The Can Opener of Innovation

The Can Opener of Innovation

A few years ago I came across this cool can opener that was designed to help (as you might expect) open cans easier. It was great. It helped with soup cans with pop up tabs and it helped loosen twist off lids. Just a great tool.

I gave it to my grandmother who was in her late 80’s at the time.  She loved it. Though she could still open cans on her own, she loved the ease of the new tool and how simple was to use, and how well it matched the color of her kitchen.

Whenever there was a can or jar to open, she would get excited to use the new opener tool.  Almost immediately, none of us in the family were allowed to open anything without using this new gadget.

“Oh, Michael don’t hurt your hand opening that jar. Loosen it first with the THINGY.” (She never called it anything but the Thingy)

She seemed disappointed when I opened a jar or can without it.  So great was her visible dejection, my mother told me to “Just use the tool. It will make your grandmother happy. “

It got to the point where my grandmother would not attempt to open a can without the Thingy. She never tried again.  She became dependent on it.

Fun new Creativity tools often get treated the same as my grandma’s can opener. Someone comes back from an impactful and motivational creativity tools workshop and immediately wants to share and use the new-found fun maker. Often the use of the tool becomes the focus versus the problem to be solved. Once introduced to the tool, someone invariably states that it is cool and we should use it whenever we do brainstorming.

While the intentions are good, the thinking is slightly flawed.  You use tools when you need them.  If you are getting great ideas and results, wonderful. Keep at it.  When you hit a roadblock, dip in group energy, or find you need a boost to get your team to a new way of thinking, then introduce that new tool.  My advice is to use tools sparingly and only when needed.

As you build your skills as a facilitator of group idea generation, keep your tools at the ready when they are truly needed and concentrate on the needs of the group and the real problem to be solved.

Communication the Critical Attribute of an Innovative Business Culture

The following is an excerpt from Saving Innovation:

When establishing the values necessary for an innovative culture, there’s a reason communication comes first.  Most of the problems any group will have with innovation will be the result of poor communication, while most of the successes will have a foundation in strong communication.  Success or failure won’t be the result of tools, training or ideas; it will be determined by communication.

Has the importance of innovation been communicated clearly?  Have the goals been well defined and understood by everyone?  Has the role each employee is expected to play been set?  Is feedback and follow up on ideas regular?  Are team members encouraged to come forward with their ideas?

When these discussions and discussions like them take place openly and consistently, results from innovation are almost sure to follow.

People already have ideas and don’t need training or tools to spark them, they need focus, feedback, collaboration and support to shape those ideas into new products, services or efficiencies.

Candor, curiosity and commitment, the values which follow communication, are extensions and specific aspects of communication.  Communication is the wellspring for all the values necessary to the innovative culture, without it, innovation can not flourish.

 

WHAT YOU CAN DO TODAY TO HAVE THE COMMUNICATION NEEDED TO CREATE AN INNOVATIVE CULTURE:

• Start building greater communication by sharing your belief in innovation with team members.  Explain why you’re starting on this path and innovation’s importance to you and the group.  Use this book to show your team all the exciting possibilities innovation holds for each of them individually and for the team as a whole.
• Begin to make conversations surrounding innovation a part of every meeting.  Remember that to be innovative, innovative practices must become fully ingrained into a workplace and regularly practiced.  If you have a weekly staff meeting, include this discussion.  If you don’t have regular meetings, show your people your commitment to innovation by calling them together and sharing your passion for the subject.  Find ways to make sure you communicate that your passion hasn’t waned as time goes on.
• Once you’ve expressed your passion and belief in innovation use Chapter 2 and share the definitions of imagination, creativity, invention and innovation.  Make sure everyone speaking the same language.
• Detail to employees the new behaviors you’re expecting to see from them as a part of the innovative culture you are instituting.  There’s no reason to be mysterious about this.  Inform team members that communication, candor, curiosity and commitment are what you will be recognizing and rewarding.  Take that message a step further by specifying exactly what types of communication, candor, curiosity and commitment you’re looking for.
• A more advanced form of communication includes gathering and sharing customer insights, what people hear going on in the marketplace, and opinions on how those changes will affect your business.

The Problem with Suggestion Boxes & Why They Don’t Lead to Innovation

The following is an excerpt from Saving Innovation:

HELPFUL HINT: Teams in need of generating more ideas have often relied on suggestion boxes, open questions to employees or idea campaigns to drive results.  This passive, shotgun approach to idea generation loses the power of focused and collaborative efforts.  Relying on individuals working isolated from each other to solve problems and withholding from them the inherent power that comes from the strength of a group communicating rarely yields results superior to what teamwork can achieve.

Suggestion boxes are a particular pet peeve of mine.  I describe them as the black hole of ideas.  You’re much more likely to find a gum wrapper in a suggestion box than a great idea fit to solve your unique business problems.

There are numerous reasons for this.

Suggestion boxes are almost never managed well; rarely are resources ever put behind their use or into the ideas submitted in order to explore how beneficial they might be.  A feature that should be mandatory when ideas are requested and offered that I’ve yet to see incorporated into a suggestion box is a strong communication loop to update employees on the progress of their idea, or if it’s even been read.  The Grand Canyon could be filled with the ideas submitted to suggestion boxes that failed to generate any response back to the employee about the quality or usefulness of the idea – or even a, “thanks for the effort.”

Suggestion boxes are horribly unfocused, failing to ask anything specific.  You may need to cut your company’s fuel consumption yet what you’ll most likely find in the “Suggestion Box” are opinions on the cafeteria food and dirty jokes.

The effectiveness of suggestion boxes are further derailed by the biases of the person tasked to read them.  What if a new process idea comes in that isn’t on the radar screen of the employee sorting through the paper scraps or it’s something he or she doesn’t understand?  It gets tossed.

Take my word after having spoken to hundreds of people around the world regarding their similar frustrations with suggestion boxes – they’re useless.  The characteristic shortcomings of suggestion boxes work to discourage employee engagement and create a de-motivating experience which tunes people out of the creative process.

You’re Unemployed, Now What?

A dear friend of mine wakes up today finding himself unemployed for the first time in his professional career.  After more than 10 years of distinguished and oft-commended service with the same global company, historically poor profits have resulted in the closure of his entire division.  In his early 40’s, my friend now has a blank page before him.

I, personally, have vast experience with unemployment.  At 36, I have been laid off, fired, downsized or otherwise left without a paying job at least five times since graduating college – I’ve honestly lost track.  I unwisely chose radio for a career; an industry which has fired even its titans: Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh to name two.  To work in radio is to know uncertainty, to know unemployment, to constantly be looking over your shoulder at the grim reaper closing in, to make updating your “tape” and resume a lifestyle.

I want to put my knowledge of unemployment to use for my friend, and for everyone else who finds themselves unemployed.

First things first.  Hold your head up.  Don’t feel guilty, ashamed, worthless or invaluable because of your unemployment.  More likely than not, you had little or nothing to do with your present circumstance.  Chances are it was macro-economic factors far beyond your control, shortsighted management, or poor leadership which has resulted in your being without a job.  As the Robin Williams character told the Matt Damon character in “Good Will Hunting:” “It’s not your fault.”

You are the same person without a job as you were with a job.  Don’t go into hiding, don’t become a hermit, don’t lose your “Carlness.” (“You, Me and Dupree” reference)  This will be especially difficult for men as our society and culture has closely welded a man’s self-worth to his career, job status and paycheck.

Take an hour, a day, or a week – but no more – to hold yourself a pity party then start moving on.  Allow yourself to feel bad (this sucks), but don’t wallow.  You are human, you have emotions, provide yourself the opportunity to work through those emotions and be sure you work through them and don’t become stuck in your sadness.

While you work through your mopey phase, file for unemployment benefits.  You paid into unemployment, now take out.  Despite what right-wing talk radio tells you filing for unemployment doesn’t make you a leech, a deadbeat or less human.  Trudging down to the unemployment office (or filing on-line) will be one of many kicks to the gut you’ll experience as you move through this process so get it over with early.  You need the money, you earned it, take it… and hold your head high.  When you walk into the unemployment office and look around at the other people and recognize how different you are from them and how in your wildest dreams you never thought you’d be forced to put yourself on the government dole your self-esteem will plummet.  Grit your teeth, look the office employees in the eye, and get it over with.  When you return home, reward yourself with the drink of your choice and call it a day.

Though you may not be able to MAKE money immediately, you can SAVE money by spending less and without a job there’s little difference.  Take a long, hard look at your personal finances and start hacking away.  Dining out.  Gone.  Cable and television – you’d be surprised how easy it is to live without them and much of it can be consumed on-line anyway.  Newish car or car with a payment?  Sell it and trade down.  Short of your mortgage, power and gas bill, cell phone and internet (essential to finding a new job) and car insurance, cut your spending to the bone.  Prepare for a dark, cold winter.  Prepare not to be jobless for a few weeks, prepare to be without a job for many months or a year.  Act as if that is your new reality.  Things are changing and no one ever said this was going to be easy.    For those of you with families and children, your expenses and the depth and difficulty of your cuts could be much more dramatic.

Your new job is finding a job and you need to treat it like one.  I’ve often said you’ll never work harder than you do when you’re unemployed; prepare yourself for how active, challenging, demanding, and intensive landing a new job will be.  Start a routine.  Set your alarm and wake yourself up at a professional hour every day.  Unemployment isn’t summer vacation.  If you allow yourself to sleep in, you will, and before long you’ll be waking up at 9:30, in your pj’s until noon and losing all touch with the professional world.  Don’t fall down this slide.  You’re still a professional, you still have a career, you just don’t have a job.  Wake up early, put on real clothes, and start working.  Make that NETworking.

My better half Kristi Dosh could be the best networker I know.  Her blog on networking provides GREAT advice.  In your first week of unemployment, contact everyone you know who could assist you in finding a new job.  Co-workers, contacts inside your field, former college classmates, previous employers, friends, family, anyone.  With your head held high, explain to them your circumstances, don’t apologize for being without a job, and let them know what you’re looking for.  You’d be surprised what you receive if you simply ask for it.

These networking efforts will be your most important and regular daily activity.  Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, industry magazines and websites, Twitter chats, face-to-face meetings, conventions – there are endless opportunities for networking and relationship building and you need to explore them all.  TRUTH: most jobs are secured not by answering the want-ads or sending off resumes, they are secured through relationships.  The more relationships you build, the more jobs you will be made aware of and mentioned in connection with.  It’s true in radio, I’ll bet it’s true in your profession: talent doesn’t get you jobs, friends do.  Make as many friends, at least in the professional sense, as you can.  Treat this with the seriousness of a job because it is.

While you explore new opportunities within your field, imagine what else you might prefer doing.  My friend Ken Coleman says that to find your “sweet spot” – that place we should all strive to find professionally – honestly identify your greatest passion and your greatest talent and find where they intersect.  That’s your sweet spot.  I’d also recommend you read Saving Innovation and apply its lessons on a personal level.  As much as companies need innovation, individuals, especially those in experiencing a transition such as unemployment, do as well.  For $12 Saving Innovation will help you develop a personal game plan of professional rebirth.

Unemployment will be one of the most difficult obstacles you face in life.  It will frustrate you, humiliate you, kick your ass some days, and test your patience, energy and resolve.  Do what you can to stay positive, network like hell, and tell me how it goes.  Contact me on Twitter @chaddscott.

A Philosophy Too Important Not to Share: Futures Mindset. Complete Chapter from Saving Innovation

An American legend, Kodak, has filed for bankruptcy.  A key lesson from Saving Innovation details how to change the way employees think about problems by instituting a futures mindset.  Could thinking with a futures mindset have saved Kodak?  That’s too late to determine now, what we’re concerned with is how YOU can use a futures mindset to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen to your business.

This concept is too important not to share.  Here is our COMPLETE chapter from Saving Innovation related to the futures mindset.

– Chadd Scott, co-author, Saving Innovation

In 1982 when the EPCOT theme park opened at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, a reporter on the scene commented to Roy Disney, brother of the late Walt Disney, “Isn’t it a shame Walt isn’t here to see this?”  Roy responded to the reporter without hesitation, “Walt saw this 30 years ago, that’s why we’re standing here today.”

After learning to generate more ideas and then better ideas, the next frontier of idea generation is channeling your inner Walt Disney and changing the way employees think about problems.  You do this by instituting a futures mindset.

Decades before it opened Walt Disney imagined a planned community of the future to be located in what was then an uninhabitable swamp in The Middle of Nowhere, Florida.  It was an audacious idea that drew ridicule at the time, but Disney was operating with a futures mindset and this level of thinking demands a degree of boldness and risk.

When we go through basic brainstorming we’re trying to address immediate needs, put out fires, grease the squeaky wheel and solve the problems of today.  While that is an important function of idea generation, when you’re after innovations that can amaze customers, catapult you into the future and separate yourself from the competition, you need to start changing the way employees think about problems.

This challenge necessitates moving your creative process beyond merely solving problems to a place where you begin anticipating the needs of the future, needs people don’t even realize they have or will have.

In the early 1960’s, housewives weren’t saying, “I wish I had an oven the size of a couple toasters which could heat my food in seconds and never get hot inside.”  Customers weren’t demanding the microwave.  No one then was thinking about how the ability to cook Salisbury steak in 90-seconds could allow millions of bachelors to live exclusively off frozen food; fortunately, an accident in a laboratory lead to a spark of imagination which fed creativity resulting in a prototype that ended up becoming an innovation that changed the way America eats.  The futures mindset seeks out the next microwave by visualizing the future and innovating solutions to unmet needs.

Most people think the future just somehow happens.  Remember Richard Branson?  When he was a kid, he thought someone would eventually come along and develop commercial space travel and all he had to do was wait for it.  He waited and waited and it didn’t happen, he had to make it happen.

The future doesn’t just happen, people innovate it when they move from a focus of solving the problems of today to a consideration of what their business and industry will look like five to 10 years or more from now.

 

HELPFUL HINT: I can hear you saying, “That’s a big job: predicting the future and innovating solutions to needs people don’t even know they have!”

It is challenging there’s no doubt about that.  This idea generation obstacle, however, like all the others we’ve discussed, has a starting place, a progression, and a set of basic techniques which, when broken down into steps, makes the possibility much more manageable.

 

For starters, if you get to this point, congratulations!  When you find your culture of innovation firmly established and your people so skilled and sharp with their basic brainstorming, brain-writing and observation that all of your immediate business challenges are being met and the only area remaining for you to explore becomes the future, treat yourself to the best restaurant in town for a job well done.  Once you’ve drilled the basics, practiced them repeatedly, worked numerous ideas all the way from imagination through innovation and believe your team’s full potential can now only be met by entirely changing the way it thinks about problems, you are an innovator and I am proud of you.

For achieving this, your reward is the tremendous challenge and opportunity of determining the future.  I’ve used the “crawl before you walk” analogy before – brainstorming is crawling, brain-writing is walking, observation is running, changing the way your employees think about problems through an incorporation of the futures mindset is competing in the Olympic decathlon.  While an advanced technique, if you’ve built a solid foundation of innovation with your employees you can do this and innovating for the future has the potential to be one of the most exciting initiatives your team can undertake.

 

The chief obstacle to incorporating a futures mindset is that it doesn’t come naturally.  In order to change the way your employees think about problems, you have to reprogram their minds.  The establishment of a futures mindset requires employees to think counter to the way they’ve been trained to think all of their lives.

Ninety-nine percent of our problem solving ability works towards issues and problems of the day: what to wear to work, prepare for meeting with Jennifer at 10:30, forms to fill out, e-mails to respond to, where to go for lunch, have to pick up dry cleaning at five, what’s the best way to get there?  People are trained to be problem solvers.  We have been conditioned to handle today’s pressing issues, go to sleep, wake up, and do it all over again.

Pulling employees out of that mindset and placing them into one that envisions the world of the future is formidable.  Fortunately, resources and exercises exist to help accomplish this and the potential benefits are staggering.

The need for a teachable method to transition employees into a futures mindset was a project I had wanted to tackle for years.  I realized it couldn’t wait any longer after a series of more and more frustrating idea generation sessions I was facilitating with teams in the food industry.

Coming up with ideas wasn’t the problem for these groups, their problem was being so stuck in the mindset of solving the challenges of the day that they couldn’t envision any solutions that were new, unique or breakthrough.  Unconsciously, these teams had built huge walls around their idea generation and hemmed in their potential by exclusively viewing their challenges through today’s eyes.

One team trying to sell more product became fixated on the idea of using the endorsement of a celebrity chef, another wanted to take its brand into low-carbohydrate offerings, a third centered its solutions around the ability to order products on-line and have them delivered to customers at home.  These were good ideas and they were five years too late.  I was working with these groups in the mid-2000’s and by that time the celebrity chef fad along with the low-carb craze and a rush to put everything on-line were played out.  These ideas were tantamount to developing a better 8-track tape player in 1980.  It was time to move on.

Trends in the food industry move fast and these groups had already missed out on the leading edge of those movements.  Trying to catch up would put them in on the back end where results are small, if experienced at all.

I knew simply imploring these employees to think differently would never transition them to a place where they could begin imagining the future.  That change requires a shift in mindset too dramatic to go through without any specific guidance or coaching.  What was necessary were a set of tools to bridge the gap between how these people were thinking, how most people think, and the futures mindset necessary to start developing the breakthrough ideas companies are demanding.

To assist the transition I set about creating progressive exercises that could help lead any group of people from a focus on the present into a mindset of inventing for the future and solving unmet needs.

Whenever I begin introducing a team to the futures mindset I always start with this question: how many people here have the ability to predict the future?  No one initially raises their hand; I do.

I keep my hand up without saying anything else, accepting the strange looks and allowing the class to think more about the question.  I see the gears in their minds working.  Team members’ thought processes start with, “I wish I could; I’d put my 401K on a 10-team parlay in Vegas and leave this seminar for Bermuda.”

Gradually, they remember they’re in an innovation class, we’re talking about the future and they know I have no supernatural powers that allow me to see tomorrow.  They begin to view the future, as we’re discussing it, as something they have control over.  Eventually, another hand goes up, then another and another.  By the time every hand in the room is raised, the team is united about what it will be working toward: predicting the future by creating it.  Through innovation, predicting the future becomes a matter of choice, calculated risk-taking, and effort.

Once a group understands and believes it has the ability to shape the future I always pull an example relative to the business I’m working with that shows how a team in this field should have been able to predict the future and the tremendous benefit it could have reaped from doing so.  There are thousands of examples of this in literally every sector and finding one that applies to your team will be easy.

•             How long were customers and experts telling American automakers to improve their product quality and transition to smaller, more fuel efficient models with no action from Detroit?  After decades of warnings and a dramatic loss of market share to foreign competitors, the bottom finally dropped out on the Big Three American automakers in the late 2000’s with massive plant closings and layoffs, the need for government bailout, and bankruptcy for General Motors and Chrysler.

•             It’s well documented that Folgers saw Starbucks coming and laughed at the idea that anyone was going to spend $3 for a cup of coffee.  Instead of branching out, Folgers stayed in the commodity business buying and selling bulk coffee and has been left in the dust by Starbucks as a purveyor of “venti iced-mocha latte with whip and an extra shot.”

•             Netflix was founded in 1997, went public in 2002, but it wasn’t until 2004 that Blockbuster entered the on-line movie rental marketplace.  Blockbuster has been eclipsed by Netflix as the nation’s top video rental company and according to a 2009 article on moneymorning.com, “Blockbuster’s operating income at the end of its second quarter in 2004 was $105.3 million. That was just before Netflix entered mainstream consumer consciousness. Blockbuster’s operating income at the end of its second quarter this year was a loss of $1.5 million.”

•             In 2006 the animal feed business was going through a terrible slump because widespread government sponsored ethanol subsidies had dramatically raised the price of corn, the main ingredient in animal feed.  Where previously corn cost $2 a bushel, its price rapidly doubled leaving animal nutrition companies struggling to meet demands and turn a profit.  Who could have ever predicted the price of corn doubling in a year because of ethanol subsidies?  A book titled “2025” did that exact thing.  The book was published in 1998.  That book and that prediction have drawn more than a few gasps from animal feed teams I have worked with on the problem of how to survive a marketplace where the price of corn has skyrocketed.

 

The future almost never appears as a lightning bolt out of a clear blue sky, much more typically it will hint at its arrival for years.

So how can this be used?  How can you use trends, research and your expectations of what the future of your industry will look like to innovate for the needs of tomorrow?

I suggest using the following prediction to introduce you and your team to this method of idea generation; consider it a warm-up exercise.  Start your team’s utilization of the futures mindset by approaching the problem of population growth.  I have employed this example numerous times with groups in widely varied industries and always find it successful.

 

“FUTURES MINSET” IN ACTION – Global census takers agree that by 2050 the world’s population will hit nine billion.  It was only in 2008 that the planet’s population hit six billion.  That means over the next 40 years our population is expected to increase again by half.

To adequately feed all those people, over the next 40 years we’ll have to create as much food as has been created in all of human history.  That calculation stuns readers and is a belief widely held by experts – experts paid and trained to predict the future.  Let your team absorb that information then ask these questions:

1.            How might that change impact you personally over the next 40 years?

2.            How might it impact your business?

3.            What is it that your key customers might need as a result of this?

4.            What might your business or company look like in 2050 as a result?

5.            What products or services might you need to have to maximize profits during this time?

6.            When do you feel you should start working on the products or services that can take advantage of this situation?

 

Each one of those questions leads to a mini brainstorming session within the group where you spend 20 or 30 minutes discussing.  Approach the questions in order as they are progressive and systematically move an individual’s mindset through a natural process which ultimately allows them to tackle what can be vast and nebulous challenges.

Question five, “What products or services would you need to have to maximize profits during this time?” will help your business and may be what you’re most interested in, but if you start your team members brainstorming around that question immediately without leading them up to it by asking the preceding questions, most likely they’ll find the challenge too daunting and idea generation will be stunted.

Questions one through four serve as a series of stepping stones leading your team to question five.  When we’re posed with a situation, we instinctually think how that information will impact us – question one.  Our brains then move to our next sphere of influence, our jobs (question two), then to our customers (question three) and eventually to the world at large (questions four and five).  Question six completes the series bringing the team back into the present by demanding action.

Questions one through five rely on imagination and creativity, question six begins the process of innovation.  As you move through these steps watch as the ideas generated by your team branch out to include different business models and fantastically imaginative products and services.  Notice the energy created by taking on the future and how team members’ thought processes begin to evolve from an exclusive focus on the present to a consideration of tomorrow.

The next step in applying your team’s burgeoning futures mindset requires finding an issue and future scenario specific to your business to start working on.  This can be another opportunity for your team to practice developing focused problem statements and brainstorm.  “What future trends or predictions might this team start focusing on for our business to take advantage of?”

If you already have trends, scenarios or predictions in mind, great, if not, there’s no need to struggle in finding them.  Information and predictions about the future of your sector are everywhere from trade publications, books, on-line sources and your own intuition.  To augment what you find on your own, there exists an organization called the World Future Society whose members spend their time analyzing data and conducting research intended to predict the future.

The World Future Society (www.wfs.org) publishes a book each year entitled The State of the Future which can serve as a tremendous resource for anyone trying to find thoughtful, detailed, exhaustively researched predictions for tomorrow and beyond.  The State of the Future includes forecasts for nearly every industry and aspect of life from travel, communications and education to science, technology and the environment.  In the interest of full disclosure, I am a member of the World Future Society, but my connection to them in no way influences my support of its work, its accuracy, or my belief in its ability to assist your idea generation.

The State of the Future and the other publication I highly recommend to spur your futures mindset, the World Future Society’s annual “Outlook Report” which features its most thought-provoking forecasts for the year, aren’t vague, fortune teller nonsense.  These predictions are the best estimates from the top experts about how our world will change five, ten, fifty years and more down the road.  You can’t trust every statistic or prediction as absolute, but you can certainly gather enough information and use your own experience and common sense to determine the future trends your industry and what will likely transform it in the coming years.

After choosing a scenario or prediction specific to your industry and communicating your interest in undertaking this exercise, ask team members the same questions from the global population example above; those same questions are used to start all future-focused brainstorming sessions.   At this point, you follow the progressive idea generation steps I have previously established:

1.            Develop a focused problem statement

2.            Perform brain-writing

3.            Sort the ideas into themes

4.            Mine those ideas down in further detail

5.            Determine which ideas have the most promise or create the most energy among the group

6.            Come to a consensus about which of those ideas to pursue

7.            Task follow-through

 

Don’t be Chairman of the Bored

As I began developing exercises to encourage a futures mindset, I started thinking about the people who are happy and unhappy in their jobs.  The more thought and observation I gave the issue, the more clear it became to me what common bond the unsatisfied employees shared: boredom.

Employees stuck in a rut, performing the same routine daily, bound to an ordinary or mundane work experience are rarely engaged in their work and functioning at maximum capacity.  Conversely, those who achieve and stand out have goals that push them to excel.  Innovation works the same.  If all your efforts are targeted at handling daily problems and continually working through similar challenges and exercises, you and your team will become bored.

Groups incorporating a futures mindset into their brainstorming do concern themselves with the present while also allowing themselves to reach out and work on a vision for what the future they want looks like.  This keeps the process fresh and evolving and stimulates the minds of employees maintaining their engagement and productivity.

Thinking for the future and handling the problems of today need not be an “either/or” decision, both can be achieved simultaneously.  A perfect example of this balance in practice takes place at Google where all employees are allocated 20% of their regular work time to focus on new projects that interest them.  That’s a full day each week.

Google does not treat thinking about tomorrow as a luxury or frivolity; it takes place every day as a part of its regular operations.  Many of Google’s most recent and popular innovations – Gmail, Google News, Orkut and AdSense – originated from these independent endeavors.

During a 2006 speech at Stanford University, Marissa Mayer, Google’s Vice President of Search Products and User Experience, stated that her analysis showed 50% of the company’s new product launches originating from this 20% “innovation time off.”  That powerful return on investment demonstrates how the futures mindset can deliver concrete, bottom-line results.

As important as those innovations are to Google’s bottom line, the “license to pursue dreams” as Mayer calls it, has an additional benefit at Google and it comes in the area of employee engagement which I’ve stressed previously.

“The key is not 20% of your time,” said Mayer, “It’s that engineers and product developers realize that the company trusts them and wants them to be creative and explore what they want to explore and it is that license that fuels a tremendous amount of creativity and innovation.”

Within the technology field, Google doesn’t offer employees the highest pay.  With that being the case, how come Google remains one of the most desired companies to work for?  The positive, supportive, engaging work environment at Google which doesn’t only allow, but demands people to follow their individual passions, far surpasses any salary shortcomings in workers’ minds.

I’m not saying 20% is the magic number when it comes to time which should be spent imagining the future; individual leaders and teams can determine that.  I am saying that making sure an eye stays continually focused on tomorrow and that resources are devoted to making sure your team gets there will pay huge dividends.

 

The Feather, the Brick or the Truck

Opportunities to see the future and act before its arrival show up constantly and sooner or later you will have to deal with it.  When the future presents itself, will you respond to the feather, the brick or the truck?

The future comes on by degrees with the feather being that subtle tickle which gets your attention, often being ignored as you focus on more pressing and immediate matters.  You know in the back of your mind that the tickle will eventually need to be reckoned with and because you’re so caught up in the issues of the day, you still neglect it.

The future arrives inevitably and if you have failed to act on the tickle, it will whack you on the head like a brick.  At this point, you are certain of your need to address future concerns, however many of us simply pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and press forward on our normal course, too busy to take the time to look beyond today’s concerns.

You’ve been given two warnings and haven’t yet had to pay dearly.  You will when your refusal to anticipate and prepare for the future manifests itself as a truck running you over leaving you splattered in the street and breathing exhaust while it barrels down a road you ignored with your competitors in the cab.  Now you have no choice, but to respond to the future and find yourself flat on your back, often hopelessly unprepared to even catch up, let alone pass, your future-focused competition.

You may laugh at this analogy, but how many of you have ignored minor health problems claiming to be too busy to have them checked out or hoping they’d go away, only to see them become much bigger problems because they weren’t treated at first symptom?

The future works the same way: it’s coming and it’s going to be big.  You choose which point you want to start preparing for and addressing it, the feather, the brick or the truck?

 

The sports television network ESPN has consistently acted on the feather routinely pacing the sports media world with innovative new content and delivery platforms.  For more than 25 years, it has changed and dictated how fans consume sports and left a trail of would-be competitors in its future-focused wake.

Sony waited for the truck which was digital music and the i-Pod.  Sony’s Walkman owned portable music for years; now that company and brand are virtually invisible in the portable music marketplace because of a refusal to work on the innovations of tomorrow, today.

Utilizing a futures mindset conditions you away from a singular obsession with the moment and trains you to notice those signs of the future that appear with a small tickle, the feather, and capitalize on them.   In hindsight, we easily say a business or individual should have acted on a hint of some future development because we’re all risky, willing and bold when it comes to events which have passed.  Recognizing those signals when they first arise demands thinking in ways most of us are unaccustomed to.  That evolution requires changing the way we think about problems by starting to put a focus beyond today.

 

Your Legacy

Great power can be found in an ability to see the future.  You will also find risk.  You make the decision of which trends and predictions to pursue and take a chance on.  The reward for taking this risk can become your legacy.  You have the ability to bring the future to people by adopting these techniques and when you do, your efforts will always be remembered.

Embrace the future, its potential, and your ability to shape it.

Think big, so big that it drives you continually.  Avoid a preoccupation with how long a project or new idea may take to be completed.

I want to share with you a quote from biologist Wes Jackson, “If your life’s work can be accomplished in your lifetime you’re not thinking big enough.”

Walt Disney never saw Epcot, John F. Kennedy never saw a man walk on the moon, and both achievements remain their legacy because they had the courage to imagine them.  That courage was accompanied by a wisdom which allowed them to envision needs for the future most others couldn’t see and the determination to put their ideas on a track to completion, no matter how long it took.  Changing the way employees think about problems, instituting a futures mindset, considering the world of tomorrow and taking action to make it happen, use these techniques to leave your mark on the world.

How Kodak Bankruptcy Could Have Been Avoided by Using a Futures Mindset

With Kodak filing for bankruptcy business analysts will spend countless hours analyzing how the American corporate giant finds itself in this position.  Few industries have changed as much as  photography over the decades – scratch that – all industries change greatly over time: photography, automotive, media, food, all of them.

What might have kept Kodak as a market leader?  Leadership determined to craft a future around their vision could have.  How do you do that?  You change the way employees think about problems by utilizing a futures mindset.

Here is an excerpt from Saving Innovation detailing the futures mindset.

When we go through basic brainstorming we’re trying to address immediate needs, put out fires, grease the squeaky wheel and solve the problems of today.  While that is an important function of idea generation, when you’re after innovations that can amaze customers, catapult you into the future and separate yourself from the competition, you need to start changing the way employees think about problems.

This challenge necessitates moving your creative process beyond merely solving problems to a place where you begin anticipating the needs of the future, needs people don’t even realize they have or will have.

In the early 1960’s, housewives weren’t saying, “I wish I had an oven the size of a couple toasters which could heat my food in seconds and never get hot inside.”  Customers weren’t demanding the microwave.  No one then was thinking about how the ability to cook Salisbury steak in 90-seconds could allow millions of bachelors to live exclusively off frozen food; fortunately, an accident in a laboratory lead to a spark of imagination which fed creativity resulting in a prototype that ended up becoming an innovation that changed the way America eats.  The futures mindset seeks out the next microwave by visualizing the future and innovating solutions to unmet needs.

The future doesn’t just happen, people innovate it when they move from a focus of solving the problems of today to a consideration of what their business and industry will look like five to 10 years or more from now.

I can hear you saying, “That’s a big job: predicting the future and innovating solutions to needs people don’t even know they have!”

It is challenging there’s no doubt about that.  This idea generation obstacle, however, like all the others we’ve discussed, has a starting place, a progression, and a set of basic techniques which, when broken down into steps, makes the possibility much more manageable.

For achieving this, your reward is the tremendous challenge and opportunity of determining the future.  I’ve used the “crawl before you walk” analogy before – brainstorming is crawling, brain-writing is walking, observation is running, changing the way your employees think about problems through an incorporation of the futures mindset is competing in the Olympic decathlon.  While an advanced technique, if you’ve built a solid foundation of innovation with your employees you can do this and innovating for the future has the potential to be one of the most exciting initiatives your team can undertake.

The chief obstacle to incorporating a futures mindset is that it doesn’t come naturally.  In order to change the way your employees think about problems, you have to reprogram their minds.  The establishment of a futures mindset requires employees to think counter to the way they’ve been trained to think all of their lives.

Ninety-nine percent of our problem solving ability works towards issues and problems of the day: what to wear to work, prepare for meeting with Jennifer at 10:30, forms to fill out, e-mails to respond to, where to go for lunch, have to pick up dry cleaning at five, what’s the best way to get there?  People are trained to be problem solvers.  We have been conditioned to handle today’s pressing issues, go to sleep, wake up, and do it all over again.

Pulling employees out of that mindset and placing them into one that envisions the world of the future is formidable.  Fortunately, resources and exercises exist to help accomplish this and the potential benefits are staggering.

Picking Appropriate Idea Generation Tool Depends on Idea Generation Goal

The following is an excerpt from Saving Innovation:

There are countless tools and techniques to help you generate ideas and wading through them all to find the right one for your group and your challenge seems incredibly daunting.  Like everything else, idea generation can be as complicated as you want to make it and I want to make it simple by focusing on the basics.  When you master the basics and regularly practice the fundamentals, your brainstorming potential becomes unlimited.

Before selecting which tools you want to use to boost your brainstorming efforts, you first need to undertake an honest evaluation of the issues you are experiencing with your current idea generation efforts.  Problems come first then tools are found to solve them.

If you see a nail sticking out of a board on your deck, that’s a problem, so you go into your garage to find a hammer, a tool, to fix that problem.  That nail presents a unique problem and the hammer is a tool specially designed to solve it.  You’ve also got a drill in your garage and you could use the butt of that drill to pound the nail in, but that’s not what it’s designed for and while it might work, it won’t work very well and it won’t work for long.

The drill is a good tool, it’s not a tool best suited to solve the problem of a nail sticking up.  Creativity tools work the same way.  There are different tools for different challenges and if you don’t know what your shortcomings are, how can you pick the proper tools to address them?  I will provide you tools designed to solve particular idea generation obstacles; you need to properly identify your team’s obstacle.

While there are millions of individual business problems, I’ve found after working for more than a decade with tens of thousands of people around the globe in widely varied businesses that everyone’s idea generation difficulties can be bucketed into one of three broad categories:

The need to generate more ideas

The need to generate better ideas

The need to change the way employees think about problems

My experience has also shown me that no single tool can effectively address each of these challenges simultaneously; there is no Swiss Army Knife of creativity tools.  For each of these challenges, there are specific tools available to solve them.  Actually, there are about 100 tools available to solve them; I’m going to give you the essential few necessary so you can start overcoming your difficulties today.

This approach marks a significant departure from the current thought in idea generation which continues to focus on tools before problems and continues to believe all tools apply to all situations.

Defining an Innovative Corporate Culture

The following is an excerpt from Saving Innovation:

Remember how I defined culture: a core set of values that become fully integrated and regularly practiced as behaviors within an organization – core values, fully integrated, regularly practiced as behaviors. 

The core values you want to instill as the foundation of your innovative culture are: communication, candor, curiosity and commitment. 

These values are long lasting and non-negotiable.  They are not subject to market fluctuations or personnel changes.  These values should define the way you operate.  Your company’s current CEO, where the Dow closed today or your last quarterly earnings report cannot alter them.

I’m not asking you to scrap your existing corporate culture and values and replace them.  Your corporate culture has been long established and supported.  I want you to add the values of communication, candor, curiosity and commitment to your current culture, or build them into your culture if you’ve yet to define it. 

Merely having and stating values won’t net you results until they are translated into behaviors – regularly practiced behaviors.

Which is More Important to Innovation: Culture or Tools?

The following is an excerpt from Saving Innovation:

Once a commitment to innovation has been made the natural inclination is to start grabbing for tools and holding brainstorming sessions and meetings to generate ideas. 

That seems reasonable enough.  Tools generate ideas, they are tangible and can be put on paper and taught.  Progress toward the next big breakthrough in your business could seemingly be made this afternoon. 

Every team I’ve worked with finds itself exactly where you are now and thinks, “We get it!  Let’s get to the fun stuff!  Let’s get the ideas rolling!”

While tools are necessary, without a supportive culture in place to properly utilize them, they’re virtually useless.  Take Doug from Ft. Collins, the tools I presented him were first rate, but since his facility’s culture didn’t support innovation, he had no way of putting them into effectual practice.

            Stop by your local gym on the way home from work tonight.  Pop your head in the door and look at all that great equipment, all those great fitness tools – barbells, dumbbells, strength machines, cardio machines, steppers, bikes, balls, rowers.  With access to all those great tools, how come there are still so many out of shape people at that gym, and every other one as well?  I promise you it’s not because they just signed up. 

For starters, most members don’t have the first idea about how to properly use those tools, but the lack of a commitment to fitness from a complete time, effort and lifestyle standpoint proves to be the primary reason.  They haven’t created within their own lives a culture that fully supports being in shape.  The best gym equipment in the world will not get someone in shape if they continue to smoke, drink soda, eat greasy sausage pizza before going to bed and only use that equipment 10 minutes a week. 

Conversely, to a person truly committed to fitness, tools are almost unnecessary to achieve that end.  Running, body weight exercises, swimming, jumping rope, eating a balanced diet – those things require only rudimentary tools and if they’re worked at hard and consistently will lead to fitness 100% of the time.

            If being in shape was simply a matter of having the right tools, every gym member would look fantastic.  The same situation exists with innovation. 

If successful innovation were only about having the best tools, every business using creativity tools would be experiencing results because most of the tools in use are effective.  When the use of these tools fails to generate results you’ll most often find an unsupportive culture as the reason why. 

A business committing to innovation and using a tools-first approach without having a culture that supports their use will never realize the results it expects.  Frustration will set in, same as with all those gym members who wander aimlessly from machine to machine with no results, and the effort will be given up.   

My years of experience have shown me conclusively the establishment of an innovative culture must come before the introduction of tools because that culture will deliver more consistent and better results than the tools alone. 

Culture works.  A culture of innovation is sustainable and long term.  Culture delivers results around the clock, within and outside of the office.  Culture overcomes problems and challenges for both the present and the future and it engages everyone. 

How the iPod Indirectly Leads Companies to Abandon Innovation

The following is an excerpt from Saving Innovation:

In the 1990’s and 2000’s, we all saw companies making billions of dollars thanks to incredibly innovative ideas.  Businesses were enamored by the potential for astronomical economic returns from new products and services.  The crown jewel of these was the iPod. 

Seemingly overnight, Apple had unveiled a completely new product.  A computer company revolutionized the music industry by innovating a device that seemed straight out of “The Jetsons.”  Ten years ago, Apple was not in the portable music business; today it owns more than 70-percent of the market.  Others saw these results and wanted to duplicate them. 

The iPod replaced the light bulb as the new symbol for innovation and everyone wanted to jump into the innovation pool so they could develop their own magnum opus.  Businesses thought that by introducing an innovation tool at the monthly meeting or conducting a playful ideation session at the company picnic, revolutionary products would fall out of the sky and everyone would drive a Maserati. 

An animal protein team I worked with rallied around the theme of wanting to create the “iPod of meat.”  Those were their exact words.  They didn’t intend to make a portable mp3 player out of beef, they wanted to innovate the next new idea in meat that would completely transform their industry the way the iPod did for portable music. 

I believe audacious goals are admirable, however, a better goal for this group would have been to become the “Apple of meat.”  Instead of focusing solely on bringing a once-in-a-lifetime product to market, this team should have focused on becoming the most innovative company in its industry which would result in the regular development of once-in-a-lifetime products, such as Apple developed with the iPod, iPhone, iPad and others.

Businesses who tried innovation and didn’t realize instantaneous market-shifting results felt duped and betrayed by the great promise of innovation.  That wasn’t innovation’s fault.  Innovation doesn’t work that way.  Nothing works that way.