The hardest part of building an innovative culture in an organization is getting it started. People aren’t sure what they should or can do. If you sit a team around a table and tell them to brainstorm for new ideas they will look around at each other expectantly or look down so they won’t be called on. But seldom will many ideas come from this Read More »
In most organizations, it’s common practice to conduct “postmortem” or lessons learned review sessions upon completion of major projects. If the project achieved its goal, management questions typically focus on what went right. What did we do well? How can we sustain this success? What could we improve to make the outcome even better?” If the project failed to meet expectations, the postmortem tends to Read More »
Imagine that you have been invited to join a group of people in a room with casual comfortable furniture and with the job of coming up with ideas to solve a problem creatively and with no pressure. Everyone will be listening to everyone else and looking for ways to enhance each others’ ideas and to piggy-back or combine ideas. The combination and diversity of backgrounds Read More »
One of the best approaches to spreading a viral change campaign is to court key influencers. But recent research also confirms that the influenced may be as critical as the influencers. A recent study found that trying to track down key influencers – people who have extremely large social networks – can in some ways limit a campaign and its viral potential. Change agents instead Read More »
Are You Overdue for An Assumption Inventory? It’s been said that in today’s chaotic markets, the only sustainable competitive advantage may be the ability to learn faster than your competitors. I disagree. The ability for leaders and managers to learn quickly is certainly a critical advantage. Especially in industries where new technologies and/or rapidly changing customer expectations can disrupt the status quo overnight. But the Read More »
One of the simplest, most valuable skills a brainstorm facilitator can develop is the ability to “read the direction” in which their group’s thoughts are flowing. Just like the ebbing and flowing tides of an ocean or river, collaborative thinking flows in one of two distinct directions: 1) it can diverge outward, in a broad, multidirectional, expansive exploration of ideas; or 2) it can converge Read More »
School teaches that there is one right answer. As students we are supposed to figure out that answer. It’s the one that matches what it says in the answer key at the back of the book or for the test. But business and life isn’t like that. There isn’t just one right answer for most of the problems and situations we encounter. In business and Read More »