Taking the “no” out of Innovation

Individual credibility or position can have a real influence on the tenor of an idea generation session. When I’m facilitating, I am acutely aware of managing the energy in the group — particularly when it comes to managing group members reactions to ideas. I employ a few process rules that help:

1. No back story – no stories on how an idea evolved, just the idea
2. Every idea has merit — treat every idea with respect
3. Look for what’s good in every idea and build on that to come up with a new idea

These process rules help in separating an idea from the person delivering the idea. However, it’s not unusual for certain people in the group to carry more credibility than others. Their ideas often get more consideration than the ideas of participants who lack credibility due to seniority, negative attitude, or past performance.  These participants are often shut down by the group or have their ideas dismissed without consideration.

Here are 3 useful tips to avoid having our ideas discarded because of how they are delivered. As facilitators, we can share these tips with our groups as another way to create a positive setting for idea generation, discussion and debate.  (I’m going to ignore #2 in order to acknowledge my source!  These ideas come from Mike Brown of Brainzooming):

1. Don’t Telegraph Your Comments – People often begin a challenge by clearly signaling through their body language (confrontational), tone (frustrated or agitated), or words (but, don’t, can’t, instead, etc.) they’re about to challenge something. Here’s an alternative – stop doing those things! Think hopefully about the conversation, looking for points of agreement; this will help modify your body language and tone. Then simply start building on the other person’s idea, even modifying it, without allowing your words and attitude to suggest you disagree.
2. Conceal Your Sources – People are also often very sincere in saying where an idea comes from, even when it really doesn’t matter. This happens frequently with new hires who trot out ideas prefaced by, “Here’s what we did at my old company.” The typical reaction? “If your old company is so great, why aren’t you still there?” In contrast, introduce a potentially challenging idea without any attribution, foregoing even claiming your own ideas. By allowing an idea to be introduced on its own, you can start getting consideration for it without any negative baggage its original source may create.
3. Give Your Ideas Away – What might be viewed as a challenging point of view from you may be seen as completely innocuous when coming from someone else in the group. The key here is to be comfortable with sharing an idea with a receptive party, letting them build and modify the idea, and then confidently allowing them to introduce the idea if it means a higher likelihood of successful adoption.

Try these three, and you’ll be a lot less likely to get shut down, have your ideas shut out or be labeled as “negative.”

 

Cindy Diamond, President and Chief Strategist

IGNiTE . .. fueling creativity and innovation

Facilitating Consumer Insights Workshops

One of the most difficult tasks for marketing teams to do without a facilitator is develop consumer insights.  I’ve seen “insights” that range from purely self-serving (“Mom wants a more healthy popcorn for herself”) to insights that are simply a finding from the research (“Teens want salty snacks to satisfy afterschool hunger”).  Getting to real insights is difficult because brand teams are so close to their brands and find it difficult to take a more holistic perspective of the target audience.   One thing, however, is certain: a penetrating insight into consumer motivations can help successfully seed a product or brand in the minds of target consumers and successfully motivate purchase.

In my insights workshops I often steer clients away from two common mistakes in developing insights: the first mistake is articulating a “consumer insight” that is simply an observation easily addressed or solved by the product or service offered by your company.  Most often, these self-serving statements are not insightful or relevant to the target audience.  The second mistake is looking at consumer research as a place to gather insights. Research findings are not insights. They are information that can be used by marketers to develop a deeper consumer understanding which can lead to insights when combined with other relevant pieces of information.

So what constitutes a consumer insight and how do you get to them through the facilitative process? A consumer insight can be defined as:

 ”A penetrating, discerning understanding about consumer motivations that unlocks opportunity”

A true insight is actually well, insightful! The discovery of a new insight triggers an “ah ha!” moment.  It requires using multiple windows into the consumer, including observation, product trials, creative techniques, and trend studies along with more traditional qualitative and quantitative methods. Together this information allows marketers to view consumer behavior from multiple angles and look for and make new connections to the brand. It’s an active process that makes for a great facilitated workshop. 

The facilitated process follows these three steps (I will lay out the facilitated process in more detail in another post as this is getting rather long!):

1. Identify the specific question about the consumer that needs to be answered – such as “What would motivate teenagers to consume  more Coke?”
2. Seek out and review as a team relevant information from your research, observations, trends, competitive data etc. that address the key question.
3. Dig deep and work to develop the penetrating discovery or “insight” from this information.

Examples of powerful insights that have led to successful business building initiatives:

• “Today information is the key to power and freedom”    –  Microsoft
• “My pets deserve my love more than people because they are more devoted to me.” — Sheba Pet Food
• “In a world that is hectic and stressful, consumers need an opportunity to relax and have a break.” — Starbucks

Insights should be checked against the following list of criteria:

• Is it relevant to the target audience?
• Is it enduring (does it have the power to remain relevant over time)?
• Is it inspiring (is the team excited by the insight? does it inspire different applications)?

Marketing teams need good facilitators to steer them from information and findings to insight. It is difficult for marketers who are close to their brands to see the consumer and how your brand fits into her/his life from a broader, more holistic perspective.  A facilitator can help teams to get to insights by asking “WHY is that important?”  when looking at key findings (keep asking “WHY?” until insights emerge).

True discovery comes from looking at what everyone else looks at but seeing what no one else sees (even if it’s right in front of them)!

Cindy Diamond, Founder and President IGNiTe

Facilitator and Chief Marketing Strategist

What can corporate America learn from the Special Olympics?

This weekend I had the good fortune to be in the audience cheering on the figure skaters at a Special Olympics ice skating competition. My 15-year old daughter, Melissa, is a volunteer assistant coach for the team and I went to watch the competition to support her work. It was a very emotional experience for me to watch these skaters — young and old — with autism or down syndrome or other special needs — bravely take the ice to compete.  What I witnessed at this event is so relevant to all of our lives — if only we could take  a few of these lessons with us into our jobs and our everyday lives.

Lesson #1: Let me win but if I can not win let me be brave in the attempt (this is the Special Olympics motto).

These skaters struggle with coordination and other issues out there on the ice. They are not always steady or sure of themselves, yet they bravely get out and do the best job they can. Win or lose, they are proud of the work they do and are proud of the all the competition winners amongst them. How can we not see the corallary here to our jobs? Our co-workers are our teammates and often our competitors. We can cheer them on and watch them win and still bravely do the best job we can do — with a smile and good will.

Lesson #2: Look for and appreciate the talents in others and seek places where their strengths can benefit the whole.

Too often we look for and highlight the faults in people. We watch a presentation only to seek out the flaws and faults. We hear a new idea and quickly find a reason why it won’t work.  We gossip about what’s wrong with others. Think how different the world would be if we all responded first to what’s good about a person, their work and their ideas.

Lesson #3: Act with compassion

I think if every one of us was raising a special needs child, the world would be a better place! The parents of these skaters have all become a close knit family sewn together in their quest for support in providing a good life for their children.  They are the most compassionate, grateful and optimistic group of people. They have been taught to be truly compassionate by their own children. Compassion requires seeing the whole person and seeking to understand their position and their needs and finding a way to fulfill them.  Compassion is something that, as a facilitator, I always try to bring into my meetings because by seeking to understand others and fulfill their needs we find win/win solutions.

I know this isn’t my usual blog post but I felt compelled to share this amazing experience with my readers and hope that you, too, can benefit from it!

Cindy Diamond

IGNiTE . . . fueling creativity and innovation!

My daugther, Melissa with her Special Skater, David

Brainstorming: Finding the Next Big Idea

Finding the Next Big Idea (link to presentation)

Last week I went to Palm Beach, FL to present at the CASRO conference for market research professionals. I presented on . . . you guessed it! . . . “Brainstorming: Finding the Next Big Idea.” My goal was to provide some structure and process tools to assist these professionals in facilitating innvoation sessions with their internal teams or client teams. I’ve attached the presentation so you can view it if you’re interested. Feel free to post questions or comments and I will respond. I received some great questions from the audience at CASRO and I’m looking forward to your questions too! I hope you find the presentation useful (the link is at the top of this post).

Cindy Diamond

Diamond Marketing Solutions / IGNiTE

Principal, Strategist & Facilitator

Fueling Creativity and Innovation