Managers Need to Become Innovation Coaches
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."
Continue reading "Managers Need to Become Innovation Coaches"
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 07:14 AM | Comments (0)
August 24, 2008Getting Down to the Business of Creativity
Here's a terrific article on creativity, based on the work of three Harvard researchers/professors.
One of the things I especially love about the article is that it confirms the approach Idea Champions has taken since 1986.
According to Teresa Amabile's research, "inner work life" is one of the biggest determinants of creative output. In other words, a positive mood is a pre-condition for creativity in the workplace. If you are attempting to establish a sustainable culture of innovation in your organization, you (and everyone else) would be well-served to do everything humanly possible to positively impact the mood (i.e. tone, feeling, atmosphere, vibe, spirit) of the environment in which you work.
And that begins, of course, with the individual.
When you treat people with respect, acknowledgment, and genuine positive reinforcement, you significantly increase the odds of creativity -- and by extension, innovation -- flourishing in your organization.
Common sense? For sure. But common sense, it seems, is all too uncommon in most organizations. In our rush to produce, get an edge, and accomplish, we forget the most important thing...
And that is the quality of our interactions with others.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 05:35 AM | Comments (0)
August 21, 2008Brainstorm 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.
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Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:11 AM | Comments (0)
August 17, 2008Charlie Mingus on Creativity
"Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, is creativity."
-Charlie Mingus
PS: My 11-year old daughter, Mimi, sent me this picture today and told me to post it on my blog because it reminded her of my book about a cool caveman who was the first person to get the idea for the wheel.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 09:16 PM | Comments (0)
August 15, 2008Are You an Idea Addict?
There are lots of things in this world that people get addicted to: alcohol, nicotine, heroin, sex, and Blackberries just to name a few. But perhaps the biggest addiction, one that often flies in under the radar, is the addiction to OUR OWN IDEAS.
Here's how it works: We think something up. We feel a buzz. We embrace the idea. We think about it some more. We tweak it, we name it, we pitch it, and POOF, the addiction begins.
At first, like most habits, it's subtle, harmless, a seemingly casual pursuit with a thousand positive side effects: increased energy, renewed focus, a feeling of well-being, a heightened sense of awareness.
Like wow, man.
First we have the idea. But then the idea has us.
We think about it in the shower. We think about it in the car. We think about it when we don't want to think about it. We even dream about it. Soon we want EVERYONE to know about our idea. We want them to feel the buzz. We want them to nod in agreement. We want them to recognize just how pure our fixation is.
If this is where it ended, it wouldn't be that big a deal. If this is where it ended, I wouldn't be calling it an addiction. Maybe I'd be calling it an "inspiration," or a "commitment" or a "visitation from the Muse." But it doesn't end here. It goes on and on and on and on -- and often, to our own detriment.
If you have a business, of course, you WANT to conjure up cool ideas that turn you on. That's a good thing. But if you cling to ideas just because they're YOURS, or just because they are FAMILIAR, or just because you've invested major amounts of TIME in them, then it's definitely time to rethink where you're coming from.
It may even be time to get help.
The story behind the creation of the iPhone is a good example of what I'm talking about. Steve Jobs and his Apple team had to face the music and back off their own addiction to what they had created in order to create something even greater. Here's what Steve had to say about the matter...
Continue reading "Are You an Idea Addict?"
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 08:20 PM | Comments (1)
August 14, 2008The Top 100 Lamest Excuses for Not Innovating
NOTE: The following has been our most popular blog entry since we started Heart of Innovation 13 months ago. We feature it here for those of you who may have missed it. MD
Since 1986, I've been working with a wide variety of organizations who have acknowledged their need to innovate -- enough, at least, to invite Idea Champions in to help them on their way.
It's been a fascinating ride.
Along the way, I've noticed that a lot of people who work in corporations are ruled by a host of "reasons" why innovation can't happen.
Many of these reasons, I realize, are based on years of in-the-trenches experience. My clients are not hallucinating, merely reporting how difficult it's been for them along the way.
I guess you could call these people realists.
I understand their point of view, but it is precisely this point of view that's the problem.
Innovation, as I've said before, is an inside job. It begins with the individual. Organizations don't innovate. People do. And if people are ruled by past experiences, old assumptions, and limiting concepts of what's possible, nothing much will ever change.
And so, as a public service, it is my pleasure to present to you the Top 100 Lamest Excuses for Not Innovating -- excuses I continue hearing again and again out there on the front lines of corporate America.
Please remember, dear reader, that there may be a kernel of truth in each of these reasons. Indeed, what sometimes may seem like an excuse may simply be a clear assessment of current reality.
Current reality, however, is only one form of reality. And just because it's current doesn't mean it's the way it will always be. Or should be.
Continue reading "The Top 100 Lamest Excuses for Not Innovating"
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 08:53 AM | Comments (3)
August 13, 2008The Jar
A college professor stood before his philosophy class at the start of a new semester. Silently, he picked up a very large jar and filled it with golf balls. Then he asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.
The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly, pebbles settling into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full.
They agreed that it was.
The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students again responded with a resounding "yes."
The professor then produced two beers from under the table and poured them into the jar, filling the empty spaces between the sand. The students laughed.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 09:36 AM | Comments (0)
August 11, 2008Big Problem or Right Problem? The Egg Freckles Saga.
Have you ever spent hours trying to solve a problem only to find you've been working on the wrong problem? Try doing it for five years. That's what Apple Computer engineers did with the Newton handheld computer over a decade ago.
From 1993-1998, Apple made a valiant effort to break open a market for portable handheld pen computers. Unfortunately, they spent most of that time working on a problem that didn't really exist for consumers. And as they labored at it, their intended market was stolen by Palm Computing's PalmPilot.
What follows is a tale about a fatal assumption -- an obsession with a Big Problem that led to one of Silicon Valley's great product misfires.
Consider the moral first.
Solving a Big problem doesn't mean you're solving the Right problem.
Apple's team chose to tackle the biggest challenge in pen computing: high-level handwriting recognition. Newton would be the first portable computer people could write on directly using their natural hand. From anyone's scrawl, the computer would extract the standard ASCII characters computers need to work with. This posed a massive challenge in pattern recognition. Since every user's handwriting is different, the Newton would need to learn the particular way its user wrote each letter and number. IF it got all the letters in, say, the word "thing" right, Newton would compare that string of letters to words in its 10,000 word native memory. IF the word "thing" was stored there, Newton would find a match and "know" the word.
The Newton team was determined to build the world's most sophisticated pattern learning pen computer. But why were they doing it? And for who? Here they made one fatal assumption about their potential buyer, an assumption that would seal the Newton's fate.
Continue reading "Big Problem or Right Problem? The Egg Freckles Saga."
Posted by Tim Moore at 02:03 PM | Comments (1)
August 07, 200814 Ways to Get Breakthrough Ideas
Ta da! My new creative thinking manifesto -- 14 Ways to Get Breakthrough Ideas -- has just been published on ChangeThis.com. How do you say "I'm pumped" in Swahili?
And how do you say, in Croatian, "I'm psyched to be published on the same day as David Meerman Scott and his crew who also just released a changethis!"
If you're interested in sparking innovation -- in yourself or your organization -- my ChangeThis manifesto (available as a beautifully designed downloadable pdf) will help.
If you've never heard of ChangeThis.com, read on to find out where they're coming from and what they do. Good people. Really good.
Continue reading "14 Ways to Get Breakthrough Ideas"
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 02:53 PM | Comments (1)
August 06, 2008CREATIVE THINKING TECHNIQUE: The Daily Muse
In the 21st century, it is no longer considered radical to believe that thought shapes the future. This is something that has been proven again and again in experiment after experiment. And it is precisely for this reason that the media has become such a powerful force in today's world. The media shapes thought.
When we read something in the newspaper, we believe it is true -- and our lives take shape around it.
Well, here is your chance to take back the power of the press. And even more than that, here's your chance to impress your thoughts on the future -- your future -- and by extension, the rest of our futures (so please be coming from the the right place before continuing with the following exercise).
Continue reading "CREATIVE THINKING TECHNIQUE: The Daily Muse"
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 06:17 AM | Comments (0)
August 05, 2008"Not everything that counts can be counted; and not everything that can be counted, counts." (Einstein)
Some things we can measure. Some things we can't. And just because we can measure something doesn't make it more real or significant. Einstein knew this. There was always the "X factor" for him -- mystery, the unknown, the divine, and the impossible to quantify.
That's why he used to conduct "thought experiments" in his lab -- times when he turned away from the blackboard with all those exotic formulas and simply daydreamed -- letting the intuitive side of him take over for a change.
Hmmm... what might YOU be attempting to quantify or measure that would best be left alone? What might you be needing to TRUST that abides outside the boundaries of the rational, logical, analytical, scientific mind?
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:41 PM | Comments (0)
August 03, 2008A Truly Stand Up Guy (Kawasaki) Acknowledges This Blog on ALLTOP
This just in!
Heart of Innovation has just been noted on Guy Kawasaki's ALLTOP website as one of the top innovation blogs.
ALLTOP (which we just discovered about seven minutes ago) is a very cool resource for anyone wanting to maximize their blogospheric reading experience. Here's how ALLTOP describes itself:
"We help you explore your passions by collecting stories from 'all the top' sites on the web. We've grouped these collections -- 'aggregations'-- into individual Alltop sites based on topics such as environment, photography, science, Muslim, celebrity gossip, military, fashion, gaming, sports, politics, automobiles, and Macintosh.
At each Alltop site, we display the headlines of the latest stories from dozens of sites and blogs.
You can think of an Alltop site as a 'digital magazine rack' of the Internet. To be clear, Alltop sites are starting points -- they are not destinations per se.
The bottom line is that we are trying to enhance your online reading by both displaying stories from the sites that you're already visiting and helping you discover sites that you didn't know existed. In other words, our goal is the 'cessation of Internet stagnation' by providing 'aggregation without aggravation.'"
Thanks, Guy, for putting this together and for acknowledging Heart of Innovation. Blog on, bro!
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:08 PM | Comments (1)
INNOVATION SCHMINNOVATION: Give Peace a Chance!Yes, we're all interested in innovation and that's a good thing, but if innovation doesn't lead to something more than increased marketshare, profits, and stuff to consume, we're in big trouble. Here's a very cool, new video by Stuart Hoffman that will lift your spirits and, hopefully, inspire you to think about new ways in which you can focus your innovation efforts on bringing peace to the world. Got any ideas?
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 09:56 AM | Comments (2)
July 29, 200850 Ways to Foster a Sustainable Culture of Innovation
I hear a lot of talk these days about how important it is for organizations to establish a culture of innovation.
Yup. True. So what else is new?
The key is closing the gap between theory and practice. Words are cheap. It's easy to wax poetic about "culture change." It's quite another thing to make it happen.
Still, the effort is worth it.
And so, to help you on your way, here's Idea Champions' list of 50 things you can do to foster a culture of innovation.
This blog entry is just a conversation starter, so join the conversation! If you've discovered something that works for you, let us know. When we get enough juicy responses from our readers, we'll post them here.
CAUTION: The hyper-linked words on our list of 50 will take you to pages on our website or blog that elaborate on this or that. So...only click if you want to dive in deeper...
Continue reading "50 Ways to Foster a Sustainable Culture of Innovation"
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 06:31 PM | Comments (0)
FUNNY BUSINESS: From Haha to Aha!
Holmes and Watson are on a camping trip. In the middle of the night Holmes wakes up and gives Dr. Watson a nudge. "Watson," he says, "look up in the sky and tell me what you see."
"I see millions of stars, Holmes," says Watson.
"And what do you conclude from that, Watson?"
Watson thinks for a moment, "Well," he says, "astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets. Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo. Horologically, I deduce that the time is approximately a quarter past three. Meteorologically, I suspect that we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. Theologically, I can see that God is all powerful, and we are small and insignificant. Uh, what does that tell you, Holmes?"
"Watson, you idiot! Someone has stolen our tent!"
Continue reading "FUNNY BUSINESS: From Haha to Aha!"
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 03:24 AM | Comments (0)
July 26, 2008Creativity or Creactivity?
Time? Do you have it or does it have you?
Recent studies have shown that workers get an average 156 e-mails a day. And when they're not reading or deleting emails, they're switching tasks every three minutes.
We're spending more than a quarter of our workday dealing with interruptions and their needed recovery time. Ouch!
The effect of all this firefighting? A pronounced drop in creativity and innovation. Read more about Terese Amabile's research on this topic here.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 02:02 AM | Comments (0)
July 23, 2008INNOVATION: It's About Time!
During the past few years I've noticed a curious paradox heading its ugly rear among business leaders tooting the horn for innovation. On one hand they want the rank and file to step up to the plate and own the effort to innovate. On the other hand, they are unwilling to grant the people they are exhorting any more TIME to innovate.
Somehow, magically, they expect aspiring innovators to not only generate game-changing ideas in their spare time, but do all the research, data collection, business case building, piloting, project management, idea development, testing, report generation, and troubleshooting in between their other assignments.
Tooth fairy alert!
This is not the way it happens, folks! Not only is this approach unreasonable, it's unfair, unbalanced, and unworkable. You cannot shoehorn game-changing innovation projects into the already overcommitted schedules of your overworked workforce. If you do, it won't be innovation you'll get, only half-finished projects and a whole lot of cranky people complaining to you in between meetings.
Continue reading "INNOVATION: It's About Time!"
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:36 AM | Comments (2)
July 18, 2008The First Annual Last Words Contest
"I wish I had drunk more champagne."
With these last words, John Maynard Keynes, the famous British economist, passed into the Great Beyond. Way to go Johnny!
Conrad Hilton, grandfather of Paris and founder of one of the world's most acclaimed hotel empires, left us with a slightly different message. "Leave the shower curtain on the inside of the tub."
Thank you, Conrad. I will do my best to remember that.
What about you? What do you imagine your last words will be? Or better yet, what would you like them to be? Oh sure, you may have lots of emails to answer, spreadsheets to read, and meetings to attend... but it's never too soon to get your legacy in gear.
Setting a clear intention is not only important for business, it's also important for LIFE.
Got it? Good! Now share it with the rest of us. When four or more submissions are received I'll post them here for everyone to read.
And soon thereafter, Idea Champions' esteemed panel of imperfect judges will bestow one lucky reader of this blog with the FIRST ANNUAL LAST WORDS prize (a copy of the book from whence these quotes were quoted). Should be interesting.
If you need some inspiration to get you going, click below to see what Mata Hari, P.T. Barnum, Oscar Wilde and a host of others had to say just before they left their mortal coil...
Continue reading "The First Annual Last Words Contest"
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 02:57 PM | Comments (1)
July 15, 2008Outsourcing Best Practices Revealed!
This just in!
In an extraordinary move, destined to be emulated by forward thinking business leaders around the world, I've just outsourced all my sleep to a guy named Namdev in New Delhi.
Yes, it's true. I no longer need to sleep. Namdev does it for me. It's astounding how much more productive I've been this week. And, as if my sleep breakthrough wasn't enough, I've also outsourced all my exercise to a guy named Sung Lee in Malaysia. God bless Sung Lee! He's been on the treadmill three hours today, as I understand it, and will be working on our delts and pecs tomorrow. Needless to say, I'm feeling exceptionally buff at this moment.
I was just about to have a big piece of cherry cheesecake to celebrate my innovative, time-saving enhancements, but I've...er... outsourced my eating to a woman named Min Yung in Taiwan. I'm down to about 145, but I'm feeling absolutely psyched about the new contract we just got from GE. Starts next month.
The only thing I haven't outsourced this week was this blog and a visit to my dentist. (Do any of you know someone willing to get a root canal on my behalf?)
(Image from images.businessweek.com)
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:30 AM | Comments (0)
July 13, 2008Need a Breakthrough?
Tired of rubbing that magic lamp you bought on ebay, hoping for a genie to appear? Need a big breakthrough on a project of yours? Look no further. You've come to the right place. And you won't need to rub a single thing.
All you need to do is click.But first you'll need to think of a venture or idea you really want to get off the ground. Got it? Good. Now click here and let our online genie help you on your way.
(If you like the results, you can order the off-line genie here.)
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 05:18 PM | Comments (0)
July 12, 2008Ideas for Other People
I have an odd ability to come up with ideas for other people when I'm not really trying. Book and song titles are my specialties. Often the ideas are so intriguing, I try to convince myself to do something with them, but eventually I realize they belong to someone else. The question, of course, is WHO? Usually I don't know and the ideas end up orphans. But now that I've got this blog thing going, I've got a way to share the wealth -- or at least a few chuckles. So, here goes:Book title for a psychic: I Thought I Was a Small, But I'm a Medium. Book title for a psychologist with an Eastern bent: Yin, Yang and Jung. Title for a song for a recovering alcoholic: 50 Ways to Love Your Liver.Go ahead. Take 'em. They're free.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 08:51 PM | Comments (0)
July 11, 2008The 30 Second Summer Blog for People on the Go
78% of all people who log onto the Idea Champions website spend less than 30 seconds there. It's probably the same for this blog. Short and sweet is the name of the game these days.
And so... for the rest of the summer, all our blog postings will take you less than 30 seconds to read. The one you're reading now has taken you about 23 seconds so far. Which means I have another 7 seconds or so to say something meaningful.
To be continued...
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 09:42 PM | Comments (1)
July 10, 200810 Ways to Help Left Brainers Tap Into the Best of Their Creativity
If your job requires you to lead meetings, brainstorming sessions, or problem solving gatherings of any kind, chances are good that most of the people you come in contact with are left-brain dominant: analytical, logical, linear folks with a passion for results and a gnawing fear that the meeting you are about to lead will end with a rousing chorus of kumbaya.
Not exactly the kind of mindset conducive to breakthrough thinking.
Do not lose heart, oh facilitators of the creative process. Even if you find yourself in a room full of 10,000 left brainers, there are tons of ways to work with this mindset in service to bringing out the very best of the group's collective genius.
Click below for ten tips...
Continue reading "10 Ways to Help Left Brainers Tap Into the Best of Their Creativity"
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 10:43 PM | Comments (0)
July 08, 2008Innovation Begins with Fascination
I own a huge library of books on innovation. Mostly hardcover. The $27.95 variety with big indexes and forwards by people who make more money than I do.
Some of these books are actually good. Most of them bore me. (I must confess I have a secret desire, whenever I enter a bookstore, to put glue between pages 187 & 188 in all of the new releases just to see if the publishers get any complaints).
Most of the books attempt to describe the origins of innovation. You know, stuff like "the innate human impulse to find a better way" and "the imperative to find a competitive edge" and "the endless search to fulfill an unmet need." That sort of thing.
Corporate-speak, in other words.
In my experience, the origin of innovation is fascination -- the state of being intensely interested in something. Enchanted. Captivated. Spellbound. Absorbed.
Continue reading "Innovation Begins with Fascination"
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:24 PM | Comments (0)
July 03, 2008The Good Thing About Bad Ideas
"You can only be as good as you dare to be bad." - John Barrymore
One of the inevitable things you will hear at a brainstorming session is something like "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 aficionados 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." It happens all the time.
Do you think that War and Peace was written in one sitting? Madame Butterfly? The Idiot's Guide to Volkswagen Repair? No way. There were plenty of earlier drafts that were horrid, but eventually led to the final outcome.
Even diamonds begin as coal.
The key for aspiring innovators? 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: Getting Your Great Ideas Rolling (in an Uphill World) shows you how to do this. It's a particularly effective method for naysaying, skeptical groups to use. It's also a hoot and a great way to make boring brainstorming sessions come alive.
Click below for the technique:
Continue reading "The Good Thing About Bad Ideas"
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 06:59 AM | Comments (3)
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