Innovating to Compete

by Drew Boyd

Innovating is a form of competitive behavior. When we innovate, we compete with someone or something. We innovate to survive. We innovate for glory. We innovate to win. Leaders of organizations need to understand and leverage this competitive aspect of innovation to embed it into the organization.

Innovating to compete occurs at many levels:

• At the national level, governments compete with other nations for trade, economic power, and global political influence.


• At the municipal level, cities compete aggressively to attract investment, firms, and employees to stimulate jobs and economic growth.


• At the industry level, competition among sectors is fierce. Industries want to attract customers, investment, talent, and favorable government treatment.


• At the company level, firms want to be more competitive by differentiating themselves in the marketplace.


• At the business unit level, franchises compete with one another for budget resources and manpower.


• At the individual level, peer rivals compete with each other for promotion and bonuses.


• At the personal level, we compete with ourselves to achieve a new "personal best" when overcoming challenges.

Here are suggestions of what leaders can do to embrace competition and drive innovation:

1. National: Governments need to create a National Innovation Policy. The policy should outline a vision, identify opportunities, create guidelines for investment, coordinate partnerships, and nurture the development of human talent. Here is an excellent example of an innovation policy from the Czech Republic. Countries that pursue these policies will thrive.


2. Municipal: Cities compete just as nations do. At the city level, government leaders can further the state of innovation by coordinating activities between firms, entrepreneurs, venture funds, and universities. Many cities spark innovation by sponsoring innovation contests.


3. Industry: To be more innovative, firms within the same industry need to band together and form trade groups to facilitate and coordinate programs that sustain the vitality of the industry. Trade groups can no longer focus just on government lobbying. They need a coordinated approach to technology transfer and scientific investment. They need to address the systemic flaws in their industry that stifle growth.


4. Firm: Companies need to train their employees how to innovate using systematic tools and processes. Firms need to "innovate on demand" and maintain a healthy flow of new projects into the pipeline. Most importantly, innovation strategy must be pursued within the context of competitive strategy.


5. Business Unit: The business unit is where innovation happens. Innovation is a team sport, and franchise leaders need to deploy teams using facilitated workshops to create new products and services. Leaders should allocate resources disproportionately to those who systematically produce new pipeline concepts...organically.


6. Individual: People succeed through innovation. An employee's value and vitality is sustained by the ability to generate novel ideas day in and day out. People need to see innovation as a skill, not a gift, that can be learned through university or corporate training programs.


7. Self: At this level, it starts with a simple question: "Am I an innovator?" Says Steve Banhegyi, "Your self image controls your level of personal innovation. Your ability to innovate rests largely on who you think you are. You are as innovative as your narrative allows you to be."

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Drew Boyd is Director of Marketing Mastery for Johnson & Johnson (Ethicon Endo-Surgery division). He is also Visiting Assistant Professor of Marketing and Innovation at the University of Cincinnati and Executive Director of the MS-Marketing program. Follow him at www.innovationinpractice.com and at http://twitter.com/drewboyd

Need more time for innovation (or whatever)?

How to get three hours back every day

by Matt Heinz

I need more hours in the day, and I assume you do as well. Between our personal and professional lives, there's always too much to do and not enough time to do it.

But despite these challenges, I'm constantly looking for ways to do two things:

1. Eliminate distractions
   
2. Make better use of "down time"

If you're trying to do the same, here are eight things I'd recommend trying. Collectively, I think they effectively give me back about three hours every day.

Don't drive

• We waste a lot of time in the car, driving. Except for returning a few phone calls, this isn't very productive time typically. If you can take the bus, other public transportation, or even carpool with coworkers, you can use part of that time to get caught up on other work. Catch up on email offline, brainstorm something without other distractions, and work through other things on your to-do list. Worst case, catch up on some of your reading. Any of that is better than stop-and-go traffic.

Always have something to read with you

• Everywhere you go, carry something you want to read. It can be printed materials (newspapers, magazines, printed-out articles), or it can be saved content on your SmartPhone. For example, on my iPhone I have access to my RSS feeds via Google Reader, a mobile version of ReadItLater that syncs Web articles I want to read, and also an iPhone version of Kindle software to catch up on a book I'm reading. There are so many times during the day when I'm waiting, or in a line, that can be used for a few minutes to catch up on some of this.

Avoid and cancel meetings

• Do you really need to attend every meeting on your schedule? Have you yourself scheduled meetings that can be more effectively handled with a 5-10 minute conversation in the hallway? I'd be willing to bet that 25% of your meetings this week aren't worth your time. Figure out which ones they are, and get your time back.

Keep your email offline, all the time

• If you use Outlook in particular, right-click on the icon in the lower right-hand corner of your screen and select "Work Offline". This will essentially "freeze" the email in your inbox currently, and queue up anything in your Outbox to sync when you want to. This helps you focus on what's at hand, without getting distracted in real-time by new incoming messages. Click the send/receive button when you want to, but otherwise stay more focused and more productive without the constant distractions.

Forward your phone to voicemail when you need/want to focus

• Most phones and phone systems give you the ability to point inbound calls directly to voicemail. If you need to focus on something, shouldn't you turn off this distraction as well? You don't have to do this all day. But if the project in front of you will take 30 minutes to get done, don't let things like new emails and phone calls distract you. That 30-minute project could take 60-90 minutes easy if you check email, take a call, and have to get re-engaged and focused again.

Get up earlier

• Would it really be that hard to get up 30 minutes earlier? This may not be your most productive, awake time. But an extra 30 minutes (when the rest of the house is still sleeping) could be used for reading, exercise, whatever you want. This alone gives you an extra 3.5 hours a week, and that's a lot of time.

Do your most important 1-2 tasks/projects FIRST every day (before email and voicemail)

• At the beginning of each day, you already know what 1-2 things are most important to accomplish. But most of us, before tackling those projects, check email and voicemail and quickly get distracted by the day's interruptions and fire-drills. Nine times out of ten, those distractions can wait until your most important tasks are finished. Get them done first, and I guarantee you'll feel (and be!) far more productive every day.

Delegate

• You probably aren't delegating to others actively enough. You're probably doing too much yourself, including things might be more efficient to be done by others (and sometimes with better results). You could be using a service like TimeSvr to get small tasks done by someone else. You could use eLance to outsource a variety of administrative projects. You could use ActiveWords to shortcut frequently-used activities on your computer. Long story short, you're working too hard and doing too much. Do less yourself, but get the same and more done.

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Matt Heinz is principal at Heinz Marketing, a sales & marketing consulting firm helping businesses increase customers and revenue. Contact Matt at matt@heinzmarketing.com or visit www.heinzmarketing.com.

Seth Godin, Nobody is Indispensable

by Mike Myatt

There is no shortage of information circulating of late espousing the benefits of making yourself indispensable to your employer. While this mantra has clearly gained some traction, if not actually becoming quite popular, popular thinking does not necessarily equate to sound thinking. Let me be as clear as I can - nobody, and I mean nobody is indispensable. I don't care who you are, what role you play, or what your title is. If you perceive yourself to be indispensable, you are setting yourself up for a very rude awakening. Furthermore, anyone who by design sets out to orchestrate a situation to make themselves indispensable is not operating in good faith. In today's post I'm going to share my thoughts as to why the myth of becoming indispensable is very dangerous thinking to say the least...

A well managed company does not allow itself to become dependent upon the performance of any single individual. Those individuals who attempt to hoard knowledge, relationships, or resources to attain job security should not to be valued or viewed as indispensable, but should be admonished as ineffective and deemed a liability. Corporate talent that cannot be shared, duplicated, distributed, or leveraged is not nearly as valuable as talent that can.

So, where has all this recent self-indulgent, misguided thinking come from? I believe much of it stems from the self-help types that proliferate the concept of self-promotion for self-benefit over the concept of service above self. More distressing is that this concept was recently validated in Seth Godin's new book "Linchpin".

Let me begin by stating that I'm a Seth Godin fan. While I agree with him more often than not, I will from time-to-time find myself shaking my head wondering what in the heck could Seth possibly be thinking? In his recent book "Linchpin", Seth Godin puts forth some great concepts that we should all aspire to. I wholeheartedly agree that each of us should become the best we can be, that our work should become developed and refined to the point where it is viewed as art, and we are seen as the artist behind the masterpiece. So much of what you'll read in between the covers of "Linchpin" is as close to inspirational brilliance as you'll find in a business book, which is why it pains me to have to point out the critical flaw in "Linchpin" that regrettably overshadows the highlights - namely the concept of the linchpin itself.

Seth describes a linchpin as somebody in an organization who is indispensable - who simply cannot be replaced because their role is just far too unique and valuable. Making things worse, he then goes on to say how important it is for all of us to become indispensable, for not to be indispensable is tantamount to economic and career suicide. Encouraging somebody to make the most of their talents and abilities is quite laudable - encouraging them to become indispensable is validating a new level of self worship that I find quite troubling.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that anyone who sets out to make themselves indispensable would be the one committing career suicide for two reasons:

1. Anyone who is "perceived" as indispensable in their current role completely eliminates any possibility of promotion


2. Any good leadership team who finds themselves dependant upon a linchpin will immediately move to mitigate the risk of finding themselves in such an untenable position

It is an organization's ability to collect and convert data into information, turn information into knowledge, and knowledge into an operating advantage that allows an enterprise to effectively address current needs as well as to strategically drive innovation and forward planning. This cannot happen if one person positions themselves as a linchpin. Put more simply, a corporation's employees must be able to acquire knowledge (learning), transfer knowledge (out of the head and into an information system), apply knowledge (from the information system into an actionable event), manage knowledge (execute with focus, timing and precision), and secure knowledge (keep it from evaporating or even worse from walking out the door to a competitor). Let's see if we can bring this issue a bit closer to home for some of you. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Have you ever had a disruption in business continuity because someone who possessed a wealth of experience and/or information retired, quit or was terminated?


• Have you ever lost a deal or had a major operational problem because somewhere in your organization you found yourself dependent upon a single person's expertise and they dropped the ball?


• Have you ever found yourself in the unenviable position of desiring to terminate an employee only to be held hostage by the fear of losing the knowledge that they possess?

While I could go on ad-nauseum with day-to-day operating examples of how a linchpin can adversely affect a business, I think I've probably dredged-up enough painful memories for now. As a CEO or entrepreneur, the fact that you would allow an employee to become indispensable to begin with means that at a minimum you have a lack of transparency and continuity in your organization, and more probably that you lack depth of talent and are weak in process and knowledge management.

How would you answer this question... Is your company talent poor and linchpin dependent, or talent rich or linchpin independent? From my perspective there is a monumental difference between real tier-one talent and a primadonna who thinks of themselves as indispensable. Employees who represent true tier-one talent see themselves as part of the team seeking to make those around them more successful. Contrast this with those primadonnas who are interested solely in their own success without regard to those around them. Any company that bestows a primadonna with recognition as somehow being indispensable, is a company about ready to experience a completely avoidable disaster.

If you want to eliminate unnecessary dependencies, don't allow any individual to create ultimate domain over anything that is considered key or mission critical. Instead create a culture that values transparency, knowledge management, mentoring, coaching, and process. By doing these things you will add both depth and breadth to your organization and increase the overall level of talent across the enterprise. Bottom line... encourage people to be a valuable part of the team, to maximize their contribution to others and the overall enterprise, but under no circumstances allow someone be become the proverbial cog in the wheel.


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Mike Myatt, is a Top CEO Coach, author of "Leadership Matters...The CEO Survival Manual", and Managing Director of N2Growth.

Innovation? - Just Do It

by Jeffrey Phillips

I'm constantly amazed by all the talk about innovation that I hear within many organizations, and how little real action is taken. It's time, my friends, to gird up your loins and take action. Let's borrow the motto from Nike and decide to "Just Do It."

If you are waiting for the sign from above (by that I mean your executive management) that you may now go and be innovative, stop waiting. Even if the sign comes, it will be so watered down and so filled with misdirection and uncertainty that you wouldn't act on it anyway. Act now, even in small ways to develop innovation activities and skills, so that you can then build on those activities and flesh them into new ideas, and new products and services.

When I say this to many mid and senior level folks I talk to, they want to know: what can I do to make a difference? There are a host of small actions you can take to start innovating, and as you do you'll build credibility and will attract others who are interested and want to work with you. If you never start, you'll never build the community or team you need to succeed.

Here are just a few things that are very easy to do, and very inexpensive to do, that just about anyone in any firm can do to add value and start innovating. Once you do these things you'll build your credibility and get to do even more.

1. Document trends and provide your sense of what they'll mean for your business in the near future. Yes, I know this isn't your job, but as it turns out it's not anyone's job in most businesses but everyone needs this synthesis. A well organized consolidation of trends, transitioned into a document that provides shape and clarity to a potential future outcome, is helpful to any organization. And, since no one else is doing it, you are now the expert. If someone disagrees, then you've attracted a compatriot who can work with you to provide a counterpoint. All innovation starts from recognizing an opportunity, issue or threat before others do. Trend spotting and synthesis can get your team there first.


2. Observe your customers. Go read the complaint letters. Read what people are writing about you online on Facebook or Twitter, or other blogs. Go watch your customers use your products. Become a customer of your products or services. Write down what you like, and don't like, about your products. This is free Voice of the Customer and Ethnography. As you do this you'll gain insights into unmet unarticulated needs, which are also a great opportunity for innovation.


3. Use brainstorming and other idea generation tools as frequently as possible, and use them in the right situations and contexts. Rather than pull a rarely used tool out of the toolbox ocassionally, use the tools regularly and effectively. In that way, idea generation doesn't seem so artificial, but a natural part of doing business. And since you're doing it regularly, you learn more about how to do it well.


4. Read the best books about innovation, to learn more about the best practices and tools, so when there are opportunities for innovation, you can recommend the appropriate tools and techniques. Learn to be a good facilitator, and understand the rules and techniques for idea generation. As your skills grow, you'll be asked to lead idea sessions for other teams.

There's always something you can do, and starting now is much better than starting when you finally get the OK. In many firms, the OK may never happen. Create a small innovation capability and generate ideas about the future, new product and service ideas, and help other teams generate ideas. You'll attract others who have similar needs and interests and gain incredible credibility. Eventually you'll be the go-to person for innovation. Don't laugh, I've been in at least two organizations where the head of innovation was simply the person who started doing innovation and was eventually recognized as the expert.


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Jeffrey Phillips is a senior leader at OVO Innovation. OVO works with large distributed organizations to build innovation teams, processes and capabilities. Jeffrey is the author of "Make us more Innovative", and innovateonpurpose.blogspot.com.

12 Steps to Grow Diversity in Your Personal Network

by Mike Brown

Look at your network now compared to last year. Have you dramatically expanded the number of people you can call or email and be reasonably sure you'll get a response from them?

And that doesn't mean from loading up on contacts inside your company using the "People You May Know" feature on LinkedIn. A network gains value through diversity - not from having 75% of your connections riding on the same economic train as you!

If your active network looks the same as it did last year, ACT NOW when ideally you don't need your network's benefits. Here are 12 potential ways to add not only numbers, but diversity to your network:

1. Join and actively participate in professional associations


2. Regularly attend (and even create) networking events and follow up on connections


3. Take on leadership roles in church, school, or alumni organizations


4. Deliberately try to network with other parents at kids' activities


5. Write articles for publications within your industry


6. Speak publicly on topics of expertise for you (and if you're reluctant to speak, join Toastmasters and get over your apprehensions)


7. Use Twitter to build a global network of people involved in topics of interest (Twitter Lists or WeFollow are great places to start)


8. Run for public office


9. Find and join groups focused on hobbies you enjoy


10. Share your expertise via social media - start a blog, comment on other blogs, record podcasts or video blogs


11. Start a second job where you interact more with the public


12. Strike up conversations with people you meet standing in line

And IMPORTANTLY, have business cards with you and introduce yourself to new people with your first and last names. I can't believe how many people go to networking events and don't have cards and/or introduce themselves by mumbling their first names.

Not all of these methods make sense for everyone. For my networking strategy, numbers 1, 2, 6, 7, and 10 have all been very effective at meeting great new people both online and in IRL (in real life), especially by starting to attend and even organize tweet-ups.

There are certainly several of these that will work for you, so pick and get started adding diversity to your network!

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Mike Brown is an award-winning marketer and strategist with extensive experience in research, strategy, branding, and sponsorship marketing. He's a frequent keynote presenter on innovation and authors Brainzooming!

Personal Branding When You're 25 x 2

by Mike Brown

Thanks to a tweet from Richard Dedor, Chris Reaburn and I were last minute attendees at a Kansas City PRSA lunch session by Dan Schawbel based on his book "Me 2.0 - Build a Personal Brand to Achieve Career Success."

The talk was part of a career day for students interested in PR, so the average audience age was 20. As a result, Dan's slant on personal branding was customized for the industry and audience life stage.

The concepts he covered were nonetheless applicable to anyone working on personal branding. From talking with many people in mid-career transitions, however, they tend to be woefully behind on how personal branding applies to their situations. So for the 25 times 2.0 crowd, here are three suggestions customized for you:


1. Volunteering for meaningful assignments with professional associations is a great mid-career internship.

Dan highlights the necessity of internships for college-age job seekers. Mid career job seekers have similar opportunities. I speak with many people whose current job is "looking for a job." There's no sizzle and not much built-in skill development there. Yet associations relevant to you are likely looking for knowledgeable professionals to take on assignments. One great thing about a smartly-chosen volunteer project is you typically have room to make it much cooler than anyone in the association ever expected. The result is you get to experiment, learn, and have something with sizzle to lead with when networking.


2. Mid-career, it's imperative to assess your personality and get on with changing what's not working

My advice to people who leave for other companies is always to think about who they want to be in a new job, because it's the only opportunity to create a "new" you. Dan makes the point it's tremendously challenging to reinvent yourself in the age of (nearly) total visibility to your online presence. That's true, but if you continually trip yourself up through the same behaviors, do the self-help, career coaching, or counseling necessary to eliminate rough spots. Become if not a new, at least a "new formula" you.


3. Mid-career people need a solid offline and online network you're actively growing

Dan's right when he says a larger network has the potential to work much harder for you. But with a number of years of experience, you should be good at determining the highest value people in your network. While you definitely want to serve and cultivate these relationships very actively, you should also be continually reaching out to expand your network offline and online. Focus on adding people you may be able to help while building the most vibrant, responsive network you can. That's a far better move than creating the largest network possible filled with people having few real ties to you.

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Mike Brown is an award-winning marketer and strategist with extensive experience in research, strategy, branding, and sponsorship marketing. He's a frequent keynote presenter on innovation and authors Brainzooming!

Do One Thing

Kevin Roberts will be speaking at the World Business Forum in New York City, October 6-7, 2009. Here is our latest hand-picked article:

by Kevin Roberts



For change to take real effect, it needs to be personalized. Saatchi & Saatchi S, our sustainability agency, is working with companies to implement nano-practices in the workplace to reduce carbon use.

We call this DIY contagion DOT, Do One Thing. Each person is encouraged to choose one thing to pursue regularity. It can be anything from cycling to work or doing laundry with cold water. It's just one thing, a start not a complete change of life. One person's DOT may stand alone, but connect a billion DOTs together and you'll see a movement of change happening.

Employees throughout our own network have shared their DOTs. Here are ten, from Sao Paolo to Singapore:

1. My DOT is to take public transportation to and from airports whenever possible.


2. I use the same bottle for water each day every day.


3. I am going to stop smoking.


4. I no longer use plastic shopping bags.


5. My family will no longer buy water in plastic bottles.


6. I turn off the tap while brushing my teeth.


7. I buy ecologic food and supplies, when possible.


8. I will not eat meat at least once a week.


9. I will drink coffee from a reusable mug whenever possible.


10. To find my bike in the cellar – yes, and to use it!

What's my DOT? Make one less flight per month. What's yours? It doesn't matter what it is, so long as you Do One Thing.




It's not too late to catch Kevin Roberts at the World Business Forum in New York City, October 6-7, 2009.

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Kevin Roberts is the CEO worldwide of The Lovemarks Company, Saatchi & Saatchi. For more information on Kevin, please go to www.saatchikevin.com. To see this blog at its original source, please go to www.krconnect.blogspot.com.

Spice Up a Long-Term Relationship

by Mike Brown

We're all likely involved in relationships tied to coaching, mentoring, or just plain supporting one another. They're tremendously helpful in personal and business growth, yet at times, these relationships can become stale.

What can you do if you find yourself in such a relationship? Here are four options to spice things up:

1. Add a Person

• I've been working out for more than three years with the same trainer. The results have been great, yet at times, we tend to fall into the same routines. When my niece was visiting last month, she went along as a guest trainee. The spirit of competition improved my effort and also created some new enthusiasm from my trainer.

2. Reverse Roles

• I've got a great career coach who can amazingly have one meeting with me that creates about nine month's worth of activity and progress. Recently we got together for lunch and turned the tables: I was able to provide some coaching for her on new possibilities she's considering. It was of benefit to her, and it was really exciting for me to give something back to someone who has done so much to help me!

3. Schedule a Reunion

• Early in my career, a group of us working as analysts for a challenging boss formed a tremendous bond as we tried to survive and figure out what we'd do with our careers. We don't get together often anymore, but we met for a happy hour recently to renew our friendship and share perspectives on what each of us is doing now.

4. Take a break

• If you find a once thriving coaching relationship has stalled, consider seeing other people. The break could be temporary or permanent, but may be just the thing to open up time to find other relationships that work better for both of you right now.

Give one or more of these a try so you can keep moving forward with renewed enthusiasm!

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Mike Brown is an award-winning marketer and strategist with extensive experience in research, strategy, branding, and sponsorship marketing. He's a frequent keynote presenter on innovation and authors Brainzooming!

Making Innovation Happen in the Downturn

by Stefan Lindegaard

What should innovation leaders do make things happen in times like this to? Let me present you with some ideas and hopefully you can add more advice on this in the following discussion. Here are eight quick tips:

1. Align With Executives

• You need to have a better alignment between the innovation strategy and the overall corporate strategy. One way to do this is to make an extra effort of understanding what matters most for the executives right now and deliver on this.

2. See What Comes Next

• Once you deliver what the executives would like to see right now, you still have to be able to see what comes next and make sure that your company moves in that direction . The small wins gained by aligning with the executives hopefully make them more attentive to your suggestions on how to develop strategies on what comes next.

3. Go External, Get Connected

• As we move towards open innovation, you need to build better personal as well as corporate networks. Look at the external sources you should connect with to develop the offerings of your company and expand your own career opportunities.

4. Become A Digerati

• As you work to develop more external ties, you need to gain a better understanding of social tools such as LinkedIn, Twitter, blogs and perhaps even Facebook. Facebook has a more private focus but there are industries where you need to understand how Facebook works in order to innovate better. Use these tools to gather and distribute information and knowledge and to build your personal brand if you have set a strategy for this.

5. Build Your T-Shape

• In short, the T-shape is about having depth as well as breadth. You need to understand how other business functions work and why they are important to the innovation process. One way to do this is to convince your executives that job rotation programs are great vehicles for building a better overall understanding of your company and its offerings.

6. Get Noticed

• In times like this, you need to make sure you get the proper credit for the work you do. I am not saying that you should just focus on your personal brand and disregard the work of colleagues. Find the right balance remembering that no one likes shameless self-promotion.

7. Adjust Your Drive

• Working with innovation you most likely have a faster drive and pace of change than that of your colleagues. You need to be careful about launching too many initiatives and pushing too hard as you need to get the support from others to get results. From time to time, you need to stop, look around and ask yourself if you have enough key stakeholders backing your projects.

8. Build Your Management Portfolio

• A majority of the innovation leaders I work with aspire to climb the corporate ladder and even become executives. In this case, you not only need to understand other business functions; you need to work in other functions such as sales in order to get the management experience needed to advance to higher positions. One reason is that innovation is carried out in smaller units not giving you the experience of working in - or leading - a larger department.

I have only heard of a few cases in which innovation leaders advanced directly to executive positions; you need to build further on your resume. Perhaps this is the time to develop new skills and competences by taking on new challenges?

Just some thoughts... I look forward to hearing your comments.

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Stefan Lindegaard is a speaker, network facilitator and strategic advisor who focus on the topics of open innovation, intrapreneurship and how to identify and develop the people who drive innovation.

It's Not Too Late - What have you done this year?

by Rowan Gibson

Tom Peters once posed this question at a seminar I attended back in the early 1990s. I remember it vividly. Sitting there at one those big round tables in the ballroom at Amsterdam's Okura hotel, Tom's question connected with me like a left hook from Mike Tyson. I vigorously scribbled those words on the notepad in front of me and sat there for a few moments staring at them. What had I actually done with one whole precious year of my life? And, more to the point, what exactly was I going to do with the next one?

When I left the Okura hotel that cold December day and headed home, I made a passionate resolution: I was going to start writing the book that had long been on my mind but not on my agenda. It turned out to be one of the major turning points in my life. That book, "Rethinking the Future", became an international bestseller sold in over 20 languages and the launch pad for my public speaking career. It also gave me the great honor of working with (and getting to know) some of the smartest business thinkers of all times – luminaries like Warren Bennis, Gary Hamel, Charles Handy, John Naisbitt, Michael Porter, CK Prahalad, Peter Senge, and Alvin Toffler, among others.

As another year comes to an end, and we contemplate what lies ahead for us all in 2010, I challenge you to think about Tom's question. Sit down and write an annual report - not for your company or department, but for your own career and personal life. Doubtless you have been very busy throughout this year so far doing all kinds of... er, 'stuff'. But can you list your most 'stunning' accomplishments so far in 2009? Have you made a significant difference this year in your organization or, better yet, in your field? Have you started working on that book, or blog, or pet project, or new business you've been wanting get off the ground? Did you do something - anything - that could one day be legendary? What will your children or your grandchildren boast to their friends about you? Molly Sargent, OD consultant and trainer, asks a powerful question: "Have you invested as much this year in your career as in your car?"

Sometimes it takes an exercise like this to jolt us out of our complacency and get us to make those hefty adjustments to our careers and our lives that we know we should be making but somehow haven't yet gotten around to. So, having done the self assessment looking back at 2009 so far, the next challenge is to look ahead to 2010. What are you going to do next year that could meet the test of being truly 'Wow'? What projects, goals, values, are you going to adopt a 'fanatic's posture' toward? How exactly do you plan to make a dent in the universe?

Most people start the year with some kind of New Year's resolution. The usual suspects include "going on a diet", "joining a fitness club" or "reducing my personal debt". But how many of those resolutions ever get beyond January? How many even get off the starting block? I believe the reason so few resolutions ever go anywhere is that most of us are aiming too low. Instead of resolving to lose a few pounds before Easter (how inspiring is that?), why not aim to create an innovative new diet that will become the basis for a bestseller that will turn you into the next weight-loss guru? Instead of aiming to reduce your personal debt, why not aim to start building the business that will eventually make you completely debt-free and financially independent?

The greatest piece of advice I ever followed (which came from my friend, Al Ries) was just one single word: "focus". Make a list of all the things you will inevitably end up doing next year unless you intervene. Then make a list of what you would truly love to do, and where you would love to be. Throw the first list away and start crossing things off the second list one until you get down to just one big career-changing or life-changing goal. Then resolve to focus all your energy in 2010 on that one big thing and treat all else as secondary. Pursue your goal tenaciously as if it's the only thing worth doing for the rest of your life. View it as a grand adventure. Before I wrote one single word of Rethinking the Future, I bought myself a T-shirt and had Helen Keller's famous mantra printed in large red letters on the front: "Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing." It certainly worked for me.

Or as advertising legend Leo Burnett once put it, "When you reach for the stars you may not quite get one, but you won't come up with a handful of mud either."

If you're gutsy enough to follow your dream next year, and to work like hell to make it happen, I salute you. May 2010 bring you and your family wealth, health and happiness.

Or even better, 2009 isn't over, yet...

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Rowan Gibson is a global business strategist, a bestselling author and an expert on radical innovation.

Personal Innovation - Profiting from Uncertainty

by Paul Sloane

How can you ensure that in turbulent times you not only survive the organizational restructuring but actually benefit by it? Most businesses are having to change not once but over and over in order to meet the challenges of recession, competition and technology convergence. Some changes are all about cutting costs, although they may be called something else. Others are about realigning the business to cope with new opportunities. Either way it can be a bloody affair, littered with victims and casualties. How can you maximize your chances in the change maelstrom? One way is to take a positive approach to change and to be seen as an innovative go-getter who will help make the re-organization a success. Here is how:

1. Adopt a positive attitude

• Don't be cynical about change. Don't assume the worst. Don't believe and repeat rumours about management conspiracies to do down the workforce. Change is inevitable for every organization so it is time to start liking it. Change means new opportunities, new responsibilities, new things to learn and do. People who are positive about new challenges are more likely to be given them. People who are resistant to change and reluctant to adapt are the first to be culled.

2. Become a change agent

• Make suggestions. Introduce ideas and recommendations. Look for ways in which your department could bring in new products, business processes or partnerships. Ask yourself - is there a better way to meet the needs of our customers? Anticipate trends and suggest ways of changing the department to exploit new opportunities and new technologies.

3. Listen to customers

• Where can you find the ideas for change? One source is customers. In your dealings with clients you should make a point of asking how your product or service could be improved. What do they like and dislike about your offering? How are their business needs changing? What will they need in the future? Even better than asking them is to study how they use your product or service. What difficulties do they encounter? How could you alleviate the problems and make their life easier? Do they use your product or service in conjunction with others? Could you co-operate with another company or combine your product with others to bring an innovation to market?

4. Watch the competition

• Keep an eye on what they are doing and any innovations they introduce. Ask customers what other suppliers are doing that is smart and new. Study their initiatives and see what works. Suggest ways in which you can not just match the competition but leapfrog them.


• A copy-machine operator at Kinko's, a major chain of outlets providing copying and document services, noticed that customer demand for copying dropped off in December. People were too pre-occupied with Christmas presents to do much copying for the office. So he came up with a creative idea. Why not allow customers to use Kinko's colour copying and binding facilities to create their own customized calendars using their personal photos for each of the months? He prototyped the idea in the store and it proved popular -- people could create personalized gifts of calendars featuring favorite family photos. The operator phoned the founder and CEO of Kinko's, Paul Orfalea, and explained the idea. Orfalea was so excited by it that he rushed it out as a service in all outlets. It was very successful and a new product -- custom calendars - and a new revenue stream were created.

5. Be sensitive to office politics

• For most ideas it is best to talk them through with colleagues in your department and in other areas to test their workability before you speak to your manager. That way you have checked out the concept, cleared some obvious objections and gained feedback before you propose it. It will sound better thought out. However, there are some ideas that are so sensitive that it would be silly to bat them around the office before proposing them. You have to choose your moments carefully. Often you can prepare the ground by describing the size of the problem and agreeing how pressing it is before you introduce your idea. Catch the boss when he or she is most receptive. Sometimes it is best to introduce your big idea outside the hurly burly of the office. If you can buttonhole the director in the bar or the car park you may have a better chance of a good hearing.

6. Don't insist on the glory

• If you spark an idea and then other people adapt and improve it then that is fine. By letting go you have a better chance of it being adopted than if you insist on driving every aspect of the initiative because it 'was your idea in the first place.' Sometimes the cleverest tactic is to let your boss take it over as his or her idea. People will still know that you were the one who planted the seed.

7. Be prepared for rejection

• Most managers are analytical and critical. They are good at finding fault with other people's ideas. The more radical your proposal the more likely it is that people will feel uncomfortable with it. Propose it carefully. Lay it out in a logical way and explain the benefits. But if your boss disagrees then don't fall out over it and don't bypass him. Let it lie fallow for a while. I once worked for a CEO who would tear new ideas to shreds and ridicule them. But the next day he would often say, "I was thinking about that idea of yours and I can see a way to make it work." His initial reaction was to oppose an idea just to test it. But once the germ of the idea was in his head he could find ways to develop it. Above all don't stop bringing forward ideas because the first few are rejected.

Conclusion

Change means winners and losers. If you can be known as someone who is creative, innovative and a driver of change then the chances are that you will emerge a winner. Not only will you survive the change but you will be given the responsibility of making part of it a reality.

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Paul Sloane writes, speaks and leads workshops on creativity, innovation and leadership. He is the author of The Innovative Leader published by Kogan-Page.

Five Ways to Create Innovation Throughout Your Life

When innovation is brought up in a business context, we mostly think about, well, the business. We think of innovations related to products, business models, go-to-market strategies and the like. This blog does a great job of identifying and promoting specific strategies and tactics for accelerating and maximizing innovation through those and other business-specific contexts.

But your business strategy is just one of many places where the right innovation approach can create incredible, positive changes in your life. Imagine what would happen if you made a specific point to innovate elsewhere?

Here are five specific places and contexts in your personal and professional life that, with the same approach to innovation, can make you happier, more fulfilled and more successful.

1. Innovate Your Career

Are you doing what you want to do? Are you learning new things every day? Do you feel comfortably challenged with the work on your plate? If not, it may be time to try something new.

If you were starting your career from scratch, knowing what you know now, what would you do differently? What risks would you take? How hard would you work in a different direction to achieve the job, the career or the business you dream of today?

What do you really want to be doing in five years? 10 years? Whatever that vision is, what do you need to do right now, this month, or at least before the end of the year to make progress towards that dream?

Playing with your career can mean playing with your livelihood, which is of course scary. But you spend at least 40 hours a week at work, working effectively on your career.

2. Innovate Your Management Style

How are you making your direct reports as productive, successful and satisfied as possible? For those who don't work directly with you, how are you enabling them as best as possible to achieve their goals, and make both you and the company overall perform better?

Are you actively mentoring future leaders inside your company? How about outside? When you get requests for your time to help someone learn - whether or not they work directly for you - do you take the time to do it?

Do you actively use recognition strategies to praise and motivate your team? Not just bonuses and coffee gift cards, but do those you work with know on a regular basis that you value their work?

Think hard about how you would be best learn, innovate and be motivated as an employee, and make sure you're innovating your management style to match that. Better yet, ask your employees directly how they learn, how they innovate, and how they’re motivated, and match that.

3. Innovate Your Personal Life

You do have a life outside of work, right? If not, let's start there. How are you staying balanced and refreshed so that you're working at your peak while on the job, but also living a rich, fulfilling life away from the office?

Put pen to paper and inventory the things you wish you had more time to do. If they're important enough, you'll make time for at least a handful.

What are the things you want to do in the next five years? Before you die? What are you doing right now to make those things possible? If you don't act now (or at least prepare to act), you'll never take advantage of the things you really want to be doing.

Explore that personal itch. Meet new people. Try new things. Mix things up.

4. Innovate Your Relationships

Think about the people most important to you - your family, your spouse, your close friends. Do you spend as much time with them as you want? Do you do the things with them you want to be doing?

Indulge me for a moment, and treat your personal relationships like a business problem. What's your goal? What does success look like? Envision what that relationship would ideally look like moving forward. Now what's your strategy to get there?

5. Innovate Your Future

OK, I cheated. This one's really a combination of the first four above, but is perhaps the most important. You can keep doing what you're doing today - follow the same career, keep the same friends, the same occasional convenient hobbies - and maybe that makes you happy.

But chances are, if you took a minute to think and innovate, you'd envision a world much different than the one you live now.

So what are you going to do about it?

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Matt Heinz is principal at Heinz Marketing, a sales & marketing consulting firm helping businesses increase customers and revenue. Contact Matt at matt@heinzmarketing.com or visit www.heinzmarketing.com.

Personal Innovation - Shine Your Star

I had a nice conversation with a friend from London today that I haven't spoken with in a while and we got onto the topic of careers. We started talking about my article on Personal Innovation and how in most professional occupations there are the stars and then there is everyone else.

We talked about how stars in certain professions might only be 5% better at something than their peers but get paid 5x to 50x more than the rest. There are certain professions like professional athletics where this is particularly true. But at the same time in many professions including lawyers, consultants, managers, speakers, even cooks and hair stylists, the stars are those who are best at marketing themselves. So if you really want to become a star, you have to hone the skills necessary to market yourself and/or your ideas.

If you read my article about The Commodity Marketplace for Employees you'll get a lot more background on this topic. Today I want to focus on a good point that my friend brought up. He had consciously tried to build up an 'aura' (or a "reputation for greatness") in his organization and had been somewhat successful in doing so. But after succeeding at building his 'aura', some coworkers who had previously been helpful in building it, suddenly stopped supporting him. Why did they do this? Well, they began to feel that his 'aura' had become stronger than their own, and a potential threat to their own career ambitions.

So, if you are really good at what you do, is building yourself into a star doomed to failure?

Definitely not!

This is one of the hazards of focusing your personal innovation efforts within your organization. While it is important to have a reputation for greatness within your organization of a certain level, it is more important to focus on expanding your reputation for greatness outside the organization and here is why:

1. To build a reputation for greatness within your organization you are dependent on your peers and managers saying flattering things about you and throwing their support behind your efforts, but at some point this support will likely decrease or cease
• The only exception is a company growing so fast that there is endless opportunity for all
• This is because people eventually become threatened and will not want to be seen as inferior


2. Building up a reputation for greatness within your organization really only helps you
• It might help your manager if he/she can show their bosses that they are a great developer of talent and deserve to move up to the next level
• It does not add value to the organization


3. Making yourself a star outside your organization increases the awareness of other companies to your promise and potential
• It also increases the profile of your organization as being a thought leader
• Upper management will eventually recognize this thought leadership benefit
1. Improved reputation
2. Free advertising
3. Free public relations

Let's face it, becoming an internal star will probably only get you a 3% annual raise instead of a 2% annual raise, and possibly on the fast track for promotions (but only until you become a little too threatening to the wrong person). If you truly are a star, begin preparing yourself mentally for the possibility that you may have to leave your current employer to be compensated appropriately, continue to execute brilliantly and start polishing your star.

If you do a good job building up your self-marketing skills and show that you do have something unique and valuable to say, then you will become of greater value to another organization than to your current one, and to a sufficient level where the other organization is willing to campaign to acquire you.

So, the following questions remain:

1. Are you really a star?
2. Are you committed to the hard work and learning necessary to shine your star?
3. Are you ready to leave your current employer when the time is right for a new opportunity or to create your own?

Well, are you?

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