The topic isn’t new, but there is more and more proof that creativity flourishes more in a single mind than in a group, but it doesn’t have to be an either-or function—a better approach probably lies in a combination of the two.
I do a lot of brainstorming with my clients in the course of naming products, creating investor presentations and developing marketing material.
Much of my work is done alone, but my own creativity is substantially enhanced by the feedback I get and the new directions that happen when we discuss what I’ve done or they respond to my questions.
Often the most valuable questions I ask are based on my ignorance.
Why?
Because I have no knowledge base from which to make assumptions clients are forced to drill through their own in order to respond. Doing so often results in an entirely new thought process or direction, which, in turn, sparks yet more creative ideas.
It is an exciting and satisfying process.
It’s important to be aware of how your organization approaches innovation. Here are seven questions to ask yourself when you want to juice creativity.
Does your company/team use brainstorming as part of its innovation process?
If so, do you do it together or individually?
If individually, do you come together to review/discuss/question the new ideas?
Do people feel safe sharing what are usually still-fragile thoughts?
Do the questions/discussion lead in yet more creative directions that no one thought of previously?
Do you investigate the new directions with an open mind?
And probably the most important aspect,
Is the process about the best possible idea or who gets credit for it?
Today’s post is short because reading the articles to which it’s linked is critical.
Are you a good communicator? Do you provide clear, complete, timely information to your team? Do you ever worry that it’s not as understandable as you think?
Have you ever read or heard a professional communicator and wished you could do that, too?
You would expect the two top people of an innovation consultancy to be good communicators and not make the assumption mistake.
“And that brings us to the ultimate irony. When we talked about firing people, we were thinking about those higher on the org chart, not lower. We meant the boss and senior management team. … We thought we made this implicit in the article. Judging from the response, we didn’t. We should have made it clearer.”
Communicating takes effort and the number one rule of clarity is no assumptions.
Read the articles and save them to read again whenever you find a disconnect between what you communicate and your team’s actions to be sure that you aren’t the source of the problem.
I was talking with a manager this week who was dreading doing his required annual reviews.
After describing his relationship with each of his people, he went on to tell me what he needed to say and how each would respond.
I asked why he was so sure and he said “because they always respond that way.”
Remind you of your own situations?
How many times have you had a conversation with a manager, peer or subordinate and walked away shaking your head thinking, “I knew I’d get that response.”
I know I have.
But did they respond to the content or the presentation?
I call it AMS syndrome and it infects all of us at various times.
AMS stands for assumption, manipulation, self-fulfilling prophesy and I first wrote about it shortly after starting this blog five years ago.
No one indulges in AMS intentionally; it’s purely subconscious. It’s driven by experience, not just our own, but friends, stuff we’ve read, movies, TV, etc.
Anything that seeds our thinking with expectations, whether specific or vague; those expectations convert into active assumptions, which causes us to present out content in ways that elicit the exact result we thought we would get, i.e., self-fulfilling prophesy.
This is the conversation I had with my client as well as emailing him the links I’ve included above.
I got this email from him today, “I’ll be damned, you were right. Reviews went great. Thanks!”
Today is a bit different from the typical Expand Your Mind because all three articles are about Google.
Assuming you live on Earth and don’t exist in an alternate reality you’ve been inundated by the news that Larry Page is assuming the CEO mantle at Google. More as a corollary, an article at HBR offers up a look at the need for and different approaches to “adult supervision” at Apple, Google and Facebook.
Next is an in depth look at six of the top people responsible for executing Page’s visions and pronouncements.
Google does many things superbly and the rest very well, but even Google is subject to its own variety of “not invented here” syndrome.
“We hope someday this institution may eclipse Google itself in terms of overall world impact by ambitiously applying innovation and significant resources to the largest of the world’s problems.”
Seven years later it hasn’t accomplished much, although the initiative isn’t dead.
Part of the problem is that Page, who championed the effort, moved on to focus on other things, but that isn’t the main reason.
Call it Google myopia, but it’s difficult for Googlers to accept that not all problems can be solved with an algorithm, especially when the problems involve nature and/or wetware (AKA, people).
This post is for the parents and friends of any person 13 to 18 years old anywhere in the world who loves science has the imagination to change the world, whether on a large or local basis.
That, and internet access, is all that’s needed to register for the Google Science Fair.
The registration deadline is April 4, 2011.
You go to google.com/sciencefair. You find the template that tells you how to register. It gives you all the categories that you can compete in. They are very broad; physics, biology, the environment and loads of other ones. Then, you design and build your experiment. You document it in any way you want, including, for instance, YouTube videos. You get it done on line for the judges. –Entrepreneur Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway.
The Google Science Fair is an amazing oportunity for all who enter, not just the winners.
I sincerely hope you will spread the word; don’t make assumptions as to who would be interested and who would not, just forward the information to all the kids and groups involved with kids you can think of.
See more videos, including the opening event on January 11, 2011.
Do you make assumptions? What sort of impact do they have on what you do?
This little exercise is well worth your time.
List the last 5 decisions you made;
list the criteria on which you based your decisions for each one;
think about each criteria and define what percentage of it was grounded in assumptions (you may need to analyze down several layers).
Typically, assumptions underlie most criteria if you drill down far enough.
Knowing that you would do well to remember that assumptions are insidious, sneaky and often masquerade as common sense, logical thinking or general wisdom.
After all, you don’t want your decisions attributed to the first three letters of their actual basis.
“We simply assume that the way we see things is the way they really are or the way they should be. And our attitudes and behaviors grow out of these assumptions.” –Stephen Covey
Think about it.
You assume people will do the right thing when faced with choices.
You assume the visions presented by your leaders are honest, true and in your best interest.
You assume your religious leaders practice what they preach.
You further assume that they will protect you and yours when their own go off the rails.
You assume your spouse/partner/friend will like the movie/book/people that you like.
You assume your team will tackle work/projects in the same way you do.
But for any of these assumptions to be true, all the people involved would have to have exactly the same MAP and experience that you have—which is impossible.
And that is what you want to remember the next time you find yourself assuming.
We see the idiocy of assuming that past performance is always a good predictor of the future all the time, but it seems especially true at senior levels.
First, there is the penchant for identifying ‘high potential’ starting in kindergarten and providing lots of extra training and coaching, while ignoring those who may be late bloomers or less obvious (read quieter).
Then there’s the Peter Principle, which is not only alive and well, but functioning even more efficiently today than it was when Laurence J. Peter first described it back in 1970.
We relish looking at the past to predict the future, thus choosing to ignore all extenuating circumstances and surrounding factors that played a role in the person’s performance.
We forget, or ignore, that
one manager’s star is another manager’s bomb;
the skills needed to take advantage of an economic expansion are very different from those needed in a downturn; and
turmoil or an ongoing crisis in a person’s personal life often impacts their performance at work.
Last, but not least, we need to get over our love affair with the idea of the hero-leader who, with a wave of the hand, can part the seas and eliminate obstacles.
A reader, “John,” emailed me with a question and suggested that I respond in the blog, because he felt that the information would be useful to everyone and I agree.
Miki, like many people these days I was laid off and have had a lot of trouble finding work. I finally interviewed and they have told me that I’ll be receiving an offer next week.
It should be terrific, but I’m very concerned about the manager I’ll be reporting to. I was in the department for most of a day and never saw anyone smile or joke with a colleague; people seemed to be tip-toeing around and trying their best to avoid this person.
The interview included conversations with three other people, one in the same group and the other two are people I’d be interfacing with. None of them would discuss the hiring manager, not a word and the internal guy practically freaked when I asked him what the manager was like to work with.
I know that beggars can’t be choosers, but I’m really concerned. I don’t want to accept and then quit a few months later. I have enough savings to hold out for awhile longer, but have no idea what else might open up.
I remember something you wrote a long time ago that a person can’t be miserable for 8+ hours a day and then come home and be fine.
So, what do you think?
John remembered correctly, 20+ years of experience has proven to me that people aren’t water faucets—they can’t be miserable in half their life, turn off the feelings and be happy in the other half.
Under normal circumstances, including a normal recession, I’d suggest waiting, but there is nothing normal about what is going on.
The great advantage that John has if he decides to accept the offer is that he is knows something is wrong, knows there is fear in the air, knows the hiring manager is the likely source.
Knowing all that, John is in the position of being able to build protective barriers around his psyche before he comes under fire.
He needs to discuss it with his wife and explain to his close family and closest friends; doing so ahead of time alerts them that he may be in very difficult situation and need extra support. It’s important to have the conversations now, not when he’s inside and under attack.
In short, John needs to hope and strive for the best, but prepare for the worst.
It’s always best to avoid a toxic boss and to leave one as quickly as possible, but desperate times call for unusual actions and a lot more preparation.
All of them are grounded in stupidity, but it’s age and appearance that I want to focus on today.
Layoffs are always a time when age is in the limelight, but this time it’s working in reverse.
“The share of older Americans who have jobs has risen during the recession, while the share of younger Americans with jobs has plunged.”
It seems that at least parts of corporate America have learned to see past the obvious.
“…employees whom companies have invested in most and who have “demonstrated track records…tend to be more experienced and are often older.””
So some companies have discovered that years of experience have substantial value when it comes to the success of the company.
But what about appearance? How much is hearing influenced by how someone looks at first take?
What better venue in which to consider this than the original British version of American Idol where the contestants are mostly young, generally good-looking and always bust their tails to make an impression.
How well do you think a slightly frumpy-looking 47 year old woman would fare under the scathing tongue of Simon Fuller?
How much do you think talent would offset the obvious visual assumptions made by both the judges and the audience?
Watch the judges and audience reaction carefully before Susan Boyle performs and how quickly it changes when she starts singing (embedding is disabled on this video); check out some of the more than 50 thousand comments.
Think about what happens when a “Susan” comes to interview; how well do you hear past her (or his) appearance?
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
Two recent articles on brainstorming look at research that shows the creative process is fundamentally a lone function as opposed to the current trend towards “groupthink.”
Today’s post is short because reading the articles to which it’s linked is critical.
I was talking with a manager this week who was dreading doing his required annual reviews.
Today is a bit different from the typical Expand Your Mind because all three articles are about Google.
But for any of these assumptions to be true, all the people involved would have to have exactly the same MAP and experience that you have—which is impossible.
Dan McCarthy had a terrific post on 
A reader, “John,” emailed me with a question and suggested that I respond in the blog, because he felt that the information would be useful to everyone and I agree.
But what about 
