When I was a kid, my cousin and I believed that if you sniffed a can of gas, it would make you run faster. We also regularly checked any patch of dirt after it rained a lot because you know – quicksand.  I once thought I could dive into a pool from the second floor of an apartment building (I have a nice scar from that lesson).  I once asked my grandmother what the world was like when they lived in black and white.

When I was a teenager, I thought that “being cool” was something you could learn, not something you had to create. I thought that my friends would be with me forever. When I learned how to program Pascal in the ninth grade, I remember thinking “I’m glad I won’t have to learn another programming language.”

When I was in college, I thought I knew a lot until I realized how much I didn’t know.

I’ve been wrong a lot, and I’m OK with that.  For me the greatest success has come from asking the right questions, not having all the answers.  If you wait until you’ve gained every bit of knowledge about something you want to try, you are going to get passed up.

There isn’t always a “right” answer for a challenge you might face.  There are however lots of great questions you can ask. So many professions are built around the false belief that knowledge is power. I believe that knowledge is not nearly as important as being aware of and comfortable with what you don’t know. Relying on the power of inquiry to get the answers you need is the real superpower.

Ask 100 Questions – Questions Are Better Than Ideas

I once had a professor tell me that true wisdom knows what questions to ask, not what answers to give.  I didn’t appreciate this nugget until I started keeping a daily idea quota. Generating ten ideas a day is a lot easier if you are fluent in asking questions.   To get better here is an exercise you can do when you have 40-60 minutes of uninterrupted time.

It’s called the 100 Question Challenge and it’s pretty simple.  The challenge is to write out 100 questions in one sitting and I’ve created a workbook to facilitate that process that you can download below. It’s one step to increasing your capacity for ideas by honing your question-asking skills.

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 “The higher you go the more your problems are behavioral. Interpersonal behavior is the difference between being great and near great.”

The following is from an interview in the Houston Chronicle with then Houston Rocket’s head coach Jeff Van Gundy published on October 27, 2004.

As often as he has said that talent in the NBA is a given, and therefore does not determine winners, Rockets coach Jeff Van Gundy offered a discourse on the subject after Tuesday’s practice.

“I crack up,” Van Gundy said. “(Media) always say it. Players always say it. Players, when they’re losing, say, ‘I don’t understand why we’re losing. We got a lot of talent.’ Obviously, if you’re one of the top 400 in your profession in the whole world, you have a lot of talent. Obviously. Unfortunately, so does the competition.

“So what separates teams is not talent, it’s habits. Whatever habits you have will come out. What you’re constantly trying to do as a coach is create habits that are winning habits….What loses are turnovers, bad shots, poor containment of the ball, (not) helping on defense, not rebounding, lack of poise under pressure. There’s a lot. Not one of them is decided in this league … on talent. ‘We got out-talented tonight. We don’t have enough talent.’ What does that mean? We didn’t have enough production. This is a production-oriented business, as are most.”

“I don’t understand this obsession with talent.”

Coach Van Gundy’s advice makes perfect sense in the sports world, but what if you’re not an athlete? I don’t know about you, but I know a lot of talented people who believe their success is based on a “gift” their peers don’t possess. It’s been my experience that individuals who think their talents can do no wrong also can’t admit they are ever wrong. Which, paradoxically, makes them more wrong.

There are volumes of consistent and overwhelming, research that indicate that regardless of discipline or profession, talent is made, not born. What separates good talent from great talent is behavior or more specifically habits. When you move up the ranks in any discipline everyone you encounter will be talented. The lesson that Jeff Van Gundy is teaching is that talent alone isn’t enough.

You can’t win at anything until you truly understand what will make you lose. Here are nine habits I believe even the most talented individuals and companies need to have in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

1. Work as hard on problem definition as you do on problem solution
2. Have a healthy appetite for curiosity
3. Embrace play
4. Understand the impact of story on human relationships
5. Build a surplus of knowledge
6. Foster a growth mindset
7. Be OK with experimenting and failure
8. Understand the power of downtime
9. Externalize the creative process

Skills aren’t the winning edge and tools don’t equal talent. Skills and tools contribute to your success, but your habits or how you apply those skills will determine how far you can go.

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There are no right or wrong opinions unless you have invalidated yours for having ignored facts that conflict with them – Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Whenever I say, this someone always says “well, you can’t tell me what I can and cannot say or think.”  In general, I agree with this.  If  “entitled to an opinion” only means everyone has the right to think and say whatever they want, then the statement is true, but that truth is relatively trivial.  I would even say it would be silly for me to tell you that you aren’t entitled to believe for example that Lebron James is better than Michael Jordan.  Even though this is probably not a commonly held opinion, there is no real way of testing it (like the earth is not flat, or gravity doesn’t exist).  Opinions become problematic when the next step is taken, and the word opinion is interchanged with “I can say what I want without criticism.”   In that way, challenging an opinion is seen as “rude,” and worse doesn’t disqualify their argument’s credibility.   An opinion is a view or judgment of something. So by definition,  it has a certain degree of subjectivity and using it as a defense only works in certain situations.

So sure, you can have an opinion, and I think it would be foolish of anyone to deny you that. However, the moment you offer your opinion up as a credible alternative to a problem, you are only entitled to what you can prove.

What is this important to you? There are lots of things that happen all around us every day that we accept as facts, when in fact, they are just opinions. How we define business, and how we define the roles of design and technology in business are just a few things that are heavily steeped in opinions.  In the past, I have said “Challenge Your Sacred Cows” to address this. Maybe a better way of  saying this would be “Is your sacred cow really a unicorn?”

The post The Most Important Thing I Teach My Students appeared first on Kenzie Creative.

I have, and it sucks.

Most managers want committed employees who can get work done without constant direction; some just aren’t sure how to achieve that goal.

Managers try all sorts of gimmicks to encourage employees to make decisions and take independent action.  What they don’t realize is that a lot of these efforts fall flat leaving them wondering why people won’t act in “empowered” ways.  Maybe you’ve heard something like this before:

“When I started this program I was pretty sure it would work. I kept seeing employees who didn’t care about their job, didn’t understand what it took to maintain the business and didn’t seek out ways to help the business grow. I was always excellent at doing this earlier in my career, so I tend to be hands-on, spending lots of time showing them how to do their jobs the right way. Even though I worry a lot about the decisions they make, I still want to delegate projects that will help them grow. I don’t get it…they won’t take my lead.  I don’t think employees want to be empowered…”

The traditional view of “employee empowerment” is broken. Why? There are two fundamental reasons. The first breakdown happens when the manager confuses delegation with empowerment and doesn’t give employees the freedom needed for independent action to take place. The second failure occurs when the manager doesn’t understand that you can’t give people power. The only thing you can do is create an environment where employees understand the company’s vision and feel that they have the freedom to do whatever is required to achieve it – thereby creating power for themselves.

Empowering your employees is not about finding ways to give more authority; it’s about liberating them so that they can make something happen with that authority. Before you add any programs, take a look at the habits you might have that are seriously limiting your employees’ ability to help run the ship, maybe without knowing it. Here are eight tips to increase the likelihood your employees feel this freedom, how to recognize them, and what to do instead:

Strong commitment has to start with you

You should never expect employees to commit fully to goals that they don’t think you are committed to first. Whenever I speak about creativity, leadership or digital marketing (or any learning objective for that matter), the first thing I ask people to do is commit to putting it into practice. It sounds simple, but even if you hear and agree with principles you receive, not committing to following through and putting the principles into action will not get you where you want. If you want to have employees who know how to make things happen you have to commit to doing the things that will make that possible.

Communicate your vision clearly

Vision is the fuel that drives most significant efforts. It’s the model that employees are supposed to be working toward bit by bit every day. To have the most impact employees need to know and understand the vision. I’m not talking about plaques, t-shirts and wordy statements that don’t mean anything. Your vision should clarify for an employee why their job exists on the deepest level, regardless of what they do. Also, it’s important to note that there is a difference between “sharing the vision” and making sure there is “shared understanding of the vision.” If the team doesn’t commit to or more importantly – understand how it relates directly to their role in the company, it will be ineffective. Understanding your vision allows employees to seek out creative solutions to everyday challenges because now they know why they are doing it.

Have genuine empathy for the people doing the work

One thing you can do to derail employee proactivity is to tell them you value them and then not show it. In today’s economic downturn employees, should be viewed as appreciating assets. That means understanding the cumulative value of training and experiences employees receive while working for you. Skill and talent simply aren’t the same thing. If you use “skill” and “talent” interchangeably, and see employees as replaceable expenses you are more likely to cripple or crush a healthy company than you are to encourage people to seek new opportunities to grow themselves and the company.

Coach them and get the hell out of the way

If you want a surefire way to stop employees from seeking new ways to improve the business – be an autocrat. Autocratic managers, who micromanage tend not to be able to use employee empowerment because they don’t understand its source. Micromanaging diminishes employee self-confidence while killing their ability (and desire) to take the initiative and think for themselves. The best policy is to coach your employee how to determine the best decisions by teaching concepts like problem-solving, communication, conflict resolution and time management. Coaching allows you to step away and know that for the most part when they make a decision it’s probably exactly what you would have them do. If you think it’s necessary to oversee all aspects of employee work, and will not give up control, you need to examine that first. “Empowerment” becomes a futile and demeaning exercise if it’s only about delegation.  Start freeing your employees from the traditional shackles and “helpful” managerial intrusions.

Have a small body and a big brain

In a traditional environment, most of the knowledge or expertise resides at the top of the organization or in specialized roles. It’s much more about hierarchy and control than it is about efficiently solving business problems. To give employees the ability to move an organization forward you have to flip this model. That means anyone in the organization can be a part of the “brain” because they have access to the information, expertise, learning opportunities, decision-making authority and most importantly the accountability needed to do so. People also need to be allowed to cross the boundaries between the roles in the organization easily to make things happen. In this way, your job isn’t just to be the “boss” and the employees’ job isn’t just to “complete tasks” as delegated by the “boss”. Both become a part of a larger, more capable company brain.

Encourage organizational curiosity

Many times people are hired based solely on technical skill or expertise and are expected to contribute within a narrowly defined job role and an even narrower scope of “this is how we do things.” It’s usually unstated, but no one wants you to ask questions or make suggestions about anything other than the job you were hired to do. Are you a programmer with an excellent idea for the marketing team?  Don’t even think about it because it may be dismissed and undoubtedly be unwelcome.  As a manager, you can help cultivate an environment of empowerment by encouraging employees to have a voracious appetite for questions and the desire to seek out the answers without worrying whose toes they step on.  Curious employees don’t tolerate mediocrity and definitely, don’t have a just “doing my job” attitude.

Accept their failures and turn your own into lessons

Thomas Watson, the founder of IBM, once said: “Success lies on the far side of failure.” Most people begin believing failure is a bad thing early in their careers, and avoid situations where they could potentially fail at all cost. The truth is, every successful breakthrough is the result of a thousand failures. Employees have to believe they can make mistakes so that they can learn from them and produce more. Tell your employees about your failures and what you learned from them. Instead of saying things like “Anything worth doing is worth doing well,” adopt a habit of saying “Anything worth doing is worth having the courage to do poorly.” Action whether it’s right or wrong breeds more action. Being secure in the idea that failure is accepted is a critical step in getting employees to take more action.

Challenge your sacred cows

We live in a world of constant change and thinking that your processes, your policies or even your business model don’t ever need to be changed or even thrown out is a recipe for disaster. Most companies have at least one “ideal” whose meaning has lost its original impact, but hasn’t been abandoned because of the energy invested in its creation. These ideas are often immune to criticism and the people who challenge them are often ignored or marginalized. Why is this a problem? Because even if the old “ideal” was correct when it was introduced, it might be false now because it is based on facts that have changed or become irrelevant. You have to encourage employees to view everything (policies, processes, meetings, etc.) as being open to challenge. That doesn’t mean that you will change them, it only means they feel free to and trust that if it’s a good idea, it will be considered.

Remember this powerful truth: Empowerment has little to do with you giving an employee anything other than freedom. It’s all about an individual enabling himself to take action, control their work and make decisions autonomously. Empowerment comes from the person and isn’t just a matter of delegating job authority to the job-holders.

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When you add tension to a story, you give the audience something to care about, and you get them asking questions. The tension should be the force that moves your main character(s) to change.

Yes, tension might be uncomfortable. It might even be painful, but there is a good reason to add it.

Most people avoid pressure, tension, conflict and pain at all cost. We don’t like it. That’s why it matters in your story. If you’ve built a structure that the audience can relate to, you can use your characters to show them that whatever challenge they are facing isn’t insurmountable.

In real life, we avoid tension, often at all costs. We don’t want to be tense, and we don’t like tense situations. And we don’t want others around us to be tense (although, some people are really into drama).

Here are some thoughts on using tension to build your stories.

Conflict fuels interest and connection

In a business setting, your story should have a moral. Even if you can easily communicate that moral, what’s the point of using a story if there is no challenge?

Challenges are what shapes the character. Challenges also shape the audience because they keep the audience locked into your story.  They provide the motive, intention or desire that moves the characters journey forward.  They help demonstrate that there is always an inherent conflict between the character’s true self and some other force.

Luckily you don’t have to figure out how to add challenges because we can just borrow from the seven types of narrative conflict.

• Man vs. Man  – a relational conflict with another person.
• Man vs. Himself – an internal conflict with yourself.
• Man vs. Society – a social conflict against a group of characters.
• Man vs. Nature – an external conflict between what is natural and what is material.
• Man vs. Machine – A conflict with the paranormal or technology and our inherent skepticism with technologies.
• Man vs. Fate/God – an internal or external conflict with the supernatural.

Here’s an example of how to add tension to your story.

This story can go in a lot of directions. Especially since we still don’t know whether the boy or girl is the main character. The point is that we added resistance.  Here are some questions you could ask to move the story along:

• What is the character trying to achieve?
• What is the “real” challenge here?
• Why is the challenge there?
• What needs to be done to remove the pressure?
• What will stand in the way of removing the obstacle(s)

Escalate the challenge by adding opposition or competition

Most stories have a protagonist (your main character or “hero”). To raise the stakes for the hero add an antagonist (the enemy). The purpose of the enemy is to stand in the way of the hero while they pursue their intentions. The cool thing is that antagonist can be directly related to the narrative you choose (e.g., man vs. machine or man vs. man). It can be internal or external to the main character – as long as it creates a conflict.

Questions you can ask about the opposition:

• Who is the “challenger”?
• Is the opposition internal, external or both?
• Why is this resistance critical to the development of the character?
• What steps will the hero take to overcome the opposition?
• Is the opposition a rival or is the hero an underdog?

The challenge should grow as the opposition grows

Introducing an enemy won’t be enough to sustain a story.  Overcoming the challenges presented by the opposition shouldn’t be easy for your hero. They should either change the character of the protagonist or reveal some factors that guide the direction of the story. It is also an excellent way to add twists to give the story variety. The best story will move beyond the beginning tensions like “the girl said no” and explore the story beyond the resistance that got it going.

Question you can ask about rising action:

• Can you use an embarrassing situation to rise the tension?
• How do you demonstrate that the character is changing?

Make change the point of your story

In the end, you have to bring the story to a resolution that supports the message you are trying to get across to your audience. Make sure that the events of the story cause a material change in the circumstances of your main character. Meaningful stories change the situation or people in meaningful ways. Ask yourself not only what the sequence of events are, but also how those events will change your character.

Questions you can ask about resolution:

• Did the main character experience some change?
• Did the protagonist change?
• Did the main character find out that nothing needed to change?

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When you hear the names, George Lucas or Stephen Spielberg, what comes to mind? Most people would answer ‘movie director’, but with movies like Star Wars, Raiders of The Lost Ark, The Color Purple, and E.T under their belts these directors are also master storytellers.

How did they get so good at telling stories? While both Spielberg and Lucas are fans of Joseph Campbell and comparative mythology you don’t have to become an expert in mythology before telling your story.

The most significant lesson we can take from these two directors is that stories aren’t just a string of events mashed together. The result of using elements like mythic structure, character, throughlines, and setting is a story that the audience can connect with on a deep subconscious level.

Let the audience draw inspiration and insight from their experiences

You can use plot, characters, and other elements to create a unified narrative that engages your audience.  In this way, they fundamentally understand your underlying message. Aristotle introduced the idea of “unification” in the Poetics. In it, Aristotle says that a good story is unified and focuses on an extended action with a beginning, middle and end.

This basic definition has evolved over the centuries. Some stories are character driven (the character moves the story forward because of their choices). Some stories are plot driven (the action moves the story forward, and the characters react). Regardless of the type of story, they all have central characters (“heroes”, “villains”, “mentors”, etc.) and some action (“Mission”, “journey” or “challenge”) that the must complete. Why? Because it still works.   Audiences are drawn to and connect with story structures they know.

A good business story has good flow and makes a point

How many times have you watched a movie only to say to yourself, “What was the point of that?” That shouldn’t happen.  Great stories don’t stall, sputter or leave the audience wondering what happened. The sequence of events should make sense and assist with the development and movement of the story. You keep stories moving with what Victoria Lynn Schmidt calls a dramatic through line. A through line helps answers “what’s the point?”. There are five essential throughlines that you can use.

• The main character succeeds (through courage, ingenuity, special skill, special weapon)
• The main character fails  (through circumstances, weakness, obsession)
• The main character abandons the goal
• The main character’s goal is undefined
• The audience creates the goal

Notice that I said that the through line helps answer the question. Your story still needs structure to make the journey toward that answer seamless.

A good business story uses a familiar structure to capture attention

The structure you choose helps ties the pieces of your story together seamlessly. Whether you realize it or not, stories that succeed do so because they evolve according to the audience’s expectation of unity (beginning, middle and end). There are lots of story structures that you could use, but I recommend the ones that are commonly understood archetypes across all cultures and can be applied quickly in a business setting (e.g. they present universally known ideas).

• Traditional – The traditional 3 act structure has a beginning, middle and end. The key to using this structure in a business setting is a well defined inciting event, protagonist, and climax. Those elements will drive your story.
• The Hero’s Quest – The quest is probably the most commonly understood structure. A hero faces a challenge and sets out to overcome the problem. The driving force in this structure is the pursuit of the goal whether it is tangible or intangible.
• The Search – The search is about man’s search for meaning. It differs from the hero’s quest in that the goal in these stories is always a character’s search for the discovery of something fundamental about who they are or who they will become.
• Stranger In A Strange Land – This is a story of change. It’s a new environment that the hero must learn how to navigate. Maybe they don’t know the local ‘rules’ or customs. Everything seems unfamiliar. The character spends the majority of the story getting accustomed to their new surroundings or circumstances. In most cases, the hero learns in the end that the ‘strange land’ wasn’t that strange after all.
• Boy Meets Girl (Romance) – This one is simple – boy meets girl, boys fall in love, but then what? Since stories need tension to move forward the “, but then what…” part is what drives this type of story. What roadblocks, conflicts or obstacles stand in the way of the two lovers in the story? The key to remember in constructing these stories is love is hard to find, and if you do find it, it’s hard to keep.
• Coming Of Age (Transformation) – A coming of age story is ultimately about the change, transformation or maturation of the character. In this type of story, the character has to re-learn comfort as they near maturity. The character may change significantly during the story or simply figure out they knew the answers all along. The experiences they gain drive the story.

Good stories connect to the audience with good character development

You always want your audience to be emotionally engaged in any story you present. The best way to make sure that happens is by creating well-rounded characters. The audience needs to be able to identify with the characters because it is through them that the audience relates to the story. Look at the following example from the first post in this series:

When I graduated from college I thought I was on top of the world. I had been in the top 10% of my high school class, done well in college, and was one of only a few college students that had been hired by the consulting firm I was working for. I hadn’t experienced a lot of work failure at that point in my life, so I felt pretty good about how I was progressing.

In this segment, I was the character and the storyteller. My goal was to give enough detail about who I was at the time to allow the audience to identify with the ‘character’ in the story.  Be careful with your detail. You only need as much detail as necessary to communicate your message.

Good stories use a vivid setting to their advantage

A story must have a “place” that orients the audience. It sets the place, time and circumstances of the story, and helps the audience gain the context needed to understand the point of your message.  As with creating your characters, don’t spare the detail when defining the location. Again, using stories takes practice. At the end of the day if you want them to work you have to think about what people care about. Instead of asking “what do I want to present?” ask yourself “what can I do to help them relate to the message I have?” In every case focusing on our need for connection will be more successful.

The post 5 Reasons You Should Be Telling Stories In Your Business appeared first on Kenzie Creative.

I’ll’ never forget when the Hunger Games books came out one my friends read all three books in the course of a weekend. To put that in perspective that’s 1,184 pages of content in less than 72 hours. The only thing powerful enough to draw you in and connect you to the plot and characters compelling storytelling.  In business, leaders use these types of stories to educate, engage, inspire and encourage.

When you are dealing with complex situations, topics or people, stories offer a way to bridge the gap through the use of what is called universal truth stories. These types oof story help us gain greater and deeper insight because of their familiarity.

To illustrate this, before you watch the clip below let me present the facts of the scene:

• Four junior high aged boys are traveling across their county to see something interesting
• They come to a railroad bridge that spans a large canyon with a river below
• They decide to cross despite the possible of danger of a train passing through
• Two of the boys narrowly miss being run off the tracks when a train does pass through

Big difference right? The scene presents the story on a level that is hard to deliver with facts alone. Maybe you didn’t have to dodge a train, but most adults can relate to doing something dumb (and possibly dangerous) when they were younger. Whether your “dumb event” was dangerous or not doesn’t matter from a storytelling standpoint, because it’s a universal truth story. Universal truth stories are used to communicate widely understood values, beliefs or situations that are commonly understood regardless of race, ethnicity, religious beliefs or gender. Ultimately this is what you want to achieve when you pick a business story.

Universal stories help us relate to the message

In a business context, you know a story hit the mark when it helps your audience connect the dots relate to the message you are trying to share. We’ve all experienced loss, fear, doubt, change, and complexity. Sometimes it’s easier to put those experiences in perspective when we see them through the eyes of a character in a story. Your stories should make it easy for the audience to empathize with what happens to the characters based on their life experiences.

Most people don’t keep track of situations, stories, and anecdotes they can use later to explain work issues or problems because everything they learned in school and business says that facts, rather than narrative should drive our decision-making process. Here are some reasons why it’s you should seriously consider using meaningful stories in your communication:

Change is an inevitable part of work life. Stories are very useful when you need to help cope with change. Change always brings some level of discomfort to the workplace because when people don’t know what will happen their natural inclination, is to perceive the change as bad.  When things change a story can help people understand that change doesn’t always mean doom or loss. By relating to their fears, uncertainties, confusion and anger you can help your audience craft a new more positive version of their stories (more on the negative stories we create later). When crafting a story about change don’t just ask what happened. Ask yourself “what will make people understand the change?“, “, “how can I show that the world is not ending?”

Stories help make the complex simple. If you look my presentations, you will see I am not a fan of the ‘stuffed data’ slide. I learned a long time ago that people just tune you out when you drone on about data item after data item. We live in a complex world that has taught us to rely heavily on facts and figures when communicating meaning in the modern workplace. Facts have a place, but it comes to expressing meaning or belief, no one cares about your facts and figures. When you want to communicate with clarity, use a story that explains what those numbers mean and why that meaning is essential. A simple, memorable universal truth story about a person who solves a problem by taking a particular course of action will always serve you better.

Stories persuade where facts can’t. We live in a world where the best storytellers get what they want. They understand that the stories we hear and tell daily influence us on a very deep level. They also know that relying solely on organizational, product or technical knowledge isn’t enough in today’s complex business environments. When faced with an opportunity to persuade, if you can’t make it meaningful for your audience, what you talk about doesn’t make much difference. Stories will work because when compared with other persuasion methods, they allow your audience to come to the desired conclusion on their own.

Stories produce mental images. Visual communication is a fundamental part of human history. Indigenous cultures used pictures to communicate and record history. You see it in primitive cave painting, the hieroglyphics of Egypt and the notes and sketches of such great thinkers as Leonardo Da Vinci. This tradition has helped shape language, history, and culture around the world. On top of that, a full 80% of our brain is dedicated to visual processing. If you can find a way to activate your audience’s imagination and create a strong mental image, the impact of your story will be multiplied. Visual imagery can help capture ideas and significantly improve the ability to learn and comprehend a subject. Start using visual words like imagine, think, picture, or when was the last time.

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If you want to communicate powerful messages in business, there are two things to keep in mind. First, you should use stories to craft engaging and personal experiences that relate to the point you are trying to make. Second, don’t rely only on facts. Facts matter most when the audience is rationalizing a decision they have already made on an emotional level.

What to do when facts don’t matter

We hear stories every day, but learning to tell stories isn’t easy. While we are comfortable with the role that stories play in television, film, and writing, we don’t always understand the power of storytelling in business.

I was recently helping a client craft a presentation that communicated their dedication to a particular set of values when I recalled a moment when I used a story to connect a business idea with the needs and desires of the audience.

….

In 2004, about a year after I had moved back to Houston I was asked to speak to a group of students about career development. There were about 20 students in the room, and I had been fielding a variety of questions on resumes and interviewing when one of them asked, “As a manager what are some things that you believe matter most to you?” It was a challenging question that I hadn’t expected anyone to ask. I knew that my answer would include two things “employees are appreciating assets” and “and don’t profess values you don’t honestly believe in”, but saying those would create an immediate crisis of credibility. This group of students was at the University of Houston, in the heart of Enron country. There was even the possibility that there was a student or two who had family members that had been affected by the scandal. There was little chance that I could say anything about “values” combined with “value your employees” without their eyes glazing over. After a few seconds of thinking I told them the following story:

When I graduated from college, I thought I was on top of the world. I had been in the top 10% of my high school class, done well in college, and was one of only a few college students hired by a fast growing consulting firm. I hadn’t experienced a lot of work failure at that point in my life, so I felt pretty good about how I was progressing. Then it happened. I made a costly mistake. It wasn’t one of those ‘oh snap you deleted the database or lost a bazillion dollars’ mistakes, but it was big enough to be noticeable. When my manager called me to talk about it, I was pretty nervous. Would I be fired? Would I be taken off the project? I fully expected some scolding, lots of teeth gnashing and maybe even a statement like “boneheaded move” thrown in. What happened not only surprised me but totally affected the way I felt about managing and leadership. He started by saying ‘Today, was educational for both of us…’, he said, ‘That was a pretty big mistake you made today, but I’m not going to scream and yell about it. I have always believed that employees are assets that appreciate. As a manager, I can either make a positive or negative investments in you. Yelling or chastising would be a negative investment at this point. You made a mistake; you know that, and I know you understand how to process it and avoid a similar problem in the future. The best thing I can do is thoroughly explain why it’s a mistake, the impact it has on the company and your co-workers, and then give you the freedom to make it again.’ Yep, he said that, and I looked at him with the same puzzled look you have right now. He was giving me the freedom to make future mistakes so that I wouldn’t fear taking the risks necessary to excel in the position. Then I remembered the first day we met, and he said “I have a few beliefs that I live by, the biggest is that I will invest in employees because they are a more important factor in company success than most managers believe. Plus smart, confident, employees make for better results all around.” I guess he did believe that. That story sums up two things I think are important…

Take a moment and think about what you just read. It was a story intended to communicate a personal value. Annette Simmons calls this a “Values in Action” story in her book Story Factor. Regardless of the type of story, when it comes to business there are two things to remember:

1. It communicates in a way most adults can understand, and it gets you to stop evaluating “facts” and ask questions like “what happened next?” or “does this apply to me?”
2. There is a point. Not all stories have a point, but when you use them in a business environment, they should.

As technology becomes more complex, those who can clarify and connect complex ideas will experience the most success. Storytelling will be a big part of that, but like any other skill you have to practice.

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While I agree that companies like Apple, Zappos, and BMW have adopted elements you need to be design oriented, it not for the reason a lot of people think.   It’s not because of their ability to create attractive products or a culture that creates raving fans.

Those things are superficial.  Focusing on these elements leads companies to believe that they can achieve the same level of success by “adding on” or “copying” those elements.

It got me thinking about how I could illustrate how we should think about this.

In the end, the square learns that people aren’t fooled if your “design” (or culture for that matter) is merely a facade or marketing ploy.

Companies that continue to suffer from this type of failure to imagine will only see design as the “creative” activity that happens when all the “important stuff” is done. For them, it will seem easier to try and replicate existing ideas of success or beauty instead of planting the seeds for the ideas of the future.

Yes, it does feel good to be the creator of timeless beauty, but it won’t be nearly enough if you don’t view design as an activity that affects an organization as a whole. Beauty can’t skin deep if you want to matter or continue to matter.

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As a human activity, technology predates both science and engineering. It is the embodiment of our ability as humans to produce practical, reproducible results by designing tools, machines, and procedures to simplify the problem-solving process. Today, with the pace of change we experience, it’s not unusual to hear about exciting new technologies or companies every day. Somewhere in the mix, we place so much emphasis on technology that we lose sight of the reasons why humans create new technologies in the first place. What’s worse is we create myths around those technologies where there are none. This confusion is illustrated well by this quote from Weaving The Web by Tim Berners-Lee.

Journalists have always asked me what the fundamental idea was or what the singular event was that allowed the Web to exist one day when it hadn’t before. They are frustrated when I tell them that there was no eureka moment. It was not like the legendary apple falling on Newton’s head to demonstrate the concept of gravity it was the process of accretion (growth by gradual addition) – Tim Berners-Lee

We don’t always know about the things that failed because history pays so much time telling us the success stories. The stories of partial failure are critical too because they provide insight into how innovation works.

If not technology then what is innovation?

To answer that question I think you need to know the definition of technology:

Technology is the branch of knowledge that deals with the creation and use of technical means and their interrelation with life, society, and the environment, drawing upon such subjects as industrial arts, engineering, applied science, and pure science.

That’s it. No mention of computer code, microcircuitry, no discussion of resolution, platforms or languages. The truth is, technology is the easiest part of the complex issues we will face in the coming years.  Anyone can create technology, but not everyone is creating technology solutions that people want to use.

To consistently create solutions that people want to use you have to pay attention to the life, society and environmental components that so often get overlooked in today’s world.  While we have become excellent at making business efficient, we have ignored the things that made great inventors pursue their inventions and passions – human necessity.

When I was 12 years old, I fell in love with programming. Back then I thought it was because I liked to program and make things “better.” Over time, however, I realized that my interest in programming was about exploration and the excitement of creating something useful.

I’ve learned that technology can help us build things that are more advanced, but that doesn’t necessarily make them better.  Building things is why I started programming when I was 12, making things that are relevant is why I embraced creativity, design, ethnography, and psychology.

Without an understanding of how to create solutions that people want, we will continue to build unfriendly technology.

Start asking “why” instead of what

For as long as I can remember when someone told me to make something I always wanted to know why. For me creating wasn’t a how or what problem (how to build stuff), it was a why problem (what should we build and why).  When you don’t ask “why” you run the risk of creating an “artifact” that has no relevance to the user.

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