How To Deploy Innovation And Have Everyone Participate
One of many myths about ideas that lead to innovation is that it comes from individuals or by a small group of creative human beings working together in an isolated room. But in fact, if we take a closer look in Thomas Edison, Ted Turner, Jeff Bezos, or even Steve Jobs, they are able to develop great ideas as results from interactions with many sources.
Anticipation on innovations, no matter how small, is a good basic for an invention, still, leaders has to nurture the right condition for innovation to grow. Here are 4 ways to connect as well as to grow and to make innovations possible:
1. Change The Organization Structure
For many years, organization structures has directly or indirectly isolated changes and innovations from the other departments, where these kind of conditions will not bring any effect on the company. To make changes in organization definitely need a structure which can actively help growth of cross function interactions.
If you are a leader, try to raise these questions:
- Do we have the infrastructure for innovations to be possible, which can delivers these innovations matching roles in every level of the company and involves everybody? Or whether the organization structure keeps on positioning innovations as an exclusive responsibilities for certain function or group?
- What steps has been taken by the company within the past year to promote functions and departments to share ideas and knowledge?
- What can we do to facilitate direct communication, person to person in all parts of the company instead of developing the traditional system that sticks on top-bottom approaches?
2. Create Open Market For New Ideas
In many companies, new ideas are scarce commodities, strangled by company cultures that disregard opportunities and need. Companies that are serious about changes must create a climate (culture) where every person within the company can contribute ideas, whereas the ideas are considered workable, they will be supported with financing and proper resources to make it happen.
Few questions that can be asked by leaders:
- Does the management really believe that mediocre worker can also innovate?
- Does companies develop a “change democracy” where anybody from any level within the company can raise their ideas?
- What have we done to communicate – verbally or by actions – that everyone in the company are encouraged to be a pioneer?
- If someone or some groups come up with new ideas, how difficult it is for them to gain supports, morally and financially from the top management?
- What have we done within these 12 months in using imaginations, know-hows or ideas from people outside of the company?
3. Use the Web In Developing Imaginations
Usually, information technologies utilized in companies end without any clear articulation of the benefit and functions only for simple and explicit knowledge management tools. Instead they have to learn to use this as a system for boosting innovation, which involves peoples in the company – and millions outside – in a global dialogue with innovation as it’s primary focus.
Questions to ask:
- Have we create discussion forum, where conversations about innovation is the main topic within the last 24 months?
- Have we use information technology infrastructures to distribute needed responsibilities to propel new ideas throughout divisions in and out of the company?
- Does the intranet has something to do with inspiring people to develop their thinking as to show them how an innovation project can be initiated?
- Can we use the infrastructure to create opportunities and rebuild projects that had no clear purpose?
4. Spend More Time For Interaction
Companies who want to promote innovations better create opportunities for their workers to interact with people working outside their business unit, people outside their geographic region and ideally outside their corresponding industries. Find ways to connect between different groups directly to share their point of views and create ideas together.
Another questions to ask:
- Within the last 12 months, has everyone in my division has the opportunity to participate in company held innovation projects?
- How often my company/division/business unit held events and forums for knowledge sharing and cooperation?
With those all 4 steps, companies can ultimately possess a field full of innovations, which in turn boost the organization to a new unprecedented level.
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Lessons From Tiger
“One of the thing that my parents have taught me is never listen to other people’s expectations. You should live your own life and live up to your own expecta
tion, and those are the only things I really care about” – Tiger Woods
Tiger Woods is a legendary golf athlete and perhaps the only athlete who could generate an income of USD 1 billion at 31 years of age. But this is not about his income we’re going to talk about. It’s about his life lessons and beliefs that led him to success. He has three simple principles; simple yet powerful that he persistently use in his way up, both in his career and his life.
Principle 1: Smile at Obstacles
You might be caught with surprise with his statement that said he smiles whenever faced with obstacles. Instead of complaining and whining, like most of people do, or avoiding, even run away from problems. He smiles because he sees an opportunity that could make him tougher if he solved it, and even though he failed, he believes he will learn something from it. Also, he smiles because he thinks that his faith is far more greater than any obstacles he faces.
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s has quoted “Whatever happened now and in the future are small compared with what resides in us“, that means a champion knows that he will always overcome challenges, because he has what it takes to do that.
The heart of champion will not fear from problems, instead challenged by them. Challenges were created for us to overcome with. It is indeed a gift from Above.
Principle 2: My Will Can Move Mountains
His enormous will has many time separate him from the typical. He believes that when he wanted something, he will get it. It is true, however that he did not necessarily won all tournaments. But he is the best from the rest, because his strong will create focus, which lead to concentration on one single purpose.
Principle 3: I Will Do It With All My Heart
His love in golf is so deep, he thinks, talks, and does, all has relation with the sport. It is almost impossible to beat someone who loves his job that much. It is nonsense for anyone who is enthusiastic in his work have to worry about his life. Every opportunities in the world are waiting for these people to have them. He spends hours everyday to work on his swings. When someone loves his job, no obstacles are big enough for them.
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4 Attitudes That Lead To Success
Have you ever felt that life is plain and quiet? Claude T. Bissell gives practical solution to have the passion back and make everything sparks.
1. Take Risk Beyond Safe Limit
Life will be less challenging because we never let ourselves in challenging situations. Of course, there will be risk also behind every challenge, but the risk is the only thing that can get us moving forward.
Bill Gates, richest man in the world is a very smart person who willing to take risk. When IBM need an operating system for their personal computers, their representative Jack Sams called Gates. Bill was unable to fulfill the demand, thus recommend Gary Kildall, owner of Digital Research to Sams. Kildall did not see the monstrous opportunities that laid before his nose and told his wife to do the negotiation. This has let IBM down and they wanted Gates to find another partner.
That time, Gates knew that this is a huge opportunity. He didn’t waste it this time, even knowing that he had nothing of what IBM wanted, he scrambled for solution. Later he was able to develop the MS-DOS (Microsoft – Disk Operating System).
2. Be Attentive More Than What Others Do In General
Whatever it is your profession and your job, must involve human interactions. By increasing care and attention to customers and people around us, success and happiness will follow.
Joe Girard, a salesman who understand well the concept of customer comes first, hold a world record of car sales which listed in Guiness Book of Record after registered 13.001 units of car in 15 years of service. His ability to understand his customers had caused his customers to refer him to their friends and families.
3. Dream Beyond Your Wildest
Big dreams can give us
bigger boost of unleashing inner potential. Steven Spielberg is a true dreamer. His box office movies have already generated USD 8 billion. Jaws, E.T., Jurrasic Park were among them.
4. Expect More, Be Passionate
By having positive expectation in this life, you will become passionate and stay positive no matter what lays ahead. Colonel Sanders is a perfect example of someone having such expectation. He was so passionate to convince chicken restaurant owners to buy his mom’s recipe – an expectation that led him to finally knock on the 1,009th door for his idea to be accepted.
These four solutions have been proven by them in their way to success. Now it’s your turn. Live your life with passion!
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8 Very Simple Steps to Free Yourself From Stress
This post is a sequel to my previous posts about stress management.
Never let stress disrupt your performance. Get over with it with these simple 8 steps:
1. Breathe
A long and deep inhale can help your mind and body relax
2. Have an Eating Pattern
Diets with high calories and fat can cause your body weaker and dysfunctional in the long run.
3. Exercise
Coordinated body movement can make you feel calmer, more controllable mood, and easier to handle pressure
4. Get a Good Quality Sleep
A deep sleep of 6-8 hours every night can raise your energy level. Making you ready to face any challenge the following day
5. See Bigger Picture
Don’t take your job as daily routine, instead, it is your pathway that leads to overwhelming success.
6. Empower and Delegate
You are neither Superman nor demi-God; learn to trust others to help you do your job. Only by this, then you can aim for a far more strategic role in works.
7. Perfection Can be Very Evil
If you spend most of your time trying to fix a working machine, you will never gain from that machine effectively. In short, you are wasting your valuable time.
8. Celebrate
Small reward to indulge yourself that comes in every accomplishment is a good motivation factor.
5 Ways To Move On With Your Life
Ever experience fatal mistake for once in your lifetime? So tremendous and caused many damages? Felt like there’s no cure and nothing we can do to amend it? The fact is, you are not alone. Everybody messed up big time at least once in their life. Think about one of these examples. Perhaps it rings a bell.
- Drug and/or booze addicts
- Money laundry
- Cheating on spouse
- Public lies
- Murder
- Burglary
- HIV infected from free sex or drug needle
- Misconduct in workplace, demotion
- Being laid off out of no reason
- Hit someone with your vehicle
- (The case could add up infinitely as different people has different encounter)
Usually, people messed up because of poor character. Because people choose to compromise over than to show their true character. Chances are, people with stronger character, provided they have a positive values, won’t mess up so easily. It is always a good investment to work on your character.
So, it’s done. Now what? There’s nothing we can do to change it, no matter how much time or resource we take to remorse or to amend them. This is something, that even many times have been said, that “we will never be able to change the past”. Forget those sci-fi movies with time machine and time traveler in them. Chances are those will be unlikely to happen in centuries ahead.
If we can not change the past, then the wisest thing to do is to ‘forget’ it. Each time after a huge disaster, there’s always an aftermath and mostly this is the painful part. We deal with our losses, with our loved one’s losses and it hurt, very bad. The 9/11 tragedy in NYC, the Aceh tsunami, onto the latest Mumbai attack. These left wounds. Wounds to be dealt with.
How can we forget such tragedy? Usually, time heals everything. Human has this very unique traits of slowly letting things go as time goes by. It doesn’t, however, cure the wound completely. But it will get better if given some time.
Here are few tips so we can overcome the feeling quicker and get on with our life.
1. Be Positive.
To the universe, we are only a particle of a dust. So if you think, you have a BIG problem. Think again. Try to think this way. Pull yourself away from your complicated thoughts and see if this is what you called a big problem. Other people might have had worse ones. So, instead, count yourself lucky. Only by being positive thinking, you can actually see there are lights at the end of tunnel and that this is not the end of the world.
2. Embrace Your Current Condition.
I know that you probably still haven’t accept your current condition. You don’t accept yourself being sacked unfairly, being robbed, being cheated, or diagnosed with deadly disease. But hey, this is a world where everyday people run forward. And they won’t stop even if they know your condition. This is the world where the fast outran the slow. The strong take out the weak. So unless you stop regretting what you shouldn’t have done or feeling so bad of mis-treated by someone and start to accept that this is your ACTUAL condition, you will never be able to move on. A book by Jim Collins “Good to Great” has revealed on a “Stockdale Paradox” whose held captive as Viet Cong prisoner in Vietnam war and he managed to survive because he (1) accepted that he was indeed a prisoner, living prisoner’s life, with no guarantee getting out from there alive, but at the same time he also (2) believed that one day, he will be out from there and reunite with his families.
3. Start Get Your Life Back.
When was your last time before the tragedy; hang out with your friends, went out to the bar, catch a movie, go skiing, eating out with your spouse, go bungee jumping ?(if this is what it takes of course). Anything that could get your lifeline going. You need sparks to light up your life. If you think you have been sitting too long, then you probably are correct. So stand up, make a plan on what to do this weekend, do it, and have fun with it.
4. Forgive Them, No Matter How Hard.
This is to some people probably the hardest part, especially when you are the victims. However hard though, forgiveness is needed in order to accept your current situation. Forgiving is not and never about losing. If you let things go and forgive those who has betrayed or treated you bad, you will be much more relaxed and you will have no chance of being the person you once hate. This is of course very possible because you have minimized the chance of retaliation to zero. If you think you can’t look them in the eyes and forgive them, then don’t force it. Give it sometime. Forgiveness is meant to be sincere. It has to be done and it has to be sincere. That simple.
5. There’s Always Reason Behind Everything.
Yes there is always a positive reason behind every tragedy. Unfortunately, we can only guess what it will be and will never know until we get it in the future. We can only connect them backward, not forward. Each of us has a noble role in this world, from the day we’re born. So this is our responsibility for God, our loved ones, and the society we live in.
The Art Of Letting Go
What I’m about to share to you is a case that happens in Gucci, one of the most high-end apparel label in the world originated from Italy. This happens about a decade ago when Gucci was faced with financial problem, family feud, and counterfeiting issues. The company was in a downward spiral at that moment because of a poor management.
Then they hired Tom Ford, a top notch designer from America to handle everything from design to product launch. Suddenly, there were signs of life. Tom worked very hard to get the company going and has done a great job according to the original shareholder, the Gucci family.
Then the shareholder changed, which means that the Gucci family is no longer in control. And the current shareholder was not amused at the “already much better” performance of the company because they think that the company was too “Tom-centric” that decision was so centralized even a mid manager could not or dare not decide for small things. This is also worsen by the celebrity status that Tom possess.
Then they changed the company CEO. They summoned Robert Polet, a Frenchman from Unilever, a huge company in consumer goods industry. Polet was handling ice cream business before he was asked to lead Gucci.
The media and fashion world was somewhat shocked by the shareholder’s decision to sack Tom and have Polet at the helm. How come an “ice cream guy” which strategy was a mass marketing and mass production can run a very delicate business of ultra niche market like Gucci had? There were jeers and boos heard from everywhere, yet the show went on.
Surprisingly, Gucci now has managed to perform much much better even compared to the moment when Tom left the company. In an interview with Polet, he revealed the secret that made him succeed. He knew that he is not a fashion guy and he will never be, so instead of doing designs, he managed to hire people to do it for him and for your information, Gucci has many brands under it’s belt that it is just almost impossible to undertake the task centrally. Polet called it “the art of letting go” that he gave full authority and responsibilty for each business unit to perform their activities and decide everything that’s necessary to achieve the goals that they had agreed before.
Now, there are three positive insights in this business case:
1. Always get the right people to do the job.
Before you have the right people on your bus and before you let the wrong people off the bus, never set the bus direction. In every business, it is not the hardware, or the system, product, appearance, or even quality that’s the most important. You will never have those if you have the wrong people working with you.
2. Give Them Direction and Watch Them Grow.
Jack Welch of GE has illustrated that managing people is like planting seeds in the right soil, then all we have to do is water them then sit back and watch them grow. Of course, occasionally, we have to pull out some weeds, but basically, it is like planting.
3. Be adaptive to changes.
Don’t be trapped in complacency. It is every leader’s biggest pitfall and unfortunately happens only on successful ones. Current condition work only for now. Yesterday might not be relevant anymore. And things have to improve for tomorrow. Set new objectives, challenge yourself and the team for better target. If the water is too still, it’s not alright. If you get all the brains moving, your company will move forward also.
Character – The Single Factor That Delivers
How a leader deals with the circumstances of life tells you many things about his character. Crisis doesn’t necessarily make character, but it certainly does reveal it. Adversity is a crossroads that makes a person choose one from two paths: CHARACTER or COMPROMISE. Every time he chooses character, he becomes stronger, even if that choice brings negative consequences.
As Nobel prize winning author Alexander Solzhenitsyn noted, “The meaning of earthly existing lies, not as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering, but in the development of the soul.” The development of character is at the heart of our development not just as leaders, but as human beings.
What must every person know about character?
1. Character Is More Than Talk
Anyone can say that he has integrity, but action is the real indicator of character. Your character determines who you are. Who you are – determines what you see. What you see – determines what you do. That’s why you can never separate a leader’s character from his actions. If a leader’s action and intentions are continually working against each other, then look to his character to find out why.
2. Talent Is a Gift, But Character Is a Choice
We have no control over a lot of things in life. We don’t get to choose our parents. We don’t select the location or circumstances of our birth and upbringing. We don’t get to pick our talents or IQ. But we do choose our character. In fact, we create it everytime we make choices, to cop out or dig out of a hard situation, to bend the truth or stand under the weight of it, to take the easy money or pay the price. As you live your life and make choices today, you are continuing to create your character.
3. Character Brings Lasting Success With People
True leadership always involves other people. As the leadership proverb says, if you think you’re leading and no one is following you, then you’re only taking a walk. Followers do not trust leaders whose character they know to be flawed, and they will not continue following them.
4. Leaders Cannot Rise Above the Limitations of Their Character
Have you ever seen highly talented people suddenly fall apart when they achieved a certain level of success? The key to that phenomenon is character. Steven Berglas, a psychologist at Harvard Medical School and author of The Success Syndrome, says that people who achieve great heights but lack the bedrock character to sustain them through the stress are headed for disaster. He believes they are destined for one or more of the four A’s: arrogance, painfull feelings of aloneness, destructive adventure-seeking, or adultery. Each is a terrible price to pay for weak character.
To improve your character, do the following:
- Search for the cracks. Spend some time looking at major areas of your life (work, family, marriage, service, etc.), and identify anywhere you might have cut corners, compromised, or let people down. Write down every instance yo can recall from the past two months.
- Look for patterns. Examine the responses that you just wrote down. Is there a particular area where yo have a weakness, or do you have a type of problem that keeps surfacing? Detectable patterns will help you diagnose character issues.
- Face the music. The beginning of character repair comes when you face your flaws, apologize, and deal with the consequences of your actions. Create a list of people to whom you need to apologize for your actions, then follow through with sincere apologies.
- Rebuild. It’s one thing to face up to your past actions. It’s another thing to build a new future. Now that you’ve identified any areas of weakness, create a plan that will prevent you from making the same mistakes again.
“Never “for the sake of peace and quiet” deny your own experience or convictions” – Dag Hammarskjold
Source: The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader – John C. Maxwell
The Change Leader
One cannot manage change. One can only be ahead of it. In a period of upheavel, such as the one we are living in, change is the norm. To be sure, it is painful and risky, and above all it requires a great deal of very hard work. But unless it is seen as the task of the organization to lead change, the organization will not survive.
In a period of rapid structural change, the only ones who survive are the change leaders. A change leader sees change as an opportunity. A change leader looks for change, knows how to find the right changes, and knows how to make them effective both outside of the organization and inside it. To make the future is highly risky. It is less risky, however, then not to try to make it. A goodly proportion of those attempting to will surely not succeed. But predictably, no one else will.
And to change ourselves effectively, we first have to change our perceptions”
(Stephen R. Covey)
People CAN Change
I will tell you how my life is. As far as I can remember I had a pretty good life. My childhood years were exciting. As a teenager, I grew in a very supportive environment. My passing grades were excellent. I’m married now to a lovely wife and have two cute children.
I’ve always been competitive in everything and hate to lose. This has been me since I was a kid. I believe that the competition was what kept me going chasing all those grades back then in school.
Then I went to college and when I was graduated, I was hired by a big company and being positioned as a junior manager in a production plant. Without me realizing, that character of “craving for victory” was still there and reflected in my daily activities.
Now at this point, I need to tell you, even I assume you already knew, that it was different in school from at workplace. When you study, you study yourself; of course there were group assignments, but it was pretty much solo. You work hard all by YOURSELF”, then you get the grades. It’s that simple.
But it’s different in workplace. In order to ‘win’, we have to work with the other and you know what? I had huge problem doing that because I used to be star and I just couldn’t stand working as a team. I felt the urge to stand out from the other.
The rest, I think you can guess, that eventually I won more enemies to friends – much more, and it was consuming me. I was 22 years old by the way. It’s hard living your day, knowing that people despised you. Then I realized that something is wrong, but I was perhaps too foolish or too young…or both…to realize that at instant. The climax was when some group of workers plot against me by ceasing the production deliberately. It happened for almost a week and had caused the company a fortune. They plotted against me because I was cutting back their overtime. I didn’t think they need OT, because the demand were slowing down. And nobody at that time in that company has ever done that before. I was lucky number one 
Luckily, all the bosses were supporting me and they knew that whatever I decided was merely to cut unnecessary cost, the problem was, it was lack of communication, so I’ve told. I was somehow cheered by the board’s reaction, but couldn’t lift my head up, knowing damages has been done. Two months after the incident, I resigned.
I didn’t automatically start to look for a new job. Why? Because I know that something was wrong. I knew something was wrong because I feel guilty. For causing one week of production loss, for cutting another’s income, for leaving the company that needed me so much. Yes, after what I did, they still asked me to stay after I state my resignation. The process of the handover itself took 3 months after I really left the company.
So, back to the main issue, I decided to cool my head off and tried to figure what’s wrong with me. It was one year until I decided to get a new job and to continue my study. During that one year, I pondered every single day and came to a conclusion that I need to change. I need to change the way I behave, I promised myself that I will not be a selfish person no more, I realize that I need to be supportive, instead of suppressive. And that winning is not the only important thing in life. There’re love, caring, participation, understanding, and empathy that’s just much more important than my previous definition of ‘Winning’.
Then I changed. I think I’ve changed..a lot. My life also has changed eventually. I have plenty of friends in my new company and I’m lucky enough to be promoted to a senior management level in my early 30′s. By the way, I still love to win. But I’m not leaving anybody behind. If people around me win, because I help them, then I win. That’s my new definition. So, YES, people CHANGE, providing there’s LIFE CHANGING EXPERIENCE that trigger inner motivation.
I hope my experience can inspire positive insights for you. Have a nice day!
