How do organisations attract and utilise creativity?
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[post_title] => "China is the next innovation powerhouse" Six Word Wisdom from George S. Yip
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[post_content] => Described as ‘The Jane Bond of Innovation’, Nilofer Merchant has grown businesses — from Fortune 500s and silicon valley web start-ups — for 20 years. She will be a keynote speaker at the IMI National Management Conference on 9 October 2014. As an innovative thinker and practitioner, Nilofer will share her thoughts and experience on how we best align our organisations to succeed against our business challenges today and into the future.IMI: Based on your current work – if you only had 6 words of advice to give a business - what would they be?
NM: Not everyone will, but anyone can.IMI: What does this mean?
NM: Most organizations think of work in boxes. As in engineering does this and marketing does that. Or, even more personally as Tom is responsible for delivering X and Susan is responsible for Y. This is to put work into neat little boxes to create some type of measurability. It’s a relic of the industrial era when the way to profitability and market performance was on efficiency and productivity. But if you look around your workplace, you’ll notice the most obvious truth. Most things are not failing because so and so didn’t do such and such. It’s because of a gap. A gap between organizational silos. A gap between understanding. A gap between the organizational boxes. In order to close the box, you need to organize not around boxes but around purpose. Organize not by “who should be here” but who wants to be here. And while not everybody will rise up to solve the situation, create new products, etc … what you’ll discover is an amazing reserve of talent that exists. Things you didn’t know were possible will happen. Because anybody can.
IMI: Where should we look for further information?
NM: Visit my website nilofermerchant.comNilofer Merchant is a keynote speaker at the IMI National Management Conference taking place on Thursday 9 October. If you are interested in attending click here to register.
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One of the most common struggles people have in life is speaking in public.
Source: www.webdesignerdepot.com
You may have always managed to avoid these scenarios like the plague. You may also be in a place where enough is enough and you just want to be equipped to be comfortable and confident to present without the all the drama attached.
From a personal perspective, it can be sometimes easy to wiggle out of these stressful scenarios. Sooner or later from a professional context, avoiding a presentation at work or leaving it until the last minute can start to impact your career or work life.
Where to start – start with yourself and your thoughts
Most people have the same fears, looking silly, what will people think, being forgetful, babbling or not getting to the point. It is really important to overcome these fears and understand where these unhelpful beliefs come from. Once you challenge these beliefs you can make huge strides which will impact both your personal and professional life.
Understanding stress
Most people become stressed when it comes to public speaking. Surveys often quote that the number one fear amongst the population is public speaking. To put this in context fear of death is number two on the list. It is useful to remember the purpose of stress. Stress is a function of the human body designed to protect you, once you reframe how you see stress it will make public speaking such a different experience. To help with this reframe remember: FEAR stands for False Evidence Appearing Real. The more relaxed you are the easier it is to communicate, so find ways to relax before presenting.
Confidence
Helpful beliefs about your self is a great start to increasing your confidence. Always play to your strengths. What people tend to do is compare themselves to others and then they never match up. Comparing yourself to others can be limiting and damaging. Everyone has their own personality and style. Play to your strengths be your authentic self. Sometimes you just got to imagine that confident state and fake it until you make it can be a good strategy until it comes second nature to you.
Structure
Always start with the audience in mind. What is the purpose of your presentation? What would interest them? It is really important to capture the audience’s attention and maintain their attention. Here preparation is key. Have structure, a beginning, middle and end. Ensure you know what key messages you would like them to remember and find ways to make those messages memorable. Remember: what would you like the audience to think, feel or take action on.
Engage the audience
Many people would love to have the confidence to engage the audience but just don`t know how. This is about understanding your audience and meeting their needs. Build rapport, be brave and curious when it comes to audience interaction. Being able to read people`s body language and influence people will increase your ability to engage the audience. Remember, always put yourself in the audience’s shoes.
Practice makes perfect
If you ever learned to drive a car, you will know you didn't just drive automatically to your destination without guidance. Treating presentations the same will help you improve. Seek feedback from others on how you could improve and look specifically at what others do. Remember, look back, reflect on what you did well and find ways to improve. Focus on presentations as a learning experience to becoming an expert to presenting with impact confidently.
William Corless is an ICF accredited ACC Coach.
He brings over fifteen years’ experience in general management, supply chain, team development and strategy.
William is an IMI associate faculty and teaches on Presenting With Impact._____________________________________
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[post_content] => Sydney Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management and Director of the Center for Leadership at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, where he teaches courses on Leadership and Strategy. He is also the Faculty Director of the flagship Tuck Executive Program, and has experience working with executives at a number of other prestigious universities around the world. His latest
bestselling book is SUPERBOSSES: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent. He will be a keynote speaker at the IMI National Management Conference on 29th September 2016.
IMI: Based on your current work – if you only had 6 words of advice to give a business – what would they be?
SF: Great leaders create other great leaders.
IMI: What does this mean?
SF: Imagine a world where the work you did really mattered. Where the person who you call your boss changed your life by helping you accomplish more than you ever thought possible. Where your own opportunities would multiply in ways you may have been afraid to even dream of. That’s the world of “superbosses”, leaders with an incredible track record of generating world-class talent time and again. By systematically studying business legends and pop culture icons like Lorne Michaels, Ralph Lauren, George Lucas, Larry Ellison, Miles Davis, Charlie Mayfield, and Alice Waters, what superbosses actually do comes into focus. And anyone can do these same things. Superbosses identify, motivate, coach and leverage others in remarkably consistent, yet highly unconventional and unmistakably powerful ways. Superbosses aren’t like most bosses; they follow a playbook all their own. They are unusually intense and passionate — eating, sleeping, and breathing their businesses and inspiring others to do the same. They look fearlessly in unusual places for talent and interview them in colorful ways. They create impossibly high work standards that push protégées to their limits. They partake in an almost inexplicable form of mentoring, one that occurs spontaneously and with no clear rules. They lavish responsibility on inexperienced protégées, taking risks that seem scary and foolish to outsiders. When the time is right superbosses may even encourage star talent to leave so they can then become part of a strategic network of acolytes in the industry.
IMI: Where should we look for further information?
SF: I put together a list of interesting articles related to this subject:
Superbosses aren't afraid to delegate their biggest decisionsThe rise of the superbossesGeorge Lucas: Management Guru?The Power of Feeling UnthreatenedHire People and Get Out of the WaySydney Finkelstein is a keynote speaker at the IMI National Management Conference taking place on Thursday 29th of September. To register for this event, please click here.
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In our 21st Century Age of Science and Technology, the volume of information available to us is enough to make our heads spin. Finding market information that is reliable and credible is a challenge that often defeats us, and for many organisations, the cost of commissioning primary research can be prohibitive. Market Research is the only sector where the ‘Secondary’ should be undertaken before the ‘Primary’. This saves time and money by finding crucial market information, from reputable third-party sources, to inform our decision-making process. On the face of it, this shouldn’t be too difficult.
Market Research is a process; it’s what we do. The frequency with which we do it is determined by our business needs, the speed of change in our industry and the impact of external forces on our sector.
Market Intelligence is how we use our research to inform our decisions, on an ongoing basis, as part of our strategic planning process.
Working with my IMI colleague, Cariona Neary, we have discovered that linking market research to established market analysis models makes it easier for organisations to get real value from their research. Meaningful market intelligence is found when the data is used to identify opportunities, as opposed to data being found to support a strategic decision that has already been made.
Discovering how and where to start, differentiating between reliable and spurious data, understanding how to use your data and building a framework that allows you to track mission-critical information on a regular basis is the key to real market intelligence. Here are 5 quick-start tips from my toolkit:
Start with the Economy
Check unemployment and consumer confidence levels – these trends indicate the economic health status of your target market, and this information is feely available from EU statistical websites and national government sites.
Reliable Business Data & Reports
The IMI Library should be your first port of call as they have access to several useful online sources. Enterprise Ireland’s Market Research Centre is an essential resource – if you are an EI client. Other business libraries that I frequently use, where clients are not EI clients, are the various business libraries in London that are free to use. Old-fashioned library work is cheaper than purchasing third-party reports that quickly become out-of-date.
Online Sources
Reputable online sources include trade bodies, websites, blogs and magazines. I keep an eye on industry conferences where keynote speakers can often provide an insight that was previously unknown.
Comparing Like with Like
This is where basic maths comes into the equation! Inevitably, you will need to do some basic calculations to marry the information and data from the different sources that you have found. Online maths calculators and Excel spreadsheets are hard to beat, though there are many software applications with varying benefits available online.
Ongoing Tracking & Evaluation
Once you have identified the key market indicators that you need to track, the different intervals for updates and the KPI’s for measuring progress and success, you can create your market intelligence dashboard. Using a single-page dashboard means that key market factors can be reviewed efficiently as part of your monthly/quarterly management meetings.
Developing in-house market research capability to deliver meaningful market intelligence is a sure-fire route to competitive advantage, and, at the end of the day that should be the whole point of the exercise.
Gráinne Kennedy is an IMI associate is an award-winning market research expert, with a background in international advertising who delivers data-driven communications solutions and advertising campaigns to client companies building international brands and businesses. Gráinne is a guest lecturer at the IMI.
[post_title] => 5 Tips For Turning ‘Market Research’ into ‘Market Intelligence’
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[post_title] => 3 slick selling techniques you should take from the Time-share Salesperson
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Gareth Jones
1st Apr 2019
Related Articles
"China is the next innovation powerhouse" Six Word Wisdom from George S. Yip
"Not everyone will, but anyone can" Six Word Wisdom from Nilofer Merchant
“I have just been asked to do a presentation”... Relax and take your finger off the panic button
5 Tips for Motivating Employees
"Great leaders create other great leaders" Six Word Wisdom from Sydney Finkelstein
5 Tips For Turning ‘Market Research’ into ‘Market Intelligence’
3 slick selling techniques you should take from the Time-share Salesperson
The Three Circles of Creativity
The pace of scientific and technical change is almost exponential. In addition, consumer tastes change more frequently than before. What gave you competitive advantage yesterday won’t work today.
It has become common place to assert that we live in a period of unprecedented change. This is an argument that quickly falls flat in the societal sense with a cursory glance at the History Channel, but in our professional lives the case is strong.
What is certainly clear is that the pace of scientific and technical change is almost exponential. In addition, consumer tastes change more frequently than before. What gave you competitive advantage yesterday won’t work today. Businesses need creativity at the heart of their DNA if they are to survive and thrive.
Organisational Creativity
We can think of creativity at three levels – individuals, teams and cultures. What do we know about creative individuals? They have high autonomy needs – they don’t like being told what to do. They have low structure needs – they like lots of free space. And finally, they don’t want to be leaders or led, but be left to pursue their obsessions.
In other words, they are not easy organisational people. Yet organisations need people who don’t quite fit in, who ask awkward questions. They will trample on the organisational sacred ground.
At PwC they may ask “does auditing have a future?”. At Unilever they provocatively ask, “what is the synergy between food and soap?” They may be wrong, but they force organisations to ask the big questions. You don’t need too many people like this, but you need a few.
Organisations need people who ask awkward questions (Photo source)
Collective Innovation
So creative individuals matter but innovation is nearly always collective. Creative teams are largely self-selected – they find each other. It is a good idea to make free time and space for people to explore new ideas collectively.
Teams that are consistently creative are diverse. Creativity increases with diversity and declines with sameness. And they are volatile, expect high levels of cognitive conflict – high performance innovation teams are rarely cosy.
At the cultural level organisations need to encourage entrepreneurialism. One good test of this is to see what happens when things go wrong. In dysfunctional cultures, the question is “whose fault was it?” In really dysfunctional cultures, the question is “whose fault can we make it look like it was?” In healthy innovative cultures, the question is “what can we learn from this?”
Perhaps the most contradictory thing CEO’s have been saying to their people is – “be entrepreneurial”, “innovate continuously”, combined with one last message, “don’t fail”.
Innovation attracts
To be successful, you need to be attractive to the most talented people – those who have the capacity to create disproportionate amounts of value. Such individuals only want to work in organisations where they can be their best selves. So, organisations need to work hard to become beacons for talent. CEO’s should be asking themselves “why should anyone work here?”
Does this organisation provide talented people with opportunities to grow and be challenged? Will they have the opportunity to work with others who will spark creativity? Kill off structures and processes which stifle initiative.
Recruiting creativity
It is not always easy to recruit creative people. Yet, recruiting staff is the most significant investment organisations ever make. Here’s a couple of suggestions for getting better at it.
• Identify talent scouts who will scan the labour market for people you might recruit. Be really curious about who at the competition could make your organisation stronger. Don’t just think about the known competition, but potential new disruptors.
• Don’t leave recruitment entirely to HR, make sure senior line executives are fully involved throughout the process.
• Pay and rations alone will not suffice to attract talent – for the best people the competition will match your offer. Instead offer development and excitement. Creative people want to work on projects that will get them out of bed in the morning with a spring in their step.
Great innovative leaders inspire people to exceptional performance. And in today’s volatile environment, exceptional performance is not a luxury, but a survival technique.
If innovation is key to your sustained success – and there are few businesses where this isn’t the case – then you will need leaders (not just at the top) who will encourage innovation and resist the temptation for control, hierarchical power and short termism.
Gareth Jones is an IMI associate on the Senior Executive Programme. Gareth is an expert on organisational design, culture, leadership and change and is currently a visiting professor at the IE Business School, Madrid, and a Fellow of the Centre for Management Development at London Business School.
Gareth has published several books co-authored with Rob Goffee, including “The Character of a Corporation” and “Why Should Anyone Be Led by You?”
Market Research is a process; it’s what we do. The frequency with which we do it is determined by our business needs, the speed of change in our industry and the impact of external forces on our sector.
Gráinne Kennedy is an IMI associate is an award-winning market research expert, with a background in international advertising who delivers data-driven communications solutions and advertising campaigns to client companies building international brands and businesses. Gráinne is a guest lecturer at the IMI.
