Working from the Same Side of the Table

Jan Harness and I are continuing to work on the “Creative Instigation” presentation and book for our August 12 Kansas City PRSA session. We’ve been working individually, but also carving out time to collaborate. Some joint meetings have been more productive than others. One last week was particularly beneficial in getting the presentation order and transitions finalized. So what’s been the common denominator in the productive get togethers?

It might be surprising, but in the two best working sessions, we didn’t sit across from each other. We sat on the same side of the table and spread the materials in front of us so that we both had the same perspective on what we working on at the time.

So while I frequently extol the virtues of diverse perspectives, there is also a place for trying to create the same perspective too!

Register today for the session if you're in KC, and also vote in the poll about creativity at work!

Brainzooming - Taking Note

When you’re at a conference, take notes along with the presentations. But also keep a separate sheet where you write down cool ideas triggered by presentations and anything else that happens at the conference. This list will be a great source for:

• Conversation starters during networking periods


• Writing a report out when you get back to work


• Creating an idea pool that you can use for strategic inspiration
  

Final Days - If you haven't already, be sure and answer the question today on the upper left of mikebrownspeaks about creativity at work. It's input for an upcoming "Creative Instigation" presentation on August 12. Thanks!

The New Anti-Strategic Thinking Chocolate - HATED IT!

Creative Quickie – Get To Spectacular Faster

What are one or two areas where you want and need your creative effort to be spectacular? List them, then ask yourself, “What shortcuts can I take to get to spectacular?”

Figure out how you can apply these ideas to go right to the front of the spectacular line!

Special Opportunity - If you haven't already, be sure and answer the question on the upper left of mikebrownspeaks about creativity at work. It's input for an upcoming "Creative Instigation" presentation on August 12. Thanks!

Excelling at the Rules of CBR

It's been some time, but here's another in the ongoing series of "The Rules of Can’t Be Right" pieces. Consider these tips to improve your ability to spot potential spreadsheet errors.

• Approximate numbers so you can do the math in your head as a double check before you begin, i.e., an 8% increase in 745 replies can be estimated at 10% of 750, or 75 minus 15 (15 being 2% of 75) or 60. The precise answer? 59.6.
  
• Use the Data Filter and Sort capabilities in Excel – filters allow you to get a quick look at all the values in a table, which is great for spotting outliers or eliminating small variations in test fields (i.e., standardizing on either “management” or “mgmt.” as a descriptor). The sort feature allows you to rearrange tables based on various dimensions to highlight potential problems.
  
• Learn Pivot Tables in Excel – beyond their traditional analytical value, Pivot Tables are great for quickly looking at combinations of data to highlight problems. Recently, I was given a table in Excel that looked fine. By putting it into a pivot table and checking some relationships, it became apparent that 4 lines were missing from a SUM equation and 50% of the costs that should have been represented in the table weren’t accounted for properly.

Not only will these three tips help you spot errors, the final tip on Pivot Tables will improve your Excel productivity dramatically. In a real life example, somebody told me that my request to modify a spreadsheet would take three hours. Using Pivot Tables, it actually took 15 minutes. That’s Excelling!

Case Studies – From the Audience's Side of the Podium

I just got back from speaking at the Frost & Sullivan Marketing World 2008 conference. The session topic was creating more strategic insights from research, with assistance from Jennifer Nelson (Johnson & Johnson), Bill Lenihan (Philips), and Barb Murphy (Weyforth-Haas Marketing).

The interactive Frost & Sullivan format called for featuring a few case studies. While I don’t usually do corporate case studies in presentations, this opportunity along with a pitch Barb was doing recently caused us to discuss - from an audience’s perspective - what a beneficial case study should incorporate:

• A few pieces of general information about the company or market under study – The audience doesn’t need to know everything about the situation; share just enough so we can judge how closely our own situations are to yours.


• A brief problem or opportunity statement – What general situation did the company face? Possible salient points might include the business / market condition (growth, retraction, cost cutting), product lifecycle stage, internal or external audiences, types of customers, business expectations, type of strategy employed, objectives, etc. Again, these needn’t be shared in excruciating detail when all we need is a point of reference to our situations and a sense of the signals that suggested the problem or opportunity was present.


• Three to five generalized lessons learned that it would have been great to know beforehand – Remember this about the audience – we’re “you” before you learned what you learned in this situation. The real benefit for us is to discover what you now know so we can get to the same successes faster or avoid what didn’t work for you. The key question for you to answer: “How would I be able to replicate the steps that took me from the initial situation to success?” That’s what we’re interested in hearing.


• A few critical success factors – The elements essential to repeating a comparable success.


• A general indication of results – We don’t need something overly detailed. It’s more important to have a sense of what we can expect, i.e. single or double digit improvements, how soon benefits can be realized, how long they’d last, etc. And avoid all these things – skip “in depth” discussion on your company statistics, videos that don’t move the topic forward, solutions only possible by using you or your vendor, and wasted time extolling your company’s incomparable virtues (i.e., a sales pitch).

I hope the outline is helpful next time you’re asked to prep a case study. And thanks to Edris Takeda from Steelcase for suggesting this article!

Thinking the Write Way

My creative instigator friend Jan Harness has made it clear that she can’t think without a pen in her hand. And since Jan’s an incredibly talented strategic writer, that’s fine with me. I’ll even supply the pen, because while she’s writing, I’m usually drawing and diagramming.

In contrast to thinking quietly or aloud, thinking while you’re writing offers yet another set of potential advantages since it:

• Gets ideas down & allows you to visualize them more readily –Seeing the words that make up a thought provides another visual perspective from which to assess the idea.
  
• Allows you to more readily edit your thinking – With the words down on paper you can begin the editing process very quickly, building on and modifying your thinking in concrete, tangible ways.
  
• Speeds sharing it with others who weren’t there – In written form, you can read, email, fax, or text the ideas so that others who aren’t in the same physical location can review, react, and participate in the thinking process nearly immediately.
  
• Makes it harder to forget or miss a point - By quickly committing things to writing you ensure that they don’t get forgotten or overlooked. It also allows strong ideas that may be passed over initially to be around later to resurface when people may have different perspectives.

Thinking while writing works with other types of thinking styles, so if you have the flexibility to think in multiple ways concurrently, you’ll reap even more advantages than you might have thought!

Don't Be a Creative Miser

Pick your favorite creative talent and figure out 5 ways you can share the talent to benefit younger people this week. It may be your kids, junior people at work, or a church youth group.

Just make sure that at least once a day all week you’re opening up your creative talents to help at least one person, whether they realize it or not.

You’ll both be better for it!

Creative Freakout

My dad managed the TV station in Hays, KS where I grew up. His job was the source of an amazing number of cool experiences. One of the best was in 1975 when Topps sent him 3 cases of baseball cards. So what did I do all summer? I opened pack after pack of baseball cards. And 1975 happened to be a year with two rookie cards for future Hall of Famers – George Brett and Robin Yount. I still have 6 or 7 each of these cards!

Another very cool experience was getting a copy of an audio cassette called “Creative Freakout.” All I knew until recently was that it was done by the Heller Corporation in L.A., and that it has a hilarious story line right out of the late 1960’s, featuring some of the most memorable advertising jingles I’ve ever heard.

Poking around on the web, I found this link with more background on the recording and an audio file that contains (unfortunately) only the first half of the program. Take a listen, and you’ll find that it lives up to its title – prepare to freakout at these advertising protest songs!

BTW – For whatever reason, when somebody else has already answered a question for which you’re seeking an answer, it’s called secondary research, as if it’s less important or relevant than “primary” research. To someone who started life as a “secondary” researcher (me), it feels like a huge disservice (okay, it really feels like b.s.) since the knowledge and skills to be successful may be different, but are just as demanding as “primary” research.

So the mini-rant is in tribute to secondary researchers everywhere, but one in particular, who’s leaving our staff today to move to a really cool new project that’s at the heart of bringing online access to communities across the US.

Deb – you’re truly a unique talent, and it’s been an honor to work with and learn from you! The best of everything! And let’s do Crave, home of grilled cheese and tomato soup - a real creative freakout!

Advertising Creativity Thought Starters

Going through the July 2008 "Real Simple" magazine, these lines from various ads all stuck out as great creative thought starters. See what thinking and ideating they get started for you!

KU Class Recap – Tuesday night I talked with Barrett Sydnor’s graduate level integrated marketing communications class about strategic thinking. The class members were great and very engaged in applying exercises to their class projects.

One topic was how to introduce strategy and creativity at work. We covered things they could do and that cultivating creativity in the workplace depends a lot on what YOU bring to the job.

Voice your perspective on creativity levels in the workplace at the mikebrownspeaks poll. Your input will be part of the upcoming Creative Instigation project.

How Do You Get Ready?

A comment from Tiger Woods prior to a June U.S. Open round was very telling relative to language and how it affects actions.

While most athletes talk about warming up, preparing, or getting ready, Tiger described his pre-round activities as “rehearsal.” And rather than simply hitting golf balls, he rehearses specific shots he expects to face during the course of a round. That’s a far cry from warming up, and his results obviously reflect that.

Take a lesson here and let’s all ask ourselves - How do I get ready for the important activities (both personal and professional) in my life? Do I warm up or do I rehearse?

Can You Hear What I'm Thinking?

There’s a scene in an early episode of the HBO mini-series “John Adams” where Benjamin Franklin cautions Adams to temper his statements. Adams asks him if he doesn’t believe in speaking what’s on one’s mind. Franklin’s responds, “Thinking aloud is a habit responsible for much of mankind’s misery.”

I’m not sure if Franklin actually made this remark, but there are certainly advantages to thinking out loud. It allows you to:

• Elicit more immediate reactions – Thinking aloud lets others hear perspectives right away and react. When time constrained, it allows for more quickly constructing, developing, and vetting potential scenarios and arriving at a selection.


• Gauge whether emerging ideas sound logical / persuasive – How an idea sounds in your head can be very different when you express it aloud. Thinking aloud can force more structure into an idea early as it comes to life through the spoken word.


• Have others start building on your thinking – Speaking a newly formed idea allows others to hear and build off it right away. Within a group that’s comfortable, open, and non-censoring, that process has tremendous value in generating more and stronger possibilities.
  
• Introduces an idea in a more raw form – Voicing an idea as it first occurs results in less self-censorship and adjustment of the idea to make it more familiar and comfortable.


• Create more energy – In a brainstorming setting, the verbal exchange of new possibilities can create a tremendous energy buzz as people go back and forth in adding and shaping the idea.
  
• See if a point of view is aligning or dividing - If your group is strong and fairly homogenous relative to people’s titles, thinking aloud provides a quick opportunity to see whether your point of view aligns or divides the group. These reactions allow you to decide on modifying or advancing your point of view to help the group move ahead.

Although quiet thinking is most comfortable for me, with close strategic and creative team partners, thinking aloud is great because it allows for rapidly building on one another’s perspectives.

Creative Quickie - Get Outside The Walls

I saw this phrase in a magazine ad recently: “It’s time to let nothing contain you.”

So what contains you – creatively, mentally, spiritually, physically, geographically, financially, or some other important way?

Spend 5 minutes to list these things out. Take 15 minutes imagining what you can do to break the containment and reap the benefits. Then take action to get outside the walls that hold you in!

Success Quotes - Compare and Contrast

"A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.” - Abraham Maslow

“It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.” - Gore Vidal


"Delay is preferable to error.” - Thomas Jefferson

“Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.” - Winston Churchill


“If 50 million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.” - Anatole France

"50 million Elvis fans can't be wrong." - Elvis Presley

Solving A Puzzling Situation

My wife has been putting together some very complex puzzles lately, with many pieces, odd shapes, and undifferentiated images from piece to piece. Completing them as quickly as she does requires intense concentration.

Along the way, there are times when she’ll get stuck; it will seem impossible to find the particular piece she needs next. Often when she’s in that situation, I’ll walk by, chat briefly, and she’ll find the piece (or I will) almost instantly.

She credits me with being good luck when that happens. While that certainly makes me feel good, it’s obviously not true. I suspect one of two things is going on when this happens and both tie directly to perspective, as so much of creative problem solving does.

If I happen to find the piece, it’s simply because I’m bringing no previous perspective to the problem. I’m seeing the patterns of shapes and images from a new and different angle than she is. And if our brief interaction is coincident with her finding the piece, it’s because the time we interacted is enough to break her concentration, allowing her if not a new, at least a fresher perspective as she reimmerses herself in the puzzle.

So next time you’re working alone, concentrating intensely on trying to solve a problem with the door closed and the phone on send, consider letting yourself be interrupted. The break in concentration may be just what you need to figure out the problem or to at least have the interrupter do it for you!

25 Ways to Change Your Character

Nearly every week since the start of the year, the Wednesday feature has been “Change Your Character,” a great technique to generate new ideas by delegating a challenge to someone who you wouldn’t typically think about selecting to do your work. This lateral thinking approach uses someone in a completely different line of work to help you look at your own situation with a fresh perspective.

As a refresher, here are the steps:

1. State the business challenge that you’re addressing – it could be an opportunity, a problem, a new process or approach, etc.
2. Pick who you want to work on your situation. This could be a real person, a fictional or cartoon character, or even another business that faces an analogous situation.
3. Once you’ve identified who you’ll put on the job, list 8 to 10 approaches that the person, character, or business uses to address opportunities or challenges.
4. Using the 8 to 10 approaches, apply them to your situation to generate at least 3 new ideas each for solving it.

The Wednesday feature does steps 2 and 3, allowing you to focus primarily on step 4 – idea generation. As the weekly feature moves to less frequent appearances, here’s a handy summary of the 25 columns that you can bookmark for use in successfully addressing future opportunities. Within each category, the situations and characters covered are listed, along with a link to the original article.

Strategy

• Disruptive Strategy – Bart Simpson
• Competitive Strategy – Terrorist
• Competing Against Bigger Players – Wee Willie Keeler
• Getting People to Participate in Strategic Planning – Event Planner

Relationship & Brand Building

• Lead Generation – Police Detective
• Identifying Good Prospects – Baseball Scout
• Growing Business Opportunities – Farmer
• Building Business Relationships, Strengthening & Maintaining Business Relationships, and Improving Challenging Business Relationships – Self-Help Advice Columinst
• Customer Service Approach – Babysitter
• Communicating Intangible Ideas – Garrison Keillor
• Brand Repositioning – Donald Trump & Madonna
• Creating Product Extensions - Successful Product-Extending Brands

Team Building

• Creating Excitement – Cheerleader
• Training & Developing Others – Great Teachers

Management & Problem Solving

• Managing Priorities – Air Traffic Controller
• Preventing & Dealing with Problems – Firefighter
• Diagnosing & Curing Problems – Doctor
• Project Turnarounds – Turnaround CEO
• Trimming Waste – Fitness Trainer

Professional Skills

• Improvising in Unfamiliar Situations – An Improv Comedian
• Generating a Variety of Potential Solutions – Castaways from Gilligan’s Island
• Clear, Concise Writing - Reporter
• Simplifying Things – Forrest Gump

Just a note - I used Bart Simpson recently, and it worked very well. Give it a try and have great success Changing Your Character!

Don't Speak - I'm Thinking

There’s a Peanuts cartoon I wrote about recently showing Snoopy sitting silently with Charlie Brown, a checker board between them, and Charlie wondering what Snoopy’s next move will be. He suspects Snoopy has a fancy strategy planned given how quiet and tricky he is; the more Charlie thinks about it, the more he wonders what Snoopy is thinking. In the last panel, Snoopy is silently trying to recall whether he’s playing red or black checkers!

I’ve used the cartoon many times because like Snoopy, I often think quietly, even if I’m actually “thinking” about something much more basic than people expect. That’s just one advantage of thinking quietly. If you don’t usually do it, you may want to consider using it more to your advantage because thinking quietly:

• Can provide mystery and cover – Quiet time allows you to potentially mask when you don’t understand something or don’t have a good idea to contribute right at that moment. Quiet thinking can also create a sense of mystery, as in the Peanuts cartoon. Particularly in an adversarial situation, causing the other person to think about what you’re thinking (thereby losing focus on their own thoughts) can provide some advantage.


• Creates a learning opportunity – I hardly ever learn while I’m talking, but there’s a lot to learn when others are sharing their perspectives. Shutting your mouth and listening is a great way to go to school on what others are thinking and expressing.


• Is great if you don’t want to influence others’ opinions unnecessarily – One of my mentors uses a relatively unconventional approach – in a team meeting, he always expresses his views last. The most junior person on the team always comments first so that they can respond without influence from statements by their boss or other senior team members. People express their perspectives in order of increasing seniority until the most senior person speaks.


• Allows you to build off of others’ ideas – Relative to the previous item about commenting in reverse order of seniority, it’s a great advantage to be thinking as you hear the perspectives that others are expressing. Having been one of the most senior people, I usually get to go next to last. There’s a tremendous advantage to be had in being able to listen to and vet your own thinking based on what others are thinking. Even if you’re not in a position to adopt this approach, gain the advantages by letting others get a word in before you do.

So what do you think? And don’t worry people who don’t think quietly; future posts will extol the virtues of thinking in other ways too.

Creative Quickie - 3 Steps and Pick

When you need to tap your creativity for a new look at an old project, try this 3-step approach with a goal of generating 33 new ideas from each step.

Step 1 – Think Connections: Ask, “What’s this project like?” Generalize the project, select an analogous situation, and then apply attributes, lessons, and possibilities from the analogous situation to your project.

Step 2 – Think Random: Select random words, phrases, and images from a magazine and ask, “What does this word, phrase, or image suggest about possibilities for my project?” Stuck for a good magazine to use? Try “Real Simple” or any other big, picture-rich magazine outside your field.

Step 3 – Think Again: Go back through your 66 current ideas and start pairing them up to generate 33 more possibilities.

Pick: With the 99 ideas you now have, there should at least 10 to 15 possibilities that you can select and directly apply to your old project to enliven it!

Radio, Radio - Part 2

Following up Tuesday’s article, I appeared Friday, June 20 on the “Eye on Small Business” radio program with Kelly Scanlon (KCTE Hot Talk 1510 AM). It’s an hour show, providing an opportunity to talk with Kelly, publisher of “Kansas City Small Business Monthly,” about ways to foster a more innovative approach in business and life. You can listen to the entire program by clicking on this link to her Talkshoe.com site.

We covered many topics during the show including those below:

• Orange – An Innovative Color
• What’s Creativity?
• Applying Your Best Talents in New Ways
• Building a Creative Team
• Generalizing Business Situations for Innovation
• Trying Different Creativity Tools
• Looking from Different Perspectives
• Creativity As a Numbers Game
• Forgetting Conventional Wisdom
• Personal Creative Team Members:
  Jan Harness – Creative Instigation Blog
  Chuck Dymer – PeopleWorks
• Getting Unstuck Creatively
• Stealing Ideas (or if you need businessspeak, call it “Leveraging the Intellectual Capital of Others”)
• Using Great Questions
• Focusing on What Matters
• What Does Strategic Mean?
• Narrowing Ideas

We also talked about the upcoming August 12 PRSA program that Jan Harness and I are doing on creativity. As part of the preparation, we’re working on a workbook (and then soon to be book) called “Creative Instigation.”

Since there won’t be an article on July 4, here’s tip: If you have the opportunity, watch fireworks from the tallest building that you can. We typically watch from the 9th floor at work because we can see fireworks displays from all over Kansas City in one location! Hotels with restaurants at the top are another great option as well.

Be safe and check back July 7 for a “Creative Quickie,” the new every Monday feature to get your week started creatively.

Change Your Character - Fixing Problems as a Turnaround CEO

There is always the potential for a business, a project, or even a personal situation to run into difficulties. In the business world, a frequent answer when something goes wrong is to call in a turnaround CEO to fix it. Using well-tested techniques, their goal is to quickly diagnose underlying problems, correct them, and return the business to solid performance.

This week, consider delegating a broken situation you have to a turnaround CEO and let them take a run at fixing it. Try to generate three new turnaround ideas for each item below as a turnaround CEO would:

• Identify the most critical problems
• Bring in unbiased consultants to help fix things
• Make fact-based decisions
• Look for smart & simple steps to take right away
• Bring in their own people to run the company
• Ask lots of questions
• Cut costs in a dramatic fashion
• Uncover hidden problems in the business
• Secure needed resources
• Write off bad operations

Note – for the previous post on how to use the Change Your Character technique, click here.

Radio, Radio - Part 1

Before and after the recent National Association of Women Business Owners session on DIY Strategic Thinking, I had the great opportunity to appear on radio programs on Kansas City’s KCTE Hot Talk 1510 AM. Strategic Thinking and Hot Talk – what a combination! Since both programs are available for listening online, you can be the judge.

In late May, I appeared with good friend Jay Liebenguth on his Thursday afternoon show, Live with Jay. Jay has been a great supporter, and beyond putting the radio show online, he wrote an incredibly kind post on his blog.

We covered a variety of strategic thinking topics, many of which have been highlighted here. Take a listen to the show, and for your quick reference, here are links to topics we covered.

• Steps You Can Take to Be More Strategic
• What’s Strategic Thinking?
• Challenges in Doing Strategic Thinking?
• Planning for Doing Planning – What’s in a Marketing Plan?
• Adapting Plans
• Who Should Be Involved in Planning?
• Bringing Others into Planning
• How Much Structure Should Go Into Strategic Planning?
• Ways to Prioritize Ideas
• What’s the Link Between Humor & Innovation?
• How Do You Get People Engaged in Strategic Thinking?
• Can Strategy Really Be Simply Stated?

After the NAWBO program, I met Kelly Scanlon, publisher of “Kansas City Small Business Monthly,” appearing on her June 20 Friday morning program. This Thursday there will be a link to that show and the innovation topics we covered.