Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else, by Geoffrey Colvin

This book is about high performance and achievement, whether in a sport, music, art, science, engineering, medicine, chess, etc. The title comes by Colvin first explaining how there has been no discovery of any genetic component to talent; i.e., there is no scientific evidence that any person is born with an inherent talent for anything.

Colvin describes the process by which people do achieve high performance. This is called Deliberate Practice. This is a process by which someone continually stretches their abilities, through a repetitive process with a lot of feedback.

Colvin goes into what deliberate practice does to a person and where the motivation comes from for a person to dedicate themselves to the practice.

Now, if I can only get my kids to read this book.

Talent Is Never Enough: Discover the Choices That Will Take You Beyond Your Talent, by John C. Maxwell

After reading “Talent is Overrated” by Geoff Colvin, I felt I had to read “Talent is Never Enough” by John C. Maxwell. Whereas “Talent is Overrated” takes the perspective that God-given talent may not really exist and then gives a study of Deliberate Practice that leads to high performance, “Talent is Never Enough” starts with the assumption that God-given talent does exists, but, as the title states, it is never enough for achievement. Maxwell writes that what is needed is:

- Belief
- Passion
- Initiative
- Focus
- Preparation
- Practice
- Perseverance
- Courage
- Being teachable
- One’s personal character
- Relationships with others
- Responsibility
- Teamwork

There’s a chapter for each of the topics with plenty of examples.

For me, the book started out as a “rah-rah” book, cheer-leading one on to self-help. However, a couple of the points in the book did personally resonate strongly with me, and I suspect there would be a point or two or more most other people would strongly resonate with.

If you only wanted to read one book about talent, I would recommend “Talent is Overrated”. But you couldn’t go wrong reading this one, too.

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t, by Jim Collins

A great book, and very popular. The company where a friend of mine works uses this book as the corporate philosophical guide (their “€œbible”). Collins previously wrote Built To Last about companies which started out and historically remained great. Good To Great describes companies that were historically mediocre or good and which became great, and discusses the commonalities of how they did that:

Leadership: humble, modest, fearless, with extreme professional will, who channel their egos and ambitions to the companies, not themselves; as opposed to a celebrity, larger-than-life type of leader. They train successors, do what needs to be done, give credit, and take responsibility.

Selection: they focused first on getting the right people in the company and then on vision and strategy. This is a common thread in business books: selection is key, as with the right people, you can do anything. Character traits (work ethic, basic intelligence, dedication to commitments, and values) were focused on more than specific knowledge and skills (which are teachable).

Having unwavering faith that they will prevail AND confronting the brutal facts of their situations head-on. This is one reason the right leadership is so important, as people may not give a leader with a coercive or corrosive personality hard facts in fear of being retaliated against or labeled pessimistic. The right leader will confront the hard facts and do what needs to be done.

Working in an area that they are deeply passionate about and that they can be the best in the world at, and knowing exactly what drives cash flow and profitability and maximizing that. Collins calls this the Hedgehog Concept.

Combining a culture of discipline (while avoiding bureaucracy and hierarchy) with an ethic of entrepreneurship. Have a framework with clear constraints consistent with the Hedgehog concept, and give people freedom and responsibility to act within it. As important as knowing what to do, it is also important to know what to stop doing.

Use of carefully selected technologies that support the companies’ Hedgehog concept. Technology by itself cannot create momentum, but the right technology can accelerate it.

Continually, gradually implemented transformations. Sustainable transformations never happened in one big change, but rather by a cumulative, incremental process that added up over time.

Of the 11 good-to-great companies profiled in the book, two have since gone down in flames in the current economic climate: Fannie Mae and Circuit City. I wouldn’t let that discourage reading of the book, though. From looking at long-term stock charts on Yahoo Finance, it looks like most of the other companies, including Wells Fargo, would still fall into Collins’ good-to-great model, and there’s certainly plenty of good take away here.

Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, by Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras

An excellent book on what Collins calls Visionary Companies, companies that have been around for many decades, and in some cases a couple of centuries, and have been much more successful (over the long term) than companies started around the same time in the same industries. Some of the companies discussed are 3M, Boeing, Ford, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, Sony, and Walt Disney. The authors describe what these companies did differently than their comparison companies:

They had very strong strategic intent, meaning very strong core values and core purposes (beyond just the making of profit) that were used in guiding them, and built-in many mechanisms into their companies (selection processes, reward systems, etc.) that reinforced their values.

Many of them used Big Hairy Audacious Goals, in some cases betting the entire company on them, to strongly motivate and inspire their people and to continue the company making progress. They would also try a lot of stuff (exemplified by 3M) and keep what worked. In order to keep making progress, these companies would try anything and everything, except those things that would be contrary to their core values.

As a general rule, these companies would grow their management teams, hardly ever hiring anyone from the outside, in order to maintain their core values. And they also built in mechanisms for constant improvement so complacency wouldn’t settle in and they’d lose their competitive edge.

The authors argue that the biggest achievement of these companies were in the architecting and building of the companies themselves in such a way that could endure and prosper for so long, across generations of different leaders, different products & services, and across the many changes in technology and society.

The things the visionary companies did not do as a rule was start with a great idea nor have the larger-than-life charismatic leader. In fact, in the comparison companies, early success and “great” leaders tended to work against the companies in the long run.

First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently, by Marcus Buckingham

This is a Management 101 book, highly recommended. The authors describe what Great Managers do and how they do it: selecting the right people, defining the right outcomes, focusing on peoples’ strengths, and finding the right fit for the people they manage.

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable (J-B Lencioni Series), by Patrick Lencioni

A good book laying the foundations of teamwork, starting with the most fundamental building block of Trust, which leads to Healthy Conflict, which leads to Commitment, which leads to Accountability, which finally leads to Attention to Results. Lencioni writes most of the book in a fictional, or fable, form, which I didn’t appreciate until the second time I read the book, at which point I couldn’t put the book down. If you just want to get to the meat of the book first, start towards the end on the chapter titled The Model, then go back to the beginning of the book.

The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done (Harperbusiness Essentials), by Peter F. Drucker

A Management 101 book, highly recommended. The title has Executive in its title, and Drucker defines an executive as a knowledge worker — someone whose contribution materially affects the capacity of an organization to perform and to obtain results, so this book is not just for the C-level folks. Drucker describes how to manage oneself for effectiveness:

- Manage your time effectively
- Focus on what you can contribute that will significantly affect the organization’s performance and results
- Focus on your and others’™ strengths, as opposed to focusing on and trying to improve weaknesses, though an executive with a corrupted character or integrity should not be in any position of power
- Do first things first and one thing at a time — no multitasking!
- Make effective decisions, covered in two excellent chapters

Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, by William L. Ury, Roger Fisher, Bruce M. Patton

Excellent book on negotiating. Ury has written two other books since, which he advises to read in reverse order, starting with “The Power of a Positive No”, then “Getting Past No”, and finally “Getting To Yes”. But you can’t go wrong reading this first in any case.

Here’s an excerpted essay about this book I wrote for a UCSD Course on Sales:

Getting To Yes is a book on a method of negotiating that the authors call “principled negotiation.” It is a method they describe as being soft on people, but hard on the problem (the issue(s) being negotiated). This method is obviously appropriate for formal negotiations, but also for conflict resolution in general, as well as being directly applicable in sales situations other than formal negotiations; it can be used when negotiating for a raise, in determining the price of a house, in deciding where to go to dinner with your spouse, or in deciding a nuclear arms treaty. The authors argue that if agreement is possible, then this method will more likely produce an agreement that meets the legitimate interests of both sides to as great an extent as possible, in as an efficient a way as possible, while improving, or at least not damaging, the relationship between both sides.

The method consists of four propositions:

1. Separate the People from the Problem. This means dealing with “people problems” directly and separately from the negotiation issues so as to help build a relationship based on trust, understanding, respect, and friendship, which will help in future dealings. One skill needed here is emotional intelligence: understand the other side’s point of view, don’t assume the worst from or about them, don’t blame them for your problem (even if justified), recognize and deal appropriately with your and the other’s emotions, and make your proposals consistent with their values. Another important skill here is communication: listen actively and acknowledge what is being said, speak to be understood, and speak for a purpose (some things are better left unsaid).

2. Focus on Interests, Not on Positions. Interests are a side’s needs, desires, concerns, and fears, whereas a position is something decided upon to meet the interests. Uncover the other side’s interests by being empathetic and asking questions. Discuss your interests so the other side understands their importance and legitimacy, and acknowledge their interests.

3. Invent Options for Mutual Gain. This is a creative process where various options are thought of to satisfy both sides’ interests. One must be careful here to not jump to a premature judgment and to not narrow down the options — ”the idea is to first brainstorm (with or without the other side) to create as many options as possible in order to “expand the pie,” and then afterwards make a decision. The end result of this step is to present the other side with an option that meets their (and your) interests such that it makes their decision easy.

4. Insist on using Objective Criteria. When faced with clear conflicting interests, in order to produce wise agreements amicably and efficiently, this part of the method says to insist on using independent objective criteria to decide between different options or a compromise, as opposed to deciding based on the will of the sides. There are many different standards that can be used, like tradition, reciprocity, and professional standards, so the key is to decide, based on the issue, which one(s) apply. Even deciding based on a coin toss may be a fair way to decide an issue when no other fair way exists.

The rest of the book discusses developing your Best Alternative To a Negotiated Alternative (BATNA), how to handle the other side if they won’t behave in a principled manner, and other miscellaneous issues in principled negotiation.

The book emphasizes the importance of preparation, which applies whether one is preparing for a negotiation or a sales call. In one’s preparations, they definitely need to determine what their interests are, they need to try to determine what the other side’s interests are, and with that information invent as many options as possible and determine which objective criteria and/or processes can be used. And perhaps the most important thing one can do in preparation is to develop their BATNA, especially if the other side has more power.

Getting Past No, by by William Ury

Another excellent book on negotiating. Ury has written two other books, which he advises to read in reverse order, starting with “The Power of a Positive No”, then “Getting Past No”, and finally “Getting To Yes”. I recommend all three.

Getting Past No discusses how to deal with difficult situations and difficult people by controlling your own emotions and handling the other side’s negative emotions, positional behavior, dissatisfactions, and power.

Of course, the first thing you’ll want to do before negotiating with another is to ”understand your interests, the other side’s interests, invent options for mutual gains, figure out which fair standards can apply to resolve issues, and know and develop your Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement (your walk-away alternative).

The Power of a Positive No: Save The Deal Save The Relationship and Still Say No, by William Ury

Another excellent book on negotiating. Ury has written two other books, which he advises to read in the order of this book, then “Getting Past No”, and finally “Getting To Yes”. I recommend all three.

The Power of a Positive No discusses a framework for saying No in a way that’s respectful to the other side and that can maintain, if not improve, your relationship with the other side. This framework involves first understanding what your own core values, needs, and interests are; saying No to the other side in a positive manner; and then offering a suggestion for a more positive behavior or negotiating a deal that satisfies both sides’ interests.

Sams Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL and Apache All in One (4th Edition), by Julie C. Meloni

I found this to be an excellent introductory book on PHP and mySQL (as well as Apache), which is why I bought it. I’ve had in mind for a while now a website service I’ve wanted to implement, and used this book as the starting point in PHP programming a mySQL-based website (starting with zero knowledge in either PHP or databases). It was very helpful in creating and configuring a Linux and Windows web server, and the projects in the book became the starting point for the development of my own web service. I still refer to the book every now and then, though for PHP questions I typically use the PHP Manual at http://us3.php.net/manual/en, and for MySQL questions I’ve graduated to needing the “SQL For MySQL Developers” book.

SQL for MySQL Developers: A Comprehensive Tutorial and Reference, by Rick F. van der Lans

After developing my own MySQL-based website for a while, I got to the point of needing a more advanced MySQL reference than the introductory “Sams Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL and Apache” book that I had been using. “SQL for MySQL Developers: A Comprehensive Tutorial and Reference” has been that reference and has worked out quite well. It has helped me in constructing complicated search queries, in modifying database tables (without uninstalling and re-installing my application), and in dealing with multi-user/multi-threading issues. I don’t think I would necessarily use this book to start learning about MySQL, but once you are doing hard-core MySQL development, this book would definitely be handy. When I have a MySQL question, I start with this book, as I have found the MySQL Reference Manual at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en to be difficult to use.

Management Powertools, by Harry Onsman

I really liked this book. The various management, leadership, and marketing ideas in this book can be found in many other sources, but Onsman brings them together and productizes them as tools you can use in your business.

The book is divided into two parts, one with 10 tools to manage an organization and the other with 10 tools to manage people. The organizational part includes tools for strategic intent (use of vision, mission, and values statements), measuring performance (the balanced scorecard), changing culture (competing values framework), marketing (the four P’s), and others. The people part includes tools for managing performance (goal setting), developing self-awareness (360 degree feedback), selecting people (behavioral interviewing), project management techniques, situational leadership, coaching, and others.

Death March (2nd Edition), by Edward Yourdon

A very interesting project management survival book on “death march” €projects – projects in which the time, resources, and/or features of a development project are severely constrained, as compared to “normal” projects, thus giving the project an unusually high likelihood of failure, while putting the people within them an unusually high degree of stress, leading to bad health, broken marriages, broken families, etc.

Yourdon’s book provides advice on how you should manage a death march, should you volunteer for one or, more likely, find yourself roped into one and decide not to quit. Yourdon discusses negotiations, staffing and team-building issues, and processes to follow.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Collins Business Essentials), by Robert B. Cialdini

Cialdini has written a number of books on Influence, and based on what I read in this book, I’m sure you couldn’t go wrong with any of them.

This book, as the title says, discusses the psychology of persuasion: how we as human beings have set up short-cuts in our decision making in order to effectively deal with information overload, and how the “compliance practitioners” exploit these and cause us to unwittingly agree to something we wouldn’t ordinarily agree with. Cialdini notes that as the world gets more complex, we rely on these short-cuts more and more, and thus are becoming even more prone to be victims of the practitioners. This book was written to help people defend themselves from being exploited by teaching what the short-cuts are and how to say no to the exploiters. Cialdini also writes about how these short-cuts can be used for helpful purposes, too, not just for exploitation. I think it’s also true that there’s info here that can ethically be used by people, for example, for their sales, marketing, and negotiation purposes.

The short-cuts/psychological persuasion principles Cialdini writes about are:

Expensive = Good. Increasing the price of something may increase its sales, as people will believe it now has higher quality.

Contrast principle. If the most expensive item is sold first (e.g., a car), then follow-ons will seem less expensive and are now more likely to be bought (e.g., extended warranty). If a trashed house is shown first, the nicer and more expensive house shown next is more likely to be bought.

Reciprocation. One person gives up something of low value (e.g., a free sample) causing the other to give up one or more things of high-value (e.g., buying a product they wouldn’t ordinarily).

Commitment and consistency. People will behave in a way that is consistent with what they have already done, even if the continued behavior is unreasonable. One may commit to a small matter and then to act consistently, agree to larger and larger matters, at their own detriment. E.g., agreeing to a low-ball price for something, and then when that can’t be delivered to then agree to a higher priced item that they would not have originally bought.

Social Proof. If we think other people believe something, we’ll more likely believe it. Think laugh tracks, pre-loaded tip-jars, and advertising that emphasizes how popular something is, not how good it is.

Liking. We tend to say Yes to people we know and like. Relationships matter, first impressions matter, referrals matter. Watch for salespeople who mirror you or claim similar backgrounds, who flatter. Think of car salespeople who “battle” with their boss to get you a good deal; good cop/bad cop.

Authority. People have a sense of duty to authority, and are likely to conform to their dictates, even when it doesn’t make sense. Think of “I was only following orders”, actors being hired to play doctors to sell something. People will misrepresent themselves with what they wear, with a self-given title, in order to seem more authoritative than they really are.

Scarcity. People will give something not prevalent a higher value. Think of “for a limited time only” and “while supplies last”, or being pressured to make a decision right away because there’s another buyer.

The Discipline of Market Leaders: Choose Your Customers, Narrow Your Focus, Dominate Your Market, by Michael Treacy

Very interesting book bringing together many business concepts (value discipline, organizational structure, corporate culture, marketing, recruiting, and others) and how they apply to different types of businesses. Here’s an excerpted essay about this book I wrote for a UCSD Course on Sales:

For this book, the authors did a “comprehensive, three-year study of more than 80 corporations in more than three dozen markets”, collecting data on market leaders as well as not so successful companies in order to determine why one group of companies was so much more successful than the other group. This book was used as the philosophical guide (the “bible”) of a company I worked at a few years ago, which is when I first read it. It is an interesting book and worthwhile reading. It brings together many business concepts (value discipline, organizational structure, corporate culture, marketing, recruiting, and others) and how they apply to different types of businesses.

The major idea in The Discipline of Market Leaders is that no company can be all things to all people; that a company’s resources are finite and limited, and that a company will be more successful if it chooses a specific value discipline and focuses its resources on achieving leadership in that discipline, while maintaining “threshold standards” in the other disciplines. Three value disciplines are explored: 1. Operational Excellence, in which best overall cost is focused on, defined as the delivery of reliable products or services at competitive prices, delivered with minimal difficulty or inconvenience, 2. Product Leadership, defined as “providing products that continually redefine the state of the art”, and 3. Customer Intimacy, defined as “selling the customer a total solution”. The authors found that companies that excel in the same value discipline are remarkably like each other, in terms of operating processes, business structures, management systems, and culture, even if the companies are in completely different industries. In contrast, mediocre companies within the same industry are remarkably like each other.

This book does seem to make good business sense, and it would be good to recognize different types of companies, how to create a successful company, and to properly match one’s personality type and needs to the appropriate business type. For example, in terms of personal relationships, the authors state that operationally excellent companies do not cultivate one-to-one relationships with their customers, that product leadership companies are very focused on innovative marketing strategies in order to capitalize on their product innovations, and that customer intimate companies, by their very nature, must be highly competent and focused on cultivating relationships with their customers. Therefore, if one is highly motivated by relationship building and personal selling, a company focused on the customer intimate model would seem to be more appropriate than a company focusing on a different model.

Though the customer intimate model is highly focused on relationships with customers, personal selling and relationships are obviously important for all business models. Operationally excellent companies must sell to (get buy-in from) their suppliers, distributors, and partners in the operationally excellent model in order to get product to flow freely with maximum efficiency and low prices to the end customer. Product leader companies must develop relationships with their customers and the end-customer in order to prepare markets and to educate people to accept their innovative products (or services) and to learn from them what kind of products (or services) to develop. And of course, no matter what kind of company, relationships are important with employees, advisors, directors, consultants, and other types of people a company depends upon.

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, by Malcolm Gladwell

Great book on right-brain thinking and intuitive decision making. Here’s an excerpted essay about this book I wrote for a UCSD Course on Entrepreneurship:

Gladwell describes two types of problems: logic and insight. Logic problems are solved by lots of information and analysis (left-brain thinking), whereas insight problems require an intuitive approach (right-brain thinking). Gladwell discusses how trying to solve an insight problem with a logical process winds up destroying one’s ability to solve the insight problem, at least for non-experts.

Interestingly, Gladwell writes that for less-important decisions, it is fine to be analytical and consider the decision from many perspectives, but for more important issues, like which mate to select or which career to pursue, to let intuition take over. Larger issues will likely have a larger emotional impact, and so intuition is more appropriate as intuition follows emotion.

Applying this to business planning, some people will say you absolutely have to have all your plans (financial, marketing, operational, etc.) ”in order before venturing forward with a business (the left-brain thinkers). Others say business planning is a waste of time, as your actual execution will never be what was planned, plus writing of the plan very likely will destroy your initial passion and confidence for the venture as you’ll never have enough information or enough of a competitive advantage (the right-brain thinkers). Perhaps there’s a happy medium here in which a lesser amount of planning is initially done (e.g., fully defining the business concept and some marketing and financial planning), and if the business still looks promising, implement the venture for an initial stage, and then iteratively do more planning and implementation.

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, by Malcolm Gladwell

A very interesting book on how small changes can have a huge effect. Gladwell discusses the kinds of people that can cause a tipping (“Connectors” who know a tremendous amount of other people, “Mavens” who are information specialists and who pass their information along to others, and “Salesmen” who very effectively persuade others), the characteristic of something that helps make it tip (stickiness, which makes something memorable, actionable, irresistible, compelling), and environmental factors that help make something tip (conditions, circumstances, situation, context, the size of a group; slightly changing one of these can cause a tipping). Gladwell ties these ideas to products, technology, children television shows, crime rates, suicide rates, infectious diseases, smoking, and more.

Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Schedules, by Steve McConnell

This is an older book now, but I still refer to it from time to time and like it a lot. Lots of good info here not just on rapid software development strategies, but also on efficient strategies. As McConnell writes, do well at efficient development before you dive into rapid development — you’ll probably find efficient development will be fast enough, at least a whole lot faster than the thrashing development too many of us experience too often.

Good info here on software development fundamentals, classic mistakes to avoid, risk management, lifecycle planning, estimating and scheduling, motivation and teamwork, rapid development best practices, and more.

I think a lot of the info in this book is compatible with, or at least not contradictory of, today’s agile development practices, and some of the best practices approach agile strategies, like Evolutionary Delivery and Evolutionary Prototyping.

Software Project Survival Guide (Pro — Best Practices), by Steve McConnell

This book was written a couple of years after McConnell wrote “Rapid Development”. There’s a fair amount of overlap with his earlier book, and if I had to choose just one, I’d choose Rapid Development.

This book discusses the Staged Delivery Plan, which is an iterative type of lifecycle, in which each stage of a project is fully designed, implemented, and released. There’s some good info here and you could do much much worse than follow McConnell’s advice, but I think Agilists will find this book out of date.

Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction, by Steve McConnell

A really excellent book on the nitty-gritty of software construction, discussing things such as cohesion and coupling, naming conventions, defensive programming, modularization, and much more. I’d say a must read for those producing code. I have the original 1993 version, and I see McConnell wrote a second edition in 2004, which is what I’€™d get now, of course.

Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence, by Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee

I’d say this is a MUST read for anyone in a leadership position or who wants to be in one. Fascinating book, discussing various leadership styles (Visionary, Coaching, Affiliative, Democratic, Pacesetting, Commanding), when to use them, when not to, how they tie in to various emotional intelligence domains, and how you can improve your leadership repertoire. Do your followers a favor and read this.

Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization, by Dave Logan, John King, and Halee Fischer-Wright

This is a really interesting book that describes five different types of groups, or tribes, within an organization that people naturally fall into, and how a leader can help a tribe move up to better performing type of group. This book is based on years of extensive research by the authors, and I think the authors did a great job of boiling things down and making a very readable book.

Stage 1 is characterized by people feeling alienated from others with their behavior expressing despairing hostility. Life is a rat race, where anything is fair game. People express this as “Life sucks.”

Stage 2 is characterized by people behaving as apathetic victims. They feel their life sucks, but others are doing ok.

Stage 3 is characterized by individual high performance, but low collaboration. People express “I’m great…but you’re not.” Information is hoarded and not freely shared, and a person in charge will feel threatened if information doesn’t flow through them or if relationships are developed between others. Almost half of all workplaces are like this.

Stage 4 is a high-collaboration tribe, with tribal pride and strong values. People express “we’re great…but they’re not.” Information is freely shared and relationships among others are encouraged and facilitated.

Stage 5 is the highest performing of tribes. People express “life is great” and instead of competing against another organization, they are completely driven by a noble cause and form ever growing networks of people, even in different organizations.

This book was published in 2008 and I’ve heard it mentioned several times now in various situations. It seems to me this book is like “Good To Great” by Jim Collins, in which people see a lot of wisdom in it and for leaders who are interested in these things, will read it, and take it to heart, improving their organizations. In fact, Tribal Leaders mention Good To Great and how their concepts mesh with Good To Great’s concepts.

Leaders, by Richard M. Nixon

Nixon gives a master’s leadership class here, writing about the leaders he personally knew while Vice President and later on: Churchill, de Gaulle, MacArthur, Khrushchev, and many others. I’d start with the last chapter, “In The Arena”, and then go back and read the entire book from the beginning. Nixon deals with political leaders, but there’s a lot to be gained for business leaders, too.

We Shall Not Fail: The Inspiring Leadership of Winston Churchill, by Celia Sandys

This is in the genre of leadership books that’s part history, part biographical, and part leadership treatise (“to be a better leader, do like X did and do …”). I really liked this book, as Churchill is a larger than life iconic hero, but I’d start with Goleman et al’s Primal Leadership and Nixon’s Leaders first, and then make my way to this book and others like it.

George Washington’s Leadership Lessons: What the Father of Our Country Can Teach Us About Effective Leadership and Character, by James Rees and Stephen Spignesi

This is obviously a copy-and-paste of my review for the “We Shall Not Fail” Churchill leadership book…

This is in the genre of leadership books that’s part history, part biographical, and part leadership treatise (“to be a better leader, do like X did and do …”). I really liked this book, as Washington is a larger than life iconic hero, but I’d start with Goleman et al’s Primal Leadership and Nixon’s Leaders first, and then make my way to this book and others like it.

I picked this book up at the gift shop at Mount Vernon in Virginia…highly recommend touring there, and this book is a nice little memento.

Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World, by Jill Jonnes

Great book! Part biography, history, science, and entrepreneurship book. Here’s an excerpted essay about this book I wrote for a UCSD Course on Entrepreneurship:

Empires of Light is the story of Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and Nikola Tesla inventing the modern electric power industry, taking place in the last two decades of the 19th century.

Starting in the 1840s, illumination on a large scale was done with a gas distribution system and arc lights. Gaslights gave off ammonia and sulfur as they burned, blackening a room and making people sick. Arc lighting was an electric technology, in which the two electrical outputs of a battery or generator were each attached to a carbon rod and the two rods placed close together with the resulting electric discharge igniting the carbon in a bright blaze.

The book opens with Edison, excited by arc lights, desiring to make an electric light appropriate for smaller areas, like a room in a house. Edison eventually invented the incandescent light bulb, but he also worked on inventions related to electricity generation and distribution that would supply the light bulbs and other electrical equipment.

Edison formed the Edison Electric Light Company in 1878, consciously setting out to replace the gas lighting industry. This was the first company with the intent of generating electricity remotely, distributing it to a geographic region, and installing the electrical hardware in homes and buildings needed to make use of electricity. Edison’s technology was DC based, as Edison thought that was much safer than an AC system.

Tesla at this time invented the revolutionary induction motor whose rotor was spun by rotating magnetic fields. This kind of motor could only be used with AC electricity.

Westinghouse formed the Westinghouse Electric Company in 1886. Westinghouse preferred AC, as significantly more power could be distributed over a much greater distance than with DC and more economically, requiring less copper wiring than DC. Westinghouse licensed the rights to many of Tesla’s patents, including his induction motor, in order to get a competitive edge over Edison.

By the early 1890s, Westinghouse’s technology completely won out over Edison’s. Ten years after Edison formed Edison General Electric, J.P. Morgan combined Edison’s company with AC-related electric companies, and renamed the new company General Electric, the dominant electric company of the time.

There is no doubt that we are living in the vision that Edison, Tesla, and Westinghouse had. Electricity powers our lights, computers, air conditioning, and all other electronics and appliances in our homes and businesses. Without electricity, industry would halt and our quality of life plummet.

Today, as in Edison’s and Westinghouse’s day, most of the engines, or turbines, used to drive the generators that make electricity are coal and oil fed, though one of the chapters in the book details the building of the Niagara hydropower plant. The resulting pollution from the burning of fossil fuels has become one of the most important concerns world-over.

Empires of Light covers many of the major concepts of entrepreneurship: visionary thinking, breakthrough innovation, international entrepreneurship, and ethics. Edison, Tesla, and Westinghouse were all extremely visionary and entrepreneurial, though their monetary successes were varied.

One important lesson of this story is that even though one is first in an industry, that does not mean that that person will be the de facto winner in that industry. And conversely, just because other people are first in an industry does not mean there’s not room for another competitor that has some unique advantage.

The importance of cognitive adaptability was also underscored. Edison would not use other people’s inventions, whereas Westinghouse would not hesitate to use other’s superior technology. Also, Edison refused to see the advantages of AC technology, which was obviously a more powerful and expandable technology than his DC technology. Had Edison chosen AC and expended his efforts into making that technology more safe, history could well have shown Edison the hands-down winner in the race to electrify the world.

Much has changed in business regulations and practices, culture, and technology since the 1880s. But even today, the right visionary leader at the right time and place with the right resources can implement change on a societal scale.

With the push to go Green, the electric power industry continues to evolve and innovate. Light bulb technology continues to evolve so that the newer bulbs use less energy and last longer. Photovoltaic and wind turbine technologies are being further developed and increasingly used both in the central station concept but also in a distributed manner, where businesses and homes generate their own electricity.

Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques (2nd Edition), by Michael Michalko

Great book on specific creativity techniques, and there a lot of them here. I actually have the 1st edition, “A Handbook of Business Creativity”, which are what these comments are based on. The first edition does not have an index, but on Amazon I see the second edition does, which can be really helpful.

Michalko wrote another book, “Cracking Creativity, the Secrets of Creative Genius”, and there is a lot of overlap between the two books. I’ve always found getting at least two books on a subject is better than just one, even with overlap, and you would do well getting both of these books.

Cracking Creativity: The Secrets of Creative Genius, by Michael Michalko

Like his other book, Thinkertoys, this is a great book on specific creativity techniques, and, again, there many of them here. As I wrote for Thinkertoys, there is a lot of overlap between the two books, AND you would do well getting them both.

The Creative Spirit, by Daniel Goleman, Paul Kaufman, and Michael Ray

This book gives a good introduction to creativity. Apparently, there was a PBS Television Series on this, and this book is a “companion” to the series.

You won’t find much in the way of creativity techniques, but there’s some really good background information on creativity and tips on how to stimulate creativity in children and the workplace, and our own lives.

This one was difficult. My hard drive crashed in the middle of recording this one, so there was about a week lost between stopping at that point and getting a new drive up & running. Then I had to re-type the script and re-screen capture the Power Point presentation.

Installing a new hard drive turned out to be an exercise in Serendipity:

• One of the things I had to do was reinstall the software development tools I use for developing the Web2Intranet.com website. I downloaded a more recent tool, which showed some software problems that the older version did not, so this has helped improve the quality of the software.
• A long-standing problem I’ve had with my laptop’s video driver was solved.
• The new hard drive has a much larger capacity than  the one it replaced, so I no longer have to shuffle videos around to an external drive just so I don’t run out of room on my internal drive.

Jacobs writes how fMRI shows a reciprocal connection between the emotional area of the brain, the amygdala, and the seat of our consciousness, the prefrontal cortex, that ensures our decisions are made with emotions, not pure logic and objectivity. It’s more the case that we make decisions based on emotions, and then justify, or rationalize, the decision with logic.

Our emotions are a shorthand for all our previous experiences in our memory, so we can quickly access our stored knowledge when making decisions. I would call this using intuition in decision making. In fact, the more we use processes that remove emotions out of decision making, the more we lose access to our stored knowledge, and the more risky our decisions can be.

As discussed in the podcast episode, part of decision making is the implementation of the decision, which may involve others. Jacobs writes that trying to influence others with logic may not be successful, as everyone is unconsciously driven by emotions, and offers other ways to more successfully influence people that deals with empathy.

What added extra motivation for me to write this blog post was an article yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, Emotion Drives Many Defaults, which deals exactly with peoples’ emotions when making a very important decision of walking away from their homes. The article says “many of the Americans defaulting on their mortgages are doing so out of anger, fear or despair rather than making a purely sensible decision about their best financial interests.” Some people default on their home loans because they’re struggling financially, of course, but a trend is occurring in which others are furious at their banks or the government for helping others but not them, they feel they’re being treated unfairly, and so feel justified in defaulting. There is also a contagion effect, or what Robert Cialdini defined as social proof in Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, in which people who know others who have defaulted feel like they can, too.

Coincidentally, I’ve started reading Management Rewired: Why Feedback Doesn’t Work and Other Surprising Lessons from the Latest Brain Science, by Charles S. Jacobs, and it seems to me there’s some good correspondence. Jacobs writes about how functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is giving us a better understanding of how the brain works and the resulting consequences of that. (For a contrary opinion on the use of fMRI and brain studies, see Jonah Lehrer’s Wired article, Lost in the Details: How Breaking Everything Down to Particles Blinds Scientists to the Big Picture.)

I’ve only just started reading chapter 3 of this book, but one of the things that has been emphasized so far is the importance of stories on how we think and act; to change the way we and others think and act; and to better understand ourselves and others and even the way things work (e.g. natural processes and businesses). The difference is between the statement of a fact, theory, or belief and the telling of a story that describes who you are, how you got to where you are, and why it is you believe in the fact, theory, or belief, which is much more persuasive.

Both Jacobs and the good folks of the evolutionary spirituality audio casts discuss evolution. And the evolutionary spirituality folks do a good job in telling stories to help the listeners change their thinking from what Jacobs would describe as a Aristotelian view, looking at everything as purely objects, to a more mental or higher reasoning view, which the evolutionary spirituality folks would describe as a spiritual viewpoint.

Stories, metaphores, and paradigms, all discussed in Management Rewired, directly relate to creativity, which I’ll either write about in a future blog entry or talk about in a future podcast episode. Stay tuned!

I’ve had a Twitter account for a while now, but didn’t do anything with it. Like many of my friends whom I’ve recently looked up on Twitter, I was curious, signed up for an account, and then didn’t do anything with it for, I don’t know, a year or two. Periodically I’d get an email indicating someone had started following me, which inevitably turned out to be a person with a link to the adult site xxxblackbook.com.

So anyway, with Web2Intranet.com, I thought I’d be more social network active, and this past weekend started being active with Twitter. I must say, I do see the appeal now. I look at it more like a focused RSS feed, where you pick the individuals and organizations to get info from. And info is what you make of it–news stories from local, national, and international news organizations; personal updates; marketing messages and customer service support from organizations; calls for help on personal and business issues; etc.

It is odd, though. You’ll find people following thousands of others, tens-of-thousands and hundreds-of-thousands of others. How can that be? People are spending a LOT of time on Twitter and I’ve read where companies hire staff whose job is to maintain their Twitter presence. Interesting stuff.

For both of them, I go through a script-writing process, first deciding the topic and then outlining the points I want to make. This part of the process is actually a bit more time consuming for an Exploding Creativity podcast episode, as I guess it’s a bit more “scholarly” in its research. When I actually sit down and start writing, it takes 2-4 days to finish a script.

The production process for both takes a single day to record the content, edit it, and produce the final image — an MP3 file for an Exploding Creativity podcast and a WMV file (Windows Media Video) for a Web2Intranet.com video. The production of the video is more time consuming with the addition of video files and titling, plus the fact I can’t flub up my lines and heavily edit the content as I can with an audio-only file (the video would probably look pretty jumpy). I also use the same microphone for the videos that I do for the podcast episodes, and the same audio software (Audacity) to massage the audio (compress, D-ess, and normalize) for the videos so the audio quality is consistent, or at least as consistent as I can make it, throughout the video.

If you have any problem viewing the video, please go to Web2Intranet’s YouTube page. To see the text within the video more clearly, click on the button that expands the video to full screen. Enjoy!

I’ve planned for a long time now to create a webpage for ExplodingCreativity detailing my podcast setup and procedure–for those who are interested in such things and those who might be able to use it themselves for producing their own podcasts, but also for me as a reference when I go months and months between podcast episodes. Maybe now I’ll plan on also creating a page for how I do videos, though I’m still learning a lot as I go along.

I have a huge amount of fun creating a podcast episode and it was certainly a lot of fun to create the video, which is a characteristic of creativity–a sense of joy or play–or at least should be.

If you have any problem viewing the video, please go to Web2Intranet’s YouTube page. To see the text within the video more clearly, click on the button that expands the video to full screen. Enjoy!

It’s an interesting article on some of the innovations in emerging markets, particularly China and India. Reading the article, however, seemed more like an exercise in SCAMPER. For example:

• Combination: “Nokia’s cheapest mobile handsets come equipped with flashlights (because of frequent power cuts), multiple phone books (because they often have several different users), rubberised key pads and menus in several different languages.”
• Put to Other Uses: “… use existing technology in imaginative new ways. TCS is looking at using mobile phones to connect television sets to the internet. Personal computers are still relatively rare in India but televisions are ubiquitous.”
• Put to Other Uses: “… apply mass-production techniques in new and unexpected areas such as health care.”
• Adaptation: “… his most important contribution to medicine is not his surgical skill but his determination to make this huge industry more efficient by applying Henry Ford’s management principles.”
• Substitution: “… BYD has radically reduced the price of expensive lithium-ion batteries by using less costly raw materials and learning how to make them at ambient temperatures rather than in expensively heated “dry rooms”.”
• Combination: “Some of the more exotic phones are designed to look like watches or packets of cigarettes (they even have room for a few real ones) and often have striking new features, such as solar chargers, superloud speakers, telephoto lenses or ultraviolet lights that make it easier to detect forged currency.”

When we encounter something unexpected or unintended, our natural first instinct is to assume we did something wrong. We’ll ignore the unexpected occurrence, and repeat the experiment or test looking for our preconceived intended results. This must be recognized and resisted.The unexpected, unintended event may be perceived as a failure of some sort, but from that failure, a different or more nuanced opportunity may become apparent and success follow from that. Failure, accidents, and unintended variations are an important aspect to innovation and success.

For serendipity, we’re looking for:

• A surprising mental association; an association between ideas we wouldn’t have thought of if it weren’t for the unexpected occurrence.
• Achieving a desired objective in a surprising way, in a way we weren’t intending to.
• Something useful when we were looking for something else.

Part of serendipity is luck. We can be more lucky by:

• Being more observant.
• Improving our Interpersonal Intelligence.
• Asking for things we might not have asked for before.
• Don’t think of a failure as a failure, but rather as an opportunity.

When encountering a failure, accident, or unintended variation, to take advantage of serendipity:

• Reconsider your assumptions. Maybe the experiment didn’t fail, but the assumptions behind the experiment are wrong.
• Use someone as a sounding board. Frequently trying to clearly explain something to someone else actually helps us to better understand what the issue is and to gain insight into it.
• Discuss the issue with others in your field. This may provide additional questions for you to consider or avenues to pursue to gain a better understanding.
• Use diversity to get different perspectives on the issue. Maybe this will lead to the use of different metaphors describing the problem and thereby lead to an innovative solution.
• Try not to filter out any of the information that contradicts your preconceptions.

For an organization to take advantage of serendipity, it should hire creative people and give them new, unexpected assignments;  expose them to diverse experiences and new ideas; encourage them to keep an open mind, to not dismiss their so-called failures, and to keep an eye out for accidents and unintended results of all types. Organizations should encourage risk taking and take steps to lower the cost of experimentation and invention.

References used in this episode:

• How to Make Your Own Luck
• Be Lucky – it’s an easy skill to learn
• Are You Lucky?
• Wall Street Journal Article on Innovation: Oops! Accidents lead to innovations. So, how do you create more accidents?
• Jeff Bezos on the importance of failure on entrepreneurial growth. James Dyson of the Dyson vacuum cleaner also emphasized the importance of failure on innovation in a July 7, 2008, Fortune Magazine article.
• Wired Magazine articles on How To Fail.
• Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, by Jim Collins and Jerry L. Porras.
• The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, by Malcolm Gladwell.

Web2Intranet provides services commonly found on Intranets for for-profit and non-profit organizations and for individuals who don’t have the resources to rent or build and maintain their own Intranet infrastructure, or who just don’t want to bother with that so they can focus on their primary business and not on IT.

My hope for Web2Intranet is that it will help unleash the creativity of folks in small and lean-run organizations and for individuals starting out. In software engineering, organizations likely have a programming style specification, one of the ideas of which is that instead of the engineer focusing his/her creativity and effort on developing their own coding style, they use the existing predefined style so they can focus all of their creativity and energy on solving the problem at hand. And now with Web2Intranet, instead of folks focusing their time, money, and effort on developing and maintaining an IT infrastructure for managing and sharing their information and to collaborate, they can use the services of Web2Intranet and focus more of their resources on their primary mission.

One of my strengths has always been organization, so creating tools for information management has been a good, natural fit. These tools include:

• Blogging
• Forums
• Wikis
• Issue Management
• Project Management
• Email
• Search
• RSS for easily tracking changes

Check it out if you can, and please pass the website on to others you think could benefit from it.

Anyway, I’ve been collecting a lot of notes for my next podcast on Serendipity and Creativity. Stay tuned!

Lemelson Center home page

Prototype newsletter archive

This month’s prototype newsletter

San Diego Inventors Forum August 2009 Presentation (Powerpoint)

]]> http://explodingcreativity.com/2009/08/episode-11-san-diego-inventors-forum-august-2009-presentation/feed/ 0 18:02 This episode is a presentation that I'll have given at the August 2009 meeting of the San Diego Inventors Forum. This presentation is a summary ... This episode is a presentation that I'll have given at the August 2009 meeting of the San Diego Inventors Forum. This presentation is a summary of the Exploding Creativity blog and podcast up to this point. [ad#posts] San Diego Inventors Forum August 2009 Presentation (Powerpoint) About,,Creativity,Tips,and,Techniques,,Fundamentals,of,Creativity Robert W. Sharp no No http://explodingcreativity.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/ec20090808-sdif-presentation.mp3 http://explodingcreativity.com/2009/06/daydreaming-leads-to-creativity/ http://explodingcreativity.com/2009/06/daydreaming-leads-to-creativity/#comments Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:57:55 +0000 Robert W. Sharp http://explodingcreativity.com/?p=293 The June 19, 2009, Wall Street Journal had a good article on the scientific study of the “flash of insight” of the creative moment: A Wandering Mind Heads Straight Toward Insight: Researchers Map the Anatomy of the Brain’s Breakthrough Moments and Reveal the Payoff of Daydreaming, by Robert Lee Hotz. Hotz describes how researchers have recorded brain wave patterns and used MRI scans of brains to capture and analyze the “Eureka moment.” A couple items:

• Flash of insight moments often materialize unexpectedly “through an unconscious shift in mental perspective that can abruptly alter how we perceive a problem.”
• Researchers have found that sudden insights “are the culmination of an intense and complex series of brain states that require more neural resources than methodical reasoning.”
• It seems that our brains may be the most active when our minds are wandering, when we’re just daydreaming, and we’ll spend maybe around a third of our day daydreaming.
• Daydreaming may be a more creative state than an active, focused, and methodical reasoning state as the unfocused mind may more readily allow new ideas and different, unexpected associations between ideas.
• EEG recordings show a distinctive burst of gamma waves from the right hemisphere of the brain one-third of a second before a person consciously experienced their moment of insight.
• No one really knows why problems sometimes trigger an insight or what makes one person more inclined to one and someone else not, but a prepared mind does favor flashes on insight.
• People in a positive mood were more likely to experience a flash of insight.

The importance of daydreaming was also written about in a book I’ve referenced before in podcast episodes, The Creative Spirit, by Daniel Goleman, Paul Kaufman, and Michael Ray, in the section titled “Perchance to Daydream.” They wrote that daydreaming and relaxation is useful in the creative process, but it can be hard to get away from other people trying to control your attention, either at school, work, or even just watching television. It’s important to get away from the noise, turn off the TV or radio, relax without intereference, and just let your mind wander.

The company first tried to get emloyees to offer suggestions on the company’s wiki and on forms in their break room, but when that didn’t produce the results they desired, they held a company-wide competition which did produce an idea pipeline. The groundrules they established were:

• Make participation mandatory as ideas can come from even the unlikiest of employees.
• Pick a slow time of the year to minimize lost productivity.
• Assemble small, diverse teams of employees, ideally from different parts of the company. They created teams of three people by randomly picking names out of a bowl.
• Keep the rules of the contest short and simple while providing guidelines to keep the contestants on track.
• Give specific feedback, explaining why each idea works or doesn’t work, while emphasizing their positive attributes.
• Let the contestants vote for their favorite submission and reward the winners with a small prize (e.g., a $100 gift card for the team to share) and lots of recognition.
• Establish a system for vetting the ideas thoroughly after the contest.

Creativity is morally neutral; it is neither inherently moral or immoral. It is how you use it that gives it its moral character. Morality is usually subjective, depending on the person making the judgment and when they make it.

Some possible dark sides, or down sides, of creativity or of being creative:

• Collaborating with the wrong person. Be careful who you collaborate with and how you collaborate with them. The podcast episode offers some suggestions on how to avoid partering with the wrong person:
  • Look for obvious red flags: do they have a history of being active, do they have basic business behavior, do they network, do they have the energy to contribute, are they overly paranoid or defensive.
  • Do a background check and a credit check.
  • Use the services of a good business attorney (not some other kind of attorney) to get a buy-sell agreement in place, corporate by-laws indicating what the expectations of everyone is, etc.
  • When in doubt, just don’t do it. Other opportunities will come.
• Working when tired, creating more problems than you solve.
• Drug use to be creative, whether sleeping pills or other drugs.
• Being open to bad or harmful ideas.
• Being affected by over-negative or over-positive emotions. Be careful of “Compliance Practitioners” who try to manipulate you.
• Lack of critical thinking. It’s good to inhibit critical thinking for creativity purposes, just don’t turn it off permanently.

References used in this episode:

• Leaders, by Richard Nixon, page 330 on leadership and morality.
• Google motto of “Don’t Be Evil”
• The Power of a Positive No: Save The Deal Save The Relationship and Still Say No, by William Ury, pages 12-13.
• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, by Robert Cialdini.
• Masaru Emoto and his water experiment.
• Quantum Entanglement.
• Particle Wave Function.

SCAMPER is an acronym:

• S – Substitute
• C – Combine
• A – Adapt
• M – Magnify/Minify/Modify
• P – Put to other uses
• E – Eliminate
• R – Reverse/Rearrange

The various techniques aren’t necessarily exclusive of each other — a substitution might also be a modification, for example — and the techniques can be used together, for example, applying a combination idea along with an elimination idea.

To use SCAMPER, first isolate your subject, e.g., by stating the problem you’d like to solve or the idea you’d like to develop. Then go through the SCAMPER list and ask questions about your subject.

For what can be substituted, think about things such as: process, procedure, rule, person or people, place, time, color, approach, part, shape, texture, sound, smell, name, people’s feelings or attitudes towards the subject, power, force.

For combination, think about things such as: what ideas, purposes, or parts can be combined or merged, what assortments, materials, people, or appeals can be combined; can a blend be created with something else that will create additional uses; can different talents be combined.

For adaptation, think of such things as: what else is like your subject, but in a different context; what other ideas are suggested; how can circumstances be adapted to; what ideas can be incorporated, what can be copied or imitated, who can be emulated, what different contexts can the subject be put in to.

For magnification, think of such things as: what can be made larger, extended, exaggerated, overstated; can more time be added; can it be made higher, longer, stronger, more frequent, thicker; can additional features or value be added; can something be duplicated.

For minification, think of such things as: what can be made smaller, more restricted, understated, streamlined; can something need less time, go slower, be made lighter, can it be made lower in height, weaker, less frequent; can a feature be removed or less value added and have the thing be used for a new purpose; how can costs, time, effort, or waste be minimized.

For modification, think of such things as: what can be altered for the better; can the meaning, color, motion, shape, package be changed; can the name change; can some plan or process be modified.

For putting to other uses, think of such things as: what else can the product, process, or idea can be used for; what new ways can the thing can be used as it already is, or any other uses if the thing is modified somehow; how can it be used by people other than those it was originally intended for, or by a child, an older person, or a person with disabilities; what other markets or industries could it be used by, perhaps with modifications.

For elimination, think of such things as: what’s not necessary, what can be omitted, divided, split-up, separated into different components; what rules or processes can be eliminated; how can it be simplified; what can be removed without altering its basic function; how can waste be eliminated.

For reversing, think of such things as: what are the opposites of the idea; what are the negatives; can you turn something around or backwards or upside down; can roles be reversed; can something unexpected be done; what if the subject was used for the exact opposite of what it was intended for.

For rearranging, think of such ideas as: what ways can another arrangement be better; what parts can be interchanged; can another pattern or layout or sequence be created; can the pace or schedule of something be changed.

References used in this episode:

• Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques (2nd Edition), by Michael Michalko, Chapter 9, SCAMPER.
• Cracking Creativity: The Secrets of Creative Genius, by Michael Michalko, pages 95-104.
• SCAMPER technique training for lateral thinking
• Creative Problem Solving with SCAMPER
• SCAMPER
• Wikipedia article on Alex Osborn

The June 2008 issue of Inc Magazine had two articles, Making Inspiration Routine, by A.G. Lafley and Ram Charan, which is more about creativity as a process, and How the Creative Stay Creative, by Leigh Buchanan, which is more about how to help those flashes of insight more likely to happen.

Lafley, Proctor & Gamble CEO, and Charan wrote The Game-Changer: How You Can Drive Revenue and Profit Growth with Innovation which “describes dozens of mechanisms for keeping the idea pipeline full”. In the Inc Magazine article, they describe scaled-down strategies more appropriate for a small business:

• Look for an underserved market. Segmenting your market can be a creative exercise itself. Try to identify a segment that is rarely treated as a segment.
• Use social networks to bring in ideas, as opposed to just using them to push out marketing messages.
• Brainstorm with employees’ network members to generate ideas; the more diverse the members the better. Promising ideas are flushed, written up, and submitted by a pair of employees who team up for collaboration on the idea.
• Ideas are formally evaluated based on their projected revenue and profit goals.
• For ideas that are chosen to go forward with, the ideas are prototyped and tested with the employees’ social networks.
• As the company grows, the innovation process scales upwards, e.g., with additional training on the creative process, hiring of more creative people, team structure, feedback.

In the How The Creative Stay Creative Article, Inc gives some insight on how top innovation consultants stay creative:

• Get multicultural
• Encourage risky behavior
• Provide lots of free time to think
• Hire people with good problem solving skills and who are open to criticism
• Have a way for employees to share their ideas
• Bring in outside experts to get their perspectives
• Be very flexible in how a team organizes itself and how it operates
• Mix teams up with people from other teams

Collaborating with others is a fundamental principle of creativity. In this blog, you’ll find many references to this — just click on the tags “Brainstorming”, “Decision Making”, “Diversity”, and “Innovation”, for a sample.

Threadless is a great example of this, where the “customers end up playing a critical role across all its operations: idea generation, marketing, sales forecasting.”

This is also an example of Creativity as a Process, where Threadless’s process is maintaining the on-line community, and having the community members submit and choose the designs to be printed.

1. Engage employees from all departments in brainstorming sessions. I addressed this in the episode on brainstorming.
2. Encourage and enable employees to pursue outside interests. This was touched on in the episode on leadership.
3. Create an inspiring work space. This was mentioned a bit in the brainstorming episode in relation to the environment for the brainstorming session. And of course, having an inspiring work space in general helps spur creativity.
4. Fund extracurricular projects or classes. Related to encouraging and enabling employees to have outside interests.
5. Lower cubicle walls. This is similar to the traditional Japanese model where there are no cubicles, where peoples’ desks are just put together in a large room. The idea here is that it helps foster teamwork. (I would note that it’s also nice to have a quiet, private place to work.)

]]> http://explodingcreativity.com/2009/02/5-ways-to-spur-employee-creativity/feed/ 1 http://explodingcreativity.com/2009/01/onboard-innovators/ http://explodingcreativity.com/2009/01/onboard-innovators/#comments Wed, 07 Jan 2009 04:25:23 +0000 Robert W. Sharp http://explodingcreativity.com/?p=243 Here’s an interesting article on inventors inventing devices for airplane travel: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28475016.

A mind map helps you visualize the challenge at hand: some problem you’re trying to solve, some plan you’re trying to develop, something you’re trying to understand better or look for new ideas for. It helps you formulate and remember things to do. It may be used as-is for remembering and organizing things, or it can be used as the basis for other things, like to-do lists, or a more formal type of plan, like a project management plan or a marketing. Mind mapping can be used in problem solving, decision making, and writing. You can do mind mapping alone or with other people in a collaborative brainstorming session.

This episode discusses:

• What mind mapping is and its uses
• The mind mapping process
• Mind mapping tools

References used in this episode:

• Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques (2nd Edition), by Michael Michalko, Chapter 8, Think Bubbles.
• Cracking Creativity: The Secrets of Creative Genius, by Michael Michalko, pages 51-68.
• Wikipedia article on Mind Mapping.
• Wikipedia article on Mind Mapping Tools.
• Adventures of the ITIL Imp blog posting on Mind Mapping.
• Exploding Creativity episode on Diversity.
• Unified Modeling Language Resource Page.
• Wikipedia article on the Unified Modeling Language.

Example Mind Map:

Among other things, Christensen says in the interview:

• Today’s economic downturn will have a huge positive impact on innovation as:
  • It forces innovators to not waste as much money as they normally would innovating by keeping them focused on their goal
  • “Breakthrough innovations come when the tension is greatest and the resources are most limited. That’s when people are actually a lot more open to rethinking the fundamental way they do business.”
• Private companies are more likely to produce disruptive innovations than public companies, as public companies tend to focus more on short-term performance to please their shareholders and are not as likely to risk near-term performance reductions in rolling out such an innovation.

• Lessons From 40 Years of Education ‘Reform’, Wall Street Journal, December 1, 2008, by Louis B. Gerstner, former CEO of Intel and former chairman of the Teaching Commission, “which reported on ways to improve the quality of public school teaching.” Gerstner writes that after decades of reform efforts, America’s K-12 schools as a whole have not improved in terms of high school and college graduation rates, test scores, and the number of college students majoring in science and engineering, and he’s worried about what this means for America’s future workforce. He then writes about things that can be done to improve education: abolishing all local school districts, establishing a national standard for a core curriculum (starting with reading, math, science, and social studies), establishing national testing days, establishing national teaching standards, measuring student and teacher performance, and extending the school day and the school year.
• Bill & Melinda Gates Go Back to School, Fortune Magazine, December 8, 2008, by Claudia Wallis. Wallis describes Bill and Melinda Gates “crusade to fix schools”. Mr. Gates is quoted as saying that the reason “America has been so successful with such terrible education” is that we pamper the elite 20% who attend the top colleges and the best public high schools and private academies. (Does anyone else find that as insulting as I do?) Gates says that has to change now with low-skill jobs vanishing and global competition on the rise. Mrs. Gates said their goal “is to double the number of low-income students who earn post-secondary degrees or credentials that let them earn a living wage” in order to make a dent in poverty in America. The article then describes their ideas to do that: performance-based scholarships, business-college partnerships, and rapid mediation. They also talk about a common set of standards and teacher quality. Intel chairman Craig Barrett is quoted as saying global corporations like Microsoft and Intel are already finding the talent they need off-shore, and that they “don’t need the U.S. to be successful”; I guess it’s implied that they would still, however, like the U.S. to be successful.

Here’s a creativity exercise: open those articles in your browser and search for the words “creativity”, “individual” (in the context of treating students as), “leadership” (in the context of teaching to students), “entrepreneurship”, “art”, “music”. What?? Can’t find them? Neither could I. Hmmm…

I wonder what Gerstner, the Gates, and other billionaires/business titans/masters of the universe/education experts are teaching their own children. Do you think they’re preparing them with plenty of math and science so they can join the workforce and work for other billionaires/business titans/masters of the universe? I would bet not. I suspect they’re teaching their own children such things as the importance of meeting people and maintaining relationships, entrepreneurship, leadership, finance, and marketing. And where is their concern for the creativity and expression of the individual, or even freedom, for their global workforce?

If I was cynical, I would say the business elites are advocating a system for creating interchangeable, inexpensive, and disposable employees — those who are one minute away from termination and one paycheck away from homelessness. However, I’ll be charitable and assume they really do have the best interests of our children at heart. Yet, unfortunately, this really is the best we can expect from business elites in looking out for our childrens’ best interests. Thank you for your concern, o holy masters of the universe with huge bank account balances…now step away from our children!

And also, unfortunately, based on my own observations and personal experiences, I don’t think the education establishment has it right either. It seems to me they want to have an assembly-line educational system where the good eggs go through and the bad eggs are identified, disciplined, and disposed of. Teachers want a room full of good “girls”, who sit quietly and listen, don’t make a fuss, and don’t talk out of order. Their education on education seems to be one of keeping their thumbs on the students in order to maintain control at all times; students are shepherded through classes, and woe be unto the uninterested, disinterested, talkative, disruptive “boy”.

I don’t have all the answers, but I think it would be good to start with the basic principle of treating our young people as the individuals they are. Out of that could come curriculums and schools tailored to the interests of the individual student, ultimately leading our young to the heights of their potential, causing an explosion of creativity in this country. And that means not everyone comes out of school readied for an employee-at-will position at intel, Microsoft, etc. We’ll also have musicians, painters, dancers, and other artists, along with the mathemeticians, scientists, and engineers…and doctors, lawyers, politicans, teachers, business leaders, etc.

These kimonos are quite fascinating. Instead of painting on canvas, Kubota-san tie-dyed landscape images onto silk kimonos he created, giving the images a three-dimensional effect. The kimonos are very intractely designed, taking a year each to be finished. These kimonos aren’t for wearing (some are quite huge); they’re purely for display as an art-form.

After January 4, 2009, the exhibit moves on to the Cultural Center for the Arts in Canton, Ohio. If you’re in the San Diego area soon, or in the Canton area February-April, definitly check it out if you can.

• Interrupting sleep seriously disrupts memory-making.
• Taking a nap may boost a sophisticated kind of memory that helps us see the big picture and get creative.
• Particularly important is “slow-wave sleep,” a period of deep sleep that occurs before REM sleep, which can occur even in a power nap.
• Even a 12-minute nap can boost some forms of memory.

Having worked from home the past three years, I’ll often take a power nap around 3 pm, which helps me finish the day stronger than if I didn’t. Sometimes I’ll fall into a deep sleep and maybe wake up a 1/2-hour or so later, but typically I’ll rest for only about 15-minutes, which works great for me. Working from offices before that, though, even ones with couches available, I can’t say I’d feel comfortable stretching out in front of everyone (no one else did).

On a more enlightened note, Google employees are encouraged to take naps. Check this out.

Winston Churchill was big on naps. He’d work late into the evening and needed afternoon naps to keep himself fresh and productive.

Thomas Edison was also famous for his naps. He was known to work and nap around the clock, even sleeping right on his workbench.

Brainstorming is used to expand the number of choices to choose from. The guiding principle is that quantity of ideas breeds quality of ideas. Brainstorming separates the creative act of coming up with ideas from the critical act of deciding. The key to this is to defer judgment, to suspend all assumptions, preconceptions, and criticism.

This episode discusses:

• History of Brainstorming
• Purpose of Brainstorming
• Brainstorming Process
  • Define Your Purpose
  • Selection of Participants
  • Selection of Facilitator
  • Selection of Recorder
  • The Three-Phases of the Brainstorming Process
• Solo Brainstorming
• Brainstorming Tools

References used in this episode:

• Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques (2nd Edition), by Michael Michalko, Chapter 34, Brainstorming.
• The Creative Spirit, by Daniel Goleman, Paul Kaufman, and Michael Ray, page 38, on the importance of humor and playfulness when brainstorming.
• Cracking Creativity: The Secrets of Creative Genius, by Michael Michalko, pages 257-28.
• Management: Skills and Application, by Leslie W. Rue and Lloyd L. Byars, pages 81-83.
• Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, by Roger Fisher and William Ury, Chapter 4, Invent Options for Mutual Gain, for a good discussion on brainstorming, and brainstorming with the other side and how to mitigate the associated risks.
• Manager Tools Podcast Episode on Brainstorming, Part 1 of 2
• Manager Tools Podcast Episode on Brainstorming, Part 2 of 2
• Wikipedia Article on Brainstorming
• Exploding Creativity Episode for discussing Creativity as a Process
• Exploding Creativity Episode on Emotions
• Exploding Creativity Episode on Decision Making
• Exploding Creativity Episode on Diversity
• Exploding Creativity Episode on Leadership

P&G is the world’s largest consumer products company that wants to expand its reach to younger consumers who spend more time with online media, and Google wants a bigger portion of P&G’s $8.7 billion annual advertising budget, which is currently dominated towards television. In order to help each other help each other, they’ve swapped about two-dozen employees, who spent weeks attending the other company’s training programs and planning meetings. This is an interesting variation of diversifying your team, as I discussed in Episode 5: Diversity and Creativity.

As described In Episode 5, you can bring in outside stakeholders (clients, suppliers, service providers, investors, etc.) as team members or advisers on an as-needed basis. P&G and Google took this a step further and actually swapped employees temporarily. Giving “outsiders” such intimate access to company confidential information has got its associated risks (and I assume P&G and Google had an anti-poaching clause in their Non-Disclosure Agreement), but I certainly admire their creativity and courage to do this.

Of course, similar activites you can do internal to an organization to help spur innovation are swapping employees between different parts of the organization, where people get experience working in different aspects of an organization’s operations, and bringing in people from different parts of the organization to form a cross-functional team.

The article Experts: Lack of playtime is hurting children discusses how the average American child has 8-12 fewer hours of free play today than they did in the 1980s. This is due to things such as parents’ reluctance to let their kids play outside due to fear of abduction or injury; parents’ scheduling of lessons, organized sports, and other structured activities; kids watching more hours of TV, playing video games, using the Internet and cell phones; the shortening or elimination of recess at many schools; and more emphasis on formal learning in preschool and more homework for elementary school students.

Some excerpts:

• Play equals learning. Creative, spontaneous play is vital. It fosters innovation and creative thinking.
• The most vital form of play for young children involves fantasy and role-playing with their peers. They’re inventing abstract thinking before the world tells them what to think.
• Lack of play in early education “could be the next global warming” crisis. It puts American children at a disadvantage in the global economy.
• Diminished time for free play with other children is producing a generation of socially inept young people and is a factor in the high rates of obesity, anxiety, attention-deficit disorder, and depression in our youth.
• Organized sports do not necessarily breed creativity and can lead to burnout and frustration.
• Lack of free play at preschools, with more emphasis on academics, reduces children’s chances to learn on their own about fairness, kindness, and other social interactions.

One thing that caught my eye is “playing video games.” Isn’t “playing video games” playing, and therefore being in a creative state? Are they “creative, spontaneous play” and “fantasy and role-playing with peers”? I suppose some could be. Games do involve fantasy and you can role play with peers. The peers may be on-line and not face-to-face, and the peers could be complete strangers who happen to be on-line and playing at the same time. The fantasy involved in a lot of games is the killing of people in a crime or combat setting, though games for younger children are more tame. The kids are still playing someone else’s game, someone else’s set of rules. Are the kids developing innovative, abstract, and creative thinking? Are they learning about fairness, kindness, and how to be social? If a kid can sit down and play a video game for hours, can they be diagnosed with ADD? Can video games be addictive? Can they change a child’s behavior, cause anxiety or depression? You may want to check out:

• Computer games stunt teen brains – CON
  • Video game “brain damage” claim criticised
• Your brain on video games – PRO
  

The author, George Gilder, is a venture capitalist, and his article is about entrepreneurship, creativity, and four emerging technological areas he expects huge growth in. Here’s some quotes from it I thought were interesting for this blog:

• “The real source of all growth is human creativity and entrepreneurship…”
• “No amount of knowledge about the present can predict the specific profile and provenance of innovation.”
• “If creativity was not unexpected, governments could plan it and socialism would work. But creativity is intrinsically surprising and the source of all real profit and growth.”

The four technological areas he writes about are cloud computing, graphics processing, nanotech engineering, and energy-saving construction materials.

So is all this creativity stuff important? Heck yeah!

In the article, the author, Cari Tuna, writes that frontline workers are often better at identifying problems and suggesting creative solutions to fix those problems, but when managers micromanage, employees become complacent. She writes of a company founder saying that when he micromanaged his team previously, his employees stopped making suggestions because they were afraid they’d be shot-down. Another company found their employees purposefully not following orders as they were resentful of the boss’s micromanagement.

Complacency…fear…resentment…yep, micromanagement sure sucks!

From the perspective of being micromanaged, I can only recall a couple of experiences. One was a boss who micromanaged only in certain things, every so often. It could be annoying, but overall no big deal. He’d do his bit of micromanagement on people and then leave us alone to get work done.

But I have had the experience of a CEO of the company I worked at who swooped down to my mid-level management position, sat in meetings with me and the folks I lead, and gave detailed instructions on what everyone was to do. Was I resentful? Resentful is too gentle a word. This was a creativity killer, morale killer, team killer, project killer. The CEO really had nothing better to do? Really??

From the perspective of micromanaging, it is kind of easy to micromanage a junior team member, though you may think of it as teaching. This is where you have to be mindful of exactly what it is you’re doing. Are you helping them learn something, or are you doing it for them? Maybe letting them make a mistake is a good way for them to learn, and maybe what they’re doing isn’t a mistake anyway, just a different way of doing something than you’d do.

Is there ever a case to be made for micromanagement? Is it ever the appropriate thing to do? I’m not creative enough to see it, I guess. If you want to make a case for micromanagement as a way to improve someone’s performance, be a real leader and give feedback and coaching instead. If you want to make sure that things just “get done right,” then don’t have employees and do everything yourself, or accept that you can utilize other people so you can focus on higher-level, better, more important things and let people do their jobs. If you’re using micromanaging as a way to force someone to quit, again, be a real leader, take responsibility that you made a bad hiring decision, and show them the door.

Tuna writes that the “best managers help employees learn to work independently by giving them meaningful responsibilities,” that managers “should give employees goals and leave them to work out the details”. Of course, there’s a place for feedback, coaching, and teaching, but NOT micromanaging.

This episode discusses:

• Selection, hiring, and interviewing
• Organization culture, values, morale, and motivation
• Developing trust
• Advocacy vs. Inquiry
• Belbin Team Roles: Coordinator, Shaper, Plant, Team Worker, Implementer, Completer-Finisher, Monitor-Evaluator, Resource Investigator, Specialist
• Situational leadership
• Leadership styles: Visionary, Coaching, Affiliative, Democratic, Pacesetting, Commanding

References used in this episode:

• Management: Skills and Application, by Leslie W. Rue and Lloyd L. Byars, for a history of management and a good “Management 101″ book.
• Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t, by Jim Collins, and First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently, by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman, for a discussion on the importance of selection and how to select people.
• Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else, by Geoff Colvin for a discussion on talent and how to improve it. There is a good book excerpt in Fortune Magazine.
• Leadershiptraq podcast on leadership.
• Management Powertools by Harry Onsman for good descriptions of Vision, Mission, and Values statements for an organization and many other topics.
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable, by Patrick Lencioni, for a discussion of what great teamwork is comprised of.
• Manager Tools podcasts on Communication for discussions on the importance of communication with personal relationships andmotivation, plus much other good stuff. Specifically, check out the episode on Virtual Teams.
• What You Don’t Know About Making Decisions, by David A. Garvin and Michael A. Roberto, a Harvard Business Review article on Advocacy vs. Inquiry for decision making.
• Belbin Team Roles.
• Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Schedules, by Steve McConnell, and Death March (2nd Edition) (Yourdon Press Series), by Edward Yourdon, for a discussion on team roles.
• Primal Leadership – Realizing The Power Of Emotional Intelligence, by Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee, for their descriptions of the various leadership styles.
• The Discipline of Market Leaders: Choose Your Customers, Narrow Your Focus, Dominate Your Market, by Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema, for a discussion on how to focus company resources to be either a leader in operational excellence, product innovation, OR customer intimacy.
• U.S. Global Investors Funds Annual Report, June 30, 2008.

We all fall into a rut from time to time that limits our creativity. Diversity is a way to break out of that and look at something from perspectives we might not have otherwise.

This episode discusses:

• Applying diversity to yourself
  • Seek different kinds of people to interact with, different kinds of knowledge, learning, and experiences
  • Break out of your routine
  • Be an active observer
• Applying diversity to your team
  • You can diversify by gender, age, culture
  • You can diversify by job function. This produces a Cross-Functional Team aka Business Team. Team members can include, as appropriate, a representative from marketing, sales, finance, production, engineering, technical documentation, QA, etc.
  • You can diversify by team role. Doing/Acting Roles (Implementer, Shaper, Completer/Finisher), Thinking/Problem Solving Roles (Plant, Monitor/Evaluator, Specialist), and People/Feelings Role (Coordinator, Team Worker, Resource/Investigator)
  • Can add others to your team, like customers, investors, and other stakeholders, but try to keep team smallish, maybe 6-12 people, and keep communication complexity low.
  • You can diversify by personality types. This may come anyway, but by paying attention to it, you can optimize for it. Be aware of conflict sure to arise from people of different personality types (and even the same types) and the need to manage conflict. Personality models briefly discussed:
    Social Style Matrix, PIAV (Personal Interests, Attitudes, and Values), Jung-based models and the Jung Type Indicator, DiSC.

References used in the episode:

• The Managerial Decision-making Process, by E. Frank Harrison, for discussion on falling into ruts and breaking out of them, advantages of working with a group (page 232), and communication complexity vs. creativity (page 226).
• Cracking Creativity: The Secrets of Creative Genius, by Michael Michalko, for a discussion on how creative people look for alternate ways to think about a subject, even when the old ways are well established, that they will create a large number of different perspectives and then pick one they want (page 285).
• MovieMaker magazine I mentioned.
• Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Schedules, by Steve McConnell, for a discussion on team members and roles (pages 282-284, kinds of teams (pages 300-301), and Business Team structure (page 304).
• Death March (2nd Edition) (Yourdon Press Series), by Edward Yourdon, for a discussion on team roles (page 115).
• The Creative Spirit, by Daniel Goleman, Paul Kaufman, and Michael Ray, for a discussion on diversity by age, geographical region, political faction, and culture (pages 171-174).
• Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques (2nd Edition), by Michael Michalko, for a discussion of diversifying people for brainstorming (page 297).
• Belbin’s Team Roles
• Social Style Matrix info
• Selling: Building Partnerships, by Barton A. Weitz, Stephen B. Castleberry, and John F. Tanner, Jr., for a discussion on the Social Style Matrix (pages 153-157).
• PIAV article in Wikipedia
• PIAV info from The Coughlin Group
• Jung Type Indicator info
• Jung Typology Test at HumanMetrics
• Jung Type Indicator article in Wikipedia
• Myers-Briggs Type indicator Wikipedia article
• DiSC Wikipedia article
• Manager-Tools DiSC info. This contains some free DiSC resources. The podcasts are all free, though for the specialized ones you’ll need to register as a member (which is also free). There’s also some handy PDFs that can be found there.

• Lots of fighting with WordPress to get my feed without oddities and then linking it in with Feedburner.
• Saturday I loaded and switched over to the xMark theme by Lisa Sabin-Wilson. I found this through Lisa’s Book, WordPress for Dummies. I also installed several of the widgets discussed in the book (some you see on the blog, some you don’t), and I’m really quite happy with the way the blog looks now. Thank you, Lisa!
• After some final touches on the blog, today I registered the podcast with iTunes, Podcast Alley, Podcast Pickle, and several others. For anyone else interested in doing such a thing, definitely checkout this Podcast 411 link.

For upcoming shows, my immediate plan is to next record shows on (titles subject to change) “Variety, Personality Styles, and Creativity” and “Leadership and Creativity.” These episodes will close out a good run of Fundamentals of Creativity episodes, needed for next discussing a series on Creativity Tips and Techniques. The first two shows I plan for that series are on Brainstorming and Mind Mapping. I’ll do some more shows in Creativity Tips and Techniques and then start on interviewing.

I’ve got a couple of people lined-up already for interviews, and I’ve already apologized to them for running so far behind of where I thought I’d be by now. Developing the blog is time-consuming by itself, and producing the shows is very time-consuming by itself (but both are highly rewarding!). Coupled with doing some part-time contracting work, time becomes very precious indeed. Anyway, little-by-little things are coming along nicely.

I also have in mind a couple of pages (as opposed to posts) I want to write-up. Plus I’d like to put in a Wiki or a Forum so that others can share their creativity fundamentals, tips/techniques, experiences, etc. More on all this later.

Thanks for reading!

Bob