Tag: innovation

Why would you settle when it’s not necessary?

The only limitations you have are those you impose upon yourself.

Struggling to become more creative and innovative?

Challenged to create a vibrant creativity and innovation culture where at least 80% of your leaders are rated by employees as very good or excellent at creating a risk-taking culture?

Challenged to create a vibrant risk-taking culture where at least 51% of your leaders are rated by employees as excellent at encouraging and supporting world-class creativity and innovation?

Do you have a personal conviction that good and very good aren’t good enough?

Do you understand the dramatic difference between an excellent idea-generating culture’s ability to get excellent results, a very good idea-generating culture getting very good results and a good culture getting good results?

Can you articulate the difference between a good idea-generating culture and an excellent idea-generating culture; and the difference between a very good culture and an excellent culture?

If you can, and i’m assuming you can, why would you settle?

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Busy Doing Nothing

Being good at doing things well is often seen as success.

Really?

Think about it.

Yes, we are good at things.

But are we good at the right things?

Who’s coaching us about creativity and innovation priorities?

Who’s holding us accountable?

And what if our boss is the same boat as us?

What if our boss has creativity and innovation priorities that we are good at delivering on, but what if all of us are focused on lower level priorities?

What if we are the boss? What if we’re passing this on down to our direct reports?

The creativity and innovation mission critical stuff, often the soft stuff, is left alone because it’s too hard to see and measure improvement.

It’s analogous to trying to lose weight instead of trying to lower our resting heart rate, our cholesterol, BMI, and triglycerides.

There are a lot of fake creativity and innovation problems in business. Fake problems are issues we spend time managing that have disproportionate value to more important priorities.

Fake problems are convenient for medicating our lack of a clear, concise, and compelling vision.

Organizational health (and personal health) is priority one.

Never get bored with the basics.

Spend time doing nothing.

Quiet time, void of distractions, void of deadlines, meetings, initiatives.

Spend time there and you’ll be astonished, if you really open your heart, at what you can accomplish when you’re busy doing nothing.

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This website is about our HOME. This is the fifth of five daily, differently-themed blog posts about: (1) mind, (2) body, (3) spirit, (4) work, (5) home. To return to Mid Life Celebration, the site about MIND, click here.

Creativity and Innovation time out, Disney-Style

Four world-class creativity and innovation basics i learned from 30 years at Disney.

Do the basics brilliantly.

Never get bored with the basics.

Generate, select, implement, leader’s role.

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This website is about our HOME. This is the fifth of five daily, differently-themed blog posts about: (1) mind, (2) body, (3) spirit, (4) work, (5) home. To return to Mid Life Celebration, the site about MIND, click here.

Improve

Let’s review the suggested cultural blueprints implementation plan.

The Building owner is the CEO.

Deliverables from Leader Champions are plumbing, hvac, electric, lighting.

Generate Ideas: Build your box.

Select Ideas: Six steps Continuous Improvement Process (CIP).

Select Ideas: CIP.

Leaders Role: Environmentalist. Everyone’s creative. Organize to maximize. Your idea is separate from your identity.

All collaborative efforts by executive leaders and the cross-functional teams should revolve around simple, focused, energetic, creative, visionary, and scalable outcomes – blueprints for an organizationally vibrant culture.

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This website is about our HOME. This is the fifth of five daily, differently-themed blog posts about: (1) mind, (2) body, (3) spirit, (4) work, (5) home. To return to Mid Life Celebration, the site about MIND, click here.

How to execute next steps to convert theory into reality

Big picture involvement:

Five foundational ownership tracts; 19 total blueprints.

One owner of everything, the CEO.

Up to ten Champions selected from CEO Cabinet; two Champions for each of the five ownership tracts (Leaders, Employees, Customers, Reputation, Improve). Some Cabinet members may be responsible for two ownership tracts.

Ten assistant champions selected from your best, most passionate leaders in Human Resources, Labor Relations, Employee Relations, Compliance, Employment, Marketing, Public Relations, Communications. Assistant Champions should only focus on one ownership tract.

From 15-30 advocate teams selected from every employee, at every level, in every department. This is three to five team advocates per ownership tract.

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Owner

• CEO

Champions

• C-Level Executive (always have two, to solve for unexpected absences)
• Provides vision, inspiration, commitment

Assistant Champions

• Cross-functional pair from Human Resources, Labor Relations, Employee Relations, Compliance, Employment, Marketing, Public Relations, Communications.
• Always have two, to solve for unexpected absences
• Provides involvement, accountability, commitment
• For unexpected absences, always be grooming the replacement from the Advocate Team.

Advocate Teams

• Created from any employee, at any level, in every department
• 3-6 total per team recommended
• Cross-functional
• Provides energy, enthusiasm, effort, commitment

Final blueprint

• Create action steps
• Review, organize notes
• Create plan
• Discuss
• Summarize
• Create final blueprint
• Present to CEO and Cabinet

Develop and deliver campaign

• Goals/deliverables
• Assign roles
• Timeline
• Accountability

Misc

• Manage project scope creep
• Prepare contingency plans for project disruptions
• Always be grooming replacement/succession

Continuous Improvement

• Manage health of all teams
• Grow team bench
• Measure
• Celebrate
• Share
• Historian documents growth, change, transformation

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This website is about our HOME. This is the fifth of five daily, differently-themed blog posts about: (1) mind, (2) body, (3) spirit, (4) work, (5) home. To return to Mid Life Celebration, the site about MIND, click here.