Break time. Stop saving the world (or your company) for the moment and simply enjoy this video. Laughing aloud allowed.

Idea Champions

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 06:20 PM | Comments (0)

'Tis the season to tell your stories, folks! Your families are gathering. Your friends are coming to visit. The tribe is reconvening, whether it's around the fire, the dining room table, or the turkey in the kitchen. Wherever you find yourself, you will have lots of opportunities to share with others -- not just the gifts you bought at the mall, but the stories of your life -- memorable moments of truth that have moved you and are likely to move others.

THIS is what people will remember, not the device you give them, not the card, not the pumpkin pie. So tell your stories! And when others tell theirs, stop what you're doing and listen. Stories, well-told and well-listened, are one of the best ways to connect with others and REMEMBER what's truly important in this life.

My new book on storytelling
My new storytelling blog
The storytelling and innovation workshop

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 09:00 AM | Comments (0)

Here's the deal: You are one of the creatives in a high flying PR, Marketing, or Communications company and have been asked by one of your clients to lead an upcoming brainstorming session. That's the good news. The-not-so-good news? Even though you're an idea-generating machine, facilitating sessions that bring out brilliance in others is not your forte. And to raise the stakes even higher, your client wants more than just "ideas". Your client wants remarkable, actionable ideas and wants the session to be highly engaging, energizing, and worth their precious time. Get it? The heat is on, big time.

Idea Champions can teach you how

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 04:08 PM | Comments (0)

Just like a GPS needs to know where you are in order to guide you to your destination, savvy business leaders need to know where their organization is in order to navigate its way forward. Enter Idea Champions' Current Reality Check-Up -- a highly engaging needs assessment process that provides movers and shakers with deep insight into the mindset, perspective, needs, and values of their workforce and customers.

If your organization has a big conference coming up, a company-wide initiative to launch, or simply wants to raise the bar for employee engagement, begin by understanding the current reality -- WHAT IS. Your ability to clarify what's next will then emerge organically with the least amount of wheel spinning, waffling, and wasted effort.

Put simply, if you want an accurate prognosis, begin with an accurate diagnosis.

THE NUTS AND BOLTS OF A CURRENT REALITY CHECK UP

Idea Champions' Current Reality Check Up goes far beyond the scope of a traditional need assessment and includes six key components:

1. ONLINE POLLS
Customized surveys for your workforce and customers -- thought-provoking questions that provide a clear snapshot of what is going on in your organization. What's working. What's not. And where your opportunities for growth abide.

2. INTERVIEWS
Building on the insights we've gleaned from the online polls, we'll engage a cross-section of your workforce, executive team, and customers in a series of one-on-one or group interviews -- either in-person or via phone. We dive into the deep end. No wading.

3. TACIT KNOWLEDGE MINING
Here's where we identify a selection of your organization's best practices, success stories, and lessons learned -- the collective know-how of your workforce too rarely identified, shared, or celebrated. HINT: If you want to change your culture, begin by changing the stories that are told.

4. SENIOR LEADER REALITY CHECKS
If there is one thing all senior teams have in common, it's this: they don't always see eye to eye, especially when it comes to understanding the mindset of the workforce or how customers perceive their organization. That's why we give Senior Leaders a simple way to predict how their workforce and customers will respond to our poll. We then analyze the gaps, interpret the results, and engage your senior team in an exploration of the causative factors, as well as fertile areas for future improvement.

5. THE CURRENT REALITY CHECK-UP REPORT
An easy-to-read, no-nonsense summary of what we have learned from polling and interviewing your workforce and customers. We know your time is precious. That's why our Summary Reports cut to the chase, are clearly written, and are free of tiresome corporate-speak.

6. ONSITE PRESENTATION OF OUR FINDINGS
While we are perfectly fine with presenting our findings to you in a written report and/or virtual meeting, we prefer to do it LIVE, in person. Situation allowing, it's far more impactful, providing vital opportunities to explore the results of our findings and possible ways to ensure rapid progress.

THE BENEFITS OF A CURRENT REALITY CHECK-UP

1. INCREASED SENIOR LEADER ALIGNMENT: Your key stakeholders get a golden opportunity to go beyond their collective assumptions and come to agreement about what is really going on within the organization.

2. INCREASED EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT: There's nothing quite like being asked "What do you think about X?" to increase people's level of participation -- especially if they know that Senior Leaders are committed to doing something different in response to what employees think and feel.

3. INCREASED CUSTOMER LOYALTY: If you include your customers in your Current Reality Check-Up process, they will experience, first hand, your organization's commitment to excellence and customer service-- two outcomes that will further solidify your relationship with them.

4. BIAS-FREE NEUTRALITY: Because Idea Champions has no axe to grind, no hidden agendas, and no turfs to protect, you can count on the results of our needs assessment being as free of bias as humanly possible. "The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" is our motto. We constantly check our own possible assumptions and blind spots in order to ensure that we're not going beyond what we actually KNOW. We're adding to your knowledge set upon which your decisions will be made, and we realize that those decisions have very real consequences. Our goal is to provide you with accurate information and useful insights that will help you make better decisions going forward.

Intrigued? Click here or call 845.679.1066

Idea Champions
Our clients

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 01:54 PM | Comments (0)

If you are reading this blog, I am 95 percent certain you value the power of BIG IDEAS. I'm also certain that you've experimented with various ways of capturing your big ideas: Notebooks. Voice memos. Post-its. Napkins. Whiteboards. Mind maps. And who knows how many other techniques. If so, you are likely to be intrigued by Chuck Frey's newly published guide about how to set up EVERNOTE as a way support a complete, end-to-end creative process. We like Chuck. You will, too.

Idea Champions
Brainstorm Champions

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 10:37 PM | Comments (0)

Entertaining and inspiring 15 minute TED talk about a fascinating experiment launched by a young entrepreneur and what he learned about how to turn rejection into opportunities.

Idea Champions
Storytelling at Work

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 05:56 PM | Comments (0)