Fresh Ideas

We've been dealing with sobering realities. Time and budgets are tight, but there's more to do than ever. We're working harder and smarter, knowing that change presents opportunities.

Tough times call for creative minds, so I conducted an experiment.

The setting: I invited a cross section of business leaders, creative professionals and entrepreneurs to participate in a prototyping process.

The focus: creating a resource for keeping our thinking fresh and flexible, in the moment and over time. A way to add some creative zest to our work.

The response: smart, talented colleagues and clients from fields including innovation, organizational development, sales and marketing, communications, executive administration and entrepreneurship worked with me to shape the focus, content and presentation of a new resource.

The outcome: Fresh Ideas. Fresh Ideas is a creative catalyst that is

Sustained: Every two weeks, for either six or twelve months, you receive an e-mailed issue describing a specific creative thinking strategy, examples of how it's been used, and ways to apply it yourself.

Informative: The strategies and examples within Fresh Ideas are drawn from past and current literature on creativity, leadership and innovation. The topics are purposefully eclectic, providing a diverse range of starting points.

Actionable: Each issue runs about 500 words, making it easy to absorb and apply quickly. Receiving content in small bites helps you build a habit of thinking more creatively; week after week, application after application, insight after insight.

Engaging: You can learn from others' experiences, and reinforce your own success, by joining the conversation at the Fresh Ideas: What Works blog.

Come take a look. You can preview and work with a few free issues of Fresh Ideas by clicking here.

Better Brainstorming: Charge Admission

Pulling together some brilliant minds to generate some brilliant ideas?

Make the most of your time together by charging admission to the meeting.

Before holding the group brainstorming session, send a preliminary invitation to your targeted participants. Clearly define the challenge and why it's important, provide as much background information as you think they'll need, and describe what you'd like the brainstorming to produce.

Ask them to independently generate and post several initial ideas. Provide a posting venue they can easily access, such as a

• physical venue: using a centrally located whiteboard or flipcharts,
• public virtual venue: using a site like evernote or ning,
• private virtual venue: like your company intranet or a private LinkedIn group.

Review basic brainstorming etiquette and ask for their ideas by a specific date.

Those that post several ideas, review and build on the ideas already posted, and demonstrate good brainstorming etiquette by the date requested are admitted to the group brainstorming meeting.

The group's time is then used by invested, engaged thinkers to augment and improve their initial ideas.

This approach accommodates different thinking styles, builds in an incubation period, and optimizes the time spent thinking together.

Capitalizing on Conflict

We should use not only

all the brains we have,

but all that we can borrow. -Woodrow Wilson


Conflict signals the opportunity to learn. Your interpretation of another's behavior, message or intent may be correct, almost correct, or incorrect. Your conflicting point of view may be completely accurate, or may need to be updated.

One of the most impactful responses to conflict is listening.

When you recognize a discussion is entering the realm of conflict:

• Stop listening for correctness, or opportunities for rebuttal, and start listening for meaning.

• Summarize, in your own words, the other person's point of view. Ask if you heard it right.

• Wait for an answer. Make sure that a person that starts a sentence gets to end it.

• Don't give up if you don't get it right at first. The greater the distance between your mindsets the greater the opportunity for learning ... and the harder you may have to work.

• Ask what you got right, and what's off base.

• Pay attention to your emotions. A strong response to a conflicting point of view signals that a deeply held belief is being tested or denied. Check to ensure your nonverbals and word choices are helpful.

• Identify what you're learning. Understanding the other point of view doesn't mean you agree with it, just that you're hearing what's meant.

Most of us listen better once we feel understood.

So in addition to creating the opportunity to learn something new, listening in this way increases the likelihood you will be heard in turn.

Bend and Break and Recreate

If you're not getting the results you want, try breaking - or at least bending - the rules that guide your typical approach.

For example,

Don't immerse yourself in a stubborn challenge. Distance yourself from it.

Creating physical or psychological distance can help us find creative solutions, by changing how we mentally represent things. Distancing from a time (projecting the challenge into the future) or probability (assuming success is more or less likely) perspective can also increase creative thinking.

Learn more about how psychological distance impacts creativity here.

Don't work to understand the challenge. Work to understand the context.

Design thinking helps would-be problem solvers avoid solving the wrong problem by immersing themselves in the world of the user before defining the problem to solve. Reading context clues and observing interactions within the environment can uncover more powerful needs.

Find resources and references for designing discovery strategies here.

Don't meet or exceed expectations. Recreate them.

If you want more of the same, keep doing and thinking what you're doing and thinking. Not everything needs to change. But if you want different results, consider ways to crack open new possibilities here.

At COMPIO, we have been busy prototyping new ways to deliver our services. Stay tuned for updates on what we're learning as we bend and break the rules that have guided our approaches.

Your Priorities Are Showing

There's a difference between forced-ranking and prioritizing.

Forced ranking is reactive, "With everything there is to do, what to do first?"

Priorities are pro-active; they're what you attend to while everything else waits.

To understand today's priorities, notice where you spend most of your time.

While you're busy with these things, you're setting aside other things.

Moving forward, ask yourself:

• How do I define success? This is a good question to revisit regularly.

• What am I doing that is getting in the way of my version of success? Find ways to stop doing these things, or do less of them.

• What will I do instead, to achieve more of this success? A priority is something you do, not something you intend. If you're not doing it, it's not a priority.

Your priorities shape your success. There's no need for a priorities list - what you do, and don't do, is shouting out what is important to you.