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Authentic Innovation

Posted on 12.26.19

Some words are overused and are part of fads in the media. Some words are slang, and some are part of our technical jargon. Other words become a part of our day-to-day language but have multiple, deeper meanings.

Innovation is exactly one of those words. There are multiple means to innovation depending on the context. Often, people use innovation to simply mean new and creative. For example, a company’s tagline might say “We are innovative”.

For about ten years, I have helped individuals and companies think big in launching new products and services. During this time, I have generated my own definition of innovation: to transform an idea into a commercial product or service that generates profit for the company. Innovations must bring value to consumers as well as the producer.

Watch the short video summary and read on for details of how you can become more authentic with innovation.

Characteristics of Authentic Innovation

So, the first characteristic of successful innovation is that it must be profitable. Products and services that do not deliver a profit are ones that fail to bring value to either the customer or the firm. If not enough people want to buy a product at a price that exceeds the cost of making it, it is not successful or useful. It might be an intriguing invention, but not an innovation.

In addition to profitability, there are other characteristics that apply to authentic innovation:

Organic,
Personal, and
Incremental.

Organic Innovation

Authentic innovation is organic, meaning it grows from a customer need. A technology, feature, or product function is designed to satisfy a gap in a customer’s service experience. Organic innovations are successful because customer insights drive research and development efforts within the firm.

In contrast, what I will call “forced innovations” start with technologies or products first, and then search for customers and markets. Consider the Segway. the Segway has really interesting technology but no large commercial applications. A much-heralded “innovation” has been relegated to security people at the mall and groups of eager tourists. There simply is not enough market volume to convert the Segway idea into a commercially profitable product.

Innovation is Personal

Nearly every purchase made by a human being has a personal element to it. We buy things and use services to add to our emotional enjoyment of life. Every purchase, and therefore every innovation, is personal.

The Walt Disney Company is well known for its high level of customer service and for innovation. Their success is based on delivering a highly personalized experience for each guest. Before you visit Walt Disney World in Florida, for instance, you are asked to select your favorite color and most beloved character for your “Magic Band”. This Bluetooth enabled wristband then serves as your unique key to your hotel room and gives you access to ride reservations in the theme parks as well as a host of other services, including payments for snacks and souvenirs. The Magic Band is an example of a very successful personal innovation.

Incremental Innovation

Incremental. Successful innovation that is authentic is incremental. I am guessing a lot of my colleagues will scream, “Heresy!” when they see that authentic innovation is incremental. In the field of new product development (NPD), we always train and discuss breakthrough, radical, and disruptive innovation as the ultimate, golden award and to such to seek such innovations unrelentingly. Yet, most companies and most individuals build success through incremental change. Consider the retrospective review completed at the end of each sprint in an Agile project. The team will make one change – only one – in their behaviors for the next sprint. The reason is that too many changes are hard to track and to verify improvement. Multiple changes can be confusing to the team members and customers alike.

Likewise, a vast majority of innovations are incremental. Understanding customer needs and any gap with their current experience drives the most successful development of next generation products and services. It is an incremental innovation to have both a forward-facing and rear-facing camera on your cell phone, but such innovations can be highly profitable.

What is Authentic Innovation?

Authentic innovation brings value to a market and to the producer by transforming ideas to profitable products and services. The characteristics of authentic innovation are organic, personal, and incremental. Successful innovations focus on customer needs before design and development of new technologies or features and don’t necessarily need to be brand new-to-the-world.

Learn How To Win With Incremental Innovation

Join leading innovators for 20 Days of Innovation in 2020. You’ll get a free innovation tip, tool, or technique in your inbox for 20 days, starting 6 January. Sign up here.

About Me

I am inspired by writing, teaching, and coaching. I tackle life with an infusion of rigor, zeal, and faith. It brings me joy to help you build innovation leaders. I am an experienced professional with a passion for lifelong learning with a PhD in Chemical Engineering and an MBA in Computer and Information Decision Making. My credentials include PE (State of Louisiana), NPDP, PMP®, and CPEM, and I am a DiSC® certified facilitator. Contact me at info@simple-pdh.com or area code 281 + phone 280-8717 for more information on coaching for entrepreneurs and innovators.

A Division of Global NP Solutions, LLC

Study. Learn. Earn. Simple.

Changing Innovation Performance

Posted on 12.19.19

Innovation has a dark side. While everyone wants to be “more innovative”, new products fail at alarming rates. When your business is to create new ideas, new technologies, and new markets, failing more than half the time is troubling indeed.

On the bright side, however, innovation is more accessible today than ever. Industries share their product development processes openly and companies partner with suppliers, distributors, and even competitors. We have learned to integrate customers into the development cycle with open innovation and Design Thinking. How do organizations continue to move forward, making progress with speed-to-market and changing internal performance?

The Purpose for Change

Read on or watch the 20-second summary to learn how you can change your innovation performance.

As senior managers present an argument to increase innovation performance, we have to explain the need for change. Many people in the organization see only a narrow slice of the business. R&D professionals, for instance, view their daily work and can see frequent, small gains in knowledge. Marketers identify new insights from customer focus groups when they are held. Project management professionals view small successes in meeting deadlines and milestones. From each individual or functional perspective, things appear okay.

Leaders inspire innovation and significant performance improvements must first demonstrate that a change is needed. Teams build cohesion around a common purpose in the threat of competition. New product development (NPD) teams can accelerate performance in time-to-market by uniting behind a common goal with a tight deadline. This is especially important for virtual teams.

Simplify Work Processes

A friend was recently telling me a story of bureaucracy. She didn’t call it bureaucracy, but her frustration was obvious. To implement a change that sped up the process and was a change that operations desired, she had to obtain approvals from her boss’ boss, the operator’s boss, and a person in the IT department. To submit the change order, she needed to get access to an antiquated computer system for which the organization had no internal training.

If you want to improve innovation performance, you need to simplify your processes and procedures. Agile processes, like Scrum, offer the advantage of focused teamwork and quick feedback from customers. The Agile Manifesto, commands us to emphasize people and interactions over paperwork and bureaucracy. Let your NPD teams work on what they do best – designing and developing new features and technologies.

Measure What Matters

Human beings are programmed to perform our best against the metrics by which our behavior is measured. If your dad gave you a dollar for every hour you were quiet on a road trip, you could manage to be silent for hours on end. If your boss measures efficiency to award your bonus, you will strive to eliminate waste.

Innovations take time to pay off. Short-term metrics drive short-term performance resulting in mundane, incremental products. Developing new technologies and new markets are long-term investments and innovation rewards must recognize learning and growth as a purpose of new product development research, as well as product profitability. Building effective, cross-functional teams is a stepping stone in the journey of improving innovation performance.

Improving Innovation Performance

Innovation is important in every organization. They say if businesses don’t innovate, they die. Customers demand new and better products and services, and companies no longer have the advantage of geographical or technological monopolies. To improve innovation performance, we must share the driving purpose and strategy. Innovation requires change and as flagship innovation leaders, we must communicate the need for change.

Next, innovation succeeds when creativity is unhindered. Simplify your processes and procedures and let the NPD teams be free to do their work without complicated bureaucracy or reporting authority. Finally, measure what matters. Innovation is a long-term adventure where learning is paramount. Experimentation often results in short-term failure yet innovation leaders value knowledge above short-term stock prices.

Do You Want to Improve Your Innovation Performance?

If so, what are you waiting for? Check out our 20 Days of Innovation in 2020 to receive a fresh innovation tip in your inbox daily during the month of January. It’s not spammy and it’s free – sign up here.

About Me

A Division of Global NP Solutions, LLC

Study. Learn. Earn. Simple.

Innovation Leaders Build Team Diversity

Posted on 12.05.19

We are all taught that innovation and creativity increase when there is diversity in team membership. We are told that teams with representatives from different groups and that interchange members frequently will outperform teams that have long-standing members. Yet, leaders intuitively know that familiar teams are more productive and efficient than groups with more fluid memberships.

Watch the 20-second summary and then Read On!

What is an Innovation Team?

Innovation teams are groups of individuals seeking a common goal to create a new “something” that brings value to both users and producers. Typically, innovation teams generate new, improved, or enhanced products and services within known markets. Often, new product development (NPD) involves new technologies or new applications; occasionally, NPD means business development to create a new market.

NPD and innovation teams are usually small with membership of six to ten people of various skills. The best NPD teams are cross-functional and involve all the necessary disciplines to transform an idea into a commercial product. Ultimately, success of new products is defined by revenue and sales volume.

Team Diversity

Innovation teams do need diversity to be successful, but many companies misinterpret what “team diversity” means. It is not uncommon for uninformed managers to define diversity purely along lines of gender and ethnicity. Team diversity for innovation means creating a team with a wide range of technical experiences, educational backgrounds, and industrial exposure. Again, each function necessary to transform the idea into a realistic product or service must be represented on the team.

Team diversity also means that members have different styles of thinking and working. If everyone on the team – regardless of function – bases decisions on detailed statistical analysis, the emotional needs of customers are neglected. Conversely, if every team member is people-oriented and sympathetic to independent consumer needs, a single product can never be designed for profitability or ease-of-use. This type of diversity goes well beyond skin color or gender identification.

Familiar Teams vs. Changing Members

Robert Huckman and Bradley Staats argue that familiar and intact teams offer advantages to project outcomes in the areas of quality and efficiency (Harvard Business Review, 2013). Familiar teams can predict actions and needs within their membership, and therefore, can outperform teams with frequent changes in membership.

The standard argument against keeping innovation teams intact for lengthy periods is that they would become stale and isolated. Such teams are assumed to have built-in biases and assumptions that prevent them from recognizing new opportunities and from being creative. Instead, familiar teams are better able to identify knowledge gaps and can be more flexible when unexpected project changes emerge.

Your Role as an Innovation Leader

Innovation leaders wear many hats. One is to compose and manage the innovation team. Successful innovation comes from being able to transform ideas into commercial products and services. Profitability derives from getting to market first (or fast) and maintaining market share. Customer satisfaction is built on quality of products and services and customer loyalty is generated when firms release new products that meet their needs.

Designing an NPD team focused on a common purpose (such as commercial success, profitability, and customer satisfaction) requires a leader who can manage diverse team members over the long run. Team member diversity means more about functional experiences and identifying with the customer than race and gender. Successful innovation leaders value cross-functional and multi-disciplinary teams that know one another well enough to adapt to change. A continuous focus on the team’s common goals is the most important message a leader sends.

Your Next Steps

Learn more about teams and leadership for innovation in our Innovation Best Practices and NPDP prep courses. Check out the 1Q2020 schedule here. You can also read more about innovation leadership and team development in Chapter 4 of The Innovation ANSWER Book, available from Amazon here. Also, be sure to check out our complimentary webinar on Transitioning from a Technical Role to Management on Friday, 13 December 2019 at noon CST (1 pm EST, 10 am PST). Register here.

About Me

I am inspired by writing, teaching, and coaching. I tackle life with an infusion of rigor, zeal, and faith. It brings me joy to help you build innovation leaders. Teresa Jurgens-Kowal is an experienced innovation professional with a passion for lifelong learning with a PhD in Chemical Engineering and an MBA in Computer and Information Decision Making. My credentials include PE (State of Louisiana), NPDP, PMP®, and CPEM, and I am a DiSC® certified facilitator. Contact me at info@simple-pdh.com or area code 281 + phone 280-8717 for more information on coaching for entrepreneurs and innovators.

A Division of Global NP Solutions, LLC

Study. Learn. Earn. Simple.

Questioning for Creative Leadership

Posted on 11.28.19

We are always told to be good listeners. Our moms and grade school teachers often told us to “shush and listen.” And as adults, as many of us think we are good listeners as we think are good drivers. (By the way, that’s a lot more than 50%, leading to an irrational conclusion.)

Active listening is more than just hearing what someone says. Listening involves silencing our own thoughts and opinions, connecting empathetically with the speaker, and providing feedback. The best way to provide feedback and to gauge if you really, truly understand what someone has said is through questioning. I’ve observed that there are two general forms of questions: transactional queries and questions for reflection.

Transactional Questions

In a market economy, we exchange money for a product. Just as in a commercial exchange, conversation and dialogue can be transactional. If there are multiple product choices with comparable features and functions, a rational consumer selects the least expensive product. The decision is based on logic and the transaction is designed to minimize time, effort, and resources.

Some conversations are transactional in nature and should be. “What time does the meeting start?” and “Where is the restaurant?” are responsible transactional questions that allow us to increase our efficiency and productivity. The responses are typically used to complete the exchange, just as handing money to a cashier completes the purchase. “The meeting starts at 10 am” and “The restaurant is at 123 Main Street”.

We use transactional queries to obtain data. Remember that data and information are different. Information allows us to make decisions, create opportunities, and to expand our knowledge of a given situation. In a transactional conversation, we exchange impersonal data and the individuals may translate that data to information on their own.

For example, if I know that the meeting starts at 10 am and is held at a restaurant on Main Street (data), I will plan to leave my office at 9 am since I also know it is a one-hour drive. Converting the transactional conversation to information also tells me that I need to take dimes and quarters with me to put in the parking meters on Main Street.

Reflection

While my decision to leave at 9 am and carry small change with me is not necessarily creative, it does explain another level of communication. Questions for reflection use “right-brain” thinking to analyze the conversational feedback, to draw conclusions, and to offer alternatives. For instance, I could have countered the restaurant location with a suggestion to meet at a different place that allows me to take a shorter drive.

It is through questions for reflection that we build creativity. Innovation is enhanced when we look at things from a different perspective and try to envision a unique outcome. Transactional queries normally limit the participants from seeing alternatives but can support incremental improvements and operational efficiencies.

Leadership Questioning Skills

How do you know if you’re asking transactional or reflective questions? As an innovation leader, you want to drive creativity and encourage alternatives in new product development (NPD). You want to empower your team to listen and to learn.

Transactional questions, potentially hindering radical innovation, are easily rephrased to “yes” or “no” inquiries. We could easily have said “Is the meeting at 10 am?” instead of asking what time the meeting is scheduled. This gives us a strong clue that the question is purely transactional.

Another indication is that the response to a transactional query is quick. The meeting time is known so there’s no hesitation in providing the answer to the question. At most, people will need to check their calendars to confirm the data.

On the other hand, reflective questions introduce a pause in the pace of the conversation. A person has to stop and think about how s/he might respond. The response provides information and not just data. And, information allows us to take on different perspectives and to generate alternative solutions. An indication that a question is designed for reflection is that a “yes” or “no” answer would be totally inappropriate.

Creativity is driven by viewing problems from different perspectives. Those viewpoints should include all potential stakeholders, including designers and developers, functional organizational representatives, customers, and end-users. Understanding the entire ecosystem of innovation lays out the scope of a new product development effort.

Customers and Open Innovation

When customers are involved in innovation, we call it open innovation. While customers cannot tell us what features and specifications they want in a new product, they can answer our questions and we gather both data and information. It’s important, however, to focus customer interactions on qualitative data, such as that gathered through reflective questions. Market research and open innovation are driven by understanding and empathizing with customer needs. And only when this information is collated, can a development team go into the labs and pilot plants to design a new product or service.

While questions for reflections are best used in gathering customer impressions and feedback, there is a place in innovation for transactional questions. Of course, these are often limited to setting pricing parameters and in A/B market testing. You’ll also want to collect and analyze demographic and geographic data about potential customers since this can frame future marketing efforts.

Questioning for Innovation Leaders

Leaders set the tone for the culture and climate of an organization. Restrictive, distrustful environments hamper creativity and are often characterized by strict boundaries and constraints. In these situations, questions are largely transactional. Managers are tracking directives for scope, budget, and schedule metrics.

In open, creative cultures, leaders provide freedom and autonomy for innovation teams. Questions seek knowledge building and deeper understanding. Open-ended questions without right or wrong answers can stimulate perspective-taking and novel approaches to solving problems. Involving customers and end-users in creative questioning can improve innovation exponentially.

Summary and Learn More

Learning to ask good questions and to fully listen to the response are skills that can be honed and grown through training and coaching. We can each practice creative leadership questioning by converting transactional queries into questions for reflection.

Learn more at our complimentary webinar on 13 December 2019 at noon CST (1 pm EST, 10 am PST). We will discuss the Transition from a Technical Role to Leadership. Register here.

About Me

I am inspired by writing, teaching, and coaching to build innovation leaders. I tackle life with an infusion of rigor, zeal, and faith. I am an experienced professional with a passion for lifelong learning with a PhD in Chemical Engineering and an MBA in Computer and Information Decision Making. My credentials include PE (State of Louisiana), NPDP, PMP®, and CPEM, and I am a DiSC® certified facilitator. Contact me at info@simple-pdh.com or area code 281 + phone 280-8717 for more information on coaching for entrepreneurs and innovators.

The 3Cs of Innovation

Posted on 11.20.19

Innovation is both easy and complicated. The easy part of innovation is focusing on customer needs and the complicated part of innovation is … focusing on customer needs. Customers vary and our ability to serve them depends on three key aspects of a company’s strategy: choice, collaboration, and competency.

Read on or watch the 30-second summary below.

Choice

Firms have many choices in innovation. First, a company can choose to serve a broad customer base or a narrow market segment. In choosing a broad market, companies often look to cost competency for a leadership position. However, when products compete on price, customers lack loyalty to the brand. Serving a narrow market segment, on the other hand, allows a firm to create products and services that are differentiated. Typically, these markets allow the firm to charge a premium and generate significant revenues. But, of course, there is no utopia. Choosing a narrow market segment for innovation ties a firm to a specific pattern of development and technology. If an unhealthy marketplace matures, it can be disastrous to revenues.

Next, new product development (NPD) choices also involve the degree of innovativeness. Are products simple line extensions or are they radical departures from existing competition? These business choices reflect investment, risk, and global economic conditions.

Finally, innovation choice includes decisions matching product development with strategy. Some firms are more risk tolerant or cash poor than others. These choices reflect strategic decisions to grow the business or to expand in existing markets. One of the most frequently cited failures of NPD is a lack of strategic alignment; therefore, choices of product and service development efforts must closely align with growth objectives for the company.

Collaboration

Cross-functional teams that work together from idea to launch are proven to be most successful in NPD. Collaboration means more than naming individuals from different functions to be part of the “team”. It means sharing ideas and problem solving with various perspectives, including the customer’s view. True collaboration crosses departmental barriers and external boundaries.

Collaboration also means the team shares trust. Trust requires sharing vulnerability and a social contract among innovation team members. New products will be “ho-hum” if team members do not trust one another enough to share crazy ideas and so-called “outside-the-box” thinking. The more risk involved in an innovation the more trust is necessary for the team.

Competency

Quality in design and competency of execution differentiate the best companies from average ones. To always consider the customers viewpoint and what service means is a hallmark of a firm delivering high quality. Such companies hire, train, and nurture innovation competences in all of their employees. And competency feeds back in a continuous loop to customer intimacy – understanding needs and wants.

Training is the starting point to build competency for a quality-driven innovation organization. Sustaining best practices through coaching can take an organization to even higher levels of success. In the Flagship Innovation Leadership program, we recommend both individual coaching and master mind groups for senior leaders. Both opportunities increase accountability and accelerate learning.

The 3Cs of Innovation

Innovation should be simple, yet in practice is often quite challenging. The 3Cs of innovation help teams and leaders to focus on what is most important to create success for new product and service design. First, the company must choose who the customers are. Innovation takes different forms, risk, and investment for broad markets or narrow customer segments. Customer choices align with the organization’s strategic growth goals.

Next, innovation teams must collaborate across functional barriers and with external stakeholders to be successful. Collaboration is built on trust and trust is essential for taking on disruptive innovation. Finally, successful innovation requires competency to deliver high quality results. NPD team members build competency with customer interactions and training in innovation best practices (check out our 1Q2020 innovation training schedule here). Organizational leaders grow their competency through coaching and sharing with others in master mind groups. Join us for an Innovation Master Mind pilot on Friday, 22 November at noon CST (register here).

Your Next Steps

Consider how NPD project choices are effectively implementing strategic goals. Then, ensure your teams are cross-functional and collaborative. Finally, implement training to sustain quality through competency. Read more about innovation best practices in my new book, The Innovation ANSWER Book, available from Amazon here.

A Division of Global NP Solutions, LLC

Study. Learn. Earn. Simple.

Making Decisions

Posted on 10.23.19

I told Siri, “Thank you,” twice yesterday. Of course, I know Siri is not real and can’t hear me and doesn’t care if I say thank you or not. But Siri gave me a route through traffic in an unfamiliar neighborhood where I was driving. And I was grateful when “she” pointed me to the nearest Starbucks!

Siri is really a form of artificial intelligence and AI is a form of digital transformation. We are using AI in our personal lives as consumers a lot. We use Amazon’s recommendations, track package shipments around the world, schedule haircuts from our cell phones, and, of course, let Siri guide us to Starbucks.

One of the ethical questions I hear at every presentation on AI and digital transformation is: “How far does technology go into our private lives?” Banks, credit card companies, doctors and dentists, and even hotels have an obligation to keep our private information secure and confidential. Yet, all institutions need access to aggregated data to better serve us as customers.

These organizations use algorithms and software to make decisions, and these decisions range from simple to complex. “Where is the nearest Starbucks?” is a simple analysis. Predicting the optimum time to pull a pump from refinery service to do maintenance based on vibration logs is a sophisticated decision.

Read on and watch the 30-second summary video.

People Decisions

My feeling is that no matter how good Amazon gets at recommending new books or products for me, my decisions will always reflect my human nature. On Star Trek, Data’s emotion chip could make him “feel” but even his robotics were not sophisticated enough to replace logical decisions with “gut instincts”.

Gut feel is a decision parameter based on our experience, intuition, and emotion. Often, we talk with friends, family, and colleagues to gather information before we make decisions. Our best decisions are logical and rational, yet they also consider our thoughts, feelings, and dreams.

Better Decisions

Wouldn’t it be great if we could harness the power of gut feel and couple it with the logic of a robot? In Life Design Master Mind, we explore personal and professional opportunities using Design Thinking tools. Design Thinking is a creative and collaborative problem-solving methodology that builds on awareness and curiosity. Design Thinking tools capture our “gut feel” to help lead us through brainstorming solutions and prototyping to find the optimal, rational answer. Used broadly in new product development (NPD) and innovation, Design Thinking focuses on the whole problem and generates optimum solutions without pre-supposing a solution. You can read an excerpt of my new book, The Innovation ANSWER Book, on Design Thinking here.

Learn More

Life Design Master Mind (LDMM) is a place to explore career, product, and other life challenges. We use Design Thinking tools to capture our feelings about work tasks, hobbies, and passions to identify the next best step in life. A trusting peer advisory board both gives and receives help in each session. YOU bring YOUR challenges to LDMM and YOU set the agenda. As we embark on the master mind journey together, I will share Design Thinking tools that you can immediately apply to find joy in your job, career, and family life. Register now. Space is limited!

A Division of Global NP Solutions, LLC

Study. Learn. Earn. Simple.

Leader A and Leader B

Posted on 10.03.19

I just finished reading “The Leader You Want to Be” by Amy Jen Su. She paints a vivid picture of two leaders – one who is firing on all cylinders and is content and another who is spinning his wheels and feeling frustrated. She calls the first person “Leader A” and the second “Leader B”.

What is startling is that all of us are both Leader A and Leader B. Some days, we are engaged in productive, building strong relationships with clients, customers comment and suppliers. We can see our legacy in the teams we build and the innovation projects we complete. These are Leader A days.

Other times, we spend all day in seemingly pointless meetings, fighting fires, and refereeing personal conflicts. At the end of the day, we feel spent and exhausted. We are too discouraged to work out and bury our resentment. These are Leader B days. “The Leader You Want to Be” gives tips on how to increase the ratio of Leader A to Leader B days.

Self-Awareness

In her book, Amy Jen Su discusses the importance of self-awareness. Of course, we have to know when we are in Leader B mode to take steps to move away from it. Yet, Leader B is as addictive as chocolate or alcohol. It seems that if we just do a little more we can escape. But just like having another sugary snack or glass of wine does not help the problem (and might make it worse), trying to do more with less time just makes more Leader B days occur with more intensity.

Self-awareness means we can look at ourselves as leaders from the outside in. We can certainly ask our trusted advisors for honest insight to our behavior and performance. We can also observe our team interactions and results. Missed product development deadlines and project budget overruns are symptoms of Leader B mode.

Life Design Master Mind

Design Thinking is a set of problem-solving tools that rely on collaboration and empathy. Design Thinking does not necessarily offer a better solution than other problem-solving methods, but it does offer an opportunity to increase our self-awareness and to utilize our network of trusted advisors. Life Design Master Mind applies Design Thinking tools to identify the best path forward to fit personal and professional passions. You learn how to creatively analyze situations so that you don’t let the temptations of Leader B mode derail you and maximize Leader A days.

A master mind group is a peer advisory board that meets regularly – either in person or online. Nothing in the master mind discussion leaves the room so we are all safe to explore and learn. Master mind group members are pre-screened to match experience levels so that everyone both gives and receives help.

For example, in my master mind group, I recently learned tips to improve PowerPoint presentations from another group member who has expertise in digital technology. Our facilitator has over 20 years of experience and offers valuable sales and marketing tips. In an upcoming master mind group meeting, I am going to share my own presentation on Building Effective Cross-Functional Teams.

In this way, all of us in the master mind group both give and receive help. We learn from one another and, importantly, hold each other accountable to reach significant business goals and objectives. When we do meet a goal, we all celebrate and share the sweet pleasure of success.

Increase Your Leader A Days

All of us want to increase our Leader A days when we feel productive, efficient, and successful. Design Thinking tools that build self-awareness (like mind mapping and customer journey maps) help us to recognize patterns of destructive Leader B behavior and pursue activities that support Leader A mode. When we combine Design Thinking tools with a board of trusted peer advisors, the power of Life Design Master Mind results in life changing Leader A transformations.

Learn more about Design Thinking tools with hands-on practice at the Institute of Management Consultants conference. I’m speaking this Sunday in Dallas on how to Enhance your Consulting Skills with Creativity. Next, join me on 21 October at noon CDT (1 pm EDT/10 am PDT) for a free Q and A webinar on Life Design Master Mind. You don’t want to miss this chance to grow your professional insights!

What to Do When Waiting

Posted on 09.26.19

When I was in grad school at the University of Washington in Seattle, I did not own a car. I took the bus to campus and home to my apartment in the Northgate mall area. While I was on the bus, I would read journal articles related to my research project. It was great to have 20 minutes of uninterrupted time to concentrate on science.

Recently, my husband and I took a two-week vacation to Scotland. We used public transit and I spent a lot of time on the train recording our stories in my travel journal. A lot of trains and buses have Wi-Fi and I noticed a lot of people texting or looking at Facebook on their phones. Few people were reading or chatting.

Read on or watch the 40-second video summary.

Waiting Time

We spend a lot of time in our lives waiting. Whether we are on the bus or train commuting or we are in a queue at the store, we often face idle time. Most of us today grab our phones and surf the internet or text friends. We fill the waiting time with non-value adding activities.

Now, I’m going to ask you to do an experiment. Close your eyes and think back 10 years. A decade ago, only a few of us had smartphones and there really was not Facebook. What did you do when you were waiting?

Maybe you chatted with the person in line ahead of you and learned the news of your community. Maybe you let your mind wander and you came up with creative ideas. Or maybe you spent that time planning strategic actions for your job or business. Maybe the waiting time just gave you a chance to catch your breath and relax for a few minutes out of a busy day.

Creativity in Waiting

When you have little to occupy your mind and your thoughts wander, creativity sparks. The subconscious mind is constantly working on our problems and challenges, and it is when we relax that those creative ideas can germinate. That’s one reason why people claim to get good ideas in the shower. So far, there is no technology distracting us in the bathroom – yet!

So, I’ll ask you to try another experiment. The next time you are waiting – on a bus or in a queue – resist your phone. Just breathe and observe what’s around you. Watch people and their patterns of behavior. Consider the simple solutions that surround you while you’re waiting: an automatic bus ticket machine, the cash drawer opening and locking, and candy bars stacked near the checkout at the grocery store. Is there a simple, creative solution for your challenge? Can you borrow one of these ideas?

Strategic Waiting

Sometimes we need to concentrate on a specific problem. Waiting time is another opportunity to generate strategic solutions. Sitting at your computer, you’ve got files and emails calling for your attention. But when you’re waiting, you literally have free time with no distractions or interruptions.

While you are next waiting, resist your phone and consider your biggest strategic problem. Now, challenge yourself to come up with three ideas to implement that would solve that problem. While you are waiting, envision exactly how you will execute each plan, who you will need to help you, and what the end result looks like. If you need to research something, plan to do it later. You must resist your phone to brainstorm a strategic plan.

How to Use Waiting Time

All of us have waiting time whether it is during our commute or in queues at stores. Instead of filling the time with quick and easy gossip on Facebook, use your time to find creative and strategic solutions to innovation challenges. Resist your phone and try to generate at least three new ideas and three action plans for implementation. You’ll be surprised with how much you can accomplish in 10 minutes!

Learn About Design Thinking

The techniques of generating three creative ideas and three specific strategic plans are tools from Design Thinking. Design thinking is a creative and collaborative problem-solving approach for identifying customer needs and designing solutions from an empathetic viewpoint. You can apply Design Thinking tools to new product development and innovation and to your own life or business challenges. Sign up here for a free, 60 minute Q&A webinar (21 Oct 2019 at noon CDT) on Life Design. I’ll be sharing more tools from Design Thinking at the Institute of Management Consultants (IMC) conference on 6 October in Dallas, TX. Stop by and say “hi”. I’d love to hear how you are generating creative and strategic solutions during your waiting times!

A Division of Global NP Solutions, LLC

Study. Learn. Earn. Simple.

How Consultants Use Design Thinking

Posted on 09.19.19

Design Thinking is a collaborative and creative approach to problem solving built on empathy for the customer. We use a variety of tools, techniques, and methods to apply design thinking in innovation processes. It is successful in new product development (NPD) because design thinking focuses on the customers’ needs and understanding from their perspective – of issues or challenges.

Traditionally, design was an afterthought in product development. Designers were called at the final stages to make a product or its package “look pretty”. Today, however, design thinking integrates aesthetics, functionality, and production throughout the innovation process – from ideation to commercialization.

I was recently asked, since design thinking is so successful in helping innovators meet goals, can it be applied in other situations? The answer is a definitive YES! Design thinking helps teachers and trainers, consultants, and small business owners.

Design Thinking and Teaching

As any teacher knows, students are all different. Trainers and facilitators base learners with different needs and capabilities. Students and participants learn differently too. Some gain knowledge from listening to a lecture, others by viewing content visually, and many learn by experience.

Design thinking offers several tools that are specially geared toward the various modes of learning. The design thinking tools and techniques engage multiple senses so participants can hear, see, touch, and engagd in the learning process.

For example, an affinity diagram is a simple tool for categorizing ideas and innovation. But you can use the same concept for learners to categorize vocabulary words, engineering processes, or biological concepts.

Design Thinking and Consultants

Business and management consultants can use design thinking tools to help frame problems and to guide teams to optimize solutions. For example, senior marketing experts in a firm often consult with individual NPD project teams. Understanding the customer’s journey can frame the development process as well as the marketing campaign. A customer journey map shows how various personas become aware of a product need, make a selection, buy and use the product, and dispose or service it after use.

External business consultants can also use the customer journey map to describe engagement with the team, senior management, and other key stakeholders. For projects involving product or quality improvements (like Six Sigma), design thinking tools complement the quantitative data with qualitative evaluations. Understanding how people feel about certain solutions builds rapport and support for total quality management.

Design Thinking and Small Business

Owning and operating a small business is both rewarding and challenging. Small business owners must maintain a pipeline of new products and new customers, all while managing day-to-day operations. In many ways, the small business owner has more challenges than an innovation team seeking disruptive technology!

In order to understand and meet customer needs, small business owners use surveys and CRM systems to understand traffic to their shops. Yet, data alone cannot predict transit attitudes that impact business conditions. Small business owners can apply design thinking tools to better understand their customers and to grow their reach.

One tool that helps identify customer needs and builds understanding is the customer empathy map. Here, you put yourself into the shoes of your customer and gain perspective on what problems they face, how it makes them feel, what messages they see and hear, and what are the pain points and benefits of existing products and services. Repeating the exercise for each of your target market segments helps the small business owner to identify the best way to help their customers have better lives.

Using Design Thinking

Design thinking offers a great set of tools and techniques that help product development practitioners, teachers, trainers, consultants, and small business owners to better understand customers, clients, and end-users. Empathy is at the heart of design thinking so that you deliver products and services that truly meet customer needs and make them happy.

Many of the design thinking tools utilize all our senses to hear, see, and touch artifacts that bring data to life. Design thinking draws on collaborative problem-solving, recognizing that the best ideas are nurtured by a group of people with different experiences and viewpoints. Finally, design thinking is it creative process, often starting with a blank sheet of paper and no preconceived notions of products or customer behaviors.

Learn More

If you are a management consultant or small business owner struggling to identify customers and solutions, you need to join the Life Design Master Mind group. In Life Design Master Mind, we use design thinking applied to life and investigate how to achieve our best purpose, what steps to take in the next phase of life, and how to help those around us. Join me on 21 October 2019 at noon CDT (1 pm EDT/10 am PDT) for a Q&A webinar and Life Design Master Mind pilot. Register now!

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Routines for Innovation Teams

Posted on 09.05.19

Last week, we discussed two key arenas for success with innovation teams – communication and the project charter. Good communication is obvious in all areas of our lives, but we are often staggeringly inept at sharing information when needed by others. The project charter is a critical guiding document for the team that lays out boundaries and constraints for the product development effort. You can watch a short video on communication and charter here.

While skills development is one of the biggest concerns for innovation executives and leaders, routines in innovation processes can build habits that drive success. Many of the systems and processes in new product development (NPD) are detailed and sophisticated so that companies minimize risk and maximize ROI. On the other hand, routines for project teams are simple and inexpensive with high returns.

Rewards and Recognition

Most of us get up every day and go to work for a purpose. We might say we need to earn money to pay the bills, but as creative professionals, our purpose in working is far deeper. People drawn to innovation, design, and development work, value helping others and improving lives. Hiring for Purpose is the first practice in the Initiation and Structure element of the Virtual Team Model (VTM).

***Element 1 of the Virtual Team Model***

Human beings also want to reap rewards when we fulfill our purpose. Creating a new product that makes it easier to do yard work or yield an increased throughput at the factory are achievements worth celebrating. Recognition of successes in innovation is an important motivator for teams, especially when the challenges seem insurmountable.

NPD teams can build rewards and recognition into their daily routines. For example, daily stand-up meetings can also celebrate successes when goals are met, and tests are completed. Innovation professionals can gather in an informal celebration at lunch after a successful gate review. Displaying the first-run production batches in commemorative packaging builds morale and showcases the team’s efforts.

Rewards and recognition should also include profit-sharing for the new product or business as well. Profit-sharing and stock options are long-term rewards that encourage strategic development rather than quick hits. Longer term rewards also demonstrate the organization’s commitment to learning and development for the innovation teams.

Renewal

Too often, we are on the go all the time. Because of the dedication to the purpose and mission of new product development, innovation professionals often put in long hours. Especially during crunch times to meet critical deadlines and during commercial launches, team members work evenings and weekends, traveling away from their homes, families, and friends. All of this go-go-go takes a toll.

Therefore, innovation teams must build routines of renewal. It can be as simple as instituting walking meetings instead of sitting in stuffy conference rooms. Renewal comes from relaxing the mind, body, and spirit.

Japanese companies require a two-week vacation each year. The reason is that you don’t really let go of your worries and concerns with just a few days away from the office. But, in two weeks you have time to pursue a favorite hobby, breathe in nature, and rejuvenate your soul. Renewal is also the reason that churches and universities offer sabbaticals. The intensity of work in these professions – to help guide and educate others – must be balanced with personal renewal. Sabbaticals give preachers and teachers an opportunity to clear their heads of day-to-day busyness and to focus on important messages.

What is Your Innovation Routine?

Does your innovation team have routines beyond schedules and budgets cycles? Do you recognize and celebrate all accomplishments? Even the learnings that come from failure? Do you reward teams with both financial and motivational honors? Do you give your innovation professionals time for renewal?

Innovation is tough work. If you face issues with too many failed projects and demotivated teams, consider adding routines of reward recognition and renewal. Learn how at the complimentary Life Design Master Mind Q&A webinar on 21 October 2019 at noon CDT (1 pm EDT, 10 am PDT). Register here.

Are Your Innovation Teams Struggling to Move Forward?

If your teams are struggling with cohesiveness and generating timely results, please join us on Friday, 6 September 2019 at 12 noon CDT for a complementary Q&A webinar on Building Effective Cross Functional Teams. Everyone who attends the webinar receives a FREE work style assessment.

A Division of Global NP Solutions, LLC

Study. Learn. Earn. Simple.