The Highly Effective, Counterintuitive Way to Stumble Upon Your Next Brilliant Idea
Don’t ask for great ideas only when brainstorming solutions to challenging problems… When brainstorming, we typically ask people to give us their best ideas. But what if the path to finding great ideas is to intentionally find start with terrible ones? Think about the world prior to vaccines. What would be the dumbest way to […]
How to Turn a Left-Brained Workforce Into a Creative Machine
You can create an environment where everyone can contribute to your company’s innovation efforts… How do you structure your innovation teams? If you are like most companies, you put your most creative people in a room to develop ideas who then hand off those ideas to a team of implementers. But is this always the […]
Why It’s Time to Become Your Company’s Chief Laziness Officer
Most of the work you do is not important and in fact slows you down… My first real job was working for a large computer manufacturer in their production control department. After two months there, the department head called me into his office and told me I was the laziest person he’d ever met. And […]
How to Make the Impossible Possible and Other Useful Tricks From Magicians
All the skills that make a magician great also apply to ambitious entrepreneurs. Do you have what it takes? I’ve always loved magic. For me, it went beyond entertainment; it was an intellectual endeavor. I enjoyed trying to figure out how an illusion was done. The actual solution didn’t matter because it was the process […]
Want to Ask Better Questions? Try This Powerful Exercise
The questions you ask may not be helping you learn anything new… Imagine this scenario: A woman walks into a hardware store. She can buy 6 for $6, 12 for $12, or 24 for $12. What is she buying? I’ve asked this question of thousands of executives over the years, and no one has ever […]
The Danger of Hiring for ‘Culture Fit’
Contrary to conventional wisdom, opposites don’t attract–and this is bad for innovation…. I remember speaking with a recruiter who once turned down a candidate I had recommended. I asked why and was told, “He didn’t fit the mold.” In other words, unless you fit our cookie cutter requirements, you won’t work here. This point of […]
The Big Problem With Customer Satisfaction Surveys – and What to Use Instead
To gather real insights, you want stories, not surveys… Many years ago, I gave a 90-minute speech to 400 non-military researchers at the US Air Force. These scientists create planes and weapons for our military. The first 45 minutes of the presentation seemed to go really well. The audience was high energy, laughing when I […]
Why Your Own Expertise Can Be Your Enemy
What worked for your company in the past may be the wrong strategy for the long term… Many advertisements for investment opportunities warn that past success is no guarantee of future results. The reality is much worse than that. Past success may actually lead to future failure. In the 1960s, Sears accounted for one percent […]
The Best Way to Know if Your ‘Brilliant’ Idea Actually Stinks
“Yeah, but.” That’s the enemy of innovation. Right? We’ve all been told that we need to stop uttering those words and replace them with “Yes, and.” But what if “yeah, but” is not the problem. What if there is something more insidious–and less obvious? A bigger enemy of innovation is, “Wow, this is a great […]
Why Following Someone Else’s Success Can Lead to Your Failure
You attend conferences. You read books. You take training classes. All with the goal of learning strategies from those who have paved the path to success before you. But what if following in their steps could lead you down the wrong track? 3M talks about its 15 percent rule–a philosophy that allows anyone in the […]