Take Help Graciously Even When You Think You Don't Need It

I was in Western Kansas last week, and my mom and I made a few trips to Walgreens. Right inside the parking lot was a huge pothole (interestingly, this may be a part of the Walgreens brand experience because there's a comparable one at the Kansas City location we regularly visit). The first two times we were there, my mom pointed it out and told me to be careful not to hit it. I found this quite UNNECESSARY since, given its enormous size, it was IMPOSSIBLE to not see the pothole.

On my way out of town, I stopped alone at Walgreens to get something. This time, I didn't see the pothole, and without my mom to point it out, the car thudded right into it.

Why the difference? I'm not entirely sure.

But here's the lesson: even when you think you don't need help from someone, TAKE IT. And more than that, accept it with a smile, take it to heart, and thank them for the advice because you just don't know what might have happened if they hadn't cared enough to offer it!

Are You Feeling More Creative Yet?

A common technique recommended to enhance creativity is to consciously do routine tasks differently, i.e. brush your teeth with the other hand, eat at a new time, take a different way to work.

That approach hasn't been all that fruitful for me. I prefer to let routine tasks be routine so my mind is free to think about new things instead of concentrating on what I'm doing. It's simply works better for me.

One of my familiar routines is driving to and from work since home and work have been in the same places for a long time. I even live and work 40 blocks apart on the SAME street, so it's a straight shot with nothing but a few stop lights and stop signs to break up the quiet time.

In fact, it's conceivable I could get to work with my eyes closed. Some days, my mind wanders so much to other topics, they might as well be closed. In short, drive time for me is usually all about creative thinking.

You can imagine my frustration now that the street is torn up midway to work and there's a detour because of the road construction. Now I have to "think" about which alternative route to take.

I'll be keeping track over the next few weeks, and let you know if I feel more creative because of my detour! I'm not holding my breath!

Could You Get on the Same Page?

It's always great to solicit and consider expert opinions. It's not so great, though, when qualified experts don't agree, and you have to decide and act.

Being confronted with this situation recently (4 physicians, none of whom agreed on the appropriate course of action) caused me to reflect on decision factors to be considered when this happens. These issues seem applicable in comparable situations you may face:

• What are the experience levels among dissenting parties? Are they generalists and/or specialists?


• How long has each expert been involved with the situation? Does more tenure translate into greater expertise?


• Are there differences in the risk/benefit perspectives among the experts?


• Do any of the experts have a personal or vested interest in a particular outcome? Does a preference create disproportional bias on a particular expert's perspective?


• Is there a more solid logic behind one point of view vs. another?


• How do the relationships among the experts play into the difference of opinion?


• How willing is each expert to consider and learn from new information?


• Are any experts in roles that create a disproportionate bias?


• If assistants are involved, how do they react relative to the experts they are or aren't affiliated with?

In the situation I faced, it appears we made the right decision.

We took the most experienced expert's point of view; he also had the most tenure and personal interest in the situation. The medical specialist, who was newest to the case and most reluctant to act, demonstrated role bias, made an illogical risk assessment, and had a wonderful P.A. who gave ample cues that she wasn't fully in support of his position. He was willing, however, to accept new information, and went ahead with the (successful) surgery he was initially reluctant to perform.

So, what questions or criteria do you use to figure out which expert to believe?

Creative Quickie - The Creative Possibilities in Trash

Here's an on-the-scene report from Big Item Pickup in my neighborhood this past weekend. It provides a wonderful lesson in creative possibilities. Enjoy!

Minus One, Minus Two

When your creativity is blocked, try simplifying your challenge. Start removing elements that aren't working or seem to be getting in the way.

Is there greater clarity and opportunity to creatively meet your objective?

If so, that's great. If not, take another element away, and keep going.

Creative Quickie: Use Twitter for Random Idea Generation

Random inputs are a great source of creativity starters, and Twitter is a wonderful place to look for them. Go to http://www.search.twitter.com/, enter a phrase of interest to you, and watch what links, ideas, and thought fragments pop up. (BTW - you don't have to be on Twitter to do this.)

I have searches going all the time on "innovation" and "creativity" that yield scads of thought provoking material - as demonstrated by yesterday's post!

"Hitting a Creative Brick Wall"

In honor of Jan Harness’ birthday today (Happy Birthday Jan!) and her love of poetry, here’s the closest we've come to featuring some on this blog:

“Hitting a Creative Brick Wall” by @Pretty_Awkward

Work work work work, short break,
work work work work, potty break,
work work work, quick snack,
work work work, BOOM! Creative brick wall.

Yet another delightful example of the incredible creativity being shared on Twitter, if you know where and when to look for it. This one appeared in the middle of the night earlier this week.

Here’s a question: Can any of us come up with a comparably elegant and simple word depiction of getting around a creative brick wall?

I’d love to share your creations here. Maybe @Pretty_Awkward might even favor us with an answer post!

World Creativity and Innovation Week - Innovating in Your "Happy Zone"

As a kid, I was a huge baseball fan, reading anything I could on how the game could be played better. One of my favorite books was “The Science of Hitting” by Ted Williams. As one of baseball’s greatest hitters (and the last person to hit .400 for a season), Williams had plenty of advice and insights to pass along.

The lesson that’s stayed with me to this day was depicted on the book's original cover. It was a photograph of Williams in the batter’s box with the strike zone depicted as 11 baseballs high and 7 baseballs across. And each color-coded baseball had a batting average listed on it corresponded to Williams’ expected batting average for pitches throughout his strike zone.

Belt high and over the plate, and he was a .400 hitter; low and away, and even the great Ted Williams knew he’d only hit .230. Williams’ point was he knew in what situations he’d be great (his "happy zone") and in which he’d be less than average. As a result, he only swung at pitches where he had a high probability of success.

That’s a great lesson well beyond baseball. Do you actively evaluate your strengths, your areas with the highest probabilities of innovation success, and concentrate efforts on those areas? If not, maybe now's the time (early in the season) to make sure you're only swinging at good "innovation" pitches day in and day out.

World Creativity and Innovation Week - Asking a Question to Spur “InYESvation”

Even amid positive energy from activities during World Creativity and Innovation Week, we all may experience times when we become self-destructive to our innovative instincts by telling ourselves, “No, I can’t _____________.” You can fill in the blank with whatever negative self-talk you usually use.

One way to fight this tendency is to ask, “If I tried _____________, what’s the worst that could happen?” When viewed in this light, so many activities that initially fill us with apprehension show themselves to have far more dramatic upsides than negatives.

Try this approach as another way of “Taking the NO Out of InNOvation” and creating a sense of “InYESvation.”

InYESvation? I’ve been talking about “Taking the NO Out of InNOvation” for 4 years and had never finished the idea by replacing the “NO” with a “YES.”

Credit for this new word goes to @rainesmaker (Glenn Raines) who tweeted this great word to me last Friday. Yet one more example of the benefits of being hooked up with so many wonderfully creative people on Twitter. Thanks Glenn for doing my work for me!

World Creativity and Innovation Week - Eight Perspectives for "Taking the NO Out of InNOvation"

“Taking the NO Out of InNOvation” touches on eight perspectives and approaches to enhance innovativeness in you and your team.

And on May 14, I'll be presenting it at the Kansas City American Advertising Federation- KC (AAF KC) Get Charged Up symposium. The luncheon keynote will be delivered by Jennifer Dominiquini from Prophet, and Sally Hogshead will be rocking the place with her opening afternoon session!

If you're anywhere near the Kansas City area, and you've read or heard me talk up Sally since I met her 4 years ago, take advantage of this opportunity to see her live.

In the interim, here are the 8 perspective that can help you realize a more innovative personal approach by being:

1. Introspective: Be more introspective and understand your creative strengths.


2. Diverse: Embrace diversity & build a creative team with complementary strengths.


3. Forgetful: Figure out how to selectively forget conventional wisdom to refresh your perspective.


4. A Borrower: Borrow thought starters & ideas from new sources & put your own twist on them!


5. Open to Possibilities: Open yourself to all kinds of possibilities by finding new ways to look at situations.


6. Inquisitive: Become more inquisitive and ask great questions to bring out new ideas within you and your team.


7. A Creator: Prioritize ideas and bring them to fruition - actually create something with your creativity.


8. Persistent: Be persistent & tenaciously pursue possibilities since "No's" can provide insights to help you change & get to a "Yes."

World Creativity and Innovation Week - "Open Innovation" by Guest Author, Gwen Ishmael

Today's post for World Creativity and Innovation Week comes through a Twitter connection with Gwen Ishmael, Senior VP, Insights and Innovation at Decision Analyst in Dallas. Gwen has worked across a variety of industries in branding and marketing, with leadership roles in new product and service development. She spoke at the marcus evans Open Innovation conference last week, and shares her perspectives on themes from the conference:

This month's 3rd Annual Open Innovation conference in Las Vegas saw B2B and B2C firms coming together to share open innovation (OI) best practices and tools. Unlike other events I’ve attended, these companies embraced the concept of openness and spoke candidly about how they had achieved their successes and where they’re trying to improve.

Headway is being made in addressing OI resistance. For some, the quest for external inspiration and contribution is actively promoted by executive management. Chris Thoen, Director of Innovation and Knowledge Management at P&G, says CEO A.G. Lafley’s long-standing direction for “50% of P&G’s initiatives to have at least one significant external partner” has helped change the “not invented here” mindset to one of “proudly found elsewhere.” Other efforts, such as the Alcan Packaging customer-centric Idea Factory, have been championed by those further down in the organization.

The quest for meaningful and relevant measures of OI return on investment continues. Director of Capital Investments and Innovation Strategy at Embarq, Jeff Stafford, shared an interesting approach based on Monte Carlo simulation in which potential sell scenarios and associated cash flows were used to determine the viability of an idea. And Brian Johnston, Director of External Alliances for Kodak, presented a six-question evaluative framework Kodak and its partners used to jointly define success.

Yet for me one theme rose above the others, which Jeff Bellairs, G-Win Director for General Mills, captured in a wonderfully simple phrase: “Open Innovation is not about being external. It’s about being connected.” Jason Husk, Group Manager Technology Brokerage for Clorox, supported this stance and presented a symbiotic relationship between technology, consumers, and business results as a model for connection. And Chris Thoen announced P&G’s launch of Connect + Develop 2.0 OI model through which the company will focus on collaborating with partners for mutual value creation.

It appears companies are successfully working through initial OI issues related to internal sell-in of OI as a good idea and decisions on the right partners to consider. Now they’re progressing to the next stage and addressing the kinds of relationships to have with partners and the appropriate ways to foster them.

With connection as the tactic for implementing an OI strategy, true collaboration between a company and its partners – whether they’re universities, other firms, customers, or consumers – becomes more possible.

World Creativity and Innovation Week - Starts Today

World Creativity and Innovation Week (WICW) starts today (the anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci's birth) and runs through next Tuesday, April 21 (although we'll extend it one day around here until April 22 to cover Jan Harness' birthday).

I was introduced to it several weeks ago on Twitter by Marci Segal. The week is intended to honor "our distinct human capacity to create, adapt, and innovate to make the world a better place and to make our place in the world better too."

Started in 2002, there are activities planned in 46 countries this year among more than a hundred communities, businesses, and schools.

To dive in and get involved, here are a variety of WICW links to check out:

• The main website for World Creativity & Innovation Week: Provides an overview of the week, activities, and ways to participate.
• Follow World Creativity and Innovation Week on Twitter and Facebook
• The WICW Wiki has a listing of scheduled events
• A Webstorm to propose, review and vote on creativity-advancing questions to be addressed

Here on Brainzooming, we'll have posts throughout the week specifically focused on innovation and creativity, including a guest post on Open Innovation tomorrow.

Everybody Must Get Stoned on High Velocity Radio

It was a pleasure to do a segment Monday on High Velocity Radio with hosts Stone Payton and Lee Kantor talking about a variety of innovation topics. I met Stone initially via Twitter back in January, and appearing on Stone's show was part of the prize for winning the IDEF140 contest he sponsored.

We covered a range of issues, so beyond a link to the radio show, here are links to many of the topics we discussed during our conversation.

• Slideshare link to "Taking the NO Out of InNOvation" ebook


• Getting comfortable with sharing credit for innovation and the power of "we"


• Why it's important to have diverse perspectives among an innovation group


• Why it's helpful to be forgetful when it comes to innovation


• Ways to be more strategic on a personal level


• Making sure you're able to prioritize ideas


• My creative instigation partner, Jan Harness, her Creative Instigation blog and our upcoming book


• Appearing at a Sydney, Australia innovation event as a result of Twitter


• Following me on Twitter: @Brainzooming


• My Most Memorable Business Mistake

Thanks again Stone and Lee for the opportunity to be on the show, and I look forward to being able to do it again in the future!

Do You Even Agree with Yourself?

A previous post on Powerpoint talked about covering a slide image and seeing what the headline says, then covering the headline and seeing what the image suggests to look for message agreement between the two.

The same approach is valuable in analytical work as well.

If you've created a chart or table, cover it and see what the explanatory text or headline conveys. Then cover the text and ask yourself if the chart backs up your point. Ideally they'll match. Often though, unless you've really pushed the analysis supporting the table/chart, it will show irrelevant or misleading data that compromises or confuses your main point.

Using this technique recently showed that instead of showing a long timeline to depict daily fluctuations, the key point was made much more directly with a stacked bar chart demonstrating a month over month change.

Another twist on the technique is to actually describe aloud the primary message of the analysis as a further check to see if you really agree with and support everything you have on the page!

Brainzooming - Coming to Your New Senses

PBS recently aired a September 2008 performance of George Gershwin's music featuring the Nashville Symphony. The show's closing piece was "Rhapsody in Blue," perhaps Gershwin's most well-known piece. I've enjoyed the song for a long time but never had the opportunity to "see" it performed and videoed to such great effect.

It was incredible to SEE guest soloist Kevin Cole's performance - his hands were up and down the keyboard in such commanding fashion. In the video excerpt below, you get some sense of the wonder of his performance.

For today's challenge - while we usually think of listening to music, in this case, being able to watch music was as impressive as the audio experience.

For other sensory experiences you encounter, identify a different dimension to begin to experience them: Maybe listening to a dog being petted or feeling the texture of the ingredients in a home cooked meal? You decide and come to some new senses of your own.

Update Note: Because of Good Friday, there won't be a post on Friday, April 10.

Creative Consumers?

I attended a session at last year's IIR The Market Research Event that discussed “creative consumers.” They were nearly reverently described as “consumers” serving as paid ideation session participants; this, after passing personality tests (both oral and written) and receiving creativity technique training. They were lauded for being able to write dead-on concept statements.

According to Marla Commons, co-presenter from Research International, the firm has a panel of at least 250 “creative consumers” with varied backgrounds available to corporations. In reviewing some profiles, one “consumer” has been doing this for 17 years!

Kraft Foods (the other presenter) applied the technique to design service concepts. “Creative consumers” were included at a one-to-one rate with corporate executives (or “drones,” although the term was never actually used) to inject creativity. The first day-long session produced 154 ideas from five custom exercises; these were narrowed eventually to 15 for further development in a second day-long session.

A couple of observations (recognizing that I do ideation primarily in a B2B environment):

• The best ideation sessions don’t require 50% creatives. At 20% of participants, they can really drive creative instigation while remaining participants contribute to other business aspects being explored. Going higher saps the diversity critical for innovative ideas.


• Lack of diversity can hamper the evaluation phase. Interestingly, two later rejected concepts shared to show the group’s creativity both fell apart based on density requirements. Not enough volume in a certain time period usually signals major problems. Density isn’t necessarily a concept driving CPG, but it’s a challenge readily apparent to service marketers since time is a perishable resource that can’t be inventoried. Here's where a little more diversity in a group could have been beneficial.


• One hundred fifty-four ideas isn’t that remarkable a number. We’ve seen 500 or 600 ideas from a more diverse participant group. The number of raw ideas is highly dependent on what your session objectives are and using the right tools to help realize your goals.


• It’s ridiculous to call these participants “consumers.” While companies want to feel they’re involving real consumers in the ideation process, that’s suspect. They may have familiarity and experience in the topic. But with the testing, training, and pay involved ($500-$1500 daily), they’re really “part-time, informal creative staff members.” Seventeen years in, somebody doesn’t enter a session with a completely fresh “consumer” perspective.

This is an intriguing concept, but appears to be misrepresented and oversold. The funniest moment was during Q&A when someone asked apprehensively if the creative consumers could travel. I turned to the guy next to me and asked, “I wonder what they eat?”

Probably special pellets to generate creative sparks!

It's Who, Not How Many

At the Charlotte Business Marketing Association presentation several weeks ago, a question was raised about the right number of people to have in ideation sessions.

That's a common question, and there are certainly optimum group sizes. What's optimum varies based on the business objective and the complexity of the effort needed.

My response though was the much more important factor is the group's composition. For the best thinking, three groups need to be represented:

• People with solid, front-line business experience to help frame business issues.


• Others with functional knowledge applicable to the topic to provide an understanding of capabilities.


• Creative instigators who can act as catalysts for viewing things in new & unconventional ways.

Given that criteria, I've done very successful multi-person strategic thinking sessions with two people who filled multiple roles. Often, it takes 3 to 8 people per group to have enough depth in each of the three areas.

Tomorrow's post will highlight the challenges of overloading an ideation session with too much creativity. Trust me - it doesn't lead to the best, most implementable ideas.

Creative Quickie - What Inspires You?

Why wait until your creativity is challenged to think about ways to stimulate it?

Take a few minutes to complete this inspiration roster listing various things you know are creativity instigators for you. Then when you really need them, you'll have a ready list to turn to for inspiration.

What Inspires Me?

Place _________________________________________

Image ________________________________________

Person ________________________________________

Writing ________________________________________

Music _________________________________________

Time of day _____________________________________

Sound _________________________________________

Memory _______________________________________

Moment _______________________________________

Activity _______________________________________

Prayer / Reflection _______________________________

Saturday Special - 6 Keys to Improving Creative Thinking

From Twitter last night, here's a video with Tony Buzan, the creator of mind mapping, talking about ways to improve your creative thinking skills. It's a very worthwhile investment of just over three and a half minutes to learn his perspectives on creativity's prevalence, whole brain thinking, and growing the speed, originality, and flexibility of your thinking. Check it out!

How About Agreeing with Something for a Change?

A disingenuous phrase has crept into business conversations (at least ones I’ve been a part of) the last few years:

“I don’t disagree with that.”

The phrase is, of course, almost always followed by the speaker disagreeing with something someone else was saying.

The person I first heard use the phrase was a sales person - a generally positive individual. Perhaps his use of the phrase began as a way to soften points of real difference. Unfortunately, its use has spread. Now it serves as a telltale sign that somebody is throwing you a small “agreement bone,” only to zing you with a major point of contention masquerading as concurrence.

Here’s an alternative: actually listen to what someone is saying and find something on which to agree.

From there, legitimately build on the point of view they’re sharing. You might get so far in agreement you don’t have to go back and point out what you don’t disagree with!

A Few Life Lessons - Just because . . .

• Just because you can doesn't mean you have to.
  
• Just because you don't have to doesn't mean you shouldn't.
  
• Just because someone else wouldn't doesn't mean it isn't worth trying.
  
• Just because it hasn't worked before doesn't mean it will or won't now.
  
• Just because it hasn't been done doesn't mean it's not possible.