Human minds run on stories not facts.

Dan Gregory   @DanGregoryCo

Most of us like to think of ourselves as making educated decisions, based on evidence and using critical thinking skills developed over time and with experience.

A more accurate description might be that, “We respond intuitively, then look for anything that sounds vaguely “sciency” to support our assumptions.”

Part of the reason for this is that during our physical evolution, over-thinkers tended to get eaten or speared to death. However, it’s also because during our social and behavioural evolution, stories came to be more influential and binding than accurate data - of which, there was often very little.

So how might this understanding be useful to us today?

1. All cultures are essentially values codified in stories

Cultures are defined by many traits and aspects, but perhaps what defines them most is their stories.

Think of the parables and myths from all of the religions around the world and throughout history. Each of them was designed to instruct and advance a particular moral code in a way that might be easily understood, accurately remembered and handed down from one generation to the next.

A more contemporary and commercial example of this can be found in the customer service training by Nordstrom the department store. Rather than giving customer service staff rote scripts or vague notions of what great customer service might look like, they share stories taken from their own history, that demonstrate what amazing service looks like.

One such story describes the customer service clerk who, on serving a customer who was buying a business shirt for a job interview later in the day, took the shirt out back and ironed it for him so he’d look the part.

2. Stories are portable and pass-on-able

In an age of hyper-connectivity, largely defined by the social media revolution of the past decade and half, stories, which have always been important, have taken on powers and abilities that should earn them their own Marvel Avengers franchise.

Indeed, stories have become the superheroes of the communications world, not just because they are personal, relatable, memorable and powerful, but precisely because, today they are unbelievably portable and pass-on-able.

3. Stories can be drawn from many parts of life and used to drive different outcomes

My business partner, Kieran Flanagan, segments stories in a memorable palette. She describes the 3 P’s of Stories as:

•              Personal

•              Professional

•              Public

Personal stories are incredibly useful for establishing a sense of intimacy, trust and for making vulnerability and truth more acceptable and culturally safe.

Professional stories, such as the Nordstrom example above, are ways of demonstrating not just where the boundaries of acceptable behaviour lie, but also serve to venerate ideals.

Public stories can include examples from sport, popular culture, from other organisations and even other nations. They’re a way of expanding points of view and diversifying input and behavioural examples.

So, if you want to lead, to create a culture of the willing and build engagement with your team, your customers and your community, maybe rely a little less on facts and data and invest a little more in your story-telling capabilities. 

And while you’re at it, spend a little time curating the stories that other share on your behalf.

Feelings are feedback not facts.

Dan Gregory   @DanGregoryCo.

OK, upfront confession, I’m not a particularly emotional person. In fact, when tested for traits such as empathy, I tend to produce the kinds of results that should put me on a watch list next to “Dexter.”

However, not being especially emotional or emotive by nature, doesn’t necessarily mean that I lack emotional intelligence. In fact, in many ways, it offers an opportunity to better understand emotions, how they manifest and how to manage them, than a perspective and perception that is more ruled by “feelings.” This is simply because, it can be a little easier to observe them objectively.

In fact, a tendency to “intellectualise” emotions rather than “feeling” them has allowed me to spend my life learning how to be people smart and to help others do the same in the process.

Part of intellectualising emotions is an ability to perceive them as feedback rather than fact. But this skill is not unique to me, nor does that limit its application by others. In fact, high performers and athletes regularly do the same and the more we train ourselves to filter feelings as feedback, not fact, the more power we can exercise in our responses.

Much of this thinking has been explored by Cognitive Behavioural Therapy drawing on the work of Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck, however its application stretches well beyond the clinical and in fact, this post should be considered as performance and mindset enhancement and not as therapy for those whose mental health is considered at risk (I’ll leave that kind of advice to others).

So how might we apply this approach to our own emotions and what kind of questions increase a sense of control rather than one of challenge?

1. Is what I’m feeling contextual rather than true?

In other words, rather than seeing a problem as a “universal” feature of yourself, your organisation or your team, ask whether it is actually an issue that is limited to a particular context, environment or time frame?

If you find yourself thinking, “Oh this always happens,” or “I always do this,” it might be worth challenging that assumption to see if it is in fact true, or simply just how you’re feeling in the moment.

Additionally, question whether your response isolated to one incident or one part of your life rather than being symptomatic of some kind of character failing?

The more you train yourself to question emotional feedback, the more you learn to understand its accuracy and efficacy.

2. Am I exaggerating the scale of the problem?

Those who work in the behavioural sciences like to call this, “catastrophising,” a name which, in many ways, is an example of what it explains. It essentially means the we are exaggerating the implications of an event or taking the specific and giving it universal significance.

Examples of this are, “This ruins everything!” or “Now I’ll never be able to XYZ!”

Rather than reducing a challenge or making a problem bite sized, it transforms the issue at hand into an all or nothing event. Which lead to question three:

3. Am I evaluating life in a binary way?

This can be understood as good/bad thinking or on/off processing. Which is great if you’re writing computer code, however your human processor is rather more nuanced and capable of far more complicated distinctions.

We’re frequently told that compromise is a sign of weakness and that we should fight (usually metaphorically) until our opponent is laid out on the canvas, however, this kind of thinking can be particularly destructive and often doesn’t lead to a successful outcome.

To overcome this, expand your vocabulary and describe outcomes with greater accuracy and in more detail. Also, be conscious of what a win actually looks like. I’m always amazed when working with leaders who do not have a clear vision of what a win looks like let alone what an acceptable compromise or accomodation might be. This makes success rather more difficult.

4. Have I surpassed similar challenges in the past? Or have others who are like me?

One of the things our brains tend to do quite effectively is to source support, research and case studies to justify our intuitive responses. The moment you screw up, that little voice in the back of your head will often just straight to, “Wow, this is just like that thing you did back in high school.”

So, try to arm it with better, or at least more expansive and current, evidence. Treat your emotions like a witness on trial. Ask them hard questions but also present evidence that might catch them out in a lie.

Of course, none of this is to say that your emotions are irrelevant or some form of weakness. Rather, it’s about being conscious that our emotions rule our rational brains, but they do so only to the extent that we can regulate them.

In the same way you might filter feedback from those you trust versus those who mean you harm, you can likewise train yourself to treat your emotional feedback as input rather than as “the truth.’

Engaging two levels of identity.

Dan Gregory   @DanGregoryCo

As much as we like to think of ourselves as being intelligent, educated, rational and capable of reasoned decision making, that is scarcely what shows up in practice. We are far more likely to act and react intuitively or emotionally and then to post-rationalise our decisions with whatever evidence or justification we feel is necessary.

Sure, I can tell you all about Porsche’s racing heritage, the science of aerodynamics and sing the praises of German engineering, but that’s not why middle-aged chaps like myself buy a Porsche.

In fact, marketers, advertisers and sales people have long understood this. Unlike idealists, academics and social rationalists, their goal is not to deal with human beings as they wish they were, nor even to be too concerned with the origins of human behaviour and psychology, but simply to make a sale based on who they truly are and how they actually make their decisions.

This, rather unexpectedly, requires a more nuanced understanding of human behaviour than many research methodologies can reveal at a surface level. In focus group research, we all go to the gym regularly, exclusively read quality non-fiction books and only ever order a salad at the drive-thru.

Successful politicians and business leaders have also come to understand this dissonance between who we say we are and who we actually are and have learned to speak first to the heart before engaging the mind. 

So, what really is driving us and sits behind our decision making?

All behaviour is identity driven

Human beings fundamentally act out of a sense of identity and more particularly to maintain a sense of identity congruence. This is largely unconscious behaviour that is anchored in our childhoods, socially reinforced and largely self-correcting. It’s one of the reasons that escaping one’s past can be so difficult.

Few of us need to be reminded how to act our age (despite the protestations of our parents). A more accurate reprimand might run more along the lines of, “Act more responsibly than your age is currently demonstrating.” The same holds true for our national, ethnic, religious and even sporting identities. These codified beliefs and behaviours are so intrinsic to who we think we are that we rarely, if ever, question them

When you challenge identity… it challenges back

One of the greatest barriers to making change stick or in persuading someone to change their point of view is that, you’re not simply asking them to change their mind or adopt a new behaviour or practice, you’re essentially undermining their existing identity. This will immediately cause your identity to rise, however irrationally, to its own defence.

Just think of any argument you’ve had at a family BBQ over politics, sport or even preferred music genres. The more you tell me I’m wrong, the more I’ll defend my identity and that of my “team”.

This is often referred to in psychology as the “backfire effect”. The more you try to rationalise your position and brow beat me with facts, the more likely I am to stubbornly hold the line on my identity.

So, if we do want to drive change, to persuade others and even change our own behaviour, how might the science of identity help us?

Firstly, consider “Who am I?”

The first level of identity is the self, or who you see yourself as.

People reveal their identities in everything they do - how they dress, the words they choose when they talk, how they carry themselves, what makes them laugh and what drives them to anger. In other words, if you want to know what’s driving someone’s decision making, you need to get good at watching and listening.

People tell you how to increase their influence with them by demonstrating who they think they are and who they wish to project to the world that they are.

Despite this, walk onto the sales floor of most industries or eaves drop on most management meetings and, typically, the wrong people will be doing the talking and not a great deal of influencing.

Secondly, ask “Who are we?”

The second level of identity is one of group or tribe or association. 

This runs deeper than loyalty that exists across family lines - that’s to be expected. We’re biologically designed to feel some sense of loyalty to and a desire to protect those we are related to (even if we wish that were not the case).

However, social identity is what has allowed human societies to evolve to nation status that far exceed any notion of tribe in the traditional sense of only a few hundred at most and is what allows human beings to collaborate and make personal sacrifices out of a kind of “social selfishness.” Put another way, this is where our gain becomes internalised as my gain.

This might be as mundane as standing in the rain to cheer on our sports team or as significant as the sacrifices soldiers make for each other in combat.

If we want to be influential and to be more persuasive, trusted and position ourselves as leaders in our teams and thought leaders in our industries, we need to communicate with those we wish to lead at both levels of identity.

So, who do you help us to be?

Psychographics are the new demographics.

Dan Gregory @DanGregoryCo

Understanding communities used to be easy. In the past, communities were largely homogenous where most people knew their neighbours and friendly communities would even acknowledge those they didn’t know well with a nod in the street.

But today, many of us struggle to recognise, much less name our neighbours, and choose instead to walk at pace, head down and headphones in, in a desperate attempt to avoid eye contact lest we initiate human interaction.

A practice brilliantly portrayed in The Mash Report’s “Northerner terrifies Londoners by saying ‘Hello’” skit, seen here.

In fact, communities and even the very concept of community are today far more likely to be found online that offline.

So, what happened?

One of the appeals of online communities is that it allows us to reach out to those who share our opinions and values, even if they do not share our geography or even demography. It allows us to feel connected and understood, especially when we feel like outsiders in the company of those around us. This is, of course, a tremendous positive to those who might have felt isolated in times past.

Compounding this is the fact that the internet and social media amplify that effect, creating filter bubbles where our own opinion is justified and repeated back to us (how reassuring). This leads to downsides too - increasing polarisation within communities, a reluctance to find common ground as well as questions we’ve never had to answer before.

For instance: In a world where communities are built online and threats to that community come from our geographic neighbours (eg. home-grown terrorists), who should the military protect? Where should our loyalties lie? And how might borders need to be defined in the future?

So, what does this all mean?

Firstly, if we want to be better informed, we need to explore opinions beyond our own, to actively cultivate diversity of opinion in our online activity and a little open-mindedness in our conversations. In doing so, we reduce the risk of biases and blindspots clouding our thinking and strategies.

Additionally, it makes a capacity to foster alignment as critical as any effort to build engagement in our communications strategies.

It also means that if we want to build communities, to reach new customers and to lead change in the world, we had better learn how to look beyond demography and get a little psychographic!

Performance is largely determined by our internal communication,

Dan Gregory   @DanGregoryCo

Whether you’re a leader or manager trying to motivate your team, or a professional trying to lift your own game, there is no shortage of advice on how to inspire and drive peak performance. Common factors include: clear goal setting, fair remuneration, professional development, a sense of purpose or meaning beyond money, a collaborative team environment, autonomy and reduced micro-managing, as well as non-punitive feedback in the face of failure and an avoidance to pointless meetings.

All of these are critical factors in motivating performance, however, the concept of motivating for performance is somewhat flawed in itself. Few people actually want to perform poorly in their work, in fact most people want to feel a sense of accomplishment and capability in what they do, so perhaps performance is as much about what we take away as what we add.

If you consider traditional sales training and methodologies for “handling objections” as a metaphor for performance, it might be worth thinking of how we handle obstacles to performance before we beat ourselves, or our teams, up for not hitting our targets.

Following are four obstacles that get in the way of our performance and motivation and a few ideas for how we can hack each of these issues.

1. How we perceive - Blind spots, opportunities and what we ignore

The truth is, “One size doesn’t motivate all.” 

Seeing team motivation or encouraging performance as a single skill is a mistake. We all filter the world through a unique frame of reference and different individuals are motivated by different core motivators. For instance, once a certain level of survival-based safety has been achieved, different people with have widely varying attitudes to risk and adventure based on their own personalities and personal experiences and backgrounds.

Some professionals are motivated by the new and shiny and they’re easily bored, others seek the rewards of teamwork and being part of an organisation that has shared goals and ambitions, some seek the intellectual challenge of solving complicated problems, whilst some professionals are driven by commercial outcomes (occasionally at any cost).

The point is, trying to motivate each of these types of people will require a nuanced approach.

What’s more, where these professionals will often fall short of their performance targets is that they are often so distracted by their own interests that they fail to see opportunities. If you’re always motivated by the next customer or sale, you might miss the opportunity to build a deeper and more rewarding relationship with an existing customer.

2. How we feel - Blocks, mindset and what we avoid

Our emotional state is fluid and how we feel on a particular day may not be how we feel the next or even typically. This may manifest as procrastination or avoidance behaviours as if we’re not “feeling it” we’re often reluctant to do it. 

It’s useful to understand the psychology that sits beneath the emotion if we’re to move past our blocks and embolden our mindset.

For example, a fear around a particular challenge or workplace activity might not have any basis in rationality or reality but be fuelled by a pre-existing definition of self that we had very little to do with creating.

A fear of sales may be motivated by a belief that “I’m not a people person,” which may be true, or it may simply be anchored in a single past experience.

It’s critical here not to ignore or dismiss the belief, but rather to shift it by aligning preferred behaviours with other existing beliefs. In other words, align behaviours with beliefs.

3. How we think - Biases, knowledge and what we prioritise

Despite all we’ve been told about playing to our strengths, our weakness is our greatest opportunity for performance uplift and increased confidence.

There are a number of problems in “playing to your strengths.” Firstly, it reinforces existing biases - when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Secondly, our strengths are often category generic - in a room filled with carpenters, being good with a hammer is essentially worthless and hardly differentiating. Thirdly, it also offers the least opportunity for performance uplift - You might be 95% efficient with the hammer, but have loads more upside when it comes to running the business of carpentry.

This means our existing knowledge often biases our behaviour, whereas exercising our weaknesses can often change the game for us and lead to exponential growth.

4. How we behave - Breaks, skills and what we do poorly

In the long run, design beats discipline and motivation. Not that motivation and discipline are bad, they’re simply short-term strategies. No one is disciplined in every area of their lives and no one is motivated every moment of every day.

However, by using systems and process design, and by hacking human nature, we can create a bias away from failure and towards success.

Consider where your breakage points are in your profession or when they occur during a particular day and then design a system that increases the chances of success. Many of us already use this thinking in our daily lives - we set an alarm for 6:00AM and another for 6:05AM, knowing that we can’t be trusted to wake up and stay up. A friend of mine goes to bed in his train clothes so that when he wakes up, he has to train or else face the shame of taking his gym gear off without training.

The point here is that rarely do we, or our team seek to underperform and often adding metrics and techniques on top of what we’re already doing, can be counter-productive. A better starting point might just be removing the obstacles from our path before we hit the accelerator.

How Creative Mindset helps fuel resilience.

Kieran Flanagan   @ThinkKieranF

Two trends that are increasingly shaping workplace and leadership conversations in most developed economies. The first is the increasing incidence of burnout, mental health concerns and a desire for greater resilience within our teams, and the second, is the rise in the need for creative problem-solving skills, touted by future of work research conducted by organisations such as IBM, EY and the World Economic Forum (research that mirrors the findings of my research in Forever Skills, which I co-authored with Dan Gregory).

It occurs to me that both of these trends are ultimately influenced by how we view “mindset.” As we move from a fixed mindset to one of growth and creativity, we also provide ourselves with the mental tools and strategies to not only be more resilient, but more engaged also.

So, how can Creative Mindset help you move beyond simple resilience to enthusiasm?

Creative mindset helps you see new possibilities

It is the very nature of creativity to produce new ideas, either challenging fixed modes of thinking or else opening new opportunities as others close down. This is a critical function of resilience.

Traditional definitions of resilience seem to have more to do with a stoic acceptance of hard graft rather than seeing it as a joyful process of progress. Limited mental bandwidth tends to see only one path to success whereas creative mindset sees or creates multiple roads.

This limited bandwidth often leads to a narrowness of focus, rather than one of being open to and creating new approaches, opportunities and of moving forward, and leaves us mired in struggle which can become exhausting.

Creative mindset gamifies persistence

Persistence is often depicted as a grinding effort rather than a series of experiments conducted with an attitude of play. Consider the difference between how many adults approach a problem (“Oh great!!!” spoken with a downward inflection) compared to how children approach a problem (“Let’s try this!” “Oh great!” with an upward inflection).

Of course, it’s easy to minimise the problems of a child and to amplify the very important problems we face in adulthood, but a critical difference is also one of mindset.

Creative mindset encourages a plethora of ideas, hypotheses and possibilities with a zen-like non-attachment to outcome. In other words, the more we contextualise solving problems as a form play, even intellectual play, the more likely we are to remain enthusiastic and engaged throughout the process.

The focus of the creative mindset is multiple solutions, not the problem itself.

A creative mindset is collaborative and sees external contribution as useful

The myth of solo success pervades our cultures and can be especially damaging in a business and organisational context.

We constantly hear stories of “self-made entrepreneurs,” who built their fortunes by the sweat of their own brows. Of course, the fact that they benefited from infrastructure such as the internet, international trade agreements, an educated workforce, distribution logistics and so on is rather overlooked.

The truth is, none of us achieve very much at all without the input of those around us and who work with us or for us. And when it comes to bringing creative endeavours to market, be it as a new product or service or even a completely new business model, this is especially true.

The myth of solo success actually costs us resilience as it encourages us to think of help or collaboration as some kind of personal failing. “I should be able to do this on my own,” is a mental frame that is not particularly helpful.

So rather than trying to “tough it out” on your own, seek shared success and support through creative collaboration.

Problems and challenges actually fuel creative mindset

Every creative endeavour in some way solves a problem or rises to a challenge. This is true of every piece of art that elevate the soul and every commercial innovation that transforms how we live and work.

In a previous article, I wrote about the 6 R’s or Resilience - Reframe, Regroup, Rethink, Rework, Reward, Reinforce. What’s key in these stages of resilience is that they are part of a creative mindset, creating new ways of seeing a problem, of thinking about it, approaching it and shaping it.

The goal isn’t meek acceptance or tolerance of challenge, it is engagement, even in the face of great pressures and expectations. 

My dear friend, Dr Jason Fox, often describes games as work that has been well designed. This rather elegantly captures the essence of creative mindset.

Growth mindset is a Creative Mindset.

Kieran Flanagan  @ThinkKieranF

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past decade, you’ve probably heard of Carol Dweck’s work around mindset and the concept of 'Growth Mindset.’

What struck me most when I first read her book, rather conveniently titled ‘Mindset,’ was just how much the concepts she outlined overlapped, almost completely, with how those who work in the creative industries are trained to think about challenges, overcoming obstacles, seeing creativity as a discipline not just a talent, being able to seek out and utilise feedback (sorting the Green Hats from the Black Hats - to borrow a metaphor from Edward de Bono) and to see collaboration and the success of others as critical to personal success.

So, I thought I’d outline some of the nuances that I’ve observed to exist between Dweck’s Growth Mindset and Creative Mindset - even though, I often use the concepts interchangeably. If anything, a Creative Mindset might be thought of as Growth Mindset ‘turned up to 11.’

Love problems

There’s a saying amongst the creative industries, “If it ain’t broke, break it.”

Not only do those with a Creative Mindset not avoid problems, they thrive on solving them. In fact, almost all creative endeavour requires some kind of tension, or challenge, or unresolved problem to push against, and in doing so, to fix, transform or revolutionise.

Truth be told, giving a problem or challenge to someone with a creative mindset is like setting a ball of wool down in front of a kitten. They can’t not play with it.

My dear friend and founder of Thought Leaders Business School, Matt Church, will often drop a problem into a conversation like an unfinished Rubik’s cube and then smile and walk away, knowing I won’t be able to leave it alone.

With a Creative Mindset, rather than avoiding a problem, or even embracing it stoically, challenges are seen as what makes the game interesting and engaging.

Try multiple ideas until solved

Creativity, amongst other things, is a numbers game.

We often imagine the stereotypical creative type staring out the window, waiting for inspiration to strike, for the muse to arouse a new thought or for a moment of genius. But in fact, creative problem solving is more discipline than talent.

Beyond not giving up, or persisting in the face of failure - trying again and again without losing enthusiasm, a Creative Mindset doesn’t just seek an answer to a problem, it seeks answers, plural.

A Creative Mindset finds joy in trying to go around a problem, over it, under it and through it, etc…

Which leads us to point number three.

See effort as play

And the game we play is called, “What if…?”

One of the joys of working in the field of Commercial Creativity, is that, the work itself is the reward, the process is intrinsically motivating. (For any clients reading this post, I still expect my invoices to be paid.)

It would not be stretching the truth too much to say that creativity is the original gamification of process. There is a lightness to creative problem-solving, even when the problems being solved are of critical, political and even moral importance.

The distinction here again is that the journey to mastery is as interesting and nuanced as the achievement of mastery itself.

Seek useful criticism

Commercial Creativity might be thought of as a capacity to withstand rejection and the killing of your babies - as for every idea that is designed, prototyped, tested, modelled and commercialised, hundreds, if not thousands will fail.

But that might be too narrow a view of how criticism is used by those who embrace the Creative Mindset.

Creativity, by its nature is fluid and malleable. Often, when running innovation workshops or issue hacking facilitation sessions, I’ll use a tool called ‘Wet Paint.’ The rationale is, as long as the paint is still wet the idea is still in flux, so let’s see where it can go.

Rather than simply being a process of negative criticism or of finding as many ways to say, “No!” diplomatically, critiques are seen as opportunities to build on the ideas and as new problems to be solved creatively - almost like increasing levels of challenge in a video game.

Collaborate to help others succeed

Few endeavours of any significance are solo events, and yet our culture has chosen to idolise the idea of the lone warrior, the solitary artist and the ‘one man against the world’ story line. As compelling as these tales can be, rarely do they fit with the reality of Commercial Creativity.

Every innovator has a team around them, every director a crew, every entrepreneur some professional service advisors and every change agent a community of followers.

A Creative Mindset sees collaboration as a critical part of the process and the success of others as dragging us all up rather than elevating a few and demising others. "A rising tide lifts all boats,” as the saying goes.

So, is it worth making a slight distinction between Growth Mindset and Creative Mindset?

In my opinion, yes. Not because different roles, tasks and industries require different mindsets or skills, rather, it’s simply because, should you feel the need to ‘turn it up to 11,’ it’s nice to know it’s there!

How creative thinking builds resilience.

Kieran Flanagan  @ThinkKieranF

#Resilience is often seen as an exercise in endurance, a heroic struggle against the odds and a stoic acceptance of “life as challenge.” And this can certainly be one aspect of resilience.

However, a useful reframe might be to see resilience as a facet of creative problem solving.

In other words, rather than running at the same obstacle again and again and failing repeatedly without losing enthusiasm (to paraphrase a quote from Winston Churchill), it might also be seen as an ability to create new and various options, approaches and opportunities while gaining enthusiasm - which draws more on the world of gamification than self-flagellation.

Given this reframe, how might we use creative problem-solving skills as tools to increase resilience?

Creativity puts your focus on solutions, not problems

Creativity thrives on challenges, problems, issues and breakage points. In fact, creativity in the absence of a problem to resolve or a inefficient process to reinvent can often struggle. Creative thinking flourishes when there is some form of resistance to push against.

What separates creative problem solving from struggle, however, is mindset and mental focus. Those who struggle tend to be entirely focused on the problem they face, even to the extent that they amplify its importance and impact, whereas creative problem solvers are more obsessed with solutions, asking “What if” and the “Have we tried this?”

Creative problem solving also looks beyond the one immediate answer and usually produces answers, plural!

Creativity looks for multiple solutions 

Creativity, which is really a capacity to move beyond default thinking patterns and reflexive solutions, is ultimately a numbers game. The most talented of your team holding only one solution is statistically more likely to struggle that an average team member with hundreds of possible solutions.

This understanding is critical in helping you and your team lose your attachment to a particular outcome and be more vigilant, aware and receptive to different lines of thinking and alternate possibilities. In fact, creative problem solving might be thought of as possibility generation.

Creativity opens new possibilities and other close

We’re all familiar with the phrase, “When one door closes another opens,” and it’s many variants including, “Open a window,” and “Open the door again, that’s how doors work!”

The central question in all creative endeavours is the phase, “What if?” But it might just as well be served by the question, “What else?”

When facing challenges, leaders and teams will often move too swiftly into convergent or critical thinking mode before adequately exploring opportunities and insights using divergent creative thinking techniques.

This is one of the reasons that it can seem so devastating when a possibility or desired direction closes down. It is seen as an ending rather than one of a series of possible options. Again, this is very much about shifting your mindset.

Creativity changes how you see problems and issues

One of the great challenges of resilience and of its opposites burn-out and cynicism, is the frame of reference we choose to use. This is partly driven by our often-obsessive attachment to the result we were seeking or expecting, but also because of our infatuation with the methodology used to achieve it.

A consistent practice of creative problem-solving skills, tools and techniques broadens our cognitive bandwidth, making us more open to opportunity and more flexible, agile and adaptable under pressure.

A sense of resilience becomes difficult to maintain when the options in front of us seem limited or much diminished. This can often be a false reading of reality especially when we lack the mental resourcefulness to imagine a new reality.

All of this is not to say that a healthy discipline and a little stoicism are a bad thing, simply that they might also be well served by inviting your brain to take Apple’s advice, and “Think Different.”

The 6 R’s of resilience.

Kieran Flanagan   @ThinkKieranF

In an age of unprecedented change, reports of change fatigue, burn out and increasing disengagement are rife in the organisational world. Add to this a shift in generation values that have left us all feeling more “fragile,” to borrow an observation from Nicholas Taleb, and you have the environmental elements of a perfect storm with the potential to undermine productivity, performance and commercial agility.

In this environment, it’s hardly surprising that one of the corporate buzzwords of the moment is, “Resilience.” 

Interestingly, in the research for my latest book “Forever Skills” with my business partner Dan Gregory, we discovered that the concept of resilience is not quite as straight forward as it initially appears. Among the many leaders and industries we interviewed across different continents. definitions of resilience ranged from grit, to determination, to mental agility, to behavioural flexibility and, of course, a desire to instruct team members to, “Suck it up precious!”

Unfortunately, many of these definitions are neither reassuring nor particularly useful. So, I’d like to propose a new definition of resilience that is far more useful and practical in the context of change and transformational leadership”

Resilience is ultimately a “creative mindset.” It is the ability to create new possibilities as existing opportunities or options close down.

So, what does that mean specifically and how might it work in practice?

Critical in this definition is a shift from “running at the same obstacle and failing over and over again without losing enthusiasm” to “being hard on objectives but flexible and adaptable on approach.” 

In this context, I’d like to outline 6 R’s of Resilience:

1. Reframe

Reframing is all about getting clear about what is actually going on versus what you are making it mean. Often, we attach a meaning or filter to a problem that is neither accurate, nor helpful - the latter being the more important.

Even the language we use can transform our experience of an event for the better. “Experiment #1” is a far more useful frame than, “Yet another failure.”

2. Regroup

Ask yourself, “Is the situation or challenge you find yourself in something you can actually solve on your own?” Or, is this issue something that might be better solved collaboratively or with a systems rather than an individual approach?

Those of us who suffer from “Superhero Syndrome” (you know who you are), will often leap into action and set ourselves up for failure when a little more strategic thinking, and accessing the wisdom of our networks and teams, might be just what is called for.

3. Rethink

Rather than simply trying again and again or simply increasing your work-rate, it’s worth considering if your approach is actually valid and relevant in the context of the challenge you’re facing.

Instead of thinking, “How many attempts will I try before I quit?” perhaps consider how many different approaches and tools you could throw at your problem.

4. Rework

There’s no way around it, at some point, you need to face down your challenges and do the work.

However, drawing on the Reframe part of the process, consider how you might engineer work as play and gamify the process so that it is intrinsically motivating rather than requiring constant self-discipline.

In other words, how might you change work into play in much the same way exercise is far more enjoyable when it is experienced as sport.

5. Reward

Breaking your challenges into achievable pieces, with relevant milestones and motivating rewards, is a well trodden and oft repeated strategy - this doesn’t make it any less relevant. 

Clearly there is a sense of achievement in overcoming a problem or in achieving a goal, however, given the previous stage’s encouragement to gamify the process, consider how else might you make progress both visible to all involved as well as personally rewarding.

6. Reinforce

Finally, any kind of change or achievement is made all the sweeter if it is sustainable.

This requires a “design mindset” rather than one of discipline only. Consider how the solution to your problem, your new habit or organisational transformation might be systematised with a bias towards success and away from failure.

The truth is, change and challenge are not going anywhere, which means we need to cultivate resilience within ourselves and in our teams, however, the kind of resilience we encourage and the tools and techniques we employ to do so will be a critical factor in just how successful we are.

Why purpose matters for innovation.

Kieran Flanagan   @ThinkKieranF

Purpose has become quite a complicated word in today's economic environment. It is layered with meaning as for some it connotes a willingness to be more environmentally, socially and politically conscious, where for others, it is more about pursuing greater personal and professional meaning and transformation in our work and in how we choose to spend our time.

The truth, as is so often the case, probably borrows a little from each of these definitions, but what does this mean for us working in the worlds of commercial creativity as well as those engaged in social innovation.

Maximising profits is no longer the only business mantra

Accenture Interactive CEO, Brian Whipple, in a recent FastComany article quoted Global Consumer Pulse Research (2019) as indicating that 62% of consumers now want organisations to take a stand on current issues such as sustainability, transparency and worker welfare, with 47% prepared to walk away if they’re unsatisfied. 17% suggested that they would be unwilling to come back having been disappointed.

Additionally, shareholders are now evaluating their investment options for both meaning and money, which makes a single bottom line focus an increasing risky strategy.

So, if both our customers and our investors are actively seeking purpose in how they spend their hard-earned, how might this shape and guide innovation strategy?

It means doing work that is worthwhile, not simply doing good

Of course, there is nothing essentially wrong with simply doing good, however a more useful filter for innovation might be doing work that is worthwhile. Work that satisfies those engaged in it, that contributes to those it serves as customers, clients and communities and enriches us all socially and environmentally as well as economically.

In other words, we don’t necessarily need to sell all our possessions and go and work for a charity, but rather we should seek to understand where we can make the greatest contribution and add the greatest value.

In this regard, value created, in the broadest sense of the word, should be our innovation filter or lens.

Purpose and innovation must be part of your organisation's DNA

To do this effectively, purpose and a culture of innovation must start at the top. Which is not to say that that is where all the best ideas will come from, simply that it is a leader's responsibility to both lead by example and also to create space for important decisions and the status quo to be questioned and challenged.

With CEOs and executive teams being held to greater account than the single bottom line, new metrics, behaviours and strategic directions must be implemented.

However, rather than constraining innovation, it is an invitation to work that is more impactful.

Innovation must be linked to value & contribution

This means that innovation must be far more strategically directed and less a function of a lucky discovery or random advancement in technology or experience. 

Fundamentally, we should view innovation through the lens of transformational leadership, asking, “What is the change we seek to make in the world?”

The changes we lead, invent and commercialise must align with our organisational purpose, advance its progress and be congruent with the expectations of our community - both internal and external.

A shift from “company man” to community member

Organisations often talk about the triple bottom line including People, Profit & Planet. And this can be a valuable filter for making strategic decisions at a leadership and executive level. 

I have found making the following distinctions useful for fuelling innovation strategy and shaping the questions we should ask to ensure we are driving Innovation on Purpose:

1. Commercial - Is it economically sensible and sustainable?

2. Contribution - is is work that is worthwhile and makes the lives of those we serve better?

3. Community - Does it serve our people and the communities and environments they inhabit? (The distinction between the two can often be artificial and prejudicial.)

Ultimately, purpose should sit at the centre of all of your innovation initiatives. This just seems logical and practical. However, it is in the defining of this purpose, and the value lens you create from it, that determines your success as an innovator and the impact you are able to achieve.

Resilience is no longer enough.

Kieran Flanagan @ThinkKieranF

Resilience has become the word of the moment.

How many times have you heard this conversation?

We’re facing a lot of change. We really need our people to be more resilient.

Resilience is so hot right now. (Best read with a Beyoncé flourish and finger snaps)

Yet I wonder if it is enough.

Is it sustainable?

Undoubtedly resilience is handy when you are going through a period of challenge.

Essentially, it means, “Suck it up, hold on and get through the tough time however you can.” Although "be more resilient" is probably a little easier to hear from a leader.

The problem is getting through is not really an option when you consider the amount of change we are about to be hit with. Some experts say we are about to experience more change in the next 10 years than we experienced in the hundred preceding them. i.e. a lot. When it comes to that much change your team can only 'suck it up' for so long until they will, eventually, break!

That is why resilience is not enough.

We need something more. So what are these skills that will future proof our workforce?

Agility and Creativity.

Agility is the ability to change, to bend and alter our points of view and approach. It's about re-thinking, un-thinking and out-thinking.

Creativity is ability to develop new thinking and ideas. Ultimately, it's a capacity to drive change rather than being driven by it.

Reframe time: You don't have all year

Kieran Flanagan @ThinkKieranF

I am pretty sure  Xmas just happened and somehow it’s April. Hilarious. IT IS APRIL! Just 263 sleeps until Xmas again. Perhaps it's time to "reframe time".

Not that I am a Griswald kind of girl who counts down the days in eager anticipation, (although I am partial to a fairylight or two thousand). But because I think most of us are constantly surprised at how fast time passes. We sport shocked, but trying not to be, expressions, (think Michelle Obama accepting Melania’s gift), and utter inane things like; 'It can'tbe Xmas again already!', 'Didn'tI just have a birthday?’ and'What on earth happened to summer?' 

Unless of course we are kids, then it seems to take for-evvv-errrr for it to be your birthday, holidays or Xmas again.

When you grow up it seems you enter a time warp and time speeds up right?

Scientists have been trying to figure out this phenomena and whilst there are a number of theories from relative experience, to amount of stuff you need to fit in to life, there is no real agreement. We just know that it certainly feels that way.

So until these scientists figure out how to extend time or bend time, we'd do well to learn how to reframe time.

Perhaps because in reality a year isn'tlong at all. It is a meagre 52 weekends. That's not even one and a half lined A4 pages of ideas (I counted 38 lines on mine) of things you want to do or books you want to read or extreme haikus to write, the last one’s just me right? Do you feel my panicpeople?Breathe in... breathe out.

I like to reframe time when I am working with businesses and people.

52 weekends or 4 quarters of thirteen.

52 Mondays to make those calls. 52 weeks to try that experiment, learn that skill or ask for that business. 52 chances.

I like to remember I will only have my daughter Darcy as an eight year old with all her eight year old curiosity, creativity and cleverness for 52 precious weeks (particularly when she is having one of her I am a teenager in a child’s body moments)…  52 weekends for eight year old adventures.

A year isn’tlong. Yet most of us are stuck in our childhood perspectives of time thinking we have all year. Our thinking needs changing.

We need to think differently about time.

You see folks, this year we are a quarter done. This is the first month of the second quarter of 2017. Which means we are almost down to just one A4 page of stuff to achieve if you do just one thing a week.

Not one year… just one page left this year.

(Or 37 Wednesdays until Xmas for you festively minded.)

Make sure the stuff on your list is meaningful.
Go.

0 Likes

Don't ignore what is unchanging.

Kieran Flanagan @ThinkKieranF

In a world of relentless change, most leaders and organizations understand the importance of keeping up to date, but often forget the importance of looking to what will endure.

What is unchanging is just as important a consideration when it comes to inventing our futures as what will. The legendary adman Bill Bernbach (one of New York's real Madmen) wisely spoke about unchanging man (of course he would has added "unchanging woman" had the MadMen era not so entirely biased towards the masculine.

He observed, “It took millions of years for man’s instincts to develop. It will take millions more for them to even vary. It is fashionable to talk about changing man. A communicator must be concerned with unchanging man, with his obsessive drive to survive, to be admired, to succeed, to love, to take care of his own.”

No matter how our business or technology or trends may change the way we deliver value for our customers, Mr Bernbach is of course, correct. Core human drivers will not dissipate.

We will still want to feel important, to matter, to connect to feel like us showing up to work made a difference.

We will buy emotionally, feel fear, worry for our loved ones (and their futures) and want to love.

We will be driven by ego, to prefer to do more of the things we are good at, that make us feel good, that trigger dopamine releases deep into our cerebellums.

None of these things will change because they are core to who people are.

When we understand this we can look to the heart of our businesses and consider how we serve the deepest motivators of humanity. If and when we do we can rest assured that no matter what technological or other changes occur (often beyond our control) what we offer will still be fundamentally relevant.

The howwe deliver might be different but the core of whatwe deliver may not change at all.

Loyalty might just be an old-fashioned ideal.

Kieran Flanagan @ThinkKieranF

"Surely not," you say! Well, hear me out.

Staff loyalty was once the ultimate measure of a leader. When a leader was great people stuck around. They progressed through the company. They grew old there. They got a gold watch.

Today staff tenure is in decline. The average length of time millennials stay in a job for  is now sitting at around 3 years. And it's predicted to decrease further.

The paradigm has changed, broad experience now trumps long experience.

People come and people go. They get a lunch, or a cake, a silly leaving card or perhaps an emotionally stunted "all-staff" email with a "thank you - its been great" kind of vibe.

In this world staff turnover measures may not be the right ones to obsess over and in the future, tenure itself may be viewed as an archaic measure. Loyalty, once telling of the type of leader you were, might become irrelevant.

Instead leaders will be judged on their ability to rally people to their vision and cause. How they stand up, what they stand for, who they stand with and what they stand against will matter far more than how well they stand in line.

The workplace of the future will be driven by oneness of purpose. People will unite to drive change, to do something extraordinary and then dissipate as the need does. In this workplace we don't want loyal people we want skilful, knowledgeable, driven people who have bought into what they are here to do.

In short, Workplaces characterized by loyalty and tenure will soon be replaced with cultures of the willing, of the voluntary, of the enthusiastic.

Future Leadership: How do we lead when they no longer work FOR us?

Kieran Flanagan @ThinkKieranF

Ah the good old days when leadership resembled a tidy, symmetrical pyramid of hierarchical control. Leaders at the top with layers of obedient minions, ready to do your bidding... or suffer the inevitable consequences. But what does future leadership look like?

Things were far from equitable but nonetheless the way leadership worked was relatively simple, almost parental, "Just do as you're told!"

Future leadership looks far less geometrical, and far more complicated. And if anything, it is going to become even less orderly and controlled.

Workplace trends like off-shoring, out-sourcing, the rise of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship and the rise of the freelance economy mean that fewer employees work forus and more and more must be encouraged to work withus.

By 2020 it is estimated that 40% of the workforce will be self employed (Source: The Intuit 2020 report).

This means employees, your team, your staff, will no longer work for you.

They will work with other businesses as well as you.

They will work on projects.

But most critically, they will work for themselves.

This will fundamentally shift the kind of leadership we require. Leaders will be required to rely less on positional authority and more on a capacity to rally followers to their cause.

Leaders will have to really stand up for something that inspires others to want to get involved, not just pay lip service to a vision that sounds like it was spat out of a Dilbert Mission Statement Generator.

Tomorrow's leaders will need to understand who people are and just as importantly, who they aspire to be.

This kind of leadership will be defined by those we chooseto follow, not those we a coerced into following.

Why you should forget work life balance and have cocktails instead.

Kieran Flanagan @ThinkKieranF

Work life balance makes me vomit in my mouth a little. It’s one of those phrases used constantly but in truth it sets all of us up to fail. I prefer the notion of work life blending. Here’s why.

Work life balance is an oppositional concept. 

On one side we  have life and the other work. ‘In the red corner we have life… love, family, fun stuff and in the blue we have work… hours, money, stress’. Not necessarily the truth, because if we are honest, family can be stressful at times and work can be meaningful and a source of joy. But the game makes it one or the other. It’s a battle that makes the Hunger Games look friendly.

That’s right, the game we have somehow found ourselves playing is to attempt to have them as equals. It is a fantasy state of perfect equilibrium, a nirvana where everyone and everything is in perfect harmony. Then real life happens and we rarely have anything remotely resembling balance and we feel like enormous failures.

Balance is hard to maintain

Balance is something that is ridiculously difficult to maintain. It’s like a seesaw (or teeter totter for my American readers). Easily out of balance. Do you remember as kids trying to get a see saw to maintain equilibrium? You shuffled up and down, you added kids and took them away and it was nearly impossible to do. Sometimes, almost by magic you managed to get the weight to distance ratio correct, for a perfect moment you hung in the air. It was beautiful, but it was fleeting. The slightest shift from one of the kids sent it back out of balance. So too with work life balance. It is precarious and too easy to upset.

What we are balancing is a ridiculously long list

Thirdly we have made the list of things that go towards ‘balance’ stupidly long. To have balance today and be deemed successful apparently we need to: be a rockstar at work, solve problems like a ninja, find an outlet for our creative expression, have a huge social following, be working on our legacy, have a 5 year plan, a life plan and a plan to give something back, we should be crazily in love, make time for date nights and other random romantic gestures, read bedtime stories to our kids, attend every assembly, performance and swimming carnival, share our feelings, get present to what we are grateful for, meditate, light candles, take time for ourselves, have lots of baths, see old friends, make new friends, call our mums every week, have the flexibility of plasticine, breathe regularly, eat whole foods, blend our own smoothies, serve food in cute jars, have a house that belongs in a magazine, throw away things that don’t bring us happiness, know more than one language, travel the world, climb mountains, collect memories, try the karma sutra, try something that frightens us,have a signature dish, a signature move and a surprise move or two so we don’t get predictable. Arghhhhhhhhhh!! I can’t take it, the list never stops.

It is exhausting just reading the list of things we are trying to balance, let alone attempting to balance them. Then we have to review them, get honest with ourselves and sometimes even give ourselves scores in each category. Sigh.

You can see why the very idea of work life balance makes me feel rather nauseous.

I say forget balance, try work life blending.

As technology blends our work lives and our personal lives together so should we. Trying to have them separate is onerous. We need to re-think the model and allow them to co-exist. To take a broader look than simply are they in balance? If the traditional model of balance is like a set of scales where you attempt to balance things by adding and removing things from each side, work life blending is rather like cocktails.

Work life blending is like mixing cocktails.

Everybody likes cocktails! Cocktails are made with a cocktail shaker and a whole lot of ingredients. You chuck in your ingredients, shake it up and voila!

Of course there is a finite volume and you have to be honest about how much you can fit in. You cannot have everything. But you get to choose the ingredients you like, how much of each you want and how they blend together.

I like to make mine a long cool drink, meaning I take a longer view of my mix. Often over an entire year. I ask myself did I have a blend that I loved this year? Did  I get school holidays off to hang with Darcy, did I kick the big work goals I have, have an adventure, learn something that made me better and did my extended family and friends not feel completely abandoned?

My mix won’t be yours and yours won’t be mine. But that’s the great thing about cocktails, there is no one right way.

Just your way.

Cheers!

Stop presenting. Start connecting.

Kieran Flanagan @ThinkKieranF

Something strange seems to happen when the word ‘presentation’ is uttered. Normal, rational, clever people who can hold a conversation, engage a group in a discussion and lead a team or company change. They go on stage at a roadshow, town hall or company gathering and suddenly we don’t know them. It’s a bit like someone standing next to an overly retouched photograph of themselves, it’s terribly awkward because we don’t recognise them. Who are you? 

It seems using the word presentation triggers a peculiar response in many of us, one that isn’t good.

People become someone else and often not a better version. They replace their individuality with their idea of a speaker. It doesn’t work and it leaves us all uncomfortable.

The trick is to be you, amplified.

Be you (on a good day).

Your job when you take the stage is you dialled up a little. Not you playing someone else. Not you trying to follow an eighties formulaic, ‘here’s how to do a speech program’. There are a myriad of speaker types that are effective and powerful. The trick is to know your natural style and amplify its assets.

Perfection is suspicious.

Human beings have exquisite inbuilt BS detectors. Beep, beep, beep! We can tell when someone isn’t being themselves and we unconsciously do not believe them. Robot like renditions of speeches are awkward for everyone. Overly nice, warm, enthusiastic, dramatic or emotional speeches make us mistrust you. It’s ok (and often better) to be charmingly imperfect on stage. 

Own your ‘flaws’.

I was once giving some advice to an amazing woman who was a little concerned about presenting to a corporate audience because she swore a lot, as in every sentence or two! I said to her that you need to let the audience know about it and gain their permission rather than launch into a verbal assault. She was perfect. She stood up and said “Hi, I’m Maz and I have to warn you. I ‘f word’ swear all the ‘f word’ time, but I think it is ok because I have an ‘f word’ posh accent and it sounds rather ‘f word’ ok. The room laughed and loved her immediately. There was not one complaint about her ‘colourful’ language. She owned her ‘flaw’ and shared it with her audience and so should you.

Stick to a structure, not just a script.

The key to a powerful presentation is structure, not necessarily a script. Some people do script things word perfectly and have the time and energy to rehearse enough to learn it that way. But for most people a script is debilitating. They spend too much time and energy trying to be word perfect and it costs them performance and engagement. If your audience can see you thinking and trying to remember you will lose connection. 

It is better to create a good logical structure that allow both you and the audience to follow along easily. Knowing what you are saying, why you are sharing it, why it matters to the audience, how it is going to happen and what you are ultimately asking them to do allows you to plan out your speech and still maintain enough freedom to be in the moment too. Which is ultimately what is important. A presentation is not a one way thing, the audience is part of it and having some room to respond and connect with them is important.

Do we have an innovation deficit?

Kieran Flanagan   @ThinkKieranF

On October 8th, 2019, Senior Correspondent with the Australian Financial Review, Aaron Patrick, wrote an article suggesting that Australia had an innovation deficit. 

The title of his article was, “Australia is rich, dumb and getting dumber.” Certainly, a sensationalist headline, however Patrick was referencing a study published by Harvard economist, Ricardo Hausmann, comparing Australia’s economic complexity to that of Bangladesh, Cuba, Iran, Mali and Turkmenistan, even though both our gross wealth and net wealth per capita is rather different to those on the rest of the list. Patrick also compared Australia with close neighbour Singapore, who, in the innovation stakes, is kicking some serious goals.

Now, if we set aside the patriotic knee-jerk response to defend ourselves with “Yeah but…" arguments, there might be something we can learn from this assessment if we address it openly and, perhaps, less emotionally. Particularly when you consider that Patrick also reported that 70% of our foreign exports come from mineral and energy sales, and that when you add in wool, food, alcohol, tourism and metal products this rises to 99%. In this light, it’s not hard to make the case that we are a generation of rich kids spending our inheritance rather than adding value.

Which is not to say that there is no innovation within these sectors or within Australia more broadly, simply that, in lay terms, we’re rich because China wants our dirt and we rely more on our natural resources than we do on our people’s resourcefulness.

So, if we’re doing OK financially, despite being “dumb,” why should we care?

Is Australian really dumb?

Ignorance and stupidity are, of course, very much dependent on the metric you use to assess them. 

There’s a famous quote that is often attributed, despite a lack of evidence, to Albert Einstein, “If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” 

However, if we choose as our metric an ability to innovate, to add value, to develop new business models and industry sectors, it might just be that we actually are the kid at the back of the class eating Perkin’s paste!

This should in no way be seen as a judgment on our capacity to innovate, nor of the intellectual talent we possess as a nation, simply that we are not realising that potential to the extent that we could.

Accelerating change demands new thinking

Perhaps a more charitable assessment than “dumbness” might be that we are comfortable, or even lazy. When times are good, and they have been for most Australians for the past 50 or so years, we tend not to want to rock the boat, to challenge the status quo or to reinvent the way things are working.

However, change is inevitable and in business, a capacity to be proactive in the face of change is critical.

This is even more true when the changes are manifold - the economic and environmental sustainability of minerals is being challenged globally, the world economy is watching a street fight between China and the US as well as the UK and Europe and there has been a global slowdown more broadly. All are concerning for the near and far future of the Australian economy and businesses.

In other words, we might need to prop up that “inheritance" with some innovation skills.

Competencies are often time dependent

So far we’ve talked about the economy and business at a macro level, but this also affects us at a micro level also. As much as our corporate, government and social organisations need to innovate, we as individuals must do the same.

Simply crossing our fingers and hoping our personal educations will remain relevant is a grave error and we must all commit to a lifetime of education. This also requires a particular focus on innovation, creativity and complex problem solving, according to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Work Study published in 2016 as well as the research my business partner, Dan Gregory, and I conducted for our 2019 book, Forever Skills.

Value demands remain but how they are met will shift

This is not to say that what we currently do and who we currently are is of no future value, in fact, the value we create is what we should focus on while expanding than how this value is achieved. A useful question might be, given that the world’s energy needs currently feed our economy, how else might we be producing this energy? And so on with other current industries and sectors

Rather than being caught up defending current business models and existing work roles, being able to transform our industries, creating additional revenue streams and more interesting work is a critical consideration.

To remain relevant (and rich) we cannot afford the luxury of being “dumb”

Whether or not you accept Hausmann's assessment of Australia’s “dumbness” or not really doesn't matter. 

What is important is the fact that if we want to remain relevant, impactful and vibrant as an economy and culture, we need to be more innovative in our work and more transformative in our leadership.

And I, for one, believe we are more than capable of achieving both!

Innovation “on purpose."

Kieran Flanagan   @ThinkKieranF

In its Future of Work Report of 2016, World Economic Forum identified an increasing need for Creativity and Problem Solving as one of the most desired work skill trends from 2015 to 2020. It’s a sentiment that was echoed in the research for my 2019 book, co-authored with Dan Gregory, called Forever Skills: 12 Skills to future proof yourself, your team and your kids.

Adding to this is an accelerating rate of change driven by shifts in technology, increasing competition facilitated by digital connectivity, shrinking barriers to founding a new business and scaling it to a global market as well as the expectation inflation emerging in our teams, customers and communities. 

With all of this playing in the background of leaders’ minds, you can see why innovation is such a critical capacity for commercial and social impact.

However, innovation is more than new product or service design, it is category leaderhip. In other words, it we either lead our industry, or we get led!

To do this effectively, we need a strategy that involves more than luck, more than trying to predict trends like a futurist or crossing our fingers and hoping our boffins (engineers, designers and product teams) are the ones who come up with the next big idea.

What we need is Innovation “on purpose.”

There are three distinctions we need to make around purpose when initiaing an innovation strategy:

1. Your purpose

When we speak about your purpose in the context of innovation, we mean more than the usual ego-centric conversations that revolve around the meaning you find add to your life and more about the value you bring to the market place, the contribution to those you work with and serve. In other words, your purpose, but viewed from the outside, not the inside. For Apple, it’s intuitive technology, for Nike, making participation heroic, for Kodak, memory presevation (well, that’s what it should have been anyway).

2. Shared purpose

Shared purpose asks, “Can align your value with their values?“ Because, until you can frame your vision, mission and personal WHY, in a way that demonstrates how it serves or matters to them and their WHY, you are not in relationship.

3. Deliberately on purpose

Just as importantly, you require the skill sets to be able to initiate innovation. To be inspired by insights that are socially desirable, tecnhnologically feasible and commercially viable. To be able to ideate solutions and new ideas by updating your cognitive software and inventing, prototyping and testing ideas and solutions we’ve never seen before. Ultimately, it requires a willingness to implement, to pilot, build engagement and create a business model that drives commercial, social and personal change.

In addition to the three phases of an innovation process; Inspiration, Ideation and Implementation, there are also three levels of competency required to innovate consistently, conguently and commerically. These are Culture (Organisation), Process (Team) and Discipline (Personal).

1. Culture

Innovation must be embedded as a cultural capability and imperitive. So many organisations speak to the importance of innovation but then reward and reinforce cultures where new ideas are not encouraged and the status quo is a protected species. Leaders of organisations set the tone on this, we need to make space for constructive challenge, and even conflict, but most importantly, creativity.

1. Process

Unless you’ve spent the past 30 years working in commerical creativity, product and service design and innovation strategy, chances are, you don’t feel “unconsciously competent” in the innovation space. This is why its important to understand creativity as a discipline, not a talent, a process, not a random flash of insiration. In the long term, designs beats discipline. However, discipline is also required.

1. Disicpline

At the end of the day, you need to do the work, to push beyond your default thinking and to challenge the llimits of what’s possible. Thinking, like all human activities, benefits from consistent effort and training. The more you learn to stretch your thinking, to think in questions not statements and to be open to new possibilities, the more likely those possibilities are to show up!

Innovation is actually category leadership.

Kieran Flanagan   @ThinkKieranF

A lot of people talk about innovation. Many professionals also think they are actively innovating within their organisations. However, much of what is called innovation might be better understood as iterative improvement that builds on what already exists, rather than breaking the status quo down and reinventing its successor.

Of course, iterative improvement is incredibly important, as well as being financially and culturally impactful. It also enlists many of the same tools and processes of innovation. Additionally, it feeds on and profits from our bias towards the familiar and the already understood. That being said, iterative improvement alone can become a risky strategy in an environment that is ripe for commercial and cultural transformation, what many of us think of as ‘true innovation.’

True innovation involves more than just new product development or service design and should, in fact, be thought of as category leadership. 

In other words, not only are you tweaking around the edges of current thinking, systems, processes and output, you’re actively transforming your industry and charting a new course for your field into the future. 

To be a true innovator requires more than expertise and more than creative problem solving. To drive innovation, you also need to be a ‘thought leader.’ So, what does this require?

1. Ideation - Add to the canon of your field 

Perhaps the best distinction to be made between being an expert or an authority, and true thought leadership, lies in your capacity to develop your own unique intellectual property. 

Experts and authorities know how things have been done and even how things should be done, but unless they can also imagine, inspire and implement new ways that things might be done, they stop short of thought leadership.

Consider what change is needed in your industry, and of these changes, decide which do you want to be known for leading. Then, be aware that whether you are fighting for a positive new possibility or against a current negative, you will be in for a fight either way.

2. Inspiration - Build engagement around your ideas

Great ideas are a dime a dozen. More importantly, great ideas often fail while inferior products and services dominate their categories. The truth is, as much as we would like to believe in meritocracy in the commercial, political and organisational worlds, a more realistic expectation might be populist democracy.

This means that our success in transforming our category has less to do with the quality of our product or service (assuming of course that an ‘acceptable’ level of quality and efficacy has been achieved) and significantly more to do with the quality of our engagement around our ideas.

Rather than leaving ‘our babies’ to fend for themselves out in the open marketplace, we need to nurture them, advocate for them and provide them with a supportive and influential network.

3. Implementation - Build it, then better it

Finally, to be a true innovator, we must be willing to go to market and test, learn from feedback and continually improve our thinking and our offering.

If a great idea is nothing without inspiration, then inspiration is of little value without implementation.

Too many great ideas die on the vine, but not because of a lack of quality. Nor is it due to too little excitement in the early stages. Far more determinant of your innovation success or failure, is a lack of will and too little action. 

If our ideas are important enough to us personally, and will be positively transformative for those we seek to serve, shouldn’t we also be willing to back ourselves and to lead the change we seek to make in the world?

So, by all means improve, iterate and increase the relevance and salience of what you do already. But while you’re doing that, make time to consider how you might lead your category and drive true innovation.