How and why most of what we call “thinking” really isn’t
In the latest of five bestselling b0oks, Unthinking: The Surprising Forces Behind What We Buy, Harry Beckwith shares a number of especially valuable insights and I have consolidated several of them in these two mosaics of excerpts:
“We could excuse our foolishness…by recognizing that most of what we call thinking really isn’t. During our decision making, the organ that that processes our data sits on the sidelines while our feelings do the work. When our feelings reach their decision, they summon our brains to come in and draft the rationale, a task it does so well that it manages to convince us that it’s right – and that it was in charge the whole time.
“We experience the world through our senses, particularly our eyes: we think with them…We shape things and then they shape us…Design has become the great value-added feature: we think with our eyes…We love beauty and nothing looks more beautiful to us than something simple…But of all the forces [that influence a decision], none surpasses reputation…reputations change our experiences. If we think a concoction will sprout hair, for example, we soon see hair…Reputations create our expectations, and out expectations change our perceptions.”
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Harry Beckwith is a frequent guest lecturer for many national corporations, including ABC, Inc., BellSouth Corporation, Norwest Corporation, and Marsh & McLennan Companies, Inc., among others. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His published works include the aforementioned Unthinking as well as Selling the Invisible, What Clients Love, You, Inc., and The Invisible Touch.
To read my interview of Beckwith, please click here.
Trust in the Competence + Goodness of Leaders = Effective Leadership – (A Lesson Gleaned from All The Devils Are Here)
Leadership is all about trust… If people trust their leader(s), anything is possible. If people lose trust in their leader(s), almost nothing can hold against the onslaught.
This Friday at the First Friday Book Synopsis, I will be presenting my synopsis of All The Devils are Here by Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera. This idea about trust is one of their vivid, profound, powerful conclusions. In this case, they reflect on the loss of trust in the system and its leaders. And that loss was, in every sense of the word, devastating.
Here are a couple of quotes, from near the end of the book, to help us understand this:
“Without reciprocal trust between the parties to any securities transaction, the money stops. Doubt fills the vacuum, and credit and liquidity are the chief casualties. Bad news, whether it derives form false rumor or verifiable fact, then has an alarming capacity to become contagious and self-perpetuating.” (Alan “Ace” Greenberg, former Bear Stearns chairman).
and
“The way I think about the crisis is that it occurred because of the systemic abuse of trust in capital markets. The blowups of subprime, then of Bear Stearns, and then of Fannie exposed massive lies. Then we went from a collective belief in soundness to a collective belief in insolvency.” (John Hampton, Australian financial analyst and historian).
I think this is right, and significant. And it simply works like this: the average worker is something of a “prisoner,” utterly dependent on the direction set, the decisions made, by people way above his or her pay grade. And, in some sense, this is also true of the average borrower, investor… in other words, all of us.
When good decisions are made, then the results can be wonderful and profitable and truly successful. When bad decisions are made, then the best work and the best workers in the world can not “save the company” from those bad decisions.
And so, people act they way they do because of the trust they have (or, the lack of trust they have), in their leaders. When that trust is broken, morale is broken, the future is uncertain, and everything feels, and is, “broken.”
And that trust is shaped by two major factors: the competence of the leaders, and the morality and integrity of the leaders. In other words, it is the combination, competence + goodness, that matters. Take away either, and trust is destroyed.
So whatever else the task of the leader is, it is certainly this: winning, maintaining, and continually being worthy of, the trust of the people they lead and the people they serve.
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If you will be in the DFW area this Friday morning, come join us for the First Friday Book Synopsis. Just click on home on this page, and click on the “Register Now” sunburst. the
The power of a well-told story
Steve Denning, Annette Simmons, and Doug Lipman have written brilliant books about storytelling; more specifically, about how to write an effective business narrative.
Don Hewitt
It is worth noting that CBS’s 60 Minutes is the longest running prime-time television show in history. In fact, its #1 ranking for five consecutive years has been equaled only by All in the Family and The Cosby Show. Its creator and producer, Don Hewitt, once explained the reason for its success: “Even the people who wrote the Bible were smart enough to know: Tell them a story. The issue was evil; the story was Noah. I latched on to that.” The title of the memoirs that Hewitt later published is Tell Me a Story.
Storytelling is universal. Our ancestors covered their caves with the PowerPoint presentations of their time: the images they painted to tell stories about the hunt. Then and now, we need stories; a story is a single coherent whole out of a lot of parts. Aesop, Jesus, Muhammad, Moses, Confucius, and the followers of the Buddha all knew it; every religion has memorable stories at its center.
How to get into and then capture people’s hearts and souls? Hewitt answered with a simple strategy that today’s most successful companies follow every day: “At 60 Minutes, we do what everyone should be doing: Tell me a story. Learn to do that well and you’ll be a success.”
The #1 Leadership Problem
Margaret Heffernan
Here is an article written by Margaret Heffernan for BNET (January 27, 2011), The CBS Interactive Business Network. To check out an abundance of valuable resources and obtain a free subscription to one or more of the BNET newsletters, please click here.
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When I meet with CEOs, I like to find out what keeps them awake at night, what intractable issues or opportunities disturb their sense of confidence. Of course, each one has industry-specific or company-specific challenges and they’re fascinating.
But there’s one problem common to each one of them. They all know it. Only a brave few will talk about it openly: Ignorance.
It doesn’t matter whether the company is large or small, old or young, high tech or blue collar manufacturing. The reality is that no leader is fully informed of what is happening on his or her watch.
Ignorance Isn’t Bliss
Of course in theory, this shouldn’t happen. The chain of command should ensure that information reaches the top. Daily reports should flag critical issues. Balance sheets should indicate significant trends. And they all do – up to a point. The problem is that none of them works quite well enough.
That’s why BP can run unsafe plants and still be taken by surprise when they blow up.
It’s why music labels could be blind-sided by the rise of digital downloads.
It’s why soft drink companies were surprised by the popularity of vitamin drinks.
It’s why Lehman Brothers and Enron and Citibank and Merrill Lynch had no idea actually how much money they had.
It’s why companies are so anxious about what Wikileaks will publish next.
It Can Happen to You
The most tempting thing in the world is to look at that string of business disasters and argue: that was them, not me. It couldn’t happen here. They were just bad leaders, a few bad apples. But the minute you say you don’t have this problem is the minute you know you do.
The problem is willful blindness: the human propensity to ignore the obvious. It isn’t just a business problem, of course. We do it in our private lives when we leave those credit card bills unopened or take on a mortgage we can’t afford or insist that tanning salons really won’t cause us any harm.
There are numerous social, structural, organizational and neurological reasons for willful blindness and I’ll be blogging about them over the next few weeks. But in the meantime I’d like to hear from you:in your company or department or industry, where are your blindspots?
Please click here to see the video, courtesy of Lindsay Nicholson and music courtesy of Nick Bicat.
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Margaret Heffernan worked for 13 years as a producer for BBC Radio and Television before running her first company. She has since been CEO of five businesses in the United States and United Kingdom, including InfoMation Corporation, ZineZone Corporation and iCAST Corporation. She has been named one of the Internet’s Top 100 by Silicon Alley Reporter and one of the Top 100 Media Executives by The Hollywood Reporter. Her books include The Naked Truth: Female Entrepreneurs Are Changing the Rules for Business Success, and the upcoming Willful Blindness. She has appeared on NPR, CNN, CNBC, and the BBC, and writes for Real Business,The Huffington Post, and Fast Company.
Michael Lebowitz (Big Spaceship) in “The Corner Office”
Michael Lebowitz
Adam Bryant conducts interviews of senior-level executives that appear in his “Corner Office” column each week in the SundayBusiness section of The New York Times. Here are a few insights provided during an interview of Michael Lebowitz, founder and C.E.O. of Big Spaceship, a digital marketing and communications agency based in Brooklyn. He says that Big Spaceship aims to avoid a rock-star culture in which a bad attitude can drag down an otherwise positive environment.
To read the complete interview and Bryant’s interviews of other executives, please click here.
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Hey, Rock Stars: Take Your Show Someplace Else
Bryant: Who were some important mentors for you?
Lebowitz: I haven’t really had a lot of mentors. I’ve had to sort of figure things out for myself, because I’ve had a lot of whatever the opposite of a mentor is. I’ve learned a lot from seeing what didn’t work. There should be a word for that kind of boss — “dismentor” or something.
Bryant: I think you just coined the term. Tell me about some of the behaviors you saw that made you say, “Memo to self: Don’t do that.”
Lebowitz: At one job, I watched as a lot of decisions were made behind closed doors and then dictated to the staff without any bridging of the feasibility gap. I remember one Web site where the owners of the company said, “O.K., we promised this really cool idea to the client.” At the time, it felt genuinely impossible. That experience has informed tremendously how we structure what we do now — you can’t disenfranchise people from the process by just giving them orders.
Bryant: So what kind of culture did you want to create when you started your company?
Lebowitz: Probably the biggest lesson I learned as we started to grow was — and this is a more sanitized version of the expression we use — “Don’t hire jerks, no matter how talented.” I became very attuned to this early on, when we were still a small start-up, and you’re doing everything you can to maintain a positive framework. So I’m looking for people I like, because I’ve seen how, no matter how talented they are, the negative is always going to pull down any positive. The second- or third- or fourth-best candidate who isn’t a jerk is going to ultimately provide way more value. Because we learned that early on, we’ve always guarded against that sort of rock-star culture.
Bryant: What was the dynamic with those kinds of hires?
Lebowitz: They say all the right things in interviews, and then they come in and really make people’s lives miserable. You spend at least a third of your life at your job. You should have a place you’re happy to go to every day. And if you’re not making good on that in even the smallest way, it becomes sort of pernicious. It can amplify itself very quickly.
I remember a guy, he really was an incredibly talented designer, one of the best I’ve ever seen, but he was just surly. No matter how good you are, design is always an exercise in balancing what you think is best with someone else’s needs, even arbitrary things. He couldn’t roll with that stuff. He had conviction born of great talent, but he was in the wrong business to have that kind of attitude. He was mostly battling with me, but I think it kind of gave permission for that attitude — almost invited it — for the other designers. They felt resentful that I was paying that much attention to that person rather than just sort of saying, “What are you doing?,” which I should have done.
I was treating him like a rock star, fundamentally. And I’ve done that a number of times since and each time I realize it and I have to put a stop to it because that won’t play in the kind of environment that I want to create. And so you can’t hire the rock star. It really is damaging.
Bryant: Tell me about your approach to hiring.
Lebowitz: I actually used to be the last person to interview everyone, and now I try to be first. I completely step back from trying to assess their skills. I leave that to the people they’re going to be working with really closely. And so I spend as much as an hour, sometimes 90 minutes, just trying to figure out who they are and if they’re going to be a good fit for the culture.
I try really hard to stay away from rote interview questions because those are the ones that people have prepared for. I ask really open-ended questions like: “So what do you do? What do you like to do? What do you do when you’re not working?” I try to knock them out of their comfort zone, but also make them comfortable. I also regularly ask, “What would you do on your first day, your first week, and your first month?” I think it’s really important, especially with senior people, because if one of the answers isn’t “listen,” then it’s not going to work out at all.
Bryant: Talk more about the qualities you’re looking for.
Lebowitz: I borrowed the whole idea of the T-shaped person. I believe strongly in that. A depth of expertise is essential. But you also need that crossbar of a breadth of knowledge.
Bryant: What things do you do to foster the kind of culture you want in the workplace?
Lebowitz: We do a lot of work just for ourselves, creating products, pieces of content. I invest fairly heavily in that, in having time. We did a thing this summer called I.P. (intellectual property) Fridays. You take the traditional corporate summer Friday where everybody’s supposed to be allowed to leave at 2 p.m., but everybody has to work anyway so they can’t and they just feel miffed. So we get a big lunch for everybody and at 2 p.m. on Friday, we close to client work and spend from 2 to 7 working on our own internal projects. And the ideas for those come from anywhere in the company.
We have a little form with a few simple questions on our internal blog, and then a few of us vet the ideas. We want them to be simple, because we want small things that we can act on quickly. So we’ve got all this stuff out in the world that we created for ourselves, and people get excited about that.
Bryant: What other things do you look for when you’re hiring?
Lebowitz: Traditionally, people look at finished work in a portfolio. I love looking at process and thought process — “Well, how did you get the idea to go from here to there?” The end product can always be polished up, but understanding how somebody thinks really matters. If I see a designer who shows me sketches in their portfolio — that’s just the way that they chose to present themselves — they’ve got a huge leg up with me because it’s all about how you get there.
We assume at Big Spaceship that the work will come out at a very high level on the other side. So the question becomes, who’s going to be fun and interesting to work with along the way? Who’s going to bring out good things in other people?
Bryant: Give some more examples about what it’s like to work at your company.
Lebowitz: I don’t believe that creativity is a department. In most of the industry, they talk about the “creatives” and creative directors. I think that’s a really detrimental thing. I won’t put “creative” in anybody’s title. If you’re not creative, regardless of what your role is, you can’t work here, period. It’s cost of entry. And I think in general it should be the cost of entry. If we’re in an idea economy, if we’re in an information economy, then it seems like everybody needs to be creative.
We also invite people from all of our disciplines into all of our brainstorms. Great ideas come from everywhere. So how do you create an environment where everybody not only has a voice, but also the mandate is to speak up? I want to talk about the pros and cons of things, and I want people to make really compelling arguments. I want people to argue with me or tell me I’m full of it. I have no ego about that stuff. I will state my position just as strongly, but I really relish those moments.
One of my longest-standing clients, a very smart guy, says: “There’s two ways to manage. You can hire to be the smartest person in the room or you can hire to be the dumbest person in the room.” And I absolutely want to do the latter.
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Adam Bryant
Adam Bryant, deputy national editor of The New York Times, oversees coverage of education issues, military affairs, law, and works with reporters in many of the Times‘ domestic bureaus. He also conducts interviews with CEOs and other leaders for Corner Office, a weekly feature in the Sunday Business section and on nytimes.com that he started in March 2009. To contact him, please click here.
Remembering Challenger….
Just before noon, eastern time, on January 28, 1986, on a subfreezing day on Merritt Island, Florida, the space shuttle Challenger exploded in a cloudless sky 73 seconds after take-off. None of the seven crew members survived.
That night, a visibly shaken President Ronald Reagan addressed the nation and the world with a speech now considered among the greatest in American history. This is how he concluded:
“There’s a coincidence today. One this day three hundred and ninety years ago, the great explorer Sir Francis Drake died aboard his ship off the coast of Panama. In his lifetime the great frontiers were the oceans, and an historian later said, ‘He lived by the sea, died on it, and was buried in it.’ Well, today, we can say of the Challenger crew, their dedication was like Drake’s, complete….We shall never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they…waved goodbye and ‘slipped the surly bonds of earth’ to ‘touch the face of God.’”
We will forever remember the Challenger crew and other courageous pioneers who were also determined, as was Tennyson’s Ulysses, ”To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield” until, in Reagan’s words, they “slipped the surly bonds of earth” to “touch the face of God.”
Save Our Libraries – How Tragic That This Is Even An Issue (a Speech by Philip Pullman Provides Quite a Rallying Cry)
In the process of doing my own thesis – not for a Ph.D., because I never took a graduate degree, but just my undergraduate honors thesis — the single most formative experience in my career took place. It was not a tutor or a teacher or a fellow student or a great book or the shining example of some famous visiting lecturer – like Sir Charles Webster, for instance, brilliant as he was. It was the stacks at Widener.
Barbara Tuchman, Practicing History
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The ripple effects of problems, and decisions, are many, and significant.
Take the current fiscal crisis, leading to so many budget cuts for such local services as Public Libraries.
I understand fiscal realities. But I also understand that when you cut one place, it might lead to problems elsewhere. This country has a growing sense of a great “education” crisis. This country has a growing sense of crisis for those who have not been able to find a job. Many have to learn new things, develop new skills. Some of these people need a place to look and learn because of their desperation…
These crises are intimately tied to the health of a good public library.
And… don’t forget that there is just the simple human need for discovery, and books have met that need for generations of curious people.
Philip Pullman, British Author -- defender of Public Libraries
These are just a few of my thoughts after I read about a remarkable speech by a British writer. The author is Philip Pullman, who wrote Northern Lights (titled The Golden Compass in North America – if you haven’t read the book, you may know of the movie). I read about it in this article from The Guardian: Philip Pullman’s call to defend libraries resounds around web: Impassioned polemic against closures picked up by thousands of readers.
I then read his speech: Leave the libraries alone. You don’t understand their value. Best-selling author Philip Pullman spoke to a packed meeting on 20 January 2011, called to defend Oxfordshire libraries. He gave this inspirational speech, which we are very pleased to co-publish with openDemocracy.
It is a resounding attack on the budget cuts aimed at libraries, and a serious call for keeping the public library alive. Yes, he has a political point of view that might not align with many readers of this blog (e.g. — should market forces alone decide who gets published?), but…but… what would it mean to cut our libraries to shadows of that they were?, or possibly even lose them entirely?
Here are some excerpts from his speech:
Here in Oxfordshire we are threatened with the closure of 20 out of our 43 public libraries…
In the world I know about, the world of books and publishing and bookselling, it used to be the case that a publisher would read a book and like it and publish it. They’d back their judgement on the quality of the book and their feeling about whether the author had more books in him or in her, and sometimes the book would sell lots of copies and sometimes it wouldn’t, but that didn’t much matter because they knew it took three or four books before an author really found his or her voice and got the attention of the public. And there were several successful publishers who knew that some of their authors would never sell a lot of copies, but they kept publishing them because they liked their work. It was a human occupation run by human beings. It was about books, and people were in publishing or bookselling because they believed that books were the expression of the human spirit, vessels of delight or of consolation or enlightenment.
I still remember the first library ticket I ever had. It must have been about 1957. My mother took me to the public library just off Battersea Park Road and enrolled me. I was thrilled. All those books, and I was allowed to borrow whichever I wanted! And I remember some of the first books I borrowed and fell in love with: the Moomin books by Tove Jansson; a French novel for children called A Hundred Million Francs; why did I like that? Why did I read it over and over again, and borrow it many times? I don’t know. But what a gift to give a child, this chance to discover that you can love a book and the characters in it, you can become their friend and share their adventures in your own imagination.
When I came to Oxford as an undergraduate, and all the riches of the Bodleian Library, one of the greatest libraries in the world, were open to me – theoretically. In practice I didn’t dare go in. I was intimidated by all that grandeur. I didn’t learn the ropes of the Bodleian till much later, when I was grown up. The library I used as a student was the old public library, round the back of this very building. If there’s anyone as old as I am here, you might remember it. One day I saw a book by someone I’d never heard of, Frances Yates, called Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. I read it enthralled and amazed.It changed my life, or at least the intellectual direction in which I was going. It certainly changed the novel, my first, that I was tinkering with instead of studying for my final exams. Again, a life-changing discover, only possible because there was a big room with a lot of books and I was allowed to range wherever I liked and borrow any of them.
Somewhere in Blackbird Leys, somewhere in Berinsfield, somewhere in Botley, somewhere in Benson or Bampton, to name only the communities beginning with B whose libraries are going to be abolished, somewhere in each of them there is a child right now, there are children, just like me at that age in Battersea, children who only need to make that discovery to learn that they too are citizens in the republic of learning. Only the public library can give them that gift.
This speech is a wonderful testimony to the value of reading – and especially the value of reading by wandering around in a place filled with a seemingly limitless numbers of books.
This blog would not exist without books. I make my living by reading books, which provide the fuel for all of my presentations (as it did for many/most of my sermons for the first 20 years of my adult/professional life). I love books. I love rooms full of books.
If you have an ounce of appreciation for books, please read this speech. (Be sure to note his powerful defense of librarians). And then ask, what can we do to not only save our public libraries, but to make them even stronger?
I hope it is not a losing battle.
Marcia Reynolds: An interview by Bob Morris
Marcia Reynolds
Marcia Reynolds has a passion for discovering and sharing how the brain works. She speaks globally on leadership topics and coaches top talent women in making big decisions, building important relationships and showing up with strength and grace. In addition to her book, Wander Woman: How High-Achieving Women Find Contentment and Direction, she previously authored Outsmart Your Brain and has been quoted in many publications including Harvard Management Review, Psychology Today and The New York Times and has appeared on ABC World News. Marcia is a true pioneer in the coaching profession and was the 5th president of the International Coach Federation. She was one of the first 25 people in the world to earn the designation of Master Certified Coach (MCC). Marcia’s doctoral degree is in organizational psychology with a research emphasis on the challenges and needs of smart, strong goal-driven women in today’s workplace. Read more at http://www.outsmartyourbrain.com.
Morris: Before discussing Wander Woman, a few general questions. First, at which point in your life did you become fully aware of the nature and extent of barriers and limitations that are unique to women’s aspirations?
Reynolds: I think I had an inkling that there were barriers for women even as a child. My mother was a good mother, but not a happy one. She never had the chance to live out her dreams. As a child, she had to work while her brother played sports. There were only enough funds for her brother to go to college. When her mother died in a car accident, she left a letter in her will explaining why she was leaving the inheritance to my mom’s brother. “You can find a man to take care of you. He can’t.” My mother was in her early twenties.
A few years later, she was married with the first of four children on the way. Throughout my childhood, my father was the center of attention in the family. No matter what good work my mother did, she never got the applause and adoration he did. She passed away twenty years ago. I dedicated the book to her, wishing she could see that she helped me live out my dreams even when she couldn’t live out hers.
I didn’t experience the barriers for myself until I entered the corporate world. I was always told I could accomplish anything I wanted to. The message I received as a girl was vastly different from my mother. I got to go to college and choose my own path (which I have done few times in my life as I wander around my career). I did very well in school and knew I could excel at most everything I liked scholastically.
Yet when I entered the workforce, I was shocked when the recognition wasn’t as forthcoming. The lack of recognition and choice of projects was a cold slap of reality. Then when I moved from healthcare into high-tech, a male-dominated world, I felt I had to fight for everything I earned. Even then, I sometimes lost the fight. Not only was it harder for me to get support for new ideas than the men I worked with, but I often felt misunderstood. I had to tone down my passion. Sometimes, I felt I had to tone down my commitment. This left me feeling disappointed as well as frustrated. When the intolerance grew to a point I couldn’t live with, I moved on. My longevity with any one company was less than five years. I was always evaluated as an excellent performer. Yet the daily difficulties weren’t worth the titles or pay.
It wasn’t until I started doing my doctoral research on high-achieving women that I realized I was not alone. Thousands of women were just like me, with the younger generation even less tolerant than I. I don’t think we should be teaching women how to succeed in a man’s world. I believe we should be teaching men how to understand and support our challenges and needs. Profits will greatly enhance when women are given environments that understand and encourage them to show up as their best selves.
Morris: Other than family members, who have had the greatest influence on your personal development? How so?
Reynolds: I learned one of my greatest life lessons—if you don’t know who you are, you will never be content with what you can do—in one of the darkest places on earth, a jail cell. A year after high school graduation, I ended up spending six months in jail for possession of drugs, an experience I swore would never happen to me. In truth, the sentence saved my life.
In addition to stopping my negative spiral, I learned that scary strangers called inmates could be unexpected angels. In particular, the leader of the toughest gang decided I should be her friend. Vickie was a smart and vocal woman. She was also a mother and a daughter. I wrote poems for her to send to her family. She liked to play cards and I proved to be a great challenger. I think Vickie and I learned a lot from each other during the many nights we talked as we played cards until morning.
Yet the moment of truth came for me when we staged a nonviolent protest, hoping to move to a larger cellblock because we had been locked down so many times for being overcrowded. When my idea failed and we ended up in an isolation cell, I declared my life to be one big failure. Vickie jumped at me, pinned me to the wall, and said, “You have no idea who you are, do you? You’re smart. You’re strong. But for some God-knows-why reason, you care about people.” She pointed to my heart. “When you can see what you are hiding in here . . .”—she then pointed beyond the bars—“you’ll figure out how to be happy out there.”
That was my first lesson in understanding that “who I am” is different from “what I can accomplish.” I didn’t know who I was inside my shell of achievement. Even though I didn’t fully understand her message at that moment, her words gave me the gumption to put my life back on track when I was released. I will never forget her words. I have been working on discovering and claiming my intrinsic value ever since.
Morris: On your professional development?
Reynolds: I have had many coaches the fifteen years I have been a coach and one has been very significant for me. Whenever I feel lost on my business path, I call her. She brings me back to what is the truth in the moment. She revives my sense of purpose and passion. She helps me take the next step forward, and the next, and the next until I am back on track again.
Morris: In your opinion, what are the most significant differences between an executive coach and an executive mentor?
Reynolds: When I mentor someone, they come to me for advice based on my knowledge and experiences. I may listen to them explain their situation, but then I do most of the talking, sharing what I know to help. When I coach someone, I act more as their thinking partner, helping them to discover the true source of issues before formulating solutions. When they see issues from a broader perspective, their own possibilities for action emerge.
I ask more questions than give advice. Yet the outcome is usually profound. People often realize they know more than they thought they did. When they come up with their own solutions through my questions and guidance, they are more committed to and feel more confident about moving forward.
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To read the complete interview, please click here.
Marcia Reynolds cordially invites you to check out these websites:
http://wanderwomanbook.com/wander-woman/
http://www.outsmartyourbrain.com
Before Creativity, Before Innovation, You Need An Idea
The first steps of a creative act are like groping in the dark: random and chaotic, feverish and fearful, a lot of busy-ness with no apparent or definable end in sight. There is nothing yet to research. For me, these moments are not pretty. I look like a desperate woman, tortured by the simple message thumping away in my head: “You need an idea.”
You need a tangible idea to get you going. The idea, however miniscule, is what turns the verb into a noun – paint into a painting, sculpt into sculpture, write into writing, dance into a dance.
Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit
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I was just revisiting my handout from the book Where Good Ideas Come From. Steven Johnson argues that a lot goes into the discovery of those really good ideas. To get to “good idea, “ you have to: go with the “flow;” you have to have, and then jettison, a bunch of bad ideas; you have to learn to rely on hunches much more than those fast/sudden/amazing eureka moments (which, really, is not the secret sauce behind most good ideas); you have to come to realize that good hunches are slow in coming – -they are “slow hunches.”
You have to build, and take advantage of, an environment that nurtures good ideas:
This is a book about the space of innovation. Some environments squelch new ideas; some environments seem to breed them effortlessly.
Good ideas come from many places:
Good ideas are not conjured out of thin air; they are built out of a collection of existing parts, the composition of which expands (and occasionally, contracts) over time.
A good idea is a network… an idea is not a single thing. It is more like a swarm.
Good ideas come from people – notice that that is “people” (plural!):
The most productive tool for generating good ideas remains a circle of humans at a table, talking shop.
And, remember, that creativity, and then innovation, are the result of good ideas. Johnson’s decision to talk about good ideas was significant:
I have deliberately chosen the broadest possible phrasing – good ideas – to suggest the cross-disciplinary vantage point I am trying to occupy.
So…pretend that you have a group of people who have nurtured the idea generation skill that is needed. You come together to work on generating new, good, usable ideas.
What do you do?
You have some brainstorming sessions. And then, you have the chance of sparking/catching those good ideas. You are looking for that someone in that crowd that can help you come up with just the right next new idea:
This is not the wisdom of the crowd, but the wisdom of someone in the crowd. It’s not that the network itself is smart; it’s that the individuals get smarter because they’re connected to the network.
So, what do you in this brainstorming session? You brainstorm. But, we all know, brainstorming done poorly does not work.
Here is some genuinely important “how to brainstorm well” counsel from The Art of Innovation (Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America’s Leading Design Firm) by Tom Kelley.
• Seven Secrets for Better Brainstorming…
1) Sharpen the focus.
2) Playful Rules. (e.g. – at IDEO: Go for quantity. Encourage wild ideas. Be visual).
1. Number your ideas. (it creates quantity – it makes it easier to refer to specific ideas…)
2. Build and Jump.
3. The Space Remembers.
4. Stretch your mental muscles.
5. Get physical. (including: big blocks; competitors products; use the body itself!)
• Six ways to kill a brainstormer…
The boss gets to speak first (the boss gets to speak!)
Everybody gets a turn.
Experts only please.
Do it off-site.
No silly stuff.
Write down everything.
And, like with every other skill that you develop, you’ll have to do it a bunch — practice brainstorming, that is. Remember the tried and true adage: “perfect practice makes perfect.”
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