. They texted. Ate chocolate. Brushed hair. Played music. Painted fingernails. Laughed. Texted. Called friends. Finished not a single sentence, rolling their eyes every time a parent entered the room.
Mindful of my daughter's need for space and my own weird tendency to be a little too present when her friends were around, I retreated to my bedroom like some kind of mid-western chicken farmer looking for a storm shelter.
I tried reading. I tried napping. I tried meditating.
Nothing worked.
My attention was completely subsumed -- taken over by an invisible vortex of swirling social networking energy being channeled by a roomful of partying 13-year old girls -- the next generation of, like, whatever.
And then, with absolutely no warning, everything became suddenly clear. In a flash, I understood exactly how to end terrorism once and for all.
THE PLAN:
For starters, the government flies a squadron of 13 year-old girls to Guantanamo -- or wherever high profile terrorists are being interrogated these days.
The girls, impeccably guarded by the highest qualified soldiers available, are walked into a prison waiting room where the shackled terrorists are already sitting.
Immediately, the girls begin texting, eating chocolate, talking, painting fingernails, and exponentially interrupting each other with a steady stream of "OMG's" and other, esoteric internet acronyms none of their parents have a clue about.
The prisoners, at first, find the whole thing amusing -- a delightful break from their dreadful prison routine. They smile. They wink. They remember their youth.
But the girls, wired to the max (sugar and wi-fi), radically pick up the pace of their texting and talking like some kind of futuristic teenage particle accelerator.
After five minutes, the prisoners stop smiling. After ten, they become silent. After twenty, they start twitching. A lot.
They try covering their ears with their shackled hands, but the chains are too short. They start looking madly around the room, hoping to catch the eyes of their jailers -- but their jailers sit motionless, miming the movements of the twelve texting teenagers.
A few of the terrorists start crying. A few go catatonic. And then, the roughest looking of the bunch -- a tall man with a long, jagged scar on his left cheek -- calls out in his native language.
"STOP! I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE! I'll TELL YOU EVERYTHING YOU WANT TO KNOW."
The guards nod and switch on the nearest tape recorder. But it's totally unnecessary.
The girls, totally tuned into the terrorists' confessions as if watching the finals of American Idol, are texting everything they hear to a roomful of Pentagon heavyweights in an undisclosed location.
The information proves vital to our national defense.
Within three days, a record number of terrorist cells are taken down. Word gets out to the global terrorist community and, in only a matter of weeks, it becomes impossible for the Jihadist movement to recruit.
Yes, of course, the ACLU raises a stink about this "new strain of American torture," but a thorough investigation by a bi-partisan task force of international peacekeepers proves to be inconclusive. No long-term damage to the prisoners can be detected.
On a roll, my daughter and her rock-the-world friends create a Facebook Group that teaches other 13-year old girls how to help the cause. A movement is born.
Soon, hundreds of teenage girl "patriots" are dispatched to war zones around the world -- radically decreasing the incidence of terrorism on all seven continents.
Subsequent interviews with former Jihadists reveal that merely the threat of being in a room with 12 texting 13-year old girls was enough to get them to lay down their homemade bombs and return to farming.
Peace comes to the Middle East. Pakistan and India make up. (Make up, girls!) The Golden Age begins.
As you might guess, HBO and Hollywood come calling.
Big time producers want to do a reality show and a major motion picture, but the girls -- newly inspired by the impact they've had on the world -- refuse to become a commodity as they prepare (OMG!) for summer camp and 8th grade and the September launch of that next, cool cell phone with the incredible keyboard.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:37 PM | Comments (2)
October 14, 2011100 Reasons Why You Won't Read This Blog Posting
I know you have no time. YOU know you have no time.
I know you're not gonna do anything you don't wanna do. YOU know you're not gonna do anything you don't wanna do.
We both know you're not going to read this blog post. It's too long and you have more important things to do.
What follows are 100 other reasons why you won't read it.
1. You don't want to.
2. You are late for a very important date.
3. You can't think of a way to monetize the experience.
4. You don't like blog postings with clever, little titles.
5. You don't know how to read.
6. You have to go to your health club to work off last night's two margaritas.
7. Someone stole your identity and you don't know who you are.
8. You've got to walk the dog.
9. You are wary of any list longer than ten.
10. Something is beeping just a few feet away from you, but you can't seem to find it.
11. It's none of my business.
12. You have to get to the airport (bathroom... meeting... dry cleaners... grocery store... movie theater).
13. You just had three shots of tequila and when you read the title you thought it said, "50 Seasons You Won't Seed the Post Toastie."
14. You're obsessing about cash flow.
15. You've got to check your kid's Facebook messages again -- especially after reading last night's really rude ones from those 497 FB friends you've never met.
16. You're out of range.
17. You're out of time.
18. You're out of money.
19. You're out of your mind.
20. You're out of excuses.
21. Anytime anybody comes off as seeming to know what you will do or won't do, you immediately do the opposite, (but you're wise to me and realize that you'd be playing into my hands by doing the opposite, so you are not reading this, which, by the way, was exactly what I predicted.)
22. You associate lists like this with superficial feature stories in Vogue or Redbook.
23. You realize that the entire universe is an illusion.
24. You need a break.
25. You took a break and now you're broke.
26. You have ADD or the latest medical condition invented by the pharmaceutical industry to sell you more drugs your health plan won't cover.
27. You have an acute case of blogitis.
28. You'd rather tweet.
29. You're late for your session with your therapist.
30. Your therapist would rather tweet.
31. You've got to check your Match.com page to see if anyone wants to go for a long walk with you on the beach.
32. You've got to change your e-Harmony profile. You haven't gotten an email from anyone in weeks.
33. You're thinking of starting your own business.
34. You're thinking of starting your own blog.
35. It's time to meditate.
36. You have an undeniable need to eat chocolate, but can't find anything in the house. Wait a minute! What about that Baker's Chocolate on the back shelf?
37. The oil spill has reached your front door.
38. You're too busy complaining to anyone who will listen about Facebook's privacy policies or lack thereof.
39. You're trying to find out how you can get a free 15-day trial to my new, online creative thinking tool.
40. These two bloggers walk into a bar.
41. Anyone here from Cleveland?
42. You're waiting for this posting to come out as a YouTube video.
43. You've only got two minutes left of battery life and if you don't book a cheap flight to Chicago, you're screwed.
44. You're certain it's all part of a vast right wing conspiracy.
45. Your wife/husband/boyfriend/girlfriend/mother/father/kids are on your case for spending too much time on the computer.
46. You're in the Federal Witness Protection Program and are convinced someone will track you down for reading this.
47. The tea kettle is whistling.
48. You're trying to figure out if the Isle of Langerhans is in the Carrribean or your pancreas.
49. You're waiting for your assistant to bring you the Executive Overview.
50. You're waiting to be important enough to have an assistant.
51. You're waiting for Godot.
52. You're a waiter and your shift starts in ten minutes.
53. The BIG GAME is on.
54. You're suspicious of anything that can't be reduced to 140 characters.
55. You're still counting hanging chads.
56. You live in New York City and have to move your car to the other side of the street.
57. It's not part of your 12-Step program.
58. Even though you had that fabulous laser surgery on both your eyes, you can't seem to find your new, inexpensive reading glasses.
59. You've just figured out how much it's going to cost to send your kids to college.
60. The Ambien's kicking in.
61. A Jehovah's Witness is at your door.
62. The pizza guy is at your door.
63. You suddenly realize you didn't order pizza.
64. Maybe it's a serial killer at your door -- not exactly the perfect time to be reading 100 reasons why you won't read this.
65. The moon is in Aquarius.
66. Your mind is in the gutter.
67. You're downloading free iPhone apps you will never use.
68. You're trying to figure out what Apple's next product that begins with "I" will be (I-Give-Up?, I-Matey?, I-Coulda-Been-A-Contenda?).
69. It's been five minutes since you've logged onto Facebook.
70. Karma.
71. You think blogging is a fad.
72. Nostradamus didn't predict it.
73. It's not in the Bible.
74. Just because.
75. You're a big fan of Sarah Palin.
76. You read my last list of 100 things and you figure that one list of 100 from someone named Ditkoff is enough.
77. You're not as open to possibility as you think you are.
78. See # 61.
79. You just got pulled over by a state trooper who saw you about to read my blog while doing 55 mph in a hospital zone.
80. You weren't breast fed.
81. You were thinking about the need your company has to establish a sustainable culture of innovation -- the kind that would make it much easier for everyone to bring the best of their innate creativity to the table on a daily basis.
82. There's something about blogs that put you off. I mean, don't these people have anything better to do?
83. Your boss is standing in the doorway, arms folded, frowning, as if to say, "Back to work, slacker. We've got a business to run!"
84. You're feeling a compelling need to find someone who can teach you how to run kick-ass brainstorming sessions.
85. Someone's on Line 2.
86. You think there must be some kind of marketing campaign behind this and I'm probably gearing up to sell you something you don't need -- and even if you did need it, clicking this link would end up getting you a whole bunch of emails that have nothing to do with your real interest (which is to read the next item on this fabulous list of 100 reasons why you won't read this fabulous list). I rest my case.
87. You've just been acquired by Google.
88. You figure that anyone who would bother writing a list of 100 reasons why you wouldn't read the list he wrote is either insane, unemployed, or your brother-in-law.
89. BTW, if you know of a good publisher who would be interested in publishing my next book, Wisdom at Work, contact me in the next 11 seconds.
90. You live on an asteroid.
91. Your hemorrhoids are acting up.
92. You've heard it said that reading long blog postings written by total strangers leads to the "harder stuff."
93. You're afraid of commitment. Always have been.
94. You haven't read my book yet.
95. You have more important things to do. (Then again, you always say that.)
96. You really need to get back to writing your screenplay.
97. Someone just mentioned you look a lot like Johnny Depp and you've got to find an agent fast.
98. You majored in economics.
99. Bottles of beer on the wall.
100. You're waiting for the results of the focus group.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 05:06 PM | Comments (6)
The Nancy Factor
See the picture to your left? Of course you do. That's Nancy Seroka, Idea Champions' Director of Operations, World Class Administrator, and Queen of Client Relations.
Without Nancy, there would be no Idea Champions. Nancy is the glue, the DNA of Details, the one who minds the store while the rest of us are on the road, in the clouds, or otherwise engaged.
For the past 13 years, Nancy has been juggling hundreds of Idea Champions projects with style, class, and heroic effort. The fact that she is still somewhat sane astounds me.
Sometimes, I regret to say, I am blind to how much value Nancy adds to our business. You see, she does what she does with so much precision and consistency that I often don't even notice it.
I am not alone in this regard. Indeed, I am betting that a lot of you reading this rant also have a Nancy in your business life -- someone who keep things together, supports you way beyond the call of duty, and makes magic happen while you're consumed with the details of your business life.
You have come to expect this kind of extraordinary contribution from others. You think it's "their job" -- and barely notice. Not a good idea.
Hey, you don't notice the air, either, but just imagine if it wasn't there.
And so, it is with great respect for Nancy -- and all that she is and all that she does -- that I implore you to pause for a moment and honor all of the Nancies in your life -- all of the people "behind the scenes" who are, day-by-day, minute-by-minute, helping you grow your business.
I'm not talking about the token giving of roses on "Secretary's Day". No.
I'm talking about being far more present and acknowledging of all the people who support you, without whom you would be howling at the moon, walking in circles, or looking for a job.
So, thank you Nancy. You are an inspiration and a life saver.
And should I forget, tomorrow... next week ... next month ... or next year to acknowledge you for all you are and all you do, I humbly ask your forgiveness.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 10:13 AM | Comments (1)
October 13, 2011John Lennon on Life
Innovators: You may be conjuring up an unbelievably cool future product or service, but please remember that THIS MOMENT is precious. Be present with your wife, husband, children, friends, neighbors, customers, clients, and self. Smell the flowers!
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:04 PM | Comments (0)
October 12, 201150 Awesome Quotes on Risk Taking
1. "Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it." -- Goethe
2. "Security is mostly a superstition. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing." -- Helen Keller
3. "It's not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It's because we dare not venture that they are difficult." -- Seneca
4. "Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far it is possible to go." -- T.S. Eliot
5. "What you have to do and the way you have to do it is incredibly simple. Whether you are willing to do it is another matter." -- Peter Drucker
6. "Go out on a limb. That's where the fruit is." -- Jimmy Carter
7. "I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it." -- Pablo Picasso
8. "Life is being on the wire, everything else is just waiting. -- Karl Wallenda
9. "If things seem under control, you are just not going fast enough." -- Mario Andretti
10. "Don't be afraid to take a big step. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps." -- David Lloyd George
11. "It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all." -- William James
12. "Do one thing every day that scares you." -- Eleanor Roosevelt
13. "Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else's." -- Billy Wilder
14. "The dangers of life are infinite, and among them is safety." -- Goethe
15. "Do not fear mistakes. There are none." -- Miles Davis
16. "A man would do nothing, if he waited until he could do it so well that no one would find fault with what he has done." -- Cardinal Newman
17. "Test fast, fail fast, adjust fast." -- Tom Peters
18. "Never let the odds keep you from doing what you know in your heart you were meant to do." -- H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
19. "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." -- Mark Twain
20. "Leap and the net will appear." -- Zen Saying
21. "The way to develop self-confidence is to do the thing you fear and get a record of successful experiences behind you. Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved." -- William Jennings Bryan
22. "Pearls don't lie on the seashore. If you want one, you must dive for it." -- Chinese proverb
23. "Nothing will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must be first overcome." -- Samuel Johnson
24. "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." -- Anais Nin
25. "Are you placing enough interesting, freakish, long shot, weirdo bets?" -- Tom Peters
26. "Take calculated risks. That is quite different from being rash." -- General George Patton
27. "I can accept failure. Everybody fails at something. But I can't accept not trying. Fear is an illusion." -- Michael Jordan
28. "Opportunity dances with those on the dance floor." -- Anonymous
29. "Yes, risk-taking is inherently failure-prone. Otherwise, it would be called 'sure-thing-taking.'" -- Jim McMahon
30. "People who don't take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year." -- Peter Drucker
31. "Necessity is the mother of taking chances." -- Mark Twain
32. "99 percent of success is built on failure." -- Charles Kettering
33. "Progress always involves risks. You can't steal second base and keep your foot on first." -- Frederick Wilcox
34. "What great thing would you attempt if you knew you could not fail?" -- Robert Schuller
35. "Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers." -- Mignon McLaughlin
36. "You can only be as good as you dare to be bad." -- John Barrymore
37. "Anything that is successful is a series of mistakes." -- Billie Armstrong
38. "Give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself." -- Robert Louis Stevenson
39. "If it's a good idea, go ahead and do it. It's much easier to apologize than it is to get permission." -- Rear Admiral Grace Hopper
40. "If you risk nothing, then you risk everything." -- Geena Davis
41. "Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most." -- Fyodor Dostoevsky
42. "Remember, a dead fish can float down a stream, but it takes a live one to swim upstream." -- W.C. Fields
43. "Take risks: if you win, you will be happy; if you lose, you will be wise." -- Anonymous
44. "To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself." -- Soren Kierkegaard
45. "You'll always miss 100% of the shots you don't take." -- Wayne Gretzky
46. "It is only in adventure that some people succeed in knowing themselves." -- Andre Gide
47. "Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
48. "One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time." -- Andre Gide
49. "Danger can never be overcome without taking risks." -- Latin Proverb
50. "I'll play it first, and tell you what it is later." -- Miles Davis
Thanks to Val Vadeboncoeur for gathering these goodies. If you have other favorites, let us know.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 09:31 AM | Comments (2)
The Power of Positive Feedback
Most high level executives do not expect a lot of recognition from others. Nor do they give a lot of recognition to others.
Many managers are like the guy who, when his wife complains that he doesn't tell her he loves her any more, responds that he told her he loved her when he married her -- and he would have let her know if anything had changed.
Similarly, most managers act as if the act of hiring an employee is recognition enough -- and they would have let them know if anything changed.
This in spite of the fact that every one of these managers wants to be valued and appreciated by their superiors, and is regularly disappointed by the lack of appreciation coming their way.
There is a great fear that only the most extraordinary achievements warrant recognition and that all "just good" or superior performance is merely what should be expected and does not require any special recognition...
The fear is that "excessive" recognition will dilute the praise, cheapen it, and reduce future motivation for outstanding performance.
The data, of course, indicates otherwise.
Mere acknowledgment of good performance increases the probability of more good performance. And specificity of feedback -- telling the person exactly what you liked about what they did and why you liked it -- dramatically increases the likelihood of that performance occurring again.
Giving people clear targets increases the likelihood that those targets will be hit, even if no incremental reward is associated with success. Hitting a valued target is rewarding in itself.
If we can get to a place where we are more generous and specific in our positive feedback, we will notice a dramatic increase in the quality of performance and overall satisfaction with work.
- Barry Gruenberg
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 08:53 AM | Comments (1)
October 11, 2011IPhone, IPod, IPad, IPaid
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 10:48 PM | Comments (0)
October 10, 2011The Six Sides of the So-Called Box
Unless you've been in a coma for the past 20 years, I'm sure you're familiar with the phrase "get out of the box." It's everywhere. Whole industries have sprung up around it, including mine.
No one can deny that getting out of the box is a good thing to do. Seems like a no-brainer, eh? Kind of like helping little old ladies cross the street. Or tearing down the Berlin Wall.
But before you start planning your heroic escape, answer me this:
What the heck is the box, anyway?
What is this so-called thing that keeps us so contained, confined, caged, trapped, claustrophobic, and otherwise unable to succeed?
Let's start with the basics. A box has six sides, including the top and the bottom.
If we can understand what these six sides are, we'll know what we're dealing with -- and this knowledge will improve our chances of getting out. Or, as Fritz Perls once said, "Awareness cures."
Let us proceed...
1. FEAR: If you want to raise the odds of being trapped in a box for the rest of your life, all you need to do is increase the amount of fear you feel.
Fear inhibits. Fear paralyzes. Fear subverts action. Indeed, when fear rules the day, even reacting is difficult. Fear not only puts us in the box, it makes it almost impossible to get out the box.
Fear of what?
Fear of judgment. Fear of failure. Fear of change. Fear of the unknown. Fear of being revealed to be an impostor. Fear of this. Fear of that. And fear of the other thing, too.
Do you think it's an accident that Peter Drucker devoted his entire life to driving fear out of the workplace? Or course not.
Fear sucks. And precisely what it sucks is the life right out of you. There is no box without fear. Get rid of fear and you get rid of the box.
2. POWERLESSNESS: Powerlessness is the state of mind in which people think they have no choice -- that they are victims of circumstance, that the act of attempting anything new is futile.
It's why Dilbert has become the patron saint of most cubicle dwellers.
Some in-the-box people have dwelled in the state of powerlessness for their entire life, going all the way back to childhood, overpowered (or disempowered) by parents, schools, and who knows what else.
If you work in a corporation, you've seen this powerlessness paradigm in spades -- as the "powers-that-be" don't always take kindly to the ideas, input, and grumblings of the "rank and file."
If you're feeling powerless, not only are you in the box, it's highly unlikely that you'll be able to muster the energy, intention, or urgency to get out of it.
3. ISOLATION: Boxes are usually small and confining. Rarely is there room for more than one person. Isolation is the result. There's no one to talk to, no one to bounce ideas off of, no one to collaborate with.
Curiously, solitary confinement is the biggest punishment our society doles out -- second only to the death sentence. Being cut off from the tribe has been a very effective "behavior modification" technique for centuries.
When you're in the box, that's exactly what's happening.
And while your isolation may give you a momentary feeling of much-needed privacy, safety, and relief from the judgment of others, it's fool's gold. Sitting in the dark, being completely on your own, vision obscured -- all reduce your chances of getting out.
4. ASSUMPTIONS: Assumptions are the guesses we make based on our subjective interpretation of reality. They are short cuts. Lines drawn in the sand.
We end up taking things for granted because we are either too lazy to get down to the root of things or too entranced by our own beliefs to consider an alternative.
Ultimately, it is our assumptions that shape our world. The world is the screen and we are the projector, seeing only what we project -- which is all too often merely a function of the assumptions we've made.
As one wise pundit once put it, "When a pickpocket meets a saint, all he sees our pockets."
Bottom line, we see what we are primed to see. Change your assumptions and you change the world -- starting with your own.
5. MENTAL CLUTTER:
If you find yourself in the box, it would be fair to say that the box contains you. But what do you contain?
If you are like most people in today's over-caffeinated, twitterfied, fast food, information overloaded world the answer is: too much.
With the amount of information doubling every few years, most of us have way too much on our minds. Too much to do and not enough time.
We have no time for musing. No time for pondering. No time for reflecting. No time for contemplating, incubating, or making new connections -- behaviors that are essential to true out-of-the-box thinking.
The result? Not a good one.
We glom onto the first seemingly "right idea" that comes our way -- or else desperately try to declutter our minds with an endless series of mindless distractions that only increase the amount of clutter we need to process. Ouch.
6. NARROW MINDEDNESS:
When you're in a box, it's hard to see. Sight lines are limited. Vision is obscured. We become shortsighted. Our vision conforms to that which confines it. We become, soon enough, narrow-minded.
I'm sure you know a few people like this. Their ability to see beyond their immediate surroundings has become disabled.
When this kind of phenomenon becomes institutionalized, we end up with a bad case of "next quarter syndrome" -- especially in organizations ruled by the need to constantly please profit-seeking shareholders.
Few people are thinking six months out. Few are thinking 12 months out. And almost no one is thinking five years out. Everyone is trapped by the short-term.
What we call "focus" becomes a euphemism for tunnel vision -- just another form of narrow-mindedness that makes getting out of the box about as likely as my credit card company rescinding their usurious late payment fees.
OK. I hope I've not depressed you. That's not my purpose. Neither is it my purpose to obsess about the "problem." But until we know what we're really dealing with, all this hot talk about "getting out of the box" is just hype and a complete waste of time.
NEXT WEEK: Tips and techniques for getting out of the box. Until then, reflect on these questions:
1. What are you afraid of?
2. If you are business leader, how can you reduce fear in the workplace?
3. How can you get reclaim your own God-given power?
4. If you are a business leader, how can you start letting go of control?
5. How can you connect with a more diverse group of collaborators?
6. If you are a business leader, what can you do this week to foster more cross-functional collaboration?
7. How can you identify your three biggest limiting assumptions?
8. If you are a business leader, how can you identify your direct reports' three biggest limiting assumptions?
9. What's the simplest thing you can do this week to decrease the amount of mental clutter in your life?
10. If you are a business leader, how can give people more time think creatively?
11. What can you do this week to dream bigger than you usually do?
12. If you are a business leader, what can you do help your organization conceive a more compelling vision of its future?
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Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 04:44 PM | Comments (2)
October 06, 2011Steve Jobs on Life, Death, and Love
All of us at Idea Champions are deeply saddened by the passing of Steve Jobs, a man who has made an extraordinary contribution to planet Earth. Here's one of his pearls of wisdom: "Your time is limited, do don't waste it living someone else's life... Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become." Thank you, Steve. God bless!
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:42 PM | Comments (2)
October 04, 2011Meet Me at the World Business Forum
Hey everyone... I'm going to be at the World Business Forum, in NYC, this Wednesday and Thursday (October 5-6) as a "guest blogger."
If you are attending and want to connect, seek me out. I'll be sitting in the "Guest Bloggers" section.
I'm kind of a cross between Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt, and George Clooney.
Or maybe Ben Kingsley, George Carlin, and your Uncle Normie.
Hope to see you there!
Mitch Ditkoff
Idea Champions
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 02:16 PM | Comments (0)
October 03, 2011Mozart on Genius
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:40 PM | Comments (0)
October 02, 2011The Good Thing About Bad Ideas
One of the inevitable things you will hear at a brainstorming session is "there are no bad ideas." Well, guess what? There are plenty of bad ideas. Nazism, for instance. Arena football. Bow ties.
What well-meaning "keep hope alive" brainstorming lovers really mean is this: Even bad ideas can lead to good ideas if the idea originators are committed enough to extract the meaning from the "bad".
Do you think that War and Peace was written in one sitting? No way. There were plenty of earlier drafts that were horrid, but eventually led to the final outcome.
The key? To find the value in what seems to be a "bad idea" and then use that extracted value as a catalyst for further exploration. The following technique, excerpted from Awake at the Wheel, shows you how...
HOW IT WORKS:
1. Bring a challenge, question, or problem to mind.
2. Conjure up a really bad idea in response to it.
3. Tell another person about your bad idea.
4. The other person thinks of something redeemable about your bad idea -- and tells you what it is.
5. Using this redeemable essence as a catalyst, the two of you brainstorm new possibilities.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 06:59 AM | Comments (0)
