9 places to dig for great ideas

9 places to dig for great ideas

Jun 21, 2017 | Innovation, Leadership, Marketing

Ideas are the fodder of our lives these days. Gone are the days of physical labour, even in the professions where labour is necessary, construction, agriculture, and others, the application of technology, the result of ideas is everywhere.

So how do you come up with the ideas that make your life more productive and  comfortable .

Look at it the other way, rather than just hoping that a great idea comes in a flash in the shower, think about the habits and practises that you need to undertake in order to improve the probability that  the ideas will emerge.

Feed your subconscious with the fodder it needs to consume in order that it is able to grow  the ideas.

Curiosity.

Questions are the source of most ideas, and we do  not ask enough of them, I suspect because we have been trained from an early age to think that asking questions is a signpost to  ignorance. Think about how your kids learnt, they asked endless questions, just because they were curious.

What if? why? How does that work? When?

Be a kid again, and ask questions, and from the answers, you will  not only learn, you will have the opportunity to have ideas presented to you on a plate.

Brain-dumping and re-ordering.

Consumption of the idea fodder is half the battle, the other half is to find ways to fit it all together in different ways, apply it to a variety of contexts, and problems. In other words, forcing yourself to regurgitate what we see in other forms really works. The story of the development of the post it note is a classic in re-ordering.

Have an idea corral.

Ideas come when they come, and not necessarily when you want them to come. In fact, I have often found that they come at the most awkward times, stimulated by something I see, hear or read, not when I am sitting down trying to bring it on. As a result you need some sort of corral in which to capture these fragments, and ideas before they disappear. There are now many digital tools, but you can still use the old fashioned notebook. I use both, a notebook, and OneNote on my computer to capture the stuff that pops into my head, almost never when I expect and want it to.

Conspicuous consumption.

Ideas are the result of what you consume, the more volume and variety of consumption, the more likely that something useful will emerge. This is not to encourage you to watch more cooking or renovation shows on TV, although they do count, it is to encourage you to widen the reach and increase the quality of that consumption. With the wealth of information at your fingertips, there is no longer any excuse not to scratch the curiosity itch.

Articulate your ideas.

Listening to an idea in your head, is different somehow to speaking it out loud. Saying them out loud, particularly to an audience, even if it is your dog, but even better a few friends, a small network group,  those at the pub, whatever it is, speaking out loud helps order the ideas, and subjects them to the discipline of the crowd. As a kid I was a reasonable tennis player, a modicum of talent that was well coached, and combined with a competitive attitude, I was OK. However, when I started coaching, it made me a better player, as I had to articulate all that I had learnt from my coach, and from competition to those I was coaching. In the process, my own game improved considerably, as I applied the lessons articulated.

Devils advocate.

The most productive commercial relationship I ever had was with a bloke to whom I reported for quite a long time, in two different companies. The course of our debates was always coloured by the presence of the devil. Even if we agreed, one of us would take the contrary point and argue it, and the inevitability was that the outcome  was better than the starting point.  The point is not to win the argument, but to use the different points of view and perspectives productively to arrive at better outcomes.

Think backwards.

Ideas are only any good when they do something useful. Normally that is to solve a problem for someone, so rather than beating your head against a wall trying to come up with ideas, try and identify problems, then think backwards to  the solution. I suspect Uber did not emerge as an idea, it evolved as a solution to the problems associated with the taxi industry as it was in most of the  developed  world. Thinking about the solutions to a problem will always generate ideas. When running a workshop, I would never go in and ask for ideas, you go in and spend some time defining the nature of a problem, and only then go looking for solutions.

Randomise.

Routine is the enemy of ideas, routine allows you to go through the motions without thought, by rote, and it is in the disruption of routine that ideas may emerge. Go to lunch in different places, exercise at different times and in different manners, seek a variety of physical and emotional environments to spark a variety of different thoughts.

Be a changeling

Never believe that the best idea is the first one you have , be prepared to be wrong, to include new information or elements that adjust the original. Do not however, mistake the agility of accepting new information with being unable to make up your mind. Those who get great ideas are in my experience the most disciplined of people despite the sometimes chaotic appearance.

Never forget that ideas come from our ability as human beings to make connections all sorts, in all sorts of ways. Imagination, the creation of ideas, then being able to do something with them, is what makes us human.

 

How leaders lead

How leaders lead

Jun 19, 2017 | Leadership

Human beings are attracted to those who are prepared to lead, to be vulnerable, and sometimes alone. Those who truly lead inevitably have a set of beliefs that  are the foundation of why others are prepared to trust them, and be led by them. People relate to and engage with the beliefs of others.

It is not that the beliefs themselves in another are attractive, but that the beliefs resonate with their personal worldview, creating respect and admiration, so they are prepared to be led.

It therefore seems sensible when building a business to be specific about what you believe as a means to attract those who hold similar views, and sometimes do business with them.

Clearly, the other side of the coin is that you also repel those who do not share the beliefs, and while a challenging idea for most businesses, being strongly attractive to a core group because you are explicit about your beliefs, and therefore business model, is way better than being neutral to a wider group, which then leads to competition based on price, as it becomes the prime differentiator.

A mate of mine is a financial adviser, one who believes that his industry is fundamentally flawed. He believes that financial advice should be absolutely free of the self-interest of the adviser, and as a result does not take the sales and trailing commissions that are the way things are done in the financial services industry. This might make finding clients challenging, as referrals from those wanting commissions will not be forthcoming, but when clients , who value the absolute transparency of his advice find their way to him, they are extremely loyal, and prepared to pay well for his advice.

I recommend often that everyone should watch Simon Sinek’s TED talk, and consider the implications in their business. Working on your ‘Why’ is essential, but not an excuse for lots of fluffy talk that fails to come to grips with the competitive realities. It is a foundation, and like most foundations well hidden.  As Sinek noted, Martin Luther King did not have a 10 point plan to remove racial prejudice in the US, he had a set of beliefs about what was right and wrong, and what good people should do.

Image credit: Scott Adams and Dilbert.

2017 Internet trends report by Mary Meeker at KPCB

2017 Internet trends report by Mary Meeker at KPCB

Jun 4, 2017 | Governance, Leadership, Strategy

Since 2001 Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers has released a report on the technical and behavioural trends driving the internet, compiled by Mary Meeker. It has become the bible of everyone associated in any way with the net as a generator of revenue and value.

The 2017 report was released at the annual Code conference on May 31.

The amount of work required to assemble this bible must be humongous, then it is given away as a contribution to the development of the industry where KPCP operates.

It is to my mind one of the greatest pieces of content marketing we will ever see.

Making any attempt to summarise the powerpoint summary of the report would be disingenuous, I recommend you flick through the slides, all 355 of them in the report and consider the implications for your business.

 

 

Trust: very easy to say, very hard to do.

Trust: very easy to say, very hard to do.

May 29, 2017 | Governance, Leadership

Trust is the basis of our humanity, without trust, we cannot have relationships of any value, and the breach of trust once given  is an emotional wrench. The greater the level of trust given the greater the emotional pain on realising that trust has been breached.

Collaboration relies on trust, the notion that we need to put the best interests of a group ahead of our personal best interests is fundamental to success in any true collaboration.

Unfortunately, they are as rare as hens teeth.

The notion of commons, comes from medieval times, a common ground on which everyone had equal right to graze. However, if one person doubled the number of head he grazed, he gets a short term benefit, to the detriment of the others, and the foundation of the commons, trust and mutual obligation, is broken.

Trust is also something that is highly individual.

People can learn to trust each other, while not having any trust in the institutions they represent. This is perhaps best demonstrated by the Christmas 1914 football match on the western front between the opposing German and British forces in the trenches. The military leadership on both sides were appalled, that their fighting men were able to put aside the deadly enmity they so valued sufficiently to have a game of football in the spirit of Christmas.

We are wary of trust because it makes us vulnerable, we give it only after it has been earned, after the ‘trustee” has demonstrated that the trust will not be breached, that it will not only do us no harm, but that it is in our mutual best interests that we trust each other.

This presentation by David DeSteno on the psychology of trust is well worth watching and absorbing into  the way you consider your relationships.

 

Richard Nixon casts a long shadow

Richard Nixon casts a long shadow

May 22, 2017 | Governance, Leadership

 

In 1974 when Richard Nixon delivered his resignation speech, just before the inevitable impeachment, I was sitting in the home of Harvard Professor  Jim Hagler just outside Boston.

I was seeing first hand the implosion of a presidency from the perspective of a 22 year old Aussie who had by that time a pretty good education, but absolutely no experience beyond the surf, meat pies, beer  and university shenanigans that had been my life.

And yet, here I was seeing the anguish of Americans as they struggled with a presidency that had failed on the two counts that really mattered to them.

  • The personal qualities that it took an individual to be their President,
  • The  rule of law and order, let alone the constitution in which so many Americans are invested in a way alien to Australians.

The world has changed somewhat since 1974, but our expectations and hopes of leadership have not, despite the evidence of  the past 43 years, in both America and here in Australia.

However we still fervently hope and believe that our leaders are worthy, and when they prove not to be, we feel betrayed.

Trump has sowed the seeds of his own destruction via twitter.

He seems to think that behaviour that drives ratings as the host of a shock jock TV show is transferable to the office of the President.

Thankfully, it appears there is a difference after all.

Part of Trump’s appeal was I suspect that he was able to sell himself as a successful business leader and entrepreneur. Those skills that made him good at business would suit him to run the biggest enterprise in the country, the government, and bring some accountability to the bloated bureaucratic processes, without any of the baggage that comes with political and government experience .

Has not gone so well so far!.

If Congress was acting as a company board, as they should be, after all they are the representatives of the shareholders, they would be insisting on his resignation about now. The current rumblings of  an impeachment that will never happen because you need a 2/3 majority in the senate to ‘convict’  would be replaced in corporate life by one of those terminal conversations so loved on the ‘Apprentice’ TV show.

No CEO  of a competently run public company could survive the apparent conflicts of interest, loose mouth, inconsistent and shambolic behaviour, clear contradictions of positions taken almost in the same sentence, and outright lies that have characterised the first 4 months of the Trump white house.

We are better off here in Australia, but perhaps only just.

The spectacle during the week of various non entity politicians, along with several of some political status personally bagging Ken Henry as chairman of NAB when he dared to disagree with them, and articulate what any sensible person already knew, is a disgrace.

The treasurer a few weeks ago was encouraging political debate, encouraging the expression of views, and the first time it happens afterwards he and his colleagues go immediately for the language of personal vilification, ignoring the arguments.

On balance, I prefer it here, but what would we give for some genuine leadership without the shadow of self interest, power for its own sake, and sheer bloody-minded hubris?

Will your O-ring kill you?

Will your O-ring kill you?

Apr 10, 2017 | Governance, Leadership

We are all familiar with the notion that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, it makes absolute sense.

However, not a lot of us have ever considered the idea that our weakest link could kill us, and yet, it can.

On January 28, 1986, the spaceshuttle ‘Challenger‘ exploded 73 seconds into its flight, killing the 7 aboard.

Challenger exploded due to a known fault, something that engineers had been warning about for some time, a faulty O-ring design. What is in effect a cheap rubber piece, a simple part of a hugely complex design proved to be the weakest link, and caused the catastrophic failure.

Everything else in the launch worked absolutely as per expectations and specifications.

The simple known problem, a cheap part, was the weakest link and  brought it all undone.

As you remove potential sources of variation from a process, the average level of reliability and repeatability of increases, and the tension in the system increases as a result. Therefore, when one link fails, the failure becomes more painful, obvious, and sometimes hard to fix. The management task is to identify the potential problem before it becomes one, and remove it.

That is why, at the core of the Toyota Production System, you have an ‘Andon‘ system, which enables anyone to bring a halt to a production process to fix a potential problem before it becomes a failure.

The Rogers commission set up to investigate the Challenger disaster, amongst a raft of findings was highly critical of the NASA culture that prevented the well known and documented concerns with the performance of the O-rings being addressed. Of particular concern was the performance of the O-rings in the cold weather that occurred during the night before the launch. The temperatures experienced on the night of January 27 were way below specifications, and there had been no testing done to gather data on what might happen under those conditions, and serious concerns had been formally expressed.

Had there been a simple Andon system in place, rather than a Byzantine hierarchical culture, the launch would not have proceeded, and the disaster been averted.

Your production processes may not be as life defining as those  in the NASA space program, but the principals remain the same.

Identify the weak points in the chain, and ensure there is explicit go/no go, or Andon points, that enable the inevitable process failures to be caught before they do any real damage. It may cost you some time in the short term, but will pay huge dividends in your ability to reliably and cost effectively deliver to your stakeholders.