Posts Tagged: ideas

Published on October 12, 2010 by Scott Gould

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

Exploring an ideaI 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

Published on August 30, 2010 by Scott Gould

And then, and then, and then

Whenever I talk with too much certainty about what I’ll do then, and then, and then, I know that I’ve become arrogant and lazy.

One of the gems from the Like Minds Summit back in February was short term execution with a long term goal. In other words, it was “there’s where we want to be, but let’s execute this first.”

So, essentially, there’s no “then,”, there’s only “now.”

Your Leading Thoughts

  1. Do you have similar traits when you get too confident and become complacent? (Or is it just me?)
  2. When did you learn that execution was more important that ideas?

Photo by juicyrai

Published on August 25, 2010 by Scott Gould

A Conversation With Me and Andrew Pickering

I had the pleasure last month of having a conversation with Professor Andrew Pickering from Exeter University, on the subject of “where do good ideas come from?”

The conversation was the latest in a range of interviews at Imperica, a smart new project by the renowed Paul Squires which “tracks a number of disciplines, wraps them all together, finds the interesting angles, then talks to the people behind them.”

The conversation began with a discussion of how accesible ideas are today, which made me say that I think ideas are harder to actualise because of the false confidence that an abundance of them creates, and ended up touching on many things including education. Here’s an extract:

Are we seeing a shift from intellectual rigour to the more technical display of “doing things”?

AP: During my lifetime, the number of young people that go through university has increased enormously. When I was an undergraduate, it was 10% of the population. Now, the target is 50%. That change implies a change in what university education, is. So, if you pick the cleverest 10% and tell them to sit around for three years, they can very probably go deeply into something. I studied Physics. If you just pick half of the population and say that “We’ll give you an education”, then education is going to be something else. The ratio of students to teaching is much higher, so you can’t give people that kind of personal attention and engagement.

Education itself has been reconceived since Mrs. Thatcher’s day. Now, it is seen as a way to fit people into the economy – to produce useful cogs for the industrial machine. Learning for itself is not a priority of the Government. So, higher education becomes industrialised, and produces an industrial product.

SG: The irony in that, is that we’re a knowledge economy – we’re not even in an industrial economy. And, yet, you’re right, the industrialised approach, turning out people who then become knowledge workers…

AP: It’s an industrialised conception of knowledge… not for its own sake, but “useful knowledge”. Physics isn’t all that useful, but engineering is. I don’t think that’s anything to do with the Internet, but the Internet feeds into this trend that already exists. The same goes for research; funding is made increasingly conditional on producing useful knowledge. How are “users” going to benefit from this knowledge?

Read the whole interview between Andrew and I here.

Your Leading Thoughts

  • Are ideas more accessible today, in your option? And if so, what are the repercussions of that?