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

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

10 Reasons to Hold Retreats to Build Your Business

I read this article on the Brandchannel.com website at http://www.brandchannel.com/brand_speak.asp?bs_id=197 and thought it was worth sharing with others interested in facilitation as well as with corporate teams seeking to conduct multi-day meetings to achieve a specific objective. While this article specifies “marketing teams,” most of the ideas are applicable to any team. The article text is included in full underneath my comments. Team retreats, much like those discussed in the Leoncini book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, can be a real boost to productivity and team building. While team building is typically a secondary objective, it often becomes the biggest catalyst for increased productivity and success. Retreats are unique in that they allow teams to take time to thoroughly discuss ideas, to come to mutual understanding by seeing issues from others points of view and because they allow the facilitator enough time to work with team members on trust building. Trust is the foundation upon which high performing teams are built. Without it, team members spend an abundance of time and energy on political games and competitive maneuvering instead of seeking cooperation and maximizing team synergy.   Another benefit of the retreat is really getting out of the mindset of the corporate day-to-day world and giving team members the time and space to think creatively and to envision the future. A skilled facilitator will structure this time so that it is somewhat less structured than the typical corporate meetings yet structured enough to provide multiple ways into the creative tasks allowing creativity to flow naturally for participants. I thought this article was a good reminder of why and when it’s important to get out of the corporate meeting room and spend some time in a more relaxed environment working, creating, ideating and playing with your team members.   — Cindy Diamond, Diamond Marketing Solutions & Ignite   Ten Reasons to Hold Marketing Retreats to Build Your Business and Your Brand by James S. Twerdahl July 14, 2008 issue Management retreats can be a very powerful tool for effecting change in organizations and brands. They do need careful planning and thoughtful and experienced facilitation, but properly done they can really help take your brand or organization to the next level. They are particularly important for those who are responsible for creating, building and maintaining brands. Here are the principle reasons to consider a marketing retreat for your organization.

 

1.   To reaffirm your company and product brands and overall strategic direction. Markets served by virtually all organizations are changing at an incredible pace. While mission and vision statements and the overall positioning of your brand should be designed for the long-term, it is critical that they periodically be reviewed and reaffirmed. Changes in technology, competitive activity, the world economy and any number of other factors can necessitate change in your brand positioning. At the very least, the near term strategic direction must be reviewed and adjusted to account for the changing reality. And, there are still a great many companies who have not formally set forth their brand positioning statements—a retreat is an ideal time to do so.  2.   To unify management. Even the best management teams can lose focus on overall goals as individual managers work in their respective areas. Retreats can be a good way of re-unifying the team and making sure that everyone is embracing the same overall objectives, goals, and brand engagement strategies. Retreats are also an ideal way of integrating new managers with older team members. Both in formal meetings and at breaks, meals and recreation times, participants can get to know one another much better and form bonds that are tough to forge when involved in day-to-day operations.  3.   To solve disputes and mediate tensions. Tensions and disputes arise in all organizations. Rather than letting them fester and become destructive and counterproductive, open discussions in non-threatening retreats, can be a good way of letting people share points of view and resolve conflicts.  4.   To identify issues. In the daily heat of battle, issues that have not been resolved often come up. Issues that cross departmental lines can remain unresolved because it takes unified actions to attack them. In a well managed retreat, issues can be identified, analysis can begin, and initiatives or action plans set to resolve them.  5.   To brainstorm and be creative. Away from the fray of day-to-day activities without phones ringing and e-mails to be answered, it may be possible to foster higher levels of creativity. Group creativity sessions can be highly synergistic as one person plays off of another’s idea.  6.   To develop new products and programs. In addition to brainstorming for new products and programs, healthy discussion about new directions can take place and plans laid. Because new products and programs typically involve actions from many departments, retreats can be a good way of outlining the plans and assigning responsibility, setting overall timetables, establishing budgets and other activities from the “big picture” perspective.  7.   To face and resolve crises. Even the best brands may periodically have to deal with crises of one kind or another. Typically when a crisis occurs, there are several hurried meetings to try and deal with the immediate situation. It is often helpful to get away from the immediate issues to assess the situation overall and make sure the organization is realigned not only to deal with the issue but not have it impact future growth and development of the brand.  8.   To provide management training. A key part of many retreats is on-going management training either from internal resources or from outside speakers brought in to address specific topics. Many retreats have themes and in keeping with the theme, speakers can discuss industry best practices, new trends or other areas to improve managers’ effectiveness individually and as members of the team. Retreats are also excellent ways of orienting new leaders in their new roles in the organization.  9.   To reward and recognize outstanding efforts. An important element in many retreats should be to recognize those team members who have really made great contributions. Discussing their successes and accomplishments, if done properly, can help motivate others and build a sense of team. Clearly the accomplishments praised have to be ones that contribute to the team overall, but acknowledging someone who has helped the team can really encourage others to do so as well.  10.   To build consensus. If done well, the first nine points should all be helping to build consensus and a unified sense of where the brand is going. This last point is highlighted as a summary because often organizational leaders may meet resistance in fostering change. Even though a leader can exert their organizational authority, it is often much more important to “sell people” than to “tell people.” Retreats can often be used to expose all sides of an issue and allow the team to reach the best possible conclusions. When reached as a group with everyone buying-in, the likelihood of success can be much greater than if the direction is dictated. Brands are organic and continue to evolve and change over time. Constant monitoring and reassessment are necessary to optimize the long-term returns from your brand.

James S. Twerdahl is the managing director of James S. Twerdahl & Associates.

Facilitation Techniques for Innovative Creative Thinking

Facilitating groups through brainstorming and idea generation can sometimes feel like trudging through mud — particularly towards the end of a day or with a difficult topic.  You can energize a group’s creative thinking by taking them away from the topic for a short period of time to a new arena that is parallel or loosely connected, and then returning to your topic using that new thinking. This is a lateral thinking technique called “associations” that can be used with any group. Let me give you an example.

• Let’s say you’re facilitating a team through an idea generation session for energy efficient flash lights.  You’ve been in ideation for hours and there simply are no more ideas flowing.  Ask the group to forget about flashlights for a minute and answer the following question: “Name some things that are energy efficient.” Record the responses so the group can see them. You may get responses like: solar powered watches, small cars, electric vehicles, screen savers, long-distance runners, etc.
• Next, using the list of energy efficient items just generated, ask the group: “What are the attributes of things that are ‘energy efficient?’” Record the responses so the group can see them.  Responses might include: electric, solar powered, turn themselves off, store energy, etc.
• Finally, ask group members to take a few quiet minutes to come up with ideas for energy efficient flashlights using the list of attributes just generated. You might get ideas such as: a flashlight that turns itself off after a certain period of time, flashlight that stores solar energy to operate when it’s dark, flashlight that stores electric energy, flashlight powered by human contact, etc.

The best ideas in this exercise often come when group members build on each others ideas. A wacky idea often becomes a very innovative idea as groups work together to build them.

Here are some other related lateral thinking exercises you might try:

• Get Fired Ideas: Ask the group “what idea could you go back to your CEO with that would definitely get you fired.” Make a list of these “get fired ideas” and then one by one turn them into ideas that would get you promoted.
• Worlds: Give each team member a “world” to go to, such as: Space, rock-n-roll, pre-school, high-tech, low-tech, nature, Hollywood, etc. Ask each team member to go to his or her world and find example of things that have a key attribute of your innovation focus (for example, portability) and write them down.  Next, using the association technique, make a list that answers the question “why is that item in your world portable” (fill-in the attribute you selected); build new ideas for your innovation focus from the list of attributes.
• Role Play: Give each group member the name of a famous person. Tell them to assume they are that person. Ask them to think about what’s important to that person, what their living environment is like, what are they thinking about? Next, ask them to invent a new product within your innovation project scope that works for that person.

The key to successful creativity with lateral thinking techniques is to move people away from concentrating on the specific opportunity area you are brainstorming on to another place. Let them incubate in the other place for a while and then force fit that new thinking back to the innovation opportunity.

Sometimes it takes a change in focus to open up creativity in the brain. Facilitating your group away from your primary focus to another area provides stimulus for their creativity and can be a productive, energetic and fun way to make significant progress during innovation sessions.

– Cindy Diamond, Diamond Marketing Solutions & Ignite

Facilitating Idea Generation — Divergence and Convergence

I read a great snippet today that said “Innovation is 10% idea generation and 90% process.” I have found, in my work as an innovation strategist and facilitator, that this statement is 100% true! That has inspired me to discuss the Diamond Innovation Process.

Click on the following link to see a chart of the process: Diamond Innovation Process

There are two main components to the idea generation process. The first is the expansion phase, also referred to as the divergent thinking phase. This is where the facilitator helps the group explore lots of territory where ideas might be uncovered. The goal of this phase is to generate lots of ideas around a clearly articulated problem or opportunity. The second phase is the convergence phase. This is the phase where the facilitator takes the group through a process to hone down the ideas and select those that are most likely to solve the problem or best address the opportunity.

The graphic attached called “The Diamond Innovation Process” depicts these two processes in a diamond shape. In the diamond shape, both processes have equal weight — the top triangle is the expansion (divergence) phase and the bottom triangle is the convergence phase. This is not always the case in reality! Teams will often spend the majority of their time on the divergence process and save ten minutes (if any time at all!) at the end for the convergence process. Ultimately, this does not produce the best result. Particularly when problems are complex, multi-faceted or mission critical, teams most likely need to spend at least as much time on convergence as they do on divergence.

Each of these phases has multiple steps as follows:

Expansion phase:

Step 1: Clearly identify the issue that is to be addressed with the innovation process

Step 2: Immersion: Explore information relevant to the problem. This could be trends, current operating environment, market research, competitive data, etc. — specific information that helps to shed light on the issue being explored.

Step 3: Identify opportunity areas: The team identifies buckets, called “opportunity areas” where a solution may be found. For an innovation session focusing on introducing a new snack product the opportunity areas might be “healthy snacking”, “kid focused snacks”, “snacking for energy”, and “indulgent snacks.”

Step 4: Idea Generation: For each of the opportunity areas, the faciltiator leads the team through idea generation techniques to help uncover new possibilities. During this process, the rules of brainstorming apply (see my post on “Setting the Stage” for some effective rules). As you move through the idea generation, new ideas become harder to find and the facilitator must be prepared with exercises that stimulate the group’s thinking. This is often when the best new ideas are born!

The Convergence Phase:

Step one: Setting criteria – the group works together to set the criteria for how ideas will be selected to move forward to the next step. These might include “fits with the brand” and “is unique in the category.” At this stage, be careful not to narrow the sieve too much or you may lose some great ideas before they get a chance to be explored.

Step two: Idea Selection — using a variety of convergence techniques (I’ll talk about these in another post), the facilitator helps the group narrow down the number of ideas to a manageable number. This will include voting, combining like ideas and championing favorite ideas. Championing favorite ideas is important so that the consensus oriented process doesn’t drive out really creative, unique (but sometimes difficult) ideas.

Step three: Synthesis/Discussion – the team comes to agreement on the ideas that will move forward into concept research or whatever the next step of your process will be.  The group provides definition around each of the lead ideas — perhaps, at this stage, creating concept outlines that can be written into concepts for the research step.

Step four: Research Preparation– this is the process where the new concepts are finalized and the research parameters are identified. Parameters include the key objectives of the research, the audience to test with, the screening criteria and the survey or discussion guide.

With this BRIEF description (I know, that’s funny!) you can see how process is 90% of the innovation process and ideas are 10%. Effective idea generation requires strong process for both the expansion and convergence processes. These two phases are equally important to the innovation process. You can generate lots and lots of ideas, but without structure and process for evaluating them they remain only ideas.

– Cindy Diamond, Principal Diamond Marketing Solutions & IGNiTE