July 29, 2009
REAL ROI: Return on Imagination

If you are looking for a simple way to build a business case for innovation in your organization, take a look at the slide show below. While YOU may be a committed champion of change, there may be others who still wonder about the value of making the effort. This show is for them. (And you...)

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:26 AM | Comments (1)

April 22, 2009
On the Job Innovation Coaching

The root of the word "manager" comes from the same root as the words "manipulate" and "maneuver", meaning to "adapt or change something to suit one's purpose".

Although these words may carry a pejorative meaning for some of us, there is nothing inherently wrong with them. Indeed, into each life a little manipulation and maneuvering must fall.

For example, if the door to your office gets stuck, a handyman might need to manipulate it to get it working again. If there is a log jam at the elevator, you might decide to maneuver around the crowd and take the stairs. No problem there.

However, there is another kind of manipulation and maneuvering that is a problem -- when managers use their position to bend subordinates to their will. While short-term gains may result, in the end the heart is taken out of people. Your staff may become good soldiers, but they will lose something far more important in the process -- their ability to think for themselves.

General George Patton said it best, "Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity."

Unfortunately, ingenuity in many corporations has gone the way of the hula-hoop. "Intellectual capital" is the name of the game these days -- and it is the enlightened manager's duty to learn how to play.

Only those companies will succeed whose people are empowered to think for themselves and respond creatively to the myriad of changes going on all around them.

Simply put, managers must make the shift from manipulators to manifesters. They must learn how to coach their people into increasingly higher states of creative thinking and creative doing. They must realize that the root of their organization's problem is not the economy, not cycle time, not strategy or outsourcing, but their own inability to tap into the power of their workforce's innate creativity.

Where does this empowerment start?

First, by recognizing what power is: "the ability to do or act". And second, by realizing that power is intimately connected to ideas.

Clearly, one's ability to "do or act" depends on there being something worth doing or acting upon. What is an idea? Where does it come from? And how can a manager increase the chances of a good one showing up?

Most managers, unfortunately, perceive new ideas as problems -- especially if the ideas are not their own.

Bottom line, they don't pay enough attention to the ideas of the people around them. They say they want to innovate. They say they want "their people" to do something different. But they do precious little to support their subordinates in their efforts to do so. They foist their ideas on others and can't figure out why things aren't happening faster.

That's not how change happens. If people are only acting out somebody else's ideas, it's only a matter of time before they feel discounted, disempowered and... well...just plain dissed. People are more than hired hands; they are hired minds and hearts, as well.

Let's start with the basics.

Everything you see around you began as an idea. The computer. The stapler. The paperclip, the microchip and the chocolate chip. All of these began as an idea within someone's fevered imagination. The originators of these ideas were on fire.

Did they have to be "managed?" No way. In fact, if they had a manager, he or she would have done well to get out of the way.

If you want to empower people, honor their ideas. Give them room to challenge the status quo. Give them room to move -- and, by extension, move mountains.

Why? Because people identify most with their ideas. "I think therefore, I am" is their motto. People feel good when they're encouraged to originate and develop ideas. It gives their work meaning, makes it their own, and intrinsically motivates.

Who has the power in an organization? The people who are allowed to think for themselves and then act on their ideas! Who doesn't have power? The people who have to continually check-in with others.

Think about it. The arrival of a new idea is typically accompanied by a wonderful feeling of upliftment and excitement -- even intoxication.

It's inspiring to have a new idea, to intuit a new way of getting the job done. Not only does this new idea have the potential to bring value to the company, it temporarily frees the idea originator from their normal habits of thinking. A sixth sense takes over, releasing the individual from the gravity of status quo thinking.

In this mindset, the idea originator is transported to a more expansive realm of possibility. All bets are off. The sky's the limit. All assumptions are seen for what they are -- limited beliefs with a history, but no future.

If you are a manager, you want people in this state of mind. It is not a problem. It is not the shirking of responsibility. It is not a waste of time. On the contrary, it's the first indicator that you are establishing a company culture that is conducive to innovation.

This is not to say, of course, that you have to fund every idea that comes your way.

On some level, ideas are a dime a dozen -- and only a handful of them are ever going to amount to much. But if you treat all ideas as if they are worthless, you will never find the priceless ones.

Creativity, you see, is often a numbers game. Einstein had plenty of bogus theories. Mozart wrote some crap. But they continued being prolific. And it was precisely this self-generating spirit of creation, which enabled them to access the good stuff.

You, as a manager, want to increase the number of new ideas being pitched to you. It's that simple. You want to create an environment where new ideas are popping all the time. If you do, old problems and ineffective ways of doing things will begin dissolving.

This is the hallmark of an empowered organization -- a place where everyone is encouraged and empowered to think creatively. Within this kind of environment managers become coaches, not gatekeepers.

"Coaching", of course, has been widely written about and there are many fine books on the subject. What hasn't been written about very much is how to become an "innovation coach" -- how to create the kind of environment that elicits the hidden genius of the people around you.

It's one thing to tell people "you want their ideas", it's quite another to create the kind of environment that makes this rhetoric real.

Creativity cannot be legislated. It cannot be sustained by mission statements and pep talks. What needs to happen is you, as a manager, need to change the way you relate to people. Each encounter you have with another in the workplace needs to quicken the likelihood that their unexpressed ideas will get a fair hearing -- enabling a far greater percentage of them to eventually take root.

How does a manager do this?

First, by expressing a lot of positive regard. Get interested! Pay attention! Be present to the moment! This is not so much a technique as it is a state of mind. Simply put, if your head is always filled with your own thoughts and ideas, there won't be any room left to entertain the thoughts and ideas of others. It's a law of physics. Two things cannot occupy the same place at the same time.

Here's an example: Let's say someone comes up to you in the middle of the day and says something like, "I have this great idea for a new product that will generate over $200 million for our company."

The first thing you need to do is realize the opportunity you have. An idea is about to be shared, one that may herald a breakthrough or, at the very least, solve a problem, capitalize on an opportunity, or make your life easier.

Your willingness to sit up and take notice needs to be just as strong as if a customer were to call and complain. If possible, drop what you're doing, focus all of your attention on the idea generator, take a deep breath, and begin a series of questions that demonstrate your interest. If you cannot drop what you are doing, schedule some time -- as soon as possible -- for the idea originator to pitch you.

And whether the pitch is now or later, your response -- in the form of exploratory questions -- needs to be as genuine as possible. Consider some of the following openers:

* "That sounds interesting. Can you tell me more?"
* "What excites you the most about this idea?"
* "What is the essence of your idea - the core principle?"
* "How do you imagine your idea will benefit others?"
* "In what ways does your idea fit with our strategic vision?"
* "What information do you still need?"
* "Who are your likely collaborators?"
* "Is there anything similar to your idea on the market?
* "What support do you need from me?"
* "What is your next step?"

Basically, you want the idea originator to talk about their idea as much as possible in this moment of truth. An idea needs to first take form in order to take root, and one of the best ways of doing this is to encourage the idea originator to talk about it -- even if their idea is not yet fully developed.

The telling of the idea, in fact, is not unlike someone telling you their dream. The telling helps the dreamer flesh out the details of what they imagined and the subsequent hearing of it firmly installs it in their memory -- and yours -- so the idea does not fade quite as quickly.

Most of us, however, are so wrapped up in our own ideas that we rarely take the time to listen to others. Your subordinates know this and, consequently, rarely share their ideas with you.

But it doesn't have to be this way. And it won't necessarily require a lot of time on your part. Some time, yes. But not as much as you might think.

Bottom line, the time it takes you to listen to the ideas of others is not only worth it -- the success of your enterprise depends on it. Choose not to listen and you will end up frantically spending a lot more time down the road asking people for their ideas about how to save your business from imminent collapse.

By that time, however, it will be too late. Your workforce will have already tuned you out.

More on establishing an inner and outer culture of innovation in AWAKE AT THE WHEEL: www.awakeatthewheel.info

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 07:14 AM | Comments (0)

April 06, 2009
Brainstorm or Braindrizzle?

Allow me to make a wild guess here and postulate that you have participated in more than a few brainstorm sessions in your life. Yes?

And allow me to make yet another wild guess and state that many of these sessions left you feeling underwhelmed, over-caffeinated, disappointed, disengaged, and doubtful that much of ANYTHING was ever going to happen as a result of your participation. Yes, again? I thought so.

There's a ton of reasons why most brainstorming sessions under-deliver, but the main reason -- the Mount Olympus of reasons (drum roll, please....) is the brainstorm facilitator.

Armed with a short list of ground rules, a flipchart marker or two, and a muffin, most brainstorm facilitators miss the mark completely.

The reason has less to do with their process, tools, and techniques than it does with their inability or lack of willingness to adapt. In an all-too-professional attempt to be one-pointed, they end up being one-dimensional, missing out on a host of in-the-moment opportunities to spark the ever-mutating, collective genius of the group.

If only our well-intentioned brainstorm facilitators could abide by the words of Walt Whitman, when he confessed that he "contained multitudes."

Translation? If you or anyone you know is going to lead a disparate group of time-crunched, opinionated, multi-tracking, high bandwidth people through a process of originating and developing breakthrough ideas, DON'T BE A ONE TRICK PONY! Be a multitude -- or, at the very least, be multi-faceted. Let it rip. Hang ten. Pull out the stops. Use your right brain and your left. Let all the cats out of the proverbial bag -- and by so doing, exponentially increase your chances of sparking brainpower, brilliance, and beyond-the-obvious ideas.

OK. Enough bloggy pep talk. Let's get down to business.

Take a few minutes now to rate yourself, on a scale of 1-10, for how skillful you think you are at embodying the following personas of a brainstorm facilitator, all of which you will need to call on at just the right time if you expect to play your role to the max. Then tune into your biggest strength and ask yourself how you can amplify that quality. Then identify your biggest weakness and figure out how you can improve in that arena.

While it may seem counter-intuitive, a well-facilitated creative thinking session is less about WHAT than it is about HOW and WHO.

1.CONDUCTOR
A skilled brainstorm facilitator knows how to orchestrate powerfully creative output from a seemingly dissonant group of people. In the conductor mode, the facilitator includes everyone, evokes even the subtlest contributions from the least experienced participant, and demonstrates their commitment to the whole by offering timely feedback to anyone who "gets lost in their own song."

2.ALCHEMIST
A good brainstorm facilitator is able to transmute lead into gold -- or in modern terms -- knows how to help people "get the lead out." This talent requires an element of wizardry -- the ability to see without looking, feel without touching, and intuitively know that within each brainstormer lives a hidden genius just waiting to get out.

3.DANCER
Light on their feet, brainstorm facilitators move gracefully through the process of sparking new ideas. Able to go from the cha-cha to the polka to the whirling dervish spinning of a brainstorm group on fire, savvy facilitators take bold steps when necessary, even when there is no visible ground underfoot. "The path is made by walking on it," is their motto.

4. MAD SCIENTIST
Skillful brainstorm facilitators are bold experimenters, often taking on the crazed (but grandfatherly) look of an Einstein in heat. While respecting the realm of logic and the rational (the ground upon which most scientists build their homes), the enlightened facilitator is willing to throw it all out the window in the hope of triggering a "happy accident" or a quantum leap of thought. Indeed, it is often these discontinuous non-linear moments that produce the kind of breakthroughs that logic can only describe, never elicit itself.

5.DIAMOND CUTTER
Fully recognizing the precious gem of the human imagination (as well as the delicacy required to set it free), the high octave brainstorm facilitator is a craftsman (or craftswoman) par excellence -- focused, precise, and dedicated. Able to get to the heart of the matter in a single stroke without leaving anything or anyone damaged in the process.

6. ACTOR
Brainstorm facilitators are "on stage" whether they like it or not. All eyes are upon them, as well as all the potential critical reviews humanly possible. More often than not, the facilitator's "audience" will only be moved to act (perchance to dream) if they believe the facilitator is completely into his or her role. If the audience does not suspend this kind of disbelief, the play will close early and everyone will be praying for a fire drill or wishing they were back home eating a grilled cheese sandwich.

7.ENVIRONMENTALIST
Brainstorm facilitators are the original recyclers. In their relentless pursuit of possibility, they look for value in places other people see as useless. To the facilitator in full mojo mode, "bad ideas" aren't always bad, only curious indicators that something of untapped value is lurking nearby.

8. OFFICER OF THE LAW
One of the brainstorm facilitator's most important jobs is to enforce "law and order" once the group gets roaring down the open highway of the imagination. This is a fine art -- for in this territory speeding is encouraged, as is running red lights, jaywalking, and occasionally breaking and entering. Just as thieves have their code of honor, however, so too should brainstormers. Indeed, it is the facilitator's task to keep this code intact -- a task made infinitely easier by the ritual declaration of ground rules at the start of a session.

9.SERVANT
Some brainstorm facilitators, intoxicated by the group energy and their own newly stimulated imagination, use their position as a way to foist their ideas on others -- or worse, manipulate the group into their way of thinking. Oops! Ouch! Aargh! Brainstorm facilitating is a service, not a personal platform. It is supposed to be a selfless act that enables others to arrive at their own solutions -- no matter how different they may be from the facilitator's.

10. STAND-UP COMIC
Humor is one of the brainstorm facilitator's most important tools. It dissolves boundaries, activates the right brain, helps participants get unstuck, and shifts perspective just enough to help everyone open their eyes to new ways of seeing. Trained facilitators are always on the lookout for humorous responses. They know that humor often signals some of the most promising ideas, and that giggles, guffaws, and laughable side-talk frequently indicate a rich vein of possibility to explore. Humor also makes the facilitator much more "likable" which makes the group they are facilitating more amenable to their direction. Ever wonder why the words "Aha!" and "Ha-Ha" are so similar?

Interested in learning how to facilitate breakthrough brainstorming sessions? Click here.

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:11 AM | Comments (0)

August 30, 2008
Innovation Slush Funds

Nortel, the fiber optics giant, allocates pools of money (or "innovation slush funds") at different organizational levels for any idea a manager thinks has great potential, but doesn't want to be accountable for the bottom-line result. Very cool.

A client of mine, at Michelin, does a similar thing. He is authorized to distribute as much as $10,000 to aspiring innovators who have done their homework and are able to convince him that their high potential projects need a bit funding to get untracked. Also very cool.

What I like about this approach is that it sidesteps the bureaucratic hokey pokey, run-it-up-the-flagpole, command and control, funky chicken shuffle that all too often scuttles powerful new ideas in need of a timely infusion of capital to get them rolling.

Of course, these "innovation slush fund" scenarios require some trust and clearly defined evaluation criteria to keep things on the up and up -- but that is simply done. No Six Sigma required. It's such a simple thing to do and can radically reduce the time it takes for breakthrough ideas and aspiring innovators to make magic happen in your organization.

In what ways can YOU establish some kind of innovation slush fund this month? And if you have already done so, click "comments" below and let us know how it's working out.

And remember, as one wise pundit put it, "It's not the money that starts the idea, it's the idea that starts the money."

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 09:30 PM | Comments (1)

June 29, 2008
More On Where and When You Get Your Best Ideas

A big thanks to Chuck Frey of Innovation Tools for his June 26th posting on our just-released poll results re: "Where and When People Get Their Best Ideas?"

Chuck notes the top ten catalysts:

1. When you're inspired
2. Brainstorming with others
3. When you're immersed in a project
4. When you're happy
5. Collaborating with a partner
6. Daydreaming
7. Analyzing a problem
8. Driving
9. Commuting to and from work
10. Reading books in your field

And here are the bottom ten:

70. Swimming
71. Brushing your teeth
72. Drinking anything with alcohol
73. Playing a sport
74. When you're sad
75. Mowing the lawn
76. Shaving
77. Procrastinating
78. In a bar
79. Having sex
80. Smoking tobacco

(If you're looking for a fun way to spark some great ideas, click here.)

Or here.

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:14 AM | Comments (1)

August 09, 2007
Is Crowdsourcing Innovation's Future?

There's been an explosion of Web 2.0 creativity over the last two years, with thousands of freelance developers and shops around the world adding daily to a burgeoning inventory of cool tools and web services.

2007 is the Year of the Mashup, says Business Week. Hop over to Newsweek/MSNBC and we're in the Year of the Widget. Whatever they call it, digital screens large and small suddenly have more cool dashboards, handy web services and must-have plug-ins than anyone can keep track of.

How did this come about? Well, in 2005 an amazing thing happened. Google, Yahoo, eBay, Amazon and other major Web brands started crowdsourcing. They opened up formerly proprietary code for some of their key API's (application programming interfaces) to the world's freelance developers. Realizing how much global creative energy there is to tap, and how limited their own resources were by comparison, these companies took a 180 degree turn on the "not invented here" freeway and struck a blow for raw, rampant innovation. Their assumption was that others would think of things they might not. And they were right.

The happy result is that now any teenager in Finland, Slovenia or Akron can download the API's for GoogleMaps, Flickr, eBay (and a growing list of other major web players) and start building and releasing their own cool mashups that incorporate the shared code. And a variety of widget engines allow developers to design great interfaces that supplant the tired old browser page for many everyday functions we used to pull from My Yahoo.

The momentum now appears unstoppable. More mashups, more dashboard, web and mobile widgets roll out each week.

Widgets bring us targeted information, on-demand services and other goodies without our ever having to find or load a webpage. Widget interfaces are smaller and more functional than a standard, screen-hogging browser page, and they load faster. I have a cool astronomy widget that helps me map the night sky wherever I am and whatever hour it is.

I also like mashup sites like zillow.com. At Zillow I can watch my home's value float up and down as home prices fluctuate around me. It's all mapped for me, and yes, Zillow has a widget for my mobile phone screen.

In 2005, writer James Surowiecki called the intelligent principle behind open-source innovation "The Wisdom of Crowds". Then Wired's Jeff Howe coined the companion verb: "crowdsource". So now we have all the words we need to help the concept lodge in our collective Mind. What does the sea-change mean for companies with decades of history in old school, siloed product development?
The core mindset shift is simple.

Everyone in an organization is potentially a source of ideas and ongoing developmental guidance... IF you let them be.

It makes good sense. Install the culture and the processes that let everyone have a stake in the creative life of the company and you get a much broader platform for innovation.

Easy to say; harder to do. Sustaining a culture of innovation over time requires well-thought out group creativity "rituals" - collaborative events and processes that eliminate the traditional line between "creatives" and "non-creatives" and encourage anyone and everyone to step forward.

Allowing equal access doesn't mean everyone is equally creative, though. There are exceptionally creative people on earth and maybe, if you're lucky, in your organization. But most people aren't idea dynamos like Thomas Edison or DaVinci. Fortunately, mega-minds like them aren't the world's only source of breakthrough ideas.

All it takes is one person thinking up a single breakthrough idea to send humanity in a new direction. Think Alexander Graham Bell, Jonas Salk, or Crick and Watson. Does anyone need to be reminded that Einstein was a patent clerk before he became a paradigm-shifting physicist?

The central creed everyone must believe in an innovation culture is that a breakthrough idea could lurk anywhere in the organization. A simple 360 degree distribution of creative respect can work wonders all by itself.

At the heart of the Web 2.0 revolution lies the liberating spirit of widespread collaboration. User-generated sites like Wikipedia and Digg tap into the wisdom of crowds to aggregate, edit and polish information. Wikipedia, now at almost almost 8 million topic entries, is by far the largest and most consulted encyclopedic reference on the Web. Amazingly, most Wikipedia entries are more than just pretty good.

Crowdsourced projects and products can also be competitive. One renowned open-source project, Firefox's web browser, has an army of volunteer developers building add-ons for it. This steady surge of nifty extras is why Firefox's market share keeps rising ever closer to Microsoft's dominant Internet Explorer browser. In some European Union countries, Firefox's market share is now 40-45 percent.

A company that welcomes crowdsourced innovation raises the odds of two things happening. Not only can more breakthrough ideas arise in-house, but it's more likely they'll be recognized by at least one other champion rather than being blocked, lost or dismissed. By endorsing crowdsourcing methods, a company retires out-dated "not invented here" attitudes that used to bury or water down great ideas in traditional siloed workplaces.

Companies that can afford to seek ideas outside their workforce and firewall gain even more - a potentially infinite pool of innovators. The author of the Linux operating system, Linus Torvalds, opened up his kernal to the world's developers in the early 1990's. Netscape did the same in 1998. Today, BMW's Virtual Innovation Agency invites customers to send in their innovation ideas and offers prizes of up to 60,000 EUR. And at Eli Lilly's Innocentive, "seeker" companies like Proctor & Gamble can post a challenge to a community of 120,000 + "solvers" registered at the website.

Crowdsourcing is young and it's future is still uncertain, but there's already evidence that crowdsourced products have more of the features and functionality people want. The likely cause is the sheer size of the crowd pouring ideas into a product's evolution. There's an inevitable diversity of views built in to any sizable crowd. At a certain point, the distinctions between product developers and typical customers have to start blurring. When they do, crowdsourced product development is almost like getting customer feedback up front, before the sale.

With such benefits emerging, it's no wonder that so many people are pleading Congress for the internet to be kept neutral for content sites and aggregators like Digg, Wikipedia and Facebook. With so many minds able to network together now, crowdsourcing enables humans to collaborate on a scale no one could have dreamed of fifty years ago.

And it comes not a moment too soon. Hopefully, over the next few years, new online tools will emerge to gather and develop global warming and alternative energy solutions from around the planet. We'll likely see the release of hundreds of widgets and mashups to help us conserve energy, nudge our households and businesses toward carbon neutrality, and re-engineer our global energy grid.

If that's a peek into what we might accomplish as a species having to make tough economic choices about our future, then we all have a stake in James Surowiecki being right about the wisdom of crowds.

Links:
Jeff Howe's original Wired article on crowdsourcing.

Google Uses Crowdsourcing To Make Maps in India

Posted by Tim Moore at 06:08 PM | Comments (1)

July 26, 2007
InnovationTools' "Quote of the Week" is from Mitch

In a nice and unexpected coincidence with the kickoff of our blog here, the Quote of the Week in the current InnovationWeek newsletter is from our own Mitch Ditkoff, President and co-founder of Idea Champions. The newsletter is published by the respected InnovationTools.com.

Innovation Quote of the Week

"In today's flattened, restructured, downsized organization, your role is much more than getting the best out of people. It's getting the best out of the best part of people - out of their inspired imaginations, their ability to dream, conjure and conceive - and transforming those inspired ideas into the products, services and improvements that will not only keep your business humming, but make the world an even better place for all of us to live."

- Mitch Ditkoff

The quote comes from near the end of an article of Mitch's, "Innovation Coaching, The Manager as Idea Midwife." The article also appears on the InnovationTools site (demonstrating at the very least what a thorough reader their Chuck Frey is).

Posted by Bill Ross at 07:12 PM | Comments (0)