Ideas Don’t Equal Innovation: A Filter For What You Could Do, And What You Should Do

Posted on October 12, 2010 by Scott Gould

I love Mike Myatt’s blog. A leader’s leader, Mike has a wealth of leadership experience and insight that he boils down into quick but prudent lessons everyday. I remember speaking with him on the phone at the beginning of the year, and it was clear to me that whilst Mike works with top companies and is a revered figure in leadership theory circles, he walks his talk. The very fact that he time for a phone call with me also speaks volumes about him.

One of Mike’s main things is focus. This isn’t just a singular focus on one thing, but it’s about adjusting focus as a balance between near sighted and far sighted. He famously says that “It’s not leadership or management, it’s leadership and management. It’s not strategy or tactics, it’s strategy and tactics”, which gives you an idea about this approach.

It is on the subject of focus that I clipped this article of his that demands some treatment from the Friends here at our blog. In his post, “Ideas Don’t Equal Innovation“, Mike lays out 15 elements to measure what you could do against what you should do. We have no shortage of ideas today and thus the defining characteristic of strong leaders, particularly in the digital space, is a focus that is not deterred easily by what they could do. We’ve certainly all been in that place where we’ve been governed by could instead of should.

Mike’s 15 Filters

1. The idea should be generated within a solid framework for decisioning. It should be developed as a solution to a problem or to exploit an opportunity. The idea should be in alignment with the overall vision and mission of the enterprise.

2. If the idea doesn’t provide a unique competitive advantage it should at least bring you closer to an even playing field.

3. Any new idea should preferably add value to existing initiatives, and if not, it should show a significant enough return on investment to justify the dilutive effect of not keeping the main thing the main thing.

4. Put the idea through a risk/reward and cost/benefit analysis.

5. Whether the new idea is intended for your organization, vendors, suppliers, partners or customers it must easy to use. Usability drives adoptability, and therefore it pays to keep things simple.

6. Just because an idea sounds good doesn’t mean it is You should endeavor to validate proof of concept based upon detailed, credible research.

7. Nothing is without risk, and when you think something is without risk, that is when you’re most likely to end-up in trouble. All initiatives surrounding new ideas should include detailed risk management provisions.

8. Adopting a new idea should be based upon solid business logic that drives corresponding financial engineering and modeling. Be careful of high level, pie-in-the-sky projections.

9. Any new ideas should contain accountability provisions. Every task should be assigned and managed according to a plan and in the light of day.

10. Any new ideas being adopted must lead to measurable objectives. Deliverables, benchmarks, deadlines, and success metrics must be incorporated into the plan.

11. It must be detailed and deliverable on a schedule. The initiative should have a beginning, middle and end.

12. Ideas need to be incorporated into strategic initiatives and not constitute disparate systems. They should be incorporated into integrated solutions that eliminate redundancies, and build in tactical leverage points.

13. Ideas should contain a road-map for versioning and evolution that is in alignment with other strategic initiatives and the overall corporate mission.

14. A successful idea cannot remain in a strategic planning state. It must be actionable through tactical implementation.

15. Senior leadership must champion any new idea being adopted. If someone at the C-suite level is against the new idea, it will likely die on the cutting-room floor.

Your Leading Thoughts

I don’t want you to discuss all 15. You might want to clip this for later, but there’s too much here for you guys to take time out now to spend a length of time discussing, instead:

Pick 2 out of the 15 that are issues that you have faced recently and have had victory in. Share your story and your lessons so that we can learn form your practical implementation of these points.

Photo credit

What Is The Defining Factor For Success?

Posted on October 9, 2010 by Scott Gould

I’m not necessarily talking about financial success. What is the defining factor that separates success from failure, in a marriage, a business, an idea, a friendship, etc?

Top 10 Productivity Tips

Posted on August 31, 2010 by Scott Gould

On yesterday’s post Ian Mcleary shared his 10 top productivity tips. Very useful:

1. Sort out my to-do list every morning
2. Start at 7 every morning.
3. Review my 99 day goals every week
4. Review my stats every week
5. Keep my CRM system up to date
6. Bring my laptop to meetings and be productive when waiting for people before meetings.
7. Do the GYM at least 3 times a week at lunchtime. The GYM helps me think and makes me more productive.
8. Avoid the laptop 1 day a week. You are more productive with 6 days work not 7.
9. Group my tasks by context, if I’m on the phone I try to do the phone calls all at once.
10. Make sure I’m doing 1 to 9

I’d say those are pretty good - although point 10 is blatant cheating.

Your Leading Thoughts

Dont’ worry about 10. What are your top 3 productivity tips?

Preparation WITH Action

Posted on June 30, 2010 by Scott Gould

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6skbTUknac

If you can’t see the above video, click here, or watch it directly on YouTube.

I had a phone call a while ago with someone who basically wasn’t doing any action because they were in preparation. Whilst I say myself that if you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail, I believe there is a difference between preparation with action, and preparation for action.

Let me explain:

Preparation for action believes that you need to create a masterplan and therefore need your key relationships and connections in place before you can do anything. It believes that all action will be based purely on this preparation. It says theory defines reality.
Preparation with action believes that everything is fluid. As I described yesterday, you can’t predict what will yield a return in your life – and that preparation in a vacum without action is like trying to create a master plan and predict every turn without understanding that once you begin acting, everything changes. It says reality defines theory.

The reason why I’m thinking about this is because my 18-year old brother Todd is at a cross road, as are many young people. People his age have been paralysed with too many choices, and the trait of our generation (I’m 26) is that few get into a working habit and settle down with focus. Of course, not that you have to be settled into a day job – but these guys also generally lack the self insight to know what skills they are amassing – and therefore find themselves at 30 without that fundamental knowledge of themselves, and then having to start all over again and reboot their working life.

The truth is these guys have a wealth of transferable skills, but no one to help them see that (because often they can’t see it themselves). I am concerned that we have a stronger focus on a process of “College, Uni, Gap Year, Job”, that when it breaks, people freak out, and that also skips the whole point of learning skills and leadership through action!

The lie that we’ve created for Todd and others is that you need to follow the trail of University education and everything will be OK. But I continually have graduates asking for my advice and asking to do internships with me because they have no experience and no one will hire them. They’ve been preparing for action – not preparing with action.

Preparation with action is a mindset. It just requires you to think “DO”. I keep telling the young people I work with to start doing what they love now. If they want to be film makers, don’t wait to college to ‘learn’ – start making films now! And the same with practically every other career.

My advice is two fold:

Do. (Well, Do Talk Do)
Rather than thinking “Uni, gap year, job, work my way up”, think “Where can I get the next transferable skill that I need to learn?”

Your Leading Thoughts

What would be your pieces of advice to the people in Todd’s position?
Is there a framework you know of that is more fleshed out than this that I can share with my interns?

Do Talk Do – What Collaboration Looks Like

Posted on March 18, 2010 by Scott Gould

I’m on a warpath.

I’ve decided that most of the content consumed on a daily basis is the digital equivilent of frozen ready meals that get warmed and served up in 5 minutes, before being forgotten, having added no nutrition value to the body, and being dropped out into the toilet a day later in the chain of useless bodily consumption.

The irony is that I’m posting content to declare a war of sorts on content, but hear me out: today I’m beginning a collaboration project that you are all invited to.

Do Talk Do

The other day my friend Robin Dickinson said “DO-TALK-DO: continual talk without action lowers your credibility. Far better to talk about the action you took.”

When people ask what collaboration looks like, I’ve now got an answer. It’s this. Collaboration is that we do something. We talk about it’s successes and failures. Then we go and do again.

There’s twice as much doing as there is talking. And the talking is based on action, not theory.

Here’s How It’s Going to Work

I’ve been speaking to you in the comments, on Twitter recently, and face to face with many of you, about a collaboration project. About connections over community. Today it begins. This is how I see it happening to start with:

We’ve all done something. So we arrange a time to talk vision – probably on a bit conference call – along the lines of a rough agenda. If you haven’t done, don’t come.
If no one responds in the comments and on Twitter to this – then fine – I’ve clearly got it wrong. I’m not going to push it.
The aim is that we move ourselves from being content creators to those who make it happen. Goodwill and all that.
Put your name in the comments below if you’re in, with contact details.

Want more info? Like what we’re actually going to collaborate on? I don’t have it. The whole point is that this isn’t me, it’s us. And we don’t yet know where we are going.

Let it begin.

By the way, thanks to AJ Pape who inspired me no end last night with a short call where he showed me all the ideas he had ready from Like Minds. You can see them in the picture above. He’s already onboard. Thanks AJ.

The Issue With Social Media Events: They Aren’t Social

Posted on March 17, 2010 by Scott Gould

Let’s be honest today.

The feedback is coming in from some events running right now – SxSWi, SMWF and some reviews from Like Minds, and something is clear to me: we still are thinking top down.

Yesterday Valeria Maltoni posted “SxSWi in Quotes“, which comprised mostly of people saying their favourite thing at South By SouthWest (SxSW) was, lo and behold, meeting people. Chris Brogan made similar conclusions in his commentary entitled ”We Could Do So Much More“, when he negatively saw people not connecting, as well as panels that weren’t attendee centric. Some how it seems the people come for the people, but the event isn’t organised for this.

Update: Jay Bear has added his thoughts on SxSW today, which also echo the same sentiment. Jay writes that “the feeling of community, and ‘we’re all in this together’ is slipping away.”

Social Media World Forum (SMWF) struggled at the beginning of the week with criticism over the same old content, and poor focus on the attendees. From what I’ve heard, this wasn’t just the event organisers, but the general attitude of many involved (all all levels: sponsors, speakers, delegates) who saw it as another event to push their content – and from what I’ve seen on the #smwf hashtag, this does seem to be true.

The feedback we had for Like Minds was overwhelmingly positive, but the criticism came, and I’m very mindful of it, that there was still lots of talking heads and not enough application. Despite our innovations with the Like Minds Lunchtime Talks, I know many people still didn’t connect and get what they needed to go and implement on Monday morning. More theory than action.

Even at the beginning of the year at the Media140 Meetup in January, there was a point where Glenn Le Santo stood up and broke the broadcast from the panel and actually started some open, honest, two-way communication – which turned it into, again from what I heard, an exceptional evening.

What’s Wrong?

The whole point of Social Media is that it is supposed to be social. Non-broadcast. Non-vertical. But… Social Media events are very broadcast, very vertical, and aren’t social.

Perhaps I should say that they aren’t social enough – and stop being so polarising - but I’m not talking about the social aspect that happens around the content. What I mean is that the foundational concept of the event is not social, it is broadcast. It doesn’t need to be, but it be. And I have a few thoughts why:

1. We idolise content, so the organisers give it.

People who say event organisers do it for money haven’t organised an event. The reason why we are so heavy on broadcasting content is because we so idolise content above comments.

This is another contradiction that irritates me, that we focus on the content not the comments – which is again broadcast over conversation.

2. Speakers and panelists want their 5 minutes.

“Screw where the panel is going, I want to say my bit on what I did” is in the back of many minds, and then out goes the idea of ‘what is helpful to Joe Bloggs in the audience?’ This is why we have our panels planned at Like Minds – because value needs to be thought through. Otherwise, everyone just says the same thing.

And to be fair – why shouldn’t the speakers and panelist get their 5 minutes? Given how much we worship content, it makes sense they’d want to get theirs out too.

3. Much of the audience wants to make money tomorrow with Social Media.

When people say that “it didn’t help me”, what they really mean is “it told me Social Media is hard work and didn’t tell me how to make money from Twitter tomorrow.” They are also the ones with business cards that they throw in everyone’s face…

Of course this isn’t just an issue with Social Media events – it’s an issue with Social Media itself, namely that we focus on content far more than action.

This is top down. It’s not audience centric, it’s author centric. I could so easily use Like Minds to push my personal purposes, but I don’t. I chose to not be author centric.

Solutions?

First: Can we not be a Social Media conference, but a conference that uses Social Media? This distinction alone changes the whole way you promote the event, because Social Media becomes a means, not an end. Therefore you can relax about whether you trend on Twitter or not. Yeah, it’s nice when you do, but it doesn’t actually make a shred of difference.

Second: Drilling down even further, our aims need to shift from providing more content to promoting more connections. Seeing as we already know more than we do, our aims should be to unite people not with more knowledge they don’t use, but with like minded individuals with whom they can make things happen. Seriously – for how much longer can we continue to preach to the converted?

Another way to say this would be to simply to say: make events about people, and action.

Third: We must dare to be different. We’re running the same 1950s conference model with 21st Century ideas. The unconference model is a step towards it, but these tend to be poorly organised and not accessible to those who are newcomers. I consider ‘unconferencing’ to be a part of the event as whole, but not the whole event, as I describe in Creating A People-To-People Conference.

I began to feel the echo chamber effect in December. I guess now it’s really echoing. The days of events riding on the back of Social Media and expecting to just succeed are over – at least for London anyway.

The Change Begins With You

As I described, I think this is stinking thinking that we’ve all got a little of. Stuck on the content wagon.

The first way to break it? Go away and do something.

What do you think?

Preaching to the Converted?

Posted on March 12, 2010 by Scott Gould

You might have the feeling if you’re using Social Media that you’re preaching to the converted. I often do. Question:

How many more case studies can we read?
How many more times can the same common sense be reinterpreted in 5 different points?
How many more summarises and digest emails can we look through for the same content packaged in new ways?
How many more comments can you leave saying “Great post”?
How many more events can you attend?

Lessons from Church

I’m an assistant pastor at my church. We have similar issues: How many sermons can you sit through? How many times can you come to church and hear the same basic principles (change, love, give, help) said in different ways?

There comes a point when you realise you are preaching to the converted. At this point you realise that it’s no longer about what you say, it’s about what they do.

Check out the diagram below. I’ve adapted it from Purpose Driven Church by Rick Warren (affiliate link) so that the language is more business orientated.

It’s pretty obvious, but let’s break it down.

The Crowd are the people in your general vicinity. This could be your city. In Social Media this used to be everyone on Twitter. But now that people follow so many other people, your crowd is probably those that either you follow or who follow you – people that you are linked to, but don’t engage with. These often are not aware of you.
The Community are those who in my case use the #likeminds hashtag and attended the last Like Minds Conference. You may speak with them occasionally. They are aware of you.
The Connected are the ones that you speak with semi-regularly to regularly. You comment on and subscribe to their blogs. Sometimes you collaborate with them. They are engaged with you.
The Committed are those you speak, discuss, update, collaborate and work with regularly. They are builders with you.
The Core are those with whom your life is share. They lead with you.

You see the change here. At the crowd level, you aren’t aware of each other. At the core level, you are leading with each other. The difference is action.

The tipping point is going from community to connected.

If you feel you are preaching to the converted

Then stop preaching. Instead, start working with them.

A few ideas for you to turn community into connections.

Schedule a skype call and get talking about your passions.
Agree to work together on a small project
Go out of your way to refer or make an opportunity for them
Do something extraordinarily special for them
Meet them

How about you? Are you preaching to the converted?

Wax On, Wax Off: Headfake Marketing, Without Marketing

Posted on March 4, 2010 by Scott Gould

Jim offers a great idea. He knows it’s good, but unfortunately a lot of people just don’t quite get it and therefore aren’t buying it. Jim is frustrated day after day when he sees how his ideas could be used by people in his community, but because he can’t communicate it, and because the community aren’t sure of him, his idea isn’t selling.

One day, Jim decides to stop trying to market his idea, and instead decides to show his idea in action. Rather than trying to promote his idea, he lets uses his idea to promote an entirely different idea altogether. The result is that in doing so, people got to see Jim’s idea in action.

Ok, so Jim is Me.

In fact, Jim is a lot of people. Headfake marketing – the method of using one thing to teach another thing – is as old as, well, the Karate Kid. Remember Mr. Miyagi teaching his young student to ‘wax on, wax off’? By teaching him how to clean windows, Daniel actually learns to block punches. We can use the same techniques today when articulating the ideas that we have.

This mechanism is used a lot in sales. When people ‘sell through’ rather than ‘sell to’, they are pulling a mild form of this (you know, the old “You might know someone who needs this”, rather than saying “You need this” trick.) Or how about getting kids to eat food by pretending it’s a plane flying into a tunnel?

The headfake above means you are selling to someone while giving them a safe way to exit, which is generally more pleasant. But there’s more to it than that.

How To Wax On, Wax Off

The reason why you have to pull a headfake is because, unfortunately, when people are too familiar with you they often won’t learn from you. That’s why Jim (and the rest of us) get annoyed when people suddenly ‘get it’ when someone says what we’ve been saying for ages already. So here’s how to start going about it:

You need to create some kind of distance, or magic curtain. You can’t let people see how you put it together, because that breaks the transformational effect when they see what you’ve done that finally shocks people into admiring what you do. Remember when Daniel realises that ‘Wax On, Wax Off’ was the actual moves? Thats the transformation you want.
Transfer your passion into the headfake. If you’ve ever visited HSBCreviews.com, you’ve seen the headfake in action. The lesson we learn from thrudigital here is that the headfake needs to be around a passion or a pain in order to provoke emotion. It can’t be bland, else people don’t get it, and don’t want it.
Make the headfake a mindshift. Do it to such a high standard that people are hungry for the next thing you have. You can do this most powerfully by making mantra and creating a phrase that people start using. If everyone in your proximity is using your language, then you are the master of that language, and can do with it as you will (just don’t abuse it.)
Tell stories. This makes it memorable. People forget what was said but they remember what they felt, and stories create feeling because we use our imagination to put ourselves in the story, rather than passively just listening.
Followup with by packaging the idea to take home. After the headfake (if you do it well), people will want you idea. You need to have a simple, clear packaged idea that they can take home with them. After you’ve worked so hard to make your idea clear, don’t make it unclear again with your amorphous mist of services. Present a clear, packaged productised idea for taking home.
Convert it. You have to master it, close the deal, and convert the headfake into your idea. This can be uncomfortable, but people are hungry for it. If people are complimenting you, then you need to just decide to have the confidence and go – stop worrying over whether people will buy into your idea or not – and stop waiting for people to come to you.

A Living Example

Randy Pausch carries out his famous last lecture here on the subject of “Achieving your Childhood Dreams.” What follows is an hour discussion on headfakes, before the final revelation that the whole talk is a headfake itself. It has passion, the magic curtain, stories, mindshifts, language and wholly converts the headfake into the idea.

Watch it here.

Your Headfakes

I want to hear about the headfakes that you’ve pulled, and the best ones that you know of. Let’s get a list going in the comments.

Photo with thanks to tico24.

Are you build Community or Connections?

Posted on February 28, 2010 by Scott Gould

So I’m sat here at the Like Minds Summit reflecting over the last few days at Like Minds where we’ve played host to over 300 people, and I don’t know where to start.

First off, I’m not one to chest beat and bang my own drum (as much as Chris was telling me I should), so I’d rather you watched this incredible video put together by the always excellent Documentally.

I guess that main thing I want to say to everyone is what I’ve been saying for a little while now about Connections Over Community. Community support is great – but it only gets you so far. If you really want to do something, and achieve something, then you need to begin building connections out of that community,

The takeaway from Like Minds, then, is to go and pick up the phone, or send an email or a tweet, and get some face-to-face time with the connections you’ve made. There’s too much much talk and not enough action these days – so often because we’re so busy building our own communities rather than developing connections that enable to us to really be helpful.

Surely all the talk of ‘social’ needs to come around into this?