When looking for these creative ideas and innovative solutions, it is often said that one should “think outside the box.” But what exactly is this proverbial “box”?
You can think of it as the space in the brain that contains all those bits of information and connections made so far. A dot is a bit of information in the knowledge base. And after solving a problem, repeatedly the same way, the connections become automatic. So, when a person is faced with the same problem, the mind, without any conscious effort presents the old, known solution.
In many ways, the mind operates like a computer. It scans the knowledge base of the memory (mind) to come up with creative solutions. If the knowledge base is old, the ideas generated may be obsolete. If the knowledge base is limited to a very small part of the total business process or operation, then the solution will only take that area into account.
Solutions that are derived from the same thought processes that the mind has used for years are unlikely to be innovative. The requirement for outside-the-box thinking is the ability to make new connections. New connections can be made in one of two ways: (1) having more dots to connect (a new or updated knowledge base) or (2) connecting the old dots in new imaginative ways.
Because creativity is the ability to connect seemingly unrelated variables (the dots we store in our minds) in imaginative ways, employees must continually update their knowledge bases…
Be Constructive
When we notice things that could be better, it’s easy to respond negatively. This easily leads to (or is) complaining.
Complaining, in addition to just being wrong, tends to create an overall attitude of negativity that is not helpful. This not only sucks the joy from your life and those around you, but also makes it less likely that people will actually want to do something to fix the problem. Playing the victim doesn’t inspire people.
Seth Godin posted the other day on how to point out problems without falling into the trap of complaining. It’s a short, good post that is worth reading.
The gist is this: Instead of saying “my job has this problem and that problem, and it’s really starting to get to me,” you say: “In this economy, I’m lucky to have this job, and it’s almost perfect. It would be even better if…”
Or, instead of saying “they spent $10 million developing this device, and it can’t even do this or that,” you say: “I love owning this device, it lets me manage my life and contacts, and the one thing that would make it even better is…”
The latter approach is the way proactive people talk. It puts the focus on the positive first, where it belongs. Then everything after that is about how to improve things.
The former approach, on the other hand, just leaves you focusing on the bad. And it would seem likely that if you generally think that way, pretty soon the bad is all that you will see everywhere — which would not only be wrong, but would also be a pretty depressing existence.
Nonprofits Are Worthy of Funding
Well said by Drucker in Managing the Nonprofit Organization:
Fund raising is going around with a begging blow and asking for money because the need is so great. Fund development is creating a constituency which supports the organization because it deserves it. It means developing a membership that participates through giving.
Nonprofits are not doing optional work. They deserve to be funded (excepting those that lack integrity and effectiveness).
When you give, don’t see yourself as spending discretionary money that you are using to do a favor for the organization. You are giving because the organization and cause are worthy of funding.
Creating Autonomy in Routine Jobs
One of my core management philosophies is that managers should define the ultimate outcomes with their people, but not the specific steps to reach those outcomes. Each employee ought to have the freedom to figure out their own path to the goal.
This solves the “manager’s dilemma” of how to serve the organization while also providing autonomy to the employee’s. The organization is served because employee efforts are directed toward the performance of the organization; at the same time, employees have autonomy because they are able to determine the best way to accomplish those results, based on their own individual preferences, judgment, and talents.
It also serves employees to know the outcomes because it is motivating to know what is expected of you and how it serves the larger picture.
One question I often get about this is: How does this work for jobs that are largely routine? For example, how would this work for a factory worker?
There’s a lot that can be said here, but Tom Morris does a good job of articulating a core part of the answer in If Aristotle Ran General Motors:
A concern for truth should continually play an important role in how we think about our jobs and in the many ways we interact with others in our work. But a concern for beauty should guide us too.
How, you might wonder, can a factory worker be an artist and experience this form of active beauty if he has to perform the same routine motions over and over, all day long? This is part of the reason Jack Stack decided to teach everyone at the Springfield Remanufacturing Company what he began to call “The Great Game of Business.”
Even the factory-floor worker engaged in repetitive acts of assembly can play the game of business, using his mind to devise more efficient processes and motions, connecting his specific job with the big picture of what’s going on in the overall company life.
He may be able to see things no one else can see and make suggestions for beautiful improvements no one else could make. He alone may be in a position to create an elegant solution to a problem that no one else can solve, or even notice.
We need to encourage the people who work around us to think of their jobs in this way, no matter what their jobs might be. Everyone can be a performance artist and an important player in the great game of business.
SMART Goals
BNET has a brief video on how managers should set SMART goals and be explicit in connecting the dots between employee’s goals and how they serve the big picture.
Smart stands for:
- S pecific
- M easurable
- A ction-oriented
- R ealistic
- T ime-bound
Einstein on Simplicity
“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.”
Good word. And a concept worth pondering: “intelligent fool.”
Building Your Organization's Vision
Here is the excellent article by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras on Building Your Company’s Vision, which is a great overall summary of their book Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies.
I regard Built to Last as one of the most foundational and important books that you can read on the topic of leading organizations.
Obscurity is not a Mark of Profundity
From If Aristotle Ran General Motors:
Some of the greatest wisdom in life is simple, but it is both profound and practical. Obscurity is not a mark of profundity, however many confused writers have hoped to bully us into believing otherwise. The medieval philosopher William of Ockham was right in his belief that we should never trust an answer less simple than one that will do the job perfectly well.
Why Kiva Works
Seth Godin has a good section in Meatball Sundae on how Kiva serves as a good example of the difference between an organization that is in sync with the nature of the web and one that isn’t.
He writes:
I attended an all-day brainstorming session with one of the oldest, best-known nonprofits in the country. They have a fancy web site, loaded with Flash features, tell-a-friend buttons, and a blog.
Last year, the site raised two million dollars. This year they want to do more.
With a mailing list of five hundred thousand e-mail accounts, this organization has demonstrated that they can extract money from people who sign up for “e-mail blasts.” And the stated goal of the group is to increase the size of the list by a factor of six, to three million. Then, using free stamps (e-mail), they can hammer this list to raise a lot of money for their good work.
Compare this organization to Kiva. Kiva is a brand-new [it was a few years ago, when Godin wrote this] organization that, after just a few months, generated nearly ten times as much traffic as the older group. And they are raising more in a month online than competition does in a year.
Is it because they have a better site?
Nope. It’s because they have a different sort of organization. They created a web-based nonprofit that could never even exist without the New Marketing. One group uses the web to advance its old agenda, while the other group is of and by and for the web.
One is focused on market share, on getting big by controlling the conversation. The other is into fashion, in creating stories that spread because people want to spread them.
And that’s the schism, the fundamental demarcation between the Old and the New.
One organization wants the New Marketing to help it grow a traditional mailing list so it can do fundraising and support a traditional organization.
The other (Kiva) is creating an organization that thrives on the New Marketing rather than fighting it.
Kiva works because the very nature of their organization requires the Web at the same time that their story is so friendly to those who use the web. Kiva connects funders (that would be you) with individuals in the developing world who can put a microloan to good use. Doing this in a world of stamps is almost impossible to consider. But doing it online plays to the strengths of the medium, and so, at least for now, the users of the medium embrace the sotry and spread the word.
Please note that I’m not insisting that everyone embrace these new techniques. All I’m arguing for is synchronization. Don’t use the tactics of one paradigm and the strategies of another and hope that you’ll get the best of both. You won’t.
After just a few minutes of conversation at the older nonprofit, one person realized, “So, if we embrace this approach, we don’t have to just change our web site — we’re going to have to change everything about our organization. Our mission, our structure, our decision making. . . . ” Exactly.
The Profit in Nonprofit
This is a good article on the story of Kiva from the Stanford Social Innovation Review. Here’s the summary:
Kiva, the first online peer-to-peer microcredit marketplace, is one of the fastest-growing nonprofits in history. But its nonprofit status was not inevitable. Here’s why Kiva chose to be a 501(c)(3), what this tax status buys the organization, and how being a nonprofit poses challenges.