Heads-Up! on Organizational Innovation

I-Competency, Find & Tell Stories, pt 13 of 13

Power Thinking Skill: Find & Tell Stories, pt 13 of 13

One of the ways Google keeps it’s personality in the face of explosive growth is by letting people speak their minds in public places ... a form of corporate graffiti.  Dozens of common area whiteboards form places where people can swap ideas about products or add their comments to the 30-foot-long whiteboard dedicated to "Google’s Plan for World Domination."

Mary Catherine Bateson once said, "Our species thinks in metaphors and learns from stories."  You can learn a lot about Google from the short story above.  You can imagine their hallways rich with whiteboards where people express themselves freely and openly.  You can contemplate what it must be like to work at a place with an open vision of "world domination."

Pat Kelly, CEO at  PSS/World Medical has a unique view on the power of stories.  His quote which follows also winds up being a mini-corporate story:

   We've never had a policy manual.
   The way we pass along our values is
   to sit around the campfire and tell stories.

If you want to ignite action and change people's hearts and minds, begin to find and tell stories that capture the essence of the change your want to create.  These should be true stories with a positive outcome.  They should give the listener an opportunity to put himself into the story.  For instance, with the Pat Kelly story above, you may have immediately reacted in one of the following ways:

-- Oh, we could never give up our policy manual.
-- I wonder how he got away with not having a policy manual.
-- How could I use stories to pass along our values.
-- Wouldn't it be great if we could sit around a campfire and really talk to each other.

Regardless of how you reacted, you were probably more engaged than you might be with an academic, statistically meaningful study of "1400 companies and their approach to using storytelling as part of their efforts to extend their values throughout the organization."

How could you engage hearts and minds through stories?

*****************************************************************************************************

Find & Tell Stories: engage hearts and minds in order to stimulate commitment and action.  Find & Tell Stories is one of the power-thinking skill sets of the new Innovation Igniter Thinking Wheel series of 13 innovative thinking competencies.

The 15-minute learning module for this competency is presented by Stephen Denning, author "Leader’s Guide to Storytelling" and other books on corporate storytelling.  These thinking skills are critical for innovation and for the creative work required for today’s world.  A 15-minute video module on "Engage Energy" is available at http://innovationigniter.com.

I-Competency, Solicit Feedback, pt 12 of 13

Power Thinking Skill: Solicit Feedback, pt 12 of 13

It's a common sight:  a meeting room with a whiteboard or easel pads festooned with brightly covered sticky notes, each representing an idea or possibility.  Months later a new product, service or process launches with great fanfare.  But, how much does it resemble that first little sticky note that sparked the innovation?  Chances are: not much.

Everything starts with an idea but then a great building and crafting, stretching and honing, shaping and fitting process readies it for the world of reality.  Critical to this process is feedback ... feedback from other departments and functions, feedback from customers, feedback from the people who provide resources.

Two keys to feedback are:  early and diverse.  Start the process of soliciting feedback as early as possible and ask for feedback from a people who have many different perspectives.  Recently, ABC's "American Inventor" offered us an entertaining look at the world of invention.  One of my favorites was the automatic dog petter -- a mechanical hand that moved back and forth and made computer-voiced comments intended to comfort a lonely pet.  While the issue of lonely pets may be valid, this robotic approach would hardly be comforting.   It was only one of several inventions that made me
wonder if people ever solicited feedback from anyone other than their mothers.

There is a tendency to not want to put out ideas too soon because we don't want them stomped on.  There is a lot of wisdom in choosing your sources of feedback carefully, however, the sooner you find potential flaws or barriers, the sooner you can recraft the concept to overcome them.  Feedback should always be taken as an opportunity for improvement rather than as a sign of failure.  While you may choose to ignore some feedback (especially if your idea is radically different), you should first listen carefully for suggestions that might make the concept better.

So, as soon as a new idea can be put into a form that people understand ... whether that's a prototype, a video re-enactment, or even a rough drawing on a napkin ... get it out there and see how others react to it.

*******************************************************************************************

Solicit Feedback: Make ideas bigger and better by actively asking for and listening to feedback from a diversity of sources. Solicit Feedback is one of the power-thinking skill sets of the new
Innovation Igniter Thinking Wheel series of 13 innovative thinking competencies.

The 15-minute learning module for this competency is presented by Tom Kuczmarski, author "Innovating the Corporation,"  Adjunct Professor of New Products and Services at Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management.  These thinking skills are critical for innovation and for the creative work required for today’s world. A 15-minute video module on "Engage Energy" is available at http://innovationigniter.com.

I-Competency, Think 360, pt 11 of 13

Power Thinking Skill: Think 360, pt 11 of 13

(Continuing series on the innovative thinking competencies needed for innovation.)

All human actions have some unintended consequences.  Almost every prescription drug created to solve one problem has some level of adverse effects, and occasionally some unintended positive effects.

The drive to eliminate the adverse effects of alcohol in the 1920s led to Prohibition which had the unintended consequence of strengthening organized crime.

While it may be impossible to eliminate all unintended consequences, we can reduce the number and frequency by systematically thinking about the entire system around a possible new action or concept.  We can think about whom an action might impact, about other systems that would be touched, about the entire context around an action. We can create scenarios of things that might happen as a result of a change.

This may take a little more time initially, but it can save a lot of problems in the future.  The Titanic was built to be so "unsinkable" that it was believed that lifeboats were unnecessary.  The unintended consequence was the death of over 1500 people.

Innovation means change and change means unintended consequences. Systematically "thinking 360" can help avoid small bumps and deadly icebergs.

*******************************************************************************************

Think 360: Avoid unintended consequences by understanding stakeholders and the entire context surrounding a new concept. Think 360 is one of the power-thinking skill sets of the new Innovation
Igniter Thinking Wheel series of 13 innovative thinking competencies.

The 15-minute learning module for this competency is presented by Jonathan Vehar, author, More Lightening; Less Thunder, dubbed an innovation guru by Investors’ Business Daily and popular instructor at the Creative Problem Solving Institute.  These thinking skills are critical for innovation and for the creative work required for today’s world. A 15-minute video module on "Engage Energy" is available at http://innovationigniter.com.

I-Competency, Understand Customer ABCs, pt 10 of 13

Power Thinking Skill: Understand Customer ABCs, pt 10 of 13

(Continuing series on the innovative thinking competencies needed for innovation.)

What do customers *really* want?  If someone would just tell us the answer to that question, we be able to focus our energies on providing exactly that.

Since all customers are unique, however, it's impossible to provide one answer that will fit all.  Doug Hall, well-known author, speaker and idea consultant, comes close though by giving us three rules that weave marketing, design and delivery into a process that exponentially increases the likelihood of success.

Doug's Three Rules are:

1.  Provide an OVERT Benefit -- make it clear that you  are providing ONE thing the customer really wants.  (Doug's  research shows that telling customers that you can give them  a lot of things they want actually diminshes the power of  your message).

2.  Give them a reason to believe -- everyone promises every  thing.  You have to find a way to make them believe and  trust you.  This could be a no-questions-asked guarantee, a  free trial, word-of-mouth recommendations or other forms of  proof that you will deliver what's promised.

3.  Offer dramatic difference -- give them a reason to act.  Stimulate their imaginations; make them say "wow!"  Give  them a reason to tell someone else about their discovery.

Understanding your customers better (whether they are external or internal) is fundamental to being able to create new products, services, processes or business models that deliver new value.  Doug's three rules provide a valuable framework for improving the success rates of new concepts.

***********************************************************************************************

Understand Customer ABCs:  create new value and winning concepts by understanding the three major rules of engagement. Understand Customer ABCs is one of the power-thinking skill sets of the new Innovation Igniter Thinking Wheel series of 13 innovative thinking competencies.

The 15-minute learning module for this competency is presented by Doug Hall, author of "Jump Start Your Business Brain," judge on ABC’s "American Inventor" and dubbed "America's #1 Idea Guru"  by "Inc." magazine. These thinking skills are critical for innovation and for the creative work required for today’s world. A 15-minute video module on "Engage Energy" is available at http://innovationigniter.com.

I-Competency, Challenge Assumptions, pt 9 of 13

Innovation Competency Series
Power Thinking Tool: Connect the Unconnected, pt 9 of 13

(Continuing series on the innovative thinking competencies needed
for innovation.)

"It can't be done ... "
"It has to be made out of  ... "
"Our customers want ... "
"Our price has to be ... "
"People would never ... "

We make hundreds, if not thousands, of assumptions every day. And, that's good ... if we had to stop and verify every thought we have, we'd grind to a halt at morning orange juice.  However, when we're trying to create something new, we have to stop and identify the assumptions we're making and then challenge each of them to find where we might branch off into new territory.

Ann Herrmann-Nedhi who teaches the InnovationIgniter's "Challenge Assumptions" module, gives a powerful example of Margaret Thatcher who in 1969 said there would never be a woman prime minister in her time.  Today there have been over 40 women prime ministers, including Margaret Thatcher herself.

Assumptions about what is true can blind us to new possibilities. When wanted to enter the personal stereo market, Masuru Ibuka challenged the existing assumptions about size and insisted that the final product be small enough to fit in his pocket. 

"Everyone knows" (a great sign of a widely-held assumption) t-shirts are made out of cotton.  However, one Denver company makes t-shirts out of 50% cotton and 50% recycled soda bottles which are melted, whipped and then spun into fibers.

A powerful way to generate new possibiities is to list assumptions and then think through alternatives if the assumption weren't true.

******************************************************************

Challenge Assumptions:  breakthrough our often self-imposed, mental barriers to reveal completely new possibilities. Challenge Assumptions is one of the power-thinking skill sets of the new Innovation Igniter Thinking Wheel series of 13 innovative thinking competencies.

The 15-minute learning module for this competency is presented by Ann Herrmann-Nedhi, CEO, Herrmann International, recognized expert in whole brain thinking.  These thinking skills are critical for innovation and for the creative work required for today’s world. A 15-minute video module on "Engage Energy" is available at http://innovationigniter.com.

I-Competency: Connect the Unconnected, pt 8 of 13

Power Thinking Tool: Connect the Unconnected, pt 8 of 13

(Continuing series on the innovative thinking competencies needed
for innovation.)

Creativity doesn't always mean creating something brand new in the world.  It might mean putting two existing things together in a new way. For instance, you might not automatically think that art and money go together, but if you did play with that combination, you might come up with a new idea, such as:

ArtMoney -- in late 1997, a starving artist was wondering how he might "make money."  He realized that people don't actually "make money" in the sense of printing it.  But he had made a lot of paintings so why couldn't they be traded as money.  He decided to make "art money" and actually found some vendors who would accept it.  Soon the Bank of International ArtMoney was born and now artists from 24 countries offer ArtMoney and the starving artist with the idea bought a house paying for 2/3 of it in art money.

Or go even further out and think about vending machines and art and you might come up with the idea of putting original works of art into old, and now banned in most places, cigarette vending machines. Art-o-Mats are now located in 82 locations and offer original art from over 400 artists for $4-7.

Frans Johansson in "The Medici Effect" suggests that we go "intersection hunting" and actively "search for connections in unlikely places and then see where those connections lead."  Some ways to find connections include finding random words from the dictionary, strolling through a hardware store, traveling to places where the culture is different from your own, or exploring how
different industries work.

************************************************************************************************

Connect the Unconnected:  Reveal hidden gems lurking at the intersection of seemingly unrelated fields.  Open new possibilities with metaphors. Connect the Unconnected is the first of the power-thinking skill sets of the new Innovation Igniter Thinking Wheel series of 13 innovative thinking competencies.

The 15-minute learning module for this competency is presented by Roger von Oech, Ph.D., speaker, consultant and author of several best-selling books on creativity and innovation.  These thinking skills are critical for innovation and for the creative work required for today’s world. A 15-minute video module on "Engage Energy" is available at http://innovationigniter.com.

I-Competency: Show, pt 7 of 13

Insight Gathering Skill:  Show

(Continuing series on the innovative thinking competencies needed for innovation.)

One way to make information visual is to mindmap it.  Dr. Milton Smith, president of Amaox Ltd., used MindManager, the mindmapping software, to create a virtual consortium of six universities, two biotech companies and a government research institute. Its goal: To develop new medical technologies that will improve the response to bio/chem weapons of mass destruction and other threats to public health. "We were faced with few resources to perform a Herculean task. The relationships between and among the members had to be clearly mapped out so that everyone in the consortium - and potential funding agencies - could clearly understand what we were trying to create and how we would organize the work. I had tried to do this all with just words. But it was too complex. They say a picture is worth 1000 words. If that's true, then visual maps are worth 5000 words."

Another way to help people see relationships and patterns is by using artifacts, sometimes called "tangible metaphors."   Here are two examples:

When electronic retailer The Good Guys wanted to help customers visualize a thin-screen TV in their homes, they created a clever fold-out advertising piece small enough to fit into a newspaper or magazine that unfolded into an actual-size image of a forty-two inch flat-panel TV.  Customers taped it to their walls to see how it would fit.

At GSD&M, an ad agency in Austin, client teams decorate their work space with customer artifacts or equipment.  When we visited GSD&M several years ago, we saw a Wal-Mart forklift and passenger seats from Southwest Airlines.  These client-related artifacts help communicate the real world of their customers to employees on a daily basis.

***************************************************************************************************************

Show:  Reveal connections and patterns by making information and ideas visual.  Question is the third of the "secondaries" forming the key insight gathering skills of the new Innovation Igniter Thinking Wheel series of 13 innovative thinking competencies.

The 15-minute learning module for this competency is presented by Bettina Jetter, co-founder of MindJet, Inc., developer of MindManager software.  These thinking skills are critical for innovation and for the creative work required for today’s world. A 15-minute video module on "Engage Energy" is available at http://innovationigniter.com.

I-Competency: Question, pt 6 of 13

Insight Gathering Skill:  Question

(Continuing series on the innovative thinking competencies needed for innovation.)

Every year, Cirque du Soleil asks its managers, "What are you going to change?" as part of their yearly review.  This puts change firmly on everyone’s agenda and the change priority challenges everyone to seek continuous improvement and new ways to innovate.

One day in 1995, the maverick thinkers of AT&T’s Opportunity Discovery Department donned sandwich boards that read: "what if long distance were free?"  This weird action prompted a lot of thinking and conversation about the future of long-distance telephone calls and anticipated the world of Vonage and Skype where long-distance is, indeed, free.

Asking questions prompts us to think in new ways and to dig deeper into problems and opportunities.  An environment where asking questions is encouraged and expected creates an open, exploring culture where unexpected connections can take root and flourish.

**************************************************************************************************************

Question:  Dig deep for new wisdom by asking great questions.  Question is the second of the "secondaries" forming the key insight gathering skills of the new Innovation Igniter Thinking Wheel series of 13 innovative thinking competencies.

The 15-minute learning module for this competency is presented by Soren Kaplan, Ph.D., principal with InnovationPoint.  These thinking skills are critical for innovation and for the creative work required for today’s world. A 15-minute video module on "Engage Energy" is available at http://innovationigniter.com.

I-Competency: Observe, pt 5 of 13

Insight Gathering Skill: Observe

(Continuing series on the innovative thinking competencies needed for innovation.)

In Tom Kelley's book, "The Ten Faces of Innovation," he tells the story of IDEO’s Roshi Gvechi who wanted a bird’s-eye-view of a hospital patient’s experience.  She moved in with a woman undergoing hip-replacement surgery and did a time-lapse video over a 48-hour period.  This was edited down to a five-minute mini-video which graphically presents the patient’s hospital experience.  Gvechi calls this type of observation "Extreme HF," short for "extreme human factors."

Often when organizations are trying to develop new products, services or processes, they put the same people in the same room focusing on the same problems and wonder why they don't come up with a breakthrough.  Somehow, we need to gain a new understanding of the situation from the customer's point of view (regardless of whether the customer is internal or external).  We need to be able to see exactly what the customer is trying to accomplish and what's working and what isn't.  These direct observations provide critical insights that are almost never revealed in customer surveys or focus groups.

Many organizations are hiring archeologists and professional ethnographers to do complex ethnography studies.  However, everyone can learn how to observe behavior and environmental context more effectively and these observations can lead to dramatic breakthroughs.

********************************************************************************************************
Observe:  Gather new insights by observing customers, environments, trends & human behavior.  Observe is the first of the "secondaries" forming the key insight gathering skills of the new Innovation Igniter Thinking Wheel series of 13 innovative thinking competencies.

The 15-minute learning module for this competency is presented by Ben Jacobson, ethnographer, principal Conifer Research.  These thinking skills are critical for innovation and for the creative work required for today’s world. A 15-minute video module on "Engage Energy" is available at http://innovationigniter.com.

I-Competency: Act, pt 4 of 13

Primary Thinking Objective: Act

(Continuing series on the innovative thinking competencies needed for innovation.)

In 2001, the Argentinian economy was in a deep depression and unemployment was staggering.  Then, in December of that year, the government froze bank accounts and the economy collapsed.   There were no jobs available and plants were closing across the country.

Then an amazing thing started to happen:  workers took over the plants that had been abandoned by management.  At first they were fearful of using equipment that didn’t belong to them but, after weeks of waiting, they went back to work producing goods without the management and supervision of their former bosses.  After expenses were paid, workers equally shared the profits and soon were making more than they had made before the crisis.

By 2005, 200 abandoned and worker-reclaimed factories were employing over 10,000 people who would otherwise be unable to find work.  However, this is still an experiment in democracy as workers struggle for legitimacy and full ownership in a country dedicated to protecting the rights of private property.

The best-known of these recovered factories is a ceramic tile factory called Zanon or "Factory Without Bosses."  According to an article in the "Nonviolent Activist," before the collapse, the factory was owned by an Italian family who "never paid taxes, had exploited workers and had stolen land and raw resources from the region’s indigenous Mapuche community. Under the management of the Zanón family, the factory had between 25 and 30 serious occupational accidents per month and one fatality per year.

"Since the workers recovered the factory, working relationships have been reinvented; elected committees oversee the running of the factory and all decisions are made in assembly on general consensus, everyone has the right to be heard, every worker has a vote, all workers are paid equally, there have been no occupational health and safety crises, there have been 170 new hires as of April 2005, production is higher than when the Zanón family locked out the workers, and the tiles now have Mapuche names in honor of the factory’s neighbors and allies."

Having the vision, skill and courage to take effective action is the launching pad for innovation.  Without it, nothing happens.  And, if oppressed, under-educated workers in factories across Argentina can step up and figure out how to work together to create a better future in the face of police threats, government sanctions and community outrage, surely those of us in organizations can also grab hold of opportunities and learn how to effectively take them forward.

** June 20, 2006 update on Zanon, the "Factory without Walls." After successfully running the plant for several years after the owner defaulted owing $170M U.S., the workers are still getting death threats and being threatened by the Argentinian judicial system.  For information about how you can help, go to http://ontario.cupe.ca/www/hrcttee/15627.

****************************************************************************************************************
Act: Take effective action to sell and implement new ideas. The critical "get it done" mindset.  Act is the third of the "primary" thinking objectives of the new Innovation Igniter Thinking Wheel series of 13 innovative thinking competencies.

The 15-minute learning module for this competency is presented by Valarie Willis, Tom Peters Group, noted speaker, consultant and writer.  These thinking skills are critical for innovation and for the creative work required for today’s world. A 15-minute video module on "Engage Energy" is available at http://innovationigniter.com.

I-Competency: Choose, pt 3 of 13

Primary Thinking Objective:  Choose

(Continuing series on the innovative thinking competencies necessary for innovation.)

Once you’ve learned to generate a lot of great possibilities, it’s time to make a decision about which to implement.  This skill is about more than crunching numbers ... it requires bringing many perspectives together in a way that can weed out the losers without squelching the possible breakthroughs that look a little strange.

Making sound group decisions is often a matter of deliberately exploring reasons something might not work.  Sometimes that can lead to creative ways around potential roadblocks ... and,  sometimes, it reveals fatal flaws early before making major investments in something that does not have a chance.

"Business 2.0" recently ran an article on "25 Best-Kept Secrets of the World’s Best Companies" (April, 2006) and one of the secrets shared was about forming "contra teams" to deliberately take the position of devil’s advocates on major commitments.  We’ve spent so much time and effort recently encouraging people to "think outside the box" and to not judge ideas too soon that there is sometimes a reluctance to appear judgmental or "non-creative."  Contra teams offer a safe and appropriate place for hard-nosed, analytical evaluation of a new possibility without casting people into a fixed role as a nay-sayer.

Here’s Toro’s "contra team" secret write up from "Business 2.0":

The appetite for mergers only gets bigger: U.S. companies consummated an estimated $1 trillion worth of M&A deals last year, up from $781 billion in 2004. All this despite the grim reality: Two-thirds of all acquisitions fail to meet their goals, according to a study by Booz Allen Hamilton.

Toro, the $1.8 billion lawn-mower giant, knows how to curb the urge to merge. Anytime an M&A pitch reaches the desk of CEO Mike Hoffman, he asks a due-diligence group to make the case to the company's board. But he also turns to the "contra team"--half a dozen vice presidents and directors--to deliver the voice of dissent. According to chairman Ken Melrose, who got the idea from reading about a similar practice at Japanese firms, a few years ago the contras killed an eight-figure acquisition of a manufacturer that had pitched itself as a turnaround success. The contras' number crunching showed that its sector was facing a slump. The prospect's revenues have since tanked, while Toro has nearly doubled its sales. "Nay-saying in corporate America isn't popular," Melrose says. "The contra team is a way to create negative views that are in the shareholders' best interest and the company's best interest."

****************************************************************************************************************

** Choose: Evaluate and select a new path with a high probability of creating significant new value. Being able to make sound group decisions.  Choose is the second of the "primary" thinking objectives of the new Innovation Igniter Thinking Wheel series of 13 innovative thinking competencies.

The 15-minute learning module for this competency is presented by Ruth Ann Hattori, author, Innovation Training, co-founder of InnovationNetwork. These thinking skills are critical for innovation and for the creative work required for today’s world. A 15-minute video module on "Engage Energy" is available at http://innovationigniter.com.

I-Competency: Aspire, Pt 2 of 13

(Continuing the series on thinking competencies required for innovation.)

Imagine being an architect challenged to build an attractive, functioning office building that uses no air conditioning in the steamy climate of Zimbabwe. Mick Pearce accepted the challenge and designed his most seminal project: Eastgate, a mixed office complex and shopping mall covering half a city block in the business center of Harare, Zimbabwe. In 2003 Pearce was presented with the Prince Claus Award, which stated in part:

"What makes it unique is that it is not only ventilated, cooled and heated entirely through natural means, but it works. Its ventilation costs one-tenth that of a comparable air-conditioned building and it uses 35 percent less energy than six conventional buildings in Harare combined.  In the first five years alone, the building saved its owner $3.5 million in energy costs.

"One needs a considerable leap of design imagination to model a building on a termite mound, or more precisely, on the termite mounds that dot the Zimbabwean savannah.  In a rare case of architectural bionics ... bionics being the field in which principles from living organisms are transferred into engineering ... this is what Mick Pearce has done at Eastgate.  Small wonder he became so fascinated with termites ... they , too, happen to be ingenious because they have to be.  They can only survive if their environment has a constant temperature of exactly 30 to 31 degrees. As temperatures in Zimbabwe fluctuate from 35 degrees at night to 104 degrees during the day, termites dig a kind of breeze-catcher at the base of their mound which cools the air by means of chambers carved out of the wet mud below, and sends hot air out through a flue to the top.  They constantly vary this construction by alternatively opening up new tunnels and blocking others to regulate the heat and humidity within the mound.

"Based on the termite mound analogy, Mick Pearce’s Eastgate building uses the mass of the building as insulation and the diurnal temperature swings outside to keep its interior uniformly cool.  With Ove Arup & Partners, he devised an air-change schedule that is significantly more efficient than other climate-controlled buildings in the area.  Fans suck fresh air from the atrium, blow it upstairs through  hollow spaces under the floors and from there into each office through baseboard vents.  As it rises and warms, it is drawn out through 48 round brick funnels.  During cool summer nights, big fans send air through the building seven times an hour to chill the hollow floors.  By day, smaller fans blow two changes of air an hour through the building.  As a result, the air is fresh, much more so than from an air conditioner which recycles 30 percent of the air that passes through it."  (more at http://www.architectsforpeace.org/mickprofile.html)

Pearce’s Eastgate is a perfect example of what happens when we Aspire to a dramatically different level of performance.  It opens us up to looking at things like termites in order to build better buildings.

*********************************************************************

Aspire: Imagine a bright future, possibly even an impossible one, and generate the winning concepts that make it a reality. Aspire is one of the "primary" thinking objectives of the new Innovation Igniter Thinking Wheel series of 13 innovative thinking competencies.

The 15-minute learning module for this competency is presented by Michael Bungay Stanier, Principal of Box of Crayons, creator of Get Unstuck & Get Going on the stuff that matters and The Eight Irresistible Principles of Fun.  These thinking skills are critical for innovation and for the creative work required for today’s world.  A 15-minute video module on "Engage Energy" is available at http://innovationigniter.com.

Engage Energy, Pt 1 of 13

Less than a year after the first man walked on the moon, space flight had become so routine it wasn’t covered by American television.   Then a space accident on the thirteenth Apollo mission sparked the words, “ Houston, we have a problem.”

Captured in the 1995 movie, “Apollo 13,” the story of the ground crew’s race to bring the astronauts home provides one of the best innovation scenes available today.  At one point, the crew is challenged to literally put a square peg in a round hole using only the materials available onboard the module.  The impossible needed to be done … and quickly.  The flight director (played by Ed Harris) captures the moment when he states, “Failure is not an option.”

One of the problems organizations face in trying to do innovation is that they seldom have a life-and-death, failure-is-not-an-option challenge that energizes creative thinking and action.  Too often, we offer people a tepid “improve sales by 12.3%” kind of challenge and expect them to create heroic results.

One organization that has created challenges that truly motivate and sustain creative energy is Cirque du Soleil, the unique combination of theater and circus that produces 500 shows per year.  A new book out by Lyn Heward, former president of Creative Content for Cirque du Soleil and John U. Bacon,  The Spark: Igniting the Creative Fire That Lives Within Us All, offers some thoughts about how to engage energy.  In a USAToday article, she is quoted as saying:

Sharing of ideas: " We argue about anything - what costumes to use, what athlete to hire. Our first idea is almost never our last."

Surrendering to your senses and living an experience: "The journey inward begins with technique but it can only progress if you allow yourself to move beyond the mechanics and into the moment."

The nurturing Environment: "The ideal office is a fantastical playground a place where an employee can see the world through the eyes of a child."

Challenges becoming creative catalysts: "Constraints - budgets, deadlines and limited resources - can be a fantastic motivator. Without them, your mind is not focused."

Keeping the job fresh: "Comes from the top. In all businesses, your people will rarely work harder than the boss.

But even Heward concedes that bringing creative energy to the workplace is easier said than done: A survey conducted by Harris Interactive last year shows that 55% of all Americans are unhappy with their jobs, only 20% feel passionate about their work, and a mere 15% feel energized by what they do.

********************************************************************

Engage Energy is the central module of the new Innovation Igniter Thinking Wheel series of 13 innovative thinking competencies.  These thinking skills are critical for innovation and for the creative work required for today’s world.  A 15-minute video module on “Engage Energy” is available at http://innovationigniter.com.