Leadership

08 Nov

To create a company where creativity is driving force, you have to reward the creative process--the behavior--not the outcome.

Yet everyone should be cautious not to make something impossible that nature would not allow, unless it would be that one wanted to make a dream work, in which case one may mix together every kind of creature.Albrecht DĆ¼rer, Four Books on Proportion[1. Translation from: Peter Parshall, "Graphic Knowledge: Albrecht DĆ¼rer and the imagination," The Art Bulletin, 2013.]

When people think about creativity, they typically think of it in terms of three Ps: Person, Problem, and Product. A person solves a problem in a new way and creates a new product.

The problem with thinking about creativity in this way is that it ignores the fourth and most important P: the Process.

23:49 / Creativity / Inspiration / Leadership
01 Nov

When you're creating innovations, you're likely not going to get it exactly right the first time. You're going to fail.Ā  Failureā€™s relation to producing creative results has to do with how people perceive failure. It is related to what psychologists call goal orientation. Goal orientation operates at the individual level and is driven by both individual and environmental factors.
22:47 / Creativity / Inspiration / Leadership
27 Sep

Make Purpose Your Bouncer -Priya Parker

Make purpose your bouncer.Priya Parker[1. Priya Parker, The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters, 2018.]

If you had 100% clarity, every decision would be obvious. How great would that be?

Although 100% clarity isnā€™t possibleā€”none of us are oracles that can predict the futureā€”it is possible to achieve much greater levels of clarity than your competitors because if your competitors are like most businesses, theyā€™re operating in a light fog instead of clear air.

23:53 / Inspiration / Leadership
21 Sep

Your job as a manager is to get better outcomes from a group of people working together. ā€”Julie Zhuo

It seems obvious that you should hire managers that want to make the organization better. Yet, few organizations evaluate people based on their desire to serve the organizationā€™s purpose.Ā 

This often results in a broken leadership system that is about self-promotion rather than the betterment of the organization and everyone the organization affects.

00:39 / Leadership / Personal Development
02 Aug

Customers are people; consumers are statistics. Customers are people; consumers are statistics. Stanley Marcus, Quest for the Best
On a recent trip overseas, I was struck at the difference in attitude between airport security in Japan and the US. In Japan, the conveyor belts had a curved design that took up little space and returned the bins automatically, there were only a few employees, and all of the employees were trying to help the customers get through security as pain-free as possible. In the US, there was a new and confusing conveyor belt system that kept backing up, there were more employees at each scanner than I wanted to count, and the TSA employee instructing people how to use the new system kept talking down to customers that didnā€™t understand what they were supposed to do. The difference between these two experiences, like all customer service experiences, comes down to cultural differencesā€”the culture of the society or the organization.
10:45 / Leadership / Marketing
14 Jun

Trust is the glue of life. It's the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It's the foundational principle that holds all relationships. Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Taking a sociological perspective, Barbara Misztal explains in her book Trust in Modern Societies that trust has three social implications: 1) it makes social life more predictable; 2) it creates a sense of community; and, 3) it allows people to work together. Without trust, social interactions are unpredictable, community building is thwarted, and people are unable to collaborate effectively. Businesses aggressively strive to establish trust with their customers but frequently neglect the need to cultivate trust in their workplaces. In their myopia, they create hostile work environments with a ā€˜me versus youā€™ mentality, where employees feel the constant need to watch their backs. In this space, loyalty, creativity, and innovation are sure to die.
11:19 / Leadership / Personal Development
17 May

The primary ingredient behind compelling stories come down to one thing: problems. The protagonist faces a challenge and tries to overcome it. This is the essence of drama and the key to good storytelling. Without problemsā€”without troubles and tensionsā€”thereā€™s no story. Thereā€™s nothing to engage us.
14:17 / Inspiration / Leadership / Marketing