New and Improved Innovation Blog Site

Brain is more important than capital

In Germany black tea lovers know the tea campaign (German: Teekampagne) as the source of excellent Darjeeling tea. In its 25 years of existence it developed into the world's largest single importer of Darjeeling tea from India – importing more than 400 tons per year. What makes tea campaign special and so successful? The company sells only one type of tea: The finest Darjeeling tea from selected tea gardens in the Darjeeling area in India. It only sells packages of 1 kg and the tea can only be purchased through a website or mail order. There are no stores. The quality of tea campaign’s tea is radically better than the teas in most small tea shops in Germany and it sells for a much cheaper price than all tea shops.

The quality is so much better because tea campaign has exclusive contracts and buys the whole yearly output of selected tea gardens in India that have to adhere to strict quality standards. 25% of the annual revenue of tea campaign is invested in local projects at partner tea gardens of tea campaign to provide schooling for the families working at the tea gardens and to provide fair wages and prices.

The founder of tea campaign, the German university professor for entrepreneurship Günter Faltin, discovered 25 years ago that 90% of the tea price the end user pays in Germany is caused by various layers of intermediate wholesale traders that want their share of the import business. That resulted in a great variety of teas in small packages with way too high prices, according to Faltin’s view. If one could eliminate the wholesale traders from the equation there would be a lot of room to pay decent prices to the tea gardens and the people working there and to offer outstanding tea at a much cheaper price. Where before there was the wholesale market, the tea surveyor, the broker, the auctioneer, the intermediary, the importer, the exporter, the packager and the tea store owner, now there is only the tea producer, tea campaign and the end user. Using an innovative business model, tea campaign radically simplified the supply chain and the way tea is bought and sold.

The Impotency of Organizational Innovation

Dig into the rigorous thinking via Google Scholar on innovation and you will find there are 2,300,000 articles and books of an academic nature that have verified and validated every different type of known innovation process - disruptive, open source, front end, back end, induced, user, IT, supply chain, management, R&D and even innovative innovation! Enough information to drive you crazy. And worse still, there is a huge problem with most of it!

It perceives innovation as a theory and a process and it is neither.

It’s a practice!

Innovation as theory is like reading a mountaineering book and then setting out to climb Mt. Everest dressed in the attire you had on while reading the book. Innovation based solely on process is like being lost with a map on the side of a snow capped mountain with wild winter weather closing in – very few will survive. Most will freeze to death. A few get lucky. Luck, however is not a dependable process for succeeding in a competitive commercial environment.

Research by our strategic partners at the Creative Leadership Forum on innovation practice in organizations has revealed systemic failure in innovation initiatives, regardless of consultants, theories and processes in up to 52% of cases.

Importantly, there are clear and identifiable reasons for this.

Would you deform your newborn’s skull to make them more creative?

If you saw these skulls would you think they belonged to extraterrestrials? Some do, but when one of our clients went to Peru and saw these deformed skulls dating back to 6000 - 7000 BC, he said he knew exactly why ancient Peruvians deformed the skulls of the newborns!

As the curious people we are, we did some research and found an interesting and easy to understand (for normal people like us) article on a blog by Katy Meyers, an Anthropology PhD Student at Michigan State University who specializes in mortuary archaeology and bioarchaeology. Her blog is “Bones Don’t Lie”. Here is what we learned.

Known to be practiced in a number of areas because of skelatal evidence,  cranial deformation has been the cause of a lot of debate. While there seems to be no way to prove why it was done (and that’s where the debate is) it’s fairly well understood how it was done. Apparently cranial vault modification can be achieved through a number of means.  In Katy’s words: “Enchev et al. (2010) discuss two types of modification: tabular or annular. Tabular, or “flat-head” modification involves compressing the fontal and occipital with fixed, erect boards or pads. This creates a lateral bulging of the head. A variation on this is when vertical boards are placed higher up on the back of the head to produce more upright modification. Annular modification is produced when bands are wrapped around the forehead and the back of the skull to force the bone to grow upright.”

Ok, but what was the intent and purpose really? In the Journal of Neurosurgery, Ayer et al. (2010) points to arguments that deformation was a sign of political and socioeconomic status and that the modification was a literal symbol of being the head of the state. A 16th century Spanish chronicler, Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, asked the Mayan why their heads were a different shape, and the reasons behind the modification. They responded: “This is done because our ancestors were told by the gods that if our heads were thus formed we should appear noble and handsome and better able to bear burdens”. Romero-Vargas et al. (2010) also in the Journal of Neurosurgery, argue that the practice has religious and socio-cultural meaning, and it is an integral part of someone’s identity.

 However, our client, the Head of Strategy Planning and Business Development in a pharmaceutical company has another fun theory about the intent and purpose of deformed skulls. He posits that they were deformed so people have a bigger cortex and thus think more with their cortex (executive brain) than react with brain stem (primitive, gator brain). Now if you know much about the way the brain would actually develop inside of a deformed skull, your own gator brain just kicked in at this creative thought. But it is a fascinating idea to have a little fun with.

             

The above pictures and the explanatory text found next to these skulls seems to correct him: “In this case deformation is in pyramidal form....causing the growth of Rolando’s incision where you find the motive center of CREATIVITY, philosophy, mathematics, etc.”

Our client was brilliant in considering the connection between what he had learned from us and the skulls he saw in Peru. We had taught him to control his gator brain, to upshift his thinking to his cortex and to make novel connections between previously unconnected thoughts so he could find creative solutions to problems he faced instead of getting stuck. And of course we had taught him some biological truths about the brain, so he knew where the cortex was: the upper-front part of the brain.

It’s highly unlikely that this deformation would have any impact on the overall function of the brain, but if the society and you both believed it did, we think their would be an impact due to the expectation setting. And that would be just fine!

As we still marvel at how the Egyptian made the pyramids and create conspiracy theories around how far advanced the ancient people were from us, we can’t help thinking that maybe they indeed were, and we need to learn from them. Could they have really deformed their newborn’s skulls to make themselves more creative? We don’t think so. But consider this, dear reader: We have it on good advice that if you go look in the mirror, you’ll notice the unique shape of your head. Rumor has it that the shape of your particular head is exactly the best shape to energize a creative brain! Now you know.

Being Resolute with Your Resolutions

It is the time of passage to a new year. The calendar has moved to January, named for Janus, the Roman god of passage, time and prophecy. Janus is depicted as a god with two faces looking in opposite directions — one facing into the past, one looking into the future. For over two thousand years in many cultures, this has been a traditional time to look back and ahead, to reflect upon the state of our lives and make New Year’s Resolutions. A time to look at what we have done and what we are committed to making different. Read on...

Position Available: Business Development

New & Improved, LLC, is seeking a full time Business Development professional. Responsibilities focus on outside sales, including lead-finding, qualifying buyers, assessing potential client needs, creating proposals, pitching solutions and closing to contract. The ideal candidate has a strong network and history of sales in the training, facilitation, speaking, and organizational development consulting areas. We work with all types of large organizations, with a focus on corporate clients. Some travel required. New & Improved is an organizational Development firm providing training, facilitation, OD consultation and executive coaching, all focused on improving the culture of innovation for our clients. Our clients are global and we currently offer our services in 7 languages. This position will have an initial training period at our headquarters in Paul Smiths, NY. Compensation commensurate with experience. Includes base plus commission.
Please submit a cover letter and resume’. Cover letter should include recreational and community involvement outside of work settings.
New & Improved, 9306 State Route 30, Paul Smiths, NY 12970

This is Your Mind on Questions

One of the greatest features of your human brain is, if you ask it a question it will answer it.

What time is it?  How far away is New York? What might be all the ways to get to New York?

See!  You can’t help it.

Phrase a problem as a question and your mind will start generating possible solutions.  Make a statement out of a problem and your mind will accept it, or it will look for data that refutes it.  Accepting it is sometimes the end of the mental line.  Your brain shrugs, says ‘ok’, and moves on.  Refuting it puts you in opposition to the speaker’s statement, usually not a good place to start if you’re looking for solutions to the problem. The beauty of asking a question is that your brain can’t help but try to answer it.

At New & Improved we believe the question-answering reflex is primal and universal.

Why?

Because the main job of the brain, the whole reason we have a brain, is to keep us alive and safe.  The fact that you can think with it is merely a function of the fact that thinking is one tool in the brain’s safety keeping arsenal.  And we all have a gator brain, our primal flight or fight brain that we share with all animals, even alligators.  Located down near the brain stem, it is interested solely in our security; in keeping us safe.  The theory on the gator brain is that it impacts our thinking almost all the time.  We are usually unaware of its influence, and it rarely impacts our thinking in a way that enhances our creativity.  And, because our gator brain seeks safety and security, it doesn’t like unanswered questions, especially unanswered problem questions.  Unanswered problem questions represent uncertainty, the unknown, possible danger.  Your gator brain, tasked with keeping you safe, doesn’t like that uncertainty.  A problem question, especially an open-ended one, leverages your instinctive gator brain to go get an answer.  For hard questions, it will trigger your neo-cortex, your big new brain, for an answer. So it’s our primal desire for safety that ultimately is why, if you ask your brain a question, your brain is motivated to answer it.

To get open ended problem questions, the stems; How to…, In what ways might I…, How might we…, and our favorite, What might be all the ways…?, are useful.  This last one invites lots of answers, which is helpful because the gator brain is lazy.  Once you’ve generated one ‘good ‘option’ the ol’ gator brain doesn’t feel unsafe anymore.  The first halfway decent answer will satisfy it, and it stops pushing for answers.  The discipline is engaging your neo-cortex to answer the question again and again to really answer the question  “What might be all the ways...?”

Your mind on questions is a powerful thing.  Phrase problems as questions and your mind will give you answers. You can’t help it.

What’s the #1 thing you can do to help your employees to be more motivated and engaged? (Hint: It’s not what you think it is!)

If we asked you, “what do you think the number one factor to help motivate and keep employees engaged in their work is” what would you guess?

Would you say?

Rewards? Or

Recognition? Or

A great team? Or

Something else entirely?

Go ahead, take a guess. What do you think it is?

Theresa Amabile, Harvard professor and expert in creativity and workplace productivity, conducted a study that asked 600 managers from a variety of organizations this very question, and the top answer received was recognition for good work.

Did you have a similar answer? If so, you might not be that surprised then.

However, what you might find surprising is that in subsequent research Amabile found out that the managers in the survey were wrong.  Recognition, it turns out, is not the most important factor in employee engagement!

By analyzing more than 12,000 diary entries from more than 200 employees across diverse industries, Amabile and her colleague Steven Kramer found that the #1 driver that helps employees feel more engaged and enthused at work is… (drum roll, please) whether or not the employees felt that they were making progress towards their goals.

That’s right, progress. According to their research, if during a work day, employees felt like they made some positive movement towards achieving their goals, they reported feeling more positive and having a stronger sense of drive and purpose at work. When they felt like they were running into obstacles or that their goals were constantly shifting, their overall moods were lower.

Amabile and Kramer detail their research and many of the practical implications in their book, The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work. (highly recommended!)

As a manager or leader, if you want to help your employees be more motivated, you might want to leverage the progress principle by:

• Helping employees clarify goals
• Providing enough support (resources and time)
• Helping them monitor progress (no matter how small)

And you might want to do your best to:

• Avoid changing goals haphazardly
• And avoid holding up resources

And if you do want to use recognition, go ahead and make the most of it.

Recognize your employees for the great progress they are making!

Pushing the Limits of Our Willpower

Its the 12th week I’ve been on the road – 68 out of 91 days, 12 long car drives, 12 plane trips, most to different locations for different purposes, many with early morning startups and late evening end times. There is no pattern. I’m in a state of constant change. I can imagine some of the leaders I coach and many of my business partners saying, “What’s unusual about this?” They have been living like this for years.

This new road life is happening at a time when I have started several new self-care habits that will improve my health, my performance and have me walking my talk. I have been very disciplined in eating healthy foods and not drinking too much. But I'm not getting enough sleep to be at my best. I’m not completing 60 minutes of cardio-vascular exercise every day. My journaling practice usually feels rushed. I’m frustrated with my mental chatter as I juggle many clients, projects and ideas. I worry too much about the items on my “to do” list that are behind schedule.

To soothe myself I tell a story that I just don’t have the extra hours I need. But when I look more closely that’s just an excuse. At the end of the day I often find time for mindless activities - scanning blogs and articles on the web (justified as research), checking what my colleagues are saying on Facebook and LinkedIn or playing a video game. As I near the end of the day I’m finding I lack the willpower to stay focused on these new self-care habits.

I wonder how a road warrior like me might realistically practice the self-care habits the research says are needed for optimal performance as an innovation leader or team member? How might I develop the willpower to sustain these healthy habits when I’m on the road?

What Really Happens to Our Time?

How many hours do you have today? Do you need all 24? Can I borrow some of your time? I can return the favor later in the week.

Sound unrealistic? Yep, it is. We are all given 24 hours in a day – no more, no less. We can’t stretch an hour to be longer than 60 minutes. No matter how we use our creative problem solving techniques, we can’t touch this one. So, how are we supposed to get everything done when we don’t have enough time?

We asked Gloria Volz, Professional Organizer and Jane Bickford, Life Coach to share some tools for Time Management with us. Their philosophy is that Time Management isn’t about TIME at all, it’s about SELF. Self management determines how you use the time in your day, week and years of your life. In our Innovation for Results Program participants commonly want to find creative solutions to this “not enough time” challenge. We discourage the use of the creative process for this, as we know there are expert solutions available (assuming you’re truly motivated) and these two are experts. We think this will be an investment of time that will save you in the long run, but you have to read on. Before you do, set aside the hope for an answer that will make this challenge go away easily. You’re smart. If there was an easy answer, you would have already thought of it...

Questionable Selling

A colleague of ours, an individual who has fully integrated the Creative Problem Solving Process into her life, had an opportunity to be a consultant to the consultants. Our colleague was asked to make a proposal to a big box consulting firm to help them innovate in all areas of the organization.

During the preliminary meeting with the potential client, our colleague offered no solutions. She simply asked questions and listened, and listened and asked questions. Her first correspondence with the consulting firm was merely a converged list, taken from her notes, of about thirty questions. All the questions were from the client’s perspective. Each was an expression of a possible desire, phrased as a problem question, using the stems, How to…, In what ways might you…, and What might be all the ways…

It was a classically simple use of the CPS process. Gather data and then use that data and information to construct a list of problem questions. It turns out, as well, that it was a powerful template for running and responding to an initial face to face sales meeting with a prospective client.

The managing director at the big box consulting firm responded to our colleague’s correspondence with the following statement:

“You did for us what we should be doing for our clients.”

She got the job.