[FRIAM] HBR: Six Secrets to Creating a Culture of Innovation
article copied belowSix Secrets to Creating a Culture of Innovation - Tony Schwartz - The Conversation - Harvard Business ReviewSix Secrets to Creating a Culture of Innovation10:26 AM Tuesday August 10, 2010by Tony Schwartz |Comments (5)EmailTweet ThisPost to FacebookShare on LinkedInPrintFEATURED PRODUCTSGuide to Persuasive PresentationsDoes public speaking make your heart race? This 11-article guide will give you the tools and confidence you need to master public speaking.Buy it now »Guide to Better Business WritingOne-third of professionals write poorly. Don't be one of them.Buy it now »Guide to Getting a JobWhether you're a new college graduate, were laid off, or are seeking a job change, this guide will help ensure that your next move is the right one.Buy it now »WhenIBM recently polled 1500 CEOsacross 60 countries, they rated creativity as the most important leadership competency.Eighty percent of the CEOs said the business environment is growing so complex that it literally demands new ways of thinking. Less than 50 percent said they believed their organizations were equipped to deal effectively with this rising complexity.But are CEOs and senior leaders really willing to make the transformational moves necessary to foster cultures of real creativity and innovation?Here are the six fundamental moves we believe they must make. In all my travels, I've not yet come across a single company that systematically does even the majority of them, much less every one.Meet People's Needs. Recognize that questioning orthodoxy and convention — the key to creativity — begins with questioning the way people are expected to work. How well are their core needs — physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual — being met in the workplace? The more people are preoccupied by unmet needs, the less energy and engagement they bring to their work. Begin by asking employees, one at a time, what they need to perform at their best. Next, define what success looks like and hold people accountable to specific metrics, but as much as possible, let them design their days as they see fit to achieve those outcomes.Teach Creativity Systematically. It isn't magical and it can be developed. There are five well-defined, widely acceptedstages of creative thinking: first insight, saturation, incubation, illumination, and verification. They don't always unfold predictably, but they do provide a roadmap for enlisting the whole brain, moving back and forth between analytic, deductive left hemisphere thinking, and more pattern-seeking, big-picture, right hemisphere thinking. The best description of the stages I've come across is in Betty Edward's bookDrawing on the Artist Within. The best understanding of the role of the right hemisphere, and how to cultivate it, is in Edwards' first book,Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.Nurture Passion. The quickest way to kill creativity is to put people in roles that don't excite their imagination. This begins at an early age. Kids who are encouraged to follow their passion develop better discipline, deeper knowledge, and are more persevering and more resilient in the face of setbacks. Look for small ways to give employees, at every level, the opportunity and encouragement to follow their interests and express their unique talents.Make the Work Matter. Human beings are meaning-making animals. Money pays the bills but it's a thin source of meaning. We feel better about ourselves when we we're making a positive contribution to something beyond ourselves. To feel truly motivated, we have to believe what we're doing really matters. When leaders can define a compelling mission that transcends each individual's self-interest, it's a source of fuel not just for higher performance, but also for thinking more creatively about how to overcome obstacles and generate new solutions.Provide the Time. Creative thinking requires relatively open-ended, uninterrupted time, free of pressure for immediate answers and instant solutions. Time is a scarce, overburdened commodity in organizations that live by the ethic of "more, bigger, faster." Ironically, the best way to insure that innovation gets attention is to schedule sacrosanct time for it, on a regular basis.Value Renewal. Human beings are not meant to operate continuously the way computers do. We're designed to expend energy for relatively short periods of time — no more than 90 minutes — and then recover. The third stage of the creative process, incubation, occurs when we step away from a problem we're trying to solve and let our unconscious work on it. It's effective to go on a walk, or listen to music, or quiet the mind by meditating, or even take a drive. Movement — especially exercise that raises the heart rate — is another powerful way to induce the sort of shift in consciousness in which creative breakthroughs spontaneously arise.These activities are only possible in a workplace that doesn't overvalue face time and undervalue the power of renewal.Tony
Re: [FRIAM] HBR: Six Secrets to Creating a Culture of Innovation
*But are CEOs and senior leaders really willing to make the transformational moves necessary to foster cultures of real creativity and innovation?* Jeez! Are you kidding? I've yet to see anything but perfect textbook examples of the Peter Principal occupying the CEO position, except for companies with just one or two people. The skill sets that take a person to that level of corporate management have nothing to do with intelligence, innovation, or any desire to meet anybody's needs except their own. --Doug On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 4:51 PM, Victoria Hughes victo...@toryhughes.comwrote: article copied below Six Secrets to Creating a Culture of Innovation - Tony Schwartz - The Conversation - Harvard Business Reviewhttp://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/08/six_invisible_secrets_to_a_cul.html Six Secrets to Creating a Culture of Innovation 10:26 AM Tuesday August 10, 2010 by Tony Schwartz | Comments (5)http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/08/six_invisible_secrets_to_a_cul.html#comments - Email - Tweet This - Post to Facebookhttp://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250winname=addthispub=harvardbusinesssource=tbx-250lng=en-uss=facebookurl=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.hbr.org%2Fcs%2F2010%2F08%2Fsix_invisible_secrets_to_a_cul.htmltitle=Six%20Secrets%20to%20Creating%20a%20Culture%20of%20Innovation%20-%20Tony%20Schwartz%20-%20The%20Conversation%20-%20Harvard%20Business%20Reviewate=AT-harvardbusiness/-/-/4c61d75493d9f52d/1CXNID=201.5215456080540439074NXCtt=0 - Share on LinkedInhttp://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250winname=addthispub=harvardbusinesssource=tbx-250lng=en-uss=linkedinurl=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.hbr.org%2Fcs%2F2010%2F08%2Fsix_invisible_secrets_to_a_cul.htmltitle=Six%20Secrets%20to%20Creating%20a%20Culture%20of%20Innovation%20-%20Tony%20Schwartz%20-%20The%20Conversation%20-%20Harvard%20Business%20Reviewate=AT-harvardbusiness/-/-/4c61d75493d9f52d/2CXNID=201.5215456080540439074NXCtt=0 - Print FEATURED PRODUCTS - [image: Related Product 1]http://hbr.org/product/guide-to-persuasive-presentations/an/12795-PDF-ENG?referral=00270cm_sp=endeca-_-related-_-link Guide to Persuasive Presentationshttp://hbr.org/product/guide-to-persuasive-presentations/an/12795-PDF-ENG?referral=00270cm_sp=endeca-_-related-_-link Does public speaking make your heart race? This 11-article guide will give you the tools and confidence you need to master public speaking. Buy it now »http://hbr.org/product/guide-to-persuasive-presentations/an/12795-PDF-ENG?referral=00270cm_sp=endeca-_-related-_-link - [image: Related Product 2]http://hbr.org/product/guide-to-better-business-writing/an/1002-PDF-ENG?referral=00270cm_sp=endeca-_-related-_-linkGuide to Better Business Writinghttp://hbr.org/product/guide-to-better-business-writing/an/1002-PDF-ENG?referral=00270cm_sp=endeca-_-related-_-link One-third of professionals write poorly. Don't be one of them. Buy it now »http://hbr.org/product/guide-to-better-business-writing/an/1002-PDF-ENG?referral=00270cm_sp=endeca-_-related-_-link - [image: Related Product 3]http://hbr.org/product/guide-to-getting-a-job/an/12917-PDF-ENG?referral=00270cm_sp=endeca-_-related-_-linkGuide to Getting a Jobhttp://hbr.org/product/guide-to-getting-a-job/an/12917-PDF-ENG?referral=00270cm_sp=endeca-_-related-_-link Whether you're a new college graduate, were laid off, or are seeking a job change, this guide will help ensure that your next move is the right one. Buy it now »http://hbr.org/product/guide-to-getting-a-job/an/12917-PDF-ENG?referral=00270cm_sp=endeca-_-related-_-link When IBM recently polled 1500 CEOs http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ibm-2010-global-ceo-study-creativity-selected-as-most-crucial-factor-for-future-success-94028284.htmlacross 60 countries, they rated creativity as the most important leadership competency. Eighty percent of the CEOs said the business environment is growing so complex that it literally demands new ways of thinking. Less than 50 percent said they believed their organizations were equipped to deal effectively with this rising complexity. But are CEOs and senior leaders really willing to make the transformational moves necessary to foster cultures of real creativity and innovation? Here are the six fundamental moves we believe they must make. In all my travels, I've not yet come across a single company that systematically does even the majority of them, much less every one. 1. *Meet People's Needs*. Recognize that questioning orthodoxy and convention — the key to creativity — begins with questioning the way people are expected to work. How well are their core needs — physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual — being met in the workplace? The more people are preoccupied by unmet needs, the less energy and engagement they bring to their work. Begin by asking employees, one at a time, what they need to perform at their best. Next, define
Re: [FRIAM] HBR: Six Secrets to Creating a Culture of Innovation
**Kids who are encouraged to follow their passion develop better discipline, deeper knowledge, and are more persevering and more resilient in the face of setbacks. Thinking out loud: Is the contrasting case simply individuals with no intrinsic motivation? They have no `discipline' because there is nothing they want to do. On one hand I can imagine that that there are good survival characteristics to learning (early in life) to manage demands that are of little or no interest to them. The children that can resist the cookie where `cookie' is not the sugary treat, but the thing they want to do. On the other hand, maybe if you make it to adulthood with no real innate curiosity and drive, then you'll never develop it? Marcus FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
[FRIAM] Can agent based modeling do a better job ( of economic modeling ) ?
http://www.economist.com/node/16636121?story_id=16636121fsrc=rss ( : ( : pete -- -- Peter Baston IDEAS business technology integration www.ideapete.com Cell: 505-690-3627 Mailto:p...@ideapete.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
