Chicago Happy Hour and Tweetup - Monday Evening, November 2, 2009

If you're in Chicago on Monday, November 2, 2009, you're invited to a happy hour / tweetup for friends from this summer's Business Marketing Association conference and other great folks in the Chicago marketing and social media community.

It will be a casual opportunity to renew friendships and meet new people! Feel free to invite others as well!

Place: Frankie's Scaloppine & Pizzeria

Location:
900 N Michigan, 5th Floor (Directions Link)
Chicago, IL 60611
312-266-2500

Starting Time: 5:45 p.m., Monday, November 2, 2009

Twitter Hashtag: #bztweetup

If you have questions, email me at brainzooming@gmail.com

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Brainzenning Bonus - Anxiety Monster

Brainzenning - A video moment of calm and reflection.

A Reflection

We never know how long important personal and business relationships will endure. That necessitates using every daily opportunity to help those around you grow and to learn from them as well. A post last year when a friend was leaving our company included questions to see if you're really giving enough of yourself to important people in your life. The questions warrant repeating:

• Can you see your positive influence on these people?
• Have you helped prepare them to pass on to others the lessons you’ve shared?
• Do these people know how much they mean to you?
• If you had one extra day to spend with one of these important people, would you do the same things to help them you'd do any other day?
• Are you ready to let them go so they can grow and develop even more?

If you answer yes to all of these, you've truly given of yourself in helping someone grow and develop.

Entering a new career phase, I want to thank all those people who should be answering "Yes" to these questions in light of what they've given to me. They know who they are, and if you look back through the first two years of posts on Brainzooming you will too!

And as suggested by Chris Reaburn, here's a time lapse Brainzenning video of the denuding of the orange in my office.

What's Next? I'll be in Chicago Monday, leading a roundtable on Business Innovation Roadblocks at the Frost & Sullivan Marketing World 2009 Conference. If you're in Chicago, watch this weekend for an announcement on a Brainzooming tweetup / happy hour get together for Monday (11/2) in Chicago. - Mike Brown

You Never Know

Cleaning offices isn't a distinctive talent for me; it's a chore from beginning to end. Yet, as you learned this week, it's necessary right now.

Among my files was a notebook from a Statistical Process Control training class my first weeks on the job. Inside the notebook was a section on conducting brainstorming along with handwritten notes from the class.

I don't remember learning brainstorming in grad school, and we didn't have training at my first job, so this had to be my first formal exposure to brainstorming. There in the notes are the familiar admonitions I use all the time: listen intently to all participants, capture what they're saying in the words they use, encourage and reinforce all comments, don't judge prematurely. Everything's there for getting innovation started.

While the class (and some of the great people I met there) is as clear in my mind as if it happened yesterday, this specific topic isn't even a vague memory. Back then, it was something my boss was making me go to. In retrospect, it was life altering day.

The moral - you never know.

You never know which days will change your life. So never write off any day as a throw-away. Go into each one with a sense of wonder. Look for who you may meet or what you might learn that will fundamentally shape the rest of what you'll ever do. - Mike Brown

Personal Branding When You're 25x 2.0

Thanks to a tweet from Richard Dedor, Chris Reaburn and I were last minute attendees at a Kansas City PRSA lunch session by Dan Schawbel based on his book Me 2.0 - Build a Personal Brand to Achieve Career Success.

The talk was part of a career day for students interested in PR, so the average audience age was 20. As a result, Dan's slant on personal branding was customized for the industry and audience life stage.

The concepts he covered were nonetheless applicable to anyone working on personal branding. From talking with many people in mid-career transitions, however, they tend to be woefully behind on how personal branding applies to their situations. So for the 25 times 2.0 crowd, here are three suggestions customized for you:

1. Volunteering for meaningful assignments with professional associations is a great mid-career internship.

Dan highlights the necessity of internships for college-age job seekers. Mid career job seekers have similar opportunities. I speak with many people whose current job is "looking for a job." There's no sizzle and not much built-in skill development there. Yet associations relevant to you are likely looking for knowledgeable professionals to take on assignments. One great thing about a smartly-chosen volunteer project is you typically have room to make it much cooler than anyone in the association ever expected. The result is you get to experiment, learn, and have something with sizzle to lead with when networking.

2. Mid-career, it's imperative to assess your personality and get on with changing what's not working.

My advice to people who leave for other companies is always to think about who they want to be in a new job, because it's the only opportunity to create a "new" you. Dan makes the point it's tremendously challenging to reinvent yourself in the age of (nearly) total visibility to your online presence. That's true, but if you continually trip yourself up through the same behaviors, do the self-help, career coaching, or counseling necessary to eliminate rough spots. Become if not a new, at least a "new formula" you.

3. Mid-career people need a solid offline and online network you're actively growing.

Dan's right when he says a larger network has the potential to work much harder for you. But with a number of years of experience, you should be good at determining the highest value people in your network. While you definitely want to serve and cultivate these relationships very actively, you should also be continually reaching out to expand your network offline and online. Focus on adding people you may be able to help while building the most vibrant, responsive network you can. That's a far better move than creating the largest network possible filled with people having few real ties to you.

This topic is of increasing interest, so look for more on it as we go forward. Let me know how we can deliver value to you as part of the Brainzooming family! - Mike Brown

When DIY Doesn't Work

Steve Epley visited last week, and we talked about challenges in trying to do for yourself what you do professionally for others. This resonated because of recent work on the Brainzooming™ brand. It's much easier to figure out another's great brand value and how to communicate it than doing the same for myself. It's tough to step back and address your own situation as objectively as you can for someone else.

Are you facing similar challenges? Here are three alternatives:

1. Use what you know works.

Struggling to clarify the Brainzooming brand as a business entity and personally, it struck me that we use a variety of tools with others to help define brand promises and positions. Turning to tools I've seen work in so many situations helped push my own thinking and expand the concepts being considered. If you've got tools and approaches developed for those you serve, don't overlook applying them to your own business situation.

2. Ask for help.

I stared at my resume for years, unable to update it. In 2007, I finally sought professional preparation, with great results. Updating it now with all the new experiences and results of the past two years is again challenging. Based on a tip from Jan Harness, whip-smart wordsmith and media maven Emma Alvarez-Gibson is helping convey what Brainzooming represents in words. Never consider it a weakness to get help doing what you know how to do. Instead, it shows the respect for your profession you want others to also have.

3. Be Patient and Wait.

As much I love believing strategic thinking approaches completely get you around time and mental capacity crunches, they won't in every case. Many issues need to unfold in real time to allow strategic thinking and action. Each passing day, next steps for Brainzooming become clearer and more developed. As much as I'd have loved to figure out some things last year, it simply wasn't reasonable to do so. Maybe if you can't work too far ahead on a project, you can at least work on patience instead.

Hope those help in getting around any roadblocks you face employing a DIY approach in your own field. - Mike Brown

What's He Doing?

Big shifts are taking place personally. They're sure to affect the direction and content on Brainzooming™, and it's appropriate to let you know what's happening.

For the past five years, I've been working a personal branding plan designed to grow my network, increase learning, and build a stronger presentation and writing repertoire. Important activities have included:

• Speaking and facilitating with groups internationally on developing strategic thinking, innovation, branding, and social media


• Starting multiple blogs, including one on humor and another on spirituality


• Introducing Brainzooming as a "personal" brand


• Employing a social media strategy to grow the brand

It's been an aggressive effort, and especially recently, I've described myself as doing two full-time jobs. The personal branding effort for Brainzooming takes place early mornings, late nights, weekends, and vacation days away from my primary job in a corporate role.

During my career, my day job has allowed incredible opportunities to grow and contribute beyond my original market research position:

• Developing the strategic understanding and planning behind a dramatic corporate turnaround


• Running an industry leading, award-winning, decade-long NASCAR sponsorship program


• Producing a series of transformative customer meetings with some of the best speakers in the business


• Creating culture changing internal and external branding efforts

Through it all, it's been amazing to work with incredibly talented and wonderful people. It's actually quite staggering to contemplate the incredible opportunities I've been provided.

This Friday though, after a difficult decision, I'm leaving my corporate position. Despite all the news suggesting it's a ridiculous time to do it, nearly all indications suggest it's exactly the right thing to do.

As a result, next Monday my priorities flip: Brainzooming moves to the forefront and pursuing a potential next corporate position becomes secondary.

While I've made a point to keep nearly all references to my corporate position out of Brainzooming, its daily learnings and challenges infuse the blog content all the time. With a different routine and new interactions, what gets covered here will change. Together, we'll find out exactly what that means as the future unfolds.

Welcome to the new phase of Brainzooming, as it grows into a full-time strategic innovation consulting company! The Brainzooming team looks forward to your ideas, business leads, and guidance as the changes take place!

P.S. Especially the business leads! More on that later! - Mike Brown

Brainzenning - Whatcha Gonna Do?

Brainzenning - A video moment of calm and reflection.

Innovation Strategy? Yes, No, and Everything In Between - Guest Post by Mike Brown

How can I be a guest blogger on my own blog you may ask? Well, this post was originally written for Braden Kelley's Blogging Innovation website. So it was a original guest post there in response to the question, "Does an organization have to have an innovation strategy?" Here's my take:


Does an organization need an innovation strategy? Let me say, unequivocally, "It depends."

Depending on its business situation, there are multiple strategic innovation approaches. Here are three different business situations and a potential innovation path for each:

Situation 1 - It's All About Innovation

If innovation is fundamental to an organization's success and competitiveness, then innovation "matters" for that business. And when innovation passes the "does it matter" test, beyond an innovation strategy, it becomes more important that innovation be woven into overall business strategy.

Situation 2 - Innovation Is Appreciated

For many (most?) companies, innovation is viewed as beneficial, but it doesn't matter in the same strategic sense as in the first group. If that's the case, having visible top-level support for innovation can take the place of an explicit innovation strategy.

Beyond that, it's vital to manage the environment's receptivity to innovation. This starts with assessing the degree to which critical success factors (CSFs) for innovation exist. If CSFs are largely in place, the primary task becomes integrating innovation into the company's strategic direction. If some or all aren't present, step one is making moves to put them in place to create a higher probability of innovation success. Among innovation CSFs are:

• Having an innovation-friendly environment - Even absent an innovation strategy, are processes in place that are conducive to exploration and development of new ideas? Organizational forces should motive and support work across disciplines and recognize individual and group contributions to innovation.
  
• A longer term sensibility - Some innovation starts yielding near-term returns. Often, it takes longer. There has to be some rope to play with (both in terms of time and resource investment) for a sustained innovation effort.
  
• Fact-based strategic perspectives are encouraged - Is innovative, strategic thinking considered to be the purview of senior leadership or is it cultivated broadly? Multiple, perspectives are vital to triggering, thoroughly vetting, and successfully implementing new ideas. The closer to customers those strategic perspectives originate, the better, and that's usually not exclusively from senior managers.
  
• A basic comfort level with disturbing the status quo - Moving into new areas is usually messy organizationally and in the marketplace. These disruptions need to be understood as innovation precursors. Is your organization ready to fail fast & learn quickly if it's a step to successful innovation?
  
• A willingness to bring diverse parties into innovation - There's now more recognition and acceptance of the incredible potential in ideas coming from outside an organization. Does yours have an externally-oriented view that introduces broad inputs into innovation?
  
• Metrics are used to motivate and refine innovation, not quash it - Innovation has to produce value for customers and the business to be worthwhile. Monitoring value requires solid metrics. Are they (or can they be put) in place to help steer innovation efforts and monitor their impacts without being used to prematurely shut-down exploration?

Situation 3 - Innovation Gets in the Way

When an organization's sentiment runs counter to innovation, underground innovation is an alternative. This implies working around the system to create and implement innovation efforts beneficial for the business. Going low-key can provide several advantages:

• It potentially lowers expectations and increases maneuverability. With few resources, there’s potentially less scrutiny, leading to some freedom to experiment, make mistakes, learn, and still drive results.
  
• Parties who participate are likely to be more committed. With a certain amount of risk in joining forces with an underground effort, people won't typically get in half-way.
  
• It forces more ingenuity. Cut-off from some fundamental resources, you have to understand limitations upfront, spell out a plan for what you won’t have, and innovate in areas you wouldn’t have considered previously.
  
• You can focus on creating deliverables instead of justifying each innovation step. With a near-term results oriented management team, being able to introduce them to an innovation that's nearer completion can be beneficial.
  
• You can get an advantage relative to competitors. They may be taking a more traditional route to innovation or completely eliminating innovation programs while you're still trying to move ahead.

What Do You Do?

You know your business situation. Consider the range of possibilities and select the level of strategic innovation focus that makes sense for your business and the desired results. - Mike Brown

How Many Years Experience Do You Have?

Several years ago, an HR professional passed along a piece of wisdom warranting consideration by anyone who works: Lots of people claim twenty years experience, when what they really have is one year of experience, twenty times over.

Since that conversation, I've used her statement to gauge my career:

• What new skills, capabilities, and accomplishments have I demonstrated in the past year?


• Based on near term potential, what opportunities exist to gain new experience in the coming year?


• What can I do specifically this year to increase the likelihood I'll be developing additional valuable skills?

Ask yourself those same questions. If it looks like you've posted several years of the same experience, you owe it to yourself to take deliberate steps and correct the situation. Potential solutions?

• Work to redesign your job - formally or informally


• Step forward for new and different work assignments


• Figure out ways you'll increase your learning


• Volunteer for associations and specific roles to help grow your experience

If you haven't done this self-assessment, do it now and get to work making sure your next twelve months are materially new and different. - Mike Brown

Make Mistakes Week

Amid dramatic changes in my professional life, and Brainzooming™ in particular, I'm deliberately forcing myself into uncomfortable areas necessitating rapid development of previously underused skills.

Understanding the importance of diving in and not holding myself to an unrealistic performance standard, I labeled last week, "Make Mistakes Week."

When undertaking changes and growth, do yourself a favor and establish a "Make Mistakes Week" for yourself. Doing so acknowledges the need to get started, consciously practice, learn from experience, and continuously improve.

In addition to trial and error, I tried listening and observing others more intently as they offered absolutely fundamental counsel. It's always amazing how clearly others can see things you should find obvious yet completely miss!

Through the concurrent development and implementation of new messaging for Brainzooming, I did get better at delivering it during the week. But the improvement wasn't all in a straight line, and it fell well short of where it needs to be.

As a result, this week is "Make Mistakes Week - The Sequel!" - Mike Brown

Creative Quickie - Flip Out

There are so many situations in everyday life that can be sources of current and future creative inspiration.

How do you become better at actually capitalizing on their inspirational value?

One way is to get an easy-to-use video camera and start capturing these situations.

Having a Flip camera with me nearly all the time this year has not only allowed capturing blatantly creative images, but has also refined my eye for spotting hidden creativity in more mundane situations.

Figure out which type of device works best for you - it could be a Flip, a Kodak (that's for former BMA board president Jeff Hayzlett!), or your PDA. Find the device that allows you to video at a moment's notice and build an inspiration reserve for when you hit a creative block. - Mike Brown

Brainzenning - Goodbye to the Land of Giant Paper Airplanes

Brainzenning - A video moment of calm and reflection.

Borrowing Brilliance - A Guest Post of Sorts

I attended the KC Small Business "Think Bigger" luncheon recently when guest speaker David Kord Murray discussed his new book, "Borrowing Brilliance." The tome covers 6 steps (defining, borrowing, combining, incubating, judging, and enhancing) to build from others' ideas.

While several people afterward expressed frustration with Murray's presentation and demeanor (some of the frustrations were very justified), he shared a number of valuable points. Here's my take on the highlights he covered (thus the designation of this piece as a guest post of sorts):

• To get to a core issue, Murray suggests asking, "What's the problem above the problem we're considering?" This is a different and helpful way of expressing the question, "What are we trying to achieve?" He cited an old, but relevant, example. In the 1920's, Ford defined the issue as building the cheapest car. GM identified a more fundamental issue: making cars affordable. Its problem definition led to auto financing's introduction.
  
• Murray expressed a clear disdain for unfettered brainstorming, claiming stronger ideas emerge when more judging is involved. He has a point, in that once you've moved from divergent to convergent thinking steps, solid evaluation approaches do push you closer to more readily implementable ideas.
  
• In using different perspectives to look for analogous ideas, Murray shared a borrowing continuum to look for ideas in Same, Similar, and then Distant domains (i.e., your industry, a related industry, a radically different industry). This concept has been discussed frequently in Brainzooming (and the "Taking the NO Out of InNOvation" ebook is structured similarly), yet this was a new, actionable way of expressing the approach.


• He talked about "aha moments" occurring in the shower so frequently because we've typically minimized conscious thought, allowing the sub-conscious to sift through raw materials it's been fed. I haven't tried scheduling a group creative team meeting in the shower yet, but it again emphasizes the value of changes of scenery and activity in ideation.


• Murray passed along an interesting factoid: Walt Disney conceived Disneyland not as an amusement park, but as a movie starring the park's guests. Instead of "rides," mini-movies were then developed in which guests star for a few minutes. I'd never really thought about it, but it makes perfect sense. It's also a great example of selecting a rich core concept and using it throughout the innovation process to create strategically consistent implementation.

All these are helpful insights. Now here's one for new authors (i.e., David Kord Murray): when a well-known local bookstore (i.e., Rainy Day Books) helps co-sponsor your appearance, maybe your closing book slide should feature its logo along with (or even instead of) the major online bookseller brands you chose to feature. Just saying. - Mike Brown

Creating Memorable Experiences

We wrapped up the AMA Marketing Research Conference last week to very kind words from a number of participants about the different nature of the conference experience.

The secret of great, meaningful brand events lies in a simple formula. Look for the strongest possible alignment on these 3 dimensions:

• Attendees' personal interests
• An event's emotional intensity
• A brand's visibility as the event's enabler

The formula works across many venues and event types. Recognize the enabling brand can be for business (i.e., an event sponsor), or it may be a personal brand (you and your spouse throwing a holiday party).

No matter what the event, consider and deliver on these three variables to see a difference in your audience's experience and reactions. - Mike Brown

Taking Note in a New Way

Want to meet cool new people? Next time you're at a public presentation, "live tweet" it. Live tweeting implies using Twitter to report:

• What the speaker is communicating
• Offering your own commentary
• Retweeting what others are tweeting about it

I live tweeted the Integrated Marketing Summit last week in Kansas City to further experiment with the process. Based on my tweets from a direct database marketing session, Doug Haslam switched breakouts and joined the session. This created the opportunity to chat, and after attending his session on PR and social media, later talk at the networking reception.

I wouldn't have necessarily gone up and talked with someone new (ah, the curse of an introvert), but live tweeting opened the door to connect and meet a new, really smart person at the forefront of social media.

Beyond the in-person opportunity, live tweeting often opens the opportunity to attract and follow new people in your Twitter network as well.

Live tweeting - a whole new way for introverts to become social animals. - Mike Brown

Write Shorter

A very nice blog reader stopped me at the Integrated Marketing Summit to say she reads Brainzooming every day, "when it's short."

Great reminder to me and to you.

When writing, set a deliberately low limit on the total number of words you'll ultimately allow yourself. Challenge every word. While you're at it, eliminate "that" from your writing. The blog's rough drafts have taught me "that" is my most frequently used unnecessary word. Based on other material I read, it's likely one of yours too.

A reader once told me I get one minute of his time each day, which is a "big deal." His statement is on my mind every time I write a post. I appreciate and respect the time you spend with Brainzooming and want to make sure it's of value. So I'll try and keep it short. - Mike Brown

Brainzenning - Self-Portrait

Brainzenning - A video moment of calm and reflection.