FROG BLOG

Looking for creative fire starters brought back to mind a study done by the Chicago Economic Development Council where only 25% of manufacturers in the greater Midwest seemed to have a clue when it comes to recognizing the need for constant technological innovation to stay ahead of (or even keep up with) the international market.

The scary part is that for the majority of the organizations in that top 25% only the leadership was actively concerned about innovation. That means that innovation was being driven from the top down, probably seen as unnecessary or worse by the majority of the organization. Consistent, incremental and even groundbreaking innovation often comes from the bottom up. Your employees who are working with customers, working with tools, working with procedures are often in the best position to imagine improvements.

More importantly, creative fire is a state of mind. If innovation is regularly improving a companies performance and generating rewards at all levels, then the organization will be more accepting of radical innovation that may be necessary to create a new competitive landscape.

In other words, your creative fire will burn brighter if everyone is searching for fuel not just a few.

The Chicago Economic Development Council is at www.edcchicago.org.

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What is fueling your company’s desire for innovation? Is there anything even smoldering?

Great inspiration for most companies can come from within. The ideas tend to be lying around all over the place, little different from deadwood waiting for someone to light a match.

So who lights the fires of change in your organization? Are they rewarded for their efforts even if the fire doesn’t catch just right? Do you limit your creative fires to small, safe rings surrounded by hundreds of buckets of water?

As a boy I loved anything to do with fire. Burning leaves, campfires, fireworks, even special effects when my old plastic models looked a bit sad on the shelf. Over time I was taught over and over how dangerous fire can be. Can’t burn leaves. Can’t blow up models. Can’t have fireworks.

To often that is the way people who spark are treated in any organization. Can’t, don’t, ahhhhhh water… We teach them that creative fires must be controlled, allowed to burn in safe little zones.

Soon the sparks fly less and less. The joy of a creative spark disapears and the fear of the work or the hassle or the damage it can do to a career takes over.

Gather up your fuel. Teach your people to spark. Enjoy the Strategic Fire.

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When something fascinates you, do you still pick it up?

Or do thoughts of unforeseen trouble keep your hands in your pockets?

Few of us live in an industry where last year’s strategy will take us through the next decade.

Few of us have businesses where success will come from ideas handed to us by our competitors.

Sometimes the best ideas look icky when they are sitting under a rock.

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Are you? Is your team? Your boss? Your company?

Whether the answer is yes or no it matters. If I were a betting person (wait I’m a marketer isn’t that the same thing?) I would lay you odds that a company’s passion score is directly related to their success with long-term innovation and development.

Can a blase’ company embrace the change necessary to grow and evolve along with their customers? Can a team truly redefine how they approach the marketplace if they are indifferent?

Take a quick pulse of your organzation…is the collective heart rate up as they excitedly move ahead?

If it isn’t or you want it to go faster, you will have to be passionate and you will have to inspire passion in others.

And that is what leadership is all about.

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Why can’t we be more creative?

Simple question certainly but the answer is usually a lot more complicated and a lot more work than managers want to hear. Building and maintaining an organization that is successfully and productively creative has to start with the basic understanding of what creativity is and what breeds it.

Creativity is about building something new out of what you have:

“I have a broken chair and a roll of duct tape.”

“I need a solution to our dependency on foreign oil and I have corn.”

“I need a way to read at night without the risk of fire and I know a bit about physics.”

“I have a nation that needs something to energize and unite them and I have scientists who are smart and a moon waiting to be explored.

Most organizations want the “something new” but have trouble understanding the process to get there. Unless it can be fixed with duct tape, one can’t hand a team an unrealized opportunity and expect a workable solution before the end of the day.

“Do I hear a chorus of ‘duh’s out there?”

Of course I do. But here is the part of the equation many corporate organizations miss — time is not the only variable in the equation. The path to the most creative solutions is paved with a long-term commitment to the chaos and disruption creativity causes.

Here are 10 questions that will help you determine the Capitalized Creative Commitment (CCC) of your organization:

1. Do you still live in a world of “suits” and “creatives” even though the dress code is mostly business casual? Is “creative” a department not a descriptor?

2. Are there standard phrases used to kill an idea…Too expensive, too hard, too risky, too new, too “out there,” too ……

3. Is there a single person or department that is always a bottleneck or barrier to a new way of conducting business?

4. How many layers of approval have to happen before budget can be spent to investigate a newly identified opportunity? Does it take a business case?

5. When was the last time your organization celebrated a failure as a learning and growth opportunity for individuals and the company?

6. When was the last time your company took a real stand in the marketplace with a new idea beating your competition to the punch?

7. Are employees encouraged to “play” as a part of their work assignments?

8. How much time do employees spend at their desk and not in your marketplace?

9. What is rewarded most — “A new idea or a budget savings?”

10. How would you characterize the climate of your company — “cold & brisk” or “warm & sunny?”

Obviously these are basic indicators that can help you measure your CCC Quotient. During the next few weeks as everyone is preparing for the expected push the new year brings I will be writing on “Capitalize Creative Commitment” and how you can lead your company to successful and productive creative chaos.

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Seth Godin writing about what kills marketing creativity, identifies two primary culprits: Fear and Lack of Imagination. As part of his piece, Mr. Godin says:

“Basically, most people don’t believe something better can occur. They believe that the status quo is also the best they can do. So they don’t look. They don’t push. They don’t ask, “what else?” and “what now?” They settle.”

It is so easy for a marketing organization to fall into this trap…innovation often creates discomfort throughout a company. And when marketing looses it edge the rest of an organization will follow.

Recently I spoke about a study that divided Midwest manufacturers into Advanced, Progressive, Struggling and Disengaged categories based on their desire to incorporate new technology and systems into their workflow. The largest group - The Disengaged - have lost their vision for change and innovation. Even under extreme economic pressure they fall into the trap Mr. Godin describes so well.

How to escape?

Effective marketing connects your entire company to the marketplace. Marketers with Vision often cause discomfort when they identify weaknesses that need to be addressed, trends that indicate trouble, customer problems that need resolution or radical directions that may turn your entire business model on its head.

When a marketer gives into fear and suffers from a lack of imagination, the discomfort stops…and unfortunatley a critical voice for innovation in your organization is silenced.

Seth Godin’s blog on this subject is at: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/10/the_two_things_.html

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Now that summer hours are over and the snow has started to fly (at least here in Chicago) I think it is time for marketing departments to try to infuse Friday with excitement and creativity. (Actually all departments should but I will talk to the marketing team for now.)

Plan regular “events” to help keep ideas flowing and to go into the weekend with seeds planted in the mind of your team. Keep them fun and high-energy. They shouldn’t be “problem-solving sessions” but stretching out to new and interesting thoughts. How about spending an hour with a spread of Jumbo Shrimp, Oven-Fried Chicken, and a 12-oz pound cake and see how many oxymorons your team can identify. Then take 10 randomly and see if you can figure out how each one applies to your business. Every great idea starts somewhere, maybe they have been hiding in the quiet of the last afternoon of the week!

Have a great weekend.

p.s. for some help on the oxymorons you can go to www.oxymorons.info or www.oxymoronlist.com

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I stopped by Dr. Ellen Weber’s blog yesterday (www.brainbasedbusiness.com) and joined her discussion on “rewarding the high-performance mind.” A quote from her blog caught my attention as I realized she nailed one of the key challenges of today’s business world:

“Most organizations knock out exuberance and annihilate curiosity, which is the heartbeat of talent.” (Dr. Ellen Weber, www.brainbasedbusiness.com)

Innovation and creativity follow from “exuberance and…curiosity.” You cannot create new revenue streams, new products, new businesses, new processes (you get the idea) from the same old, same old. And, if the company culture (also known as senior management) is not willing to reward high-performance thinking, eventually mediocrity takes over.

I know that it is easier to not upset the apple cart by encouraging employees to be innovative. I have actually had managers say to me that the cost of a bad idea is too high to encourage “out of the box” thinking.

Many who say they want innovative programs don’t really. As I said in my response to Dr. Weber, some clients say they “want” innovative programs but the true statement should be “we want innovative and creative as long as it doesn’t change the way we do business because it would be too much to change and you (the consultant) can do it without any internal resources.”
It is a challenge to help a motivated senior management team to change…it is impossible to change a team that isn’t willing to “do the work” required to help the organization really change.

To be a great business, you need great people. And to have great people, they have to feel like they can make a difference. They have to feel valued and rewarded; and they have to feel safe in order to step beyond the known into “what could be.”

I encourage all of us in management to ask ourselves if we have created the kind of environment our staff is excited to be a part of and, if not, why not.

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I have come to the conclusion that one of the biggest challenges for today’s businesses is the lack of critical thinking time. No more do we have time to “chew” on a problem or “mull over” an idea. Words like cogitate and ruminate are almost extinct.

Instead we are driven by a pace measured in nano-seconds and kilobytes. We are reachable everywhere — if you don’t believe me count the number of times you hear a phone conversation in the stall next to you — all the time. The expectation of receiving an instant answer, or decision is bolstered by our ability to text message, email, IM or track down our colleagues on any vacation.

I’m not a neophyte that believes we need to abandon our technical progress of the past 20 years. Nor do I advocate abandoning the countless benefits the business world has experienced with the removal of communication barriers, the development of new technology and implementation of advanced processes. That said, I do think there should be more room for simple thinking, ideating, innovating, discussing, and considering the world, the problems, the opportunities and even the visions of a business.

A creative organization that is positioned to manage itself through the chaotic environment of today’s marketplace demands innovative solutions that make surprising connections. Today there is a dependence on speed and time, which makes it difficult to build a creative foundation. And yet, it is creativity and innovation that keeps any business growing and moving forward.

The result of all this speed and technology? Relationships within organizations are not as strong, depth of knowledge and skills are sometimes lost and business-changing ideas are swept aside as not a quick enough fix. When I worked at Hallmark back in the late 80’s and early 90’s one of my managers told me (and I agree) that good businesses are born out of good decisions based on good people doing good work for people they trust in a place they enjoy coming to.

I think that is still true — we just have to give ourselves the time to get there.

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