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

Core Values: An essential part of core ideology or not?

The most misunderstood, misguided and misrepresented part of an organization’s core ideology is often the core values. These values, which often give lip service to such things as: “We respect each other as equals,” “We seek diversity and diverse points of view,” etc. rarely manifest themselves within the organization they are written for. Why? For one, exactly because they are “written for” an organization and not with the input of the employees but, equally important, it’s because the management team is not equipped with the tools, the coaching and the know-how to help all members of the organization live these values day in and day out.

Why do core values matter anyway? If they permeate an organization, core values can help with recruiting employees, retaining employees, attracting and retaining new customers and creating customer loyalty. It’s impossible to ignore the importance of these values. It must be said that every company HAS core values — they just may not be the ones the senior leadership team created!

There is no better example of a company living it’s core values than Starbucks.  For anyone, facilitator or leader, attempting to create a set of core values and infuse them into the organization, I recommend reading the little book called  How Starbucks Saved My Life, by Michael Gates Gill.  This book provides a rare glimpse into a company that is actually living it’s values. I was amazed (and I think you will be to!) at how successfully Starbucks has created a culture of respect for each other, listening, and attention to the customer by bringing their core values to life in each and every store.

So, how does a facilitator or company/organization leader help leadership teams live their core values?  Here’s a short list of tips I have learned along the way:

1) Gather input from the organization. Use an anonymous survey tool to find out where things are really at and how far away you are from the values you would like your organization to embody.

2) For each of the values, determine how committed the leadership team is to actually “living” that value day in and day out. Articulate what it means to “live” the value.  Set aside those values that not everyone is willing to commit to.

3) Articulate what the organization will look like when all the values are being actively “lived” by all in the organization. Create a vivid description using picture and words to communicate your vision to the organization

4) Create and implement a communications plan so that every single person within the organization knows how they should live each of the values and what that means for their everyday interactions with co-workers, leadership and customers.

5) Set up a consistent reward and staffing structure.  Reward ALL employees based on how effectively they convey the organization’s values. Hire only those people whose own values are congruent with the organizations.

This little book, How Starbucks Saved My Life, is a powerful depiction of the impact an organizations values can have on both the success of the overall entity and, even more importantly, the happiness of the employees who are out on the line serving customers.

Click on this link to see the core values of another successful company:  Zappos

http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/21/news/companies/obrien_zappos10.fortune/index.htm

Cindy Diamond

IGNiTE . . . fueling creativity and innovation

Facilitating Team Building in a Time of Uncertainty

Most of today’s organizations function in a team setting. These may be cross functional or functional internal teams, client service teams made from internal and external service providers, or other member compositions.  Stability is an essential component to the success of these teams. Why? Because teams go through many stages before they become high performing — namely:  forming, storming, norming and finally, performing.  Stabilty makes teams more efficient and effective at doing their jobs.

In today’s recessionary, lay-off laden environment, stability is simply not a reality. Does this mean organizations are going to suffer from less efficient and less effective teams? Most likely. Now, more than ever, organizational leadership must prioritize team building amongst it’s highest goals or risk suffering an even greater setback from the loss of team members and the environment of uncertainty we are in.

Why team building? Because trust has suffered a great blow in organizations and this hinders cooperation amongst teams that have been newly formed or have lost or changed members. Organized team building sessions, with the assistance and direction of an objective, outside facilitator,  helps team members build trust with each other. Specific trust building activities, such as sharing personal histories, viewingthe situation from each others perspectives and understanding motivations leads to an increase in cooperation, admiration, and, ultimately, trust. Once this trust has been established, teams can develop shared goals based on the passions of individual team members.  Cooperative, trusting team members will then be able to work together to meet the team goals and help each other embrace their passions and contribute their best to the team.

Teams that spend a lot of time “forming” and/or “storming” typically don’t move the needle on accomplishments as quickly as teams that are high performing. The essential difference between these stages is trust and, as a by product, cooperation and shared goals.  The relatively small investment of time and money it takes to bring in a facilitator and set aside a few days a quarter for team building will pay back multiple times in the efficiency realized by teams that work well together and have developed a team perspective on where they want to go and how to get there. And, after all, in the end it’s all about the people!

Cindy Diamond, Founder and CEO

IGNiTE, facilitating strategy and innovation