Latest / The Innovation Show / Carla Johnson — RE:Think Innovation and the Wheel of Innovation

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Carla Johnson — RE:Think Innovation and the Wheel of Innovation · The Innovation Show

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Innovation isn't a gift, it's a process.
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A simple, , repeatable five-step process that anyone at any level
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can learn with nothing more than a stack of Post-it notes.
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Observe, distill, relate, generate, pitch, and that's it.
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That's how the world's most prolific innovators consistently come up with
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ideas that are new, great, and reliable.
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She's on a mission to teach one million people to do exactly that.
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It's a pleasure to welcome the author of Re-Think Innovation, Carla Johnson.
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Welcome to the show.
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Thank you.
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I'm so happy to be here.
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We've been talking about this for a while, so I'm happy we
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get to sit down and chat today
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It's so great to finally meet you and finally share your work, and you've
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been on that mission to teach a million.
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You're nearly there as well, which is absolutely fantastic to hear.
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But let's start with the title.
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… That wasn't an overpronunciation of rethink innovation.
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It's a very specific reason you picked that title
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It is.
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And also I was very thoughtful in how, if you wanna show the cover,
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how it's presented graphically.
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it's RE:Think Innovation.
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So say in the olden days when I was early in my career, we would have
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these paper memos and it would say to colon, from colon, colon, like
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regarding what, what is this memo about?
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so for me, that's what I wanted it to be.
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It's yes, let's rethink innovation and who's involved and the
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purpose and how we all look at it.
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it's regarding the way we think about innovation and really looking at it
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from all different perspectives and re- reevaluating what we think it
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actually is and who we give permission to be a part of it or how willing we
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are as individuals to give ourselves permission to be a part of the process.
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I actually still use re, so I don't know what that says about me.
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It's m- like I'm some old English lord or something.
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I'll be sending messenger pigeons to people.
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But yeah, I still, I use re in my letters and m- in my emails even as well.
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But let's start with the cautionary tale of the thirsty pet story,
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which you open the book with
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You know for me it, it, I loved it.
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I love to find quirky little stories, and it was so fun to come across this
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story about the, the pet water company because they had these high hopes and,
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and I think like a lot of companies, they looked around and they said,
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"Here's this amazing opportunity for us to be a, you know, billion-dollar
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company in a really short amount of time." And they failed to look at the
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signs that were right in front of them.
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So the product was, you know, if, if you were a dog, it was
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like a beef-flavored water.
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If you were a cat, it was like a salmon-flavored water.
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Ideally, it was a health water, and the owner had been walking down the aisle
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in a grocery store looking at of the options for your pet's food, care, all
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of these things, and he's like, "The only thing we don't have is pet water."
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And as humans, you know, we have have the Fiji, we have all of our, you know,
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Liquid Death, we have all of our waters.
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He said, "Well, you know, why should we why should we not allow our pets,
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our beloved family members, to have the same quality of water as we do?"
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So they launched this company and, and when it first started out, it
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looked like it was just i- incredible.
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But what they didn't take into consideration is like the, the
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health impact of this water.
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so it was you know, the, the cats and dogs were getting fat because of
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all the additional calories in it.
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also they didn't take into consideration like these are pets that will
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literally drink out of the toilet.
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their discerning taste was not at the same level as their
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pet owner's discerning taste.
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And, and as you can imagine, it just fell flat on its face and… But it,
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it showed all the signs of what we typically think of, you know, like a, a
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disruptor, an incredible innovator inside an industry and, and yet it missed the
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very signs right in front of it that the idea wasn't new, great, reliable,
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one that could, could actually produce money and, and sustain for the long term.
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One of the things that story opens up is the question of a reliable
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idea, and we'll come back to that because it's a really important
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aspect that's throughout the book.
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But one- the only other things is, and I experienced this recently, I'll
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share this with you 'cause you work as a practitioner in innovation as well.
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I was asked by a well-known brand to w- come up with a workshop for their
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senior team, an innovation workshop, and it was as person second to the
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senior leader who was, I was dealing with, and did the workshop, did- put
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the workshop together, and then I had a call, and I gave the call, and it
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was crickets, like, not going well.
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It's the only time it's ever happened.
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I was so disappointed by it.
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But the problem was she wanted an innovation workshop, but when I talked
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to her, it was about innovation, and it turned out she wanted creativity,
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which is something that, yes, linked to innovation, but it's not innovation, and
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it opens up the thing you talk about in the book, which is you ask 100 people,
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maybe even 1,000, for their definition of innovation, and it's often very different.
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And an organization really needs to agree on what they mean by innovation.
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Maybe you'll share a bit about that, but also your definition of innovation.
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Yeah, and it was interesting.
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I like, I like to poll people and see what their ideas are.
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I mean, I, I have my own experiences from my own client engagements and
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from people I, I talk to after I, after I give keynotes and things,
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and I love to hear their perspective.
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But I did this, this question.
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I put the question out on, on LinkedIn a number of years ago
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of how do you define innovation?
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And, I think whatever number it was, there was probably twice
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the definitions of innovation.
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as I read through them, none of… One, none of them were very
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clear, and two, none of them were definitions that you could read
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and then understand what behavior should I take next, what should I do?
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And I think that's one of the greatest that's one of the greatest
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problems that companies have that they don't realize around innovation
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is the word is thrown around, but nobody really knows what it means.
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Like, if you and I are talking and I say, you know, "I'm, I'm gonna go for
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a run," you have a pretty clear picture of what that behavior looks like.
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Now, the speed might be very different, that you do this.
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Or if I say,
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"I'm going to bake a soufflé," you have a general, I think we all
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have a general accepted expectation of what that behavior looks like.
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we don't with innovation.
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And I see it in organizations' values, I see it in their mission
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and vision , and all of these things.
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But without clarity of definition, employees don't
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understand what actions to take.
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And when employees don't understand a clear action to take, then they
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don't wanna perform that behavior because there may be consequences.
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And I think that's, that's one of the most powerful things
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that we have to understand.
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even if there i- even if there may be a definition, it's usually convoluted and
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complicated and, you know, o- only certain people are gonna be able to figure it out.
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But I, I believe innovation is everybody's business.
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So I define innovation as consistently being able to come up
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with new, great, and reliable ideas.
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And when I think of a new idea, it doesn't have to be something that's never, ever
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been done before, because, we've seen a lot of amazing ideas over the centuries.
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But it could be something that's new to that industry.
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So I tell a story about the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, it's
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a children's hospital, and they had an error rate of 30% from the time a surgery
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was done until that pediatric patient was moved down the hallway to the ICU.
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And what they ended up doing is they pulled in the Ferrari's Formula 1 pit
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stop crew to learn from them about precision, speed, and process and things.
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Now, were the things that they had done absolutely new and never been done?
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Well, of course not, because Ferrari and Formula 1 pit stop crews had
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been, had been doing them for years.
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But it was a new approach inside of the pediatric surgery suite And
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those standards, they dropped the error rate by 20%, and they're,
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continuing to slowly chip away at that.
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But that process and the standards are now incorporated into pediatric
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surgery suites around the world.
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And so that's, that's an amazing new idea.
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Now, the second word is, you know, a new great idea, and I think of David Ogilvy.
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He says, "You know, a great idea is one that kind of makes the, the hair
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stand up and gives you goosebumps," and y- it's more, it's more subjective.
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Like, your definition of a great idea might be completely different
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than mine, but it, it gets some kind of, like, visceral reaction.
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And then the third quality is that it's a reliable idea, and a reliable idea
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is one that actually has a financial impact, grows revenue, cuts expenses
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increases employee engagement, customer experience scores, th- things like that.
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Like, there's a concrete outcome from it.
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And then I put the word consistently in front of that, consistently
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coming up with ideas that have all three of these characteristics.
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Because we've all seen the companies that are the one-hit wonders.
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They do have one idea that's new, great, and reliable, but
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they're not able to sustain that output over long periods of time.
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so when I think of innovation, innovative thinkers, innovative organizations,
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they're those companies that consistently come up with new, great, and reliable
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ideas that we all get excited about
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And that brings us to that idea that you talked about.
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You call these companies or these people in the companies perpetual innovators.
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We better give a definition for that as well before we get stuck into the
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framework and the updated framework
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absolutely.
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So I, I think of a perpetual innovator as, as someone who , they
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constantly think in the framework of the process that we're going to,
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that we're going to walk through.
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And it's not necessarily that they have a different degree or they're
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smarter or anything like this.
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Like we've I've known people in every kind of industry at every level
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of seniority or experience in an organization who can think like this.
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And we all know people who, if we see them in the hallway or if we feel
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stuck, it's like, "Oh, I can just call them and I, I know I'm gonna get like
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8, 10, 12, 40 ideas just like that." And it's because they're able to think
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in this perpetual cycle of how do we come up with the ideas and, and be
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able to articulate and share them.
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by the way, I wanna tell our audience as well, it's the anniversary
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of your book, and I'm delighted we got this episode out in time.
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So an anniversary of the book, so buy the book.
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We're only gonna cover part one today, so we're gonna leave you
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hanging for part two, so you'll have to buy the book to find that.
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But you start p- you start chapter two with another cautionary tale,
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and this is one that every innovator, many, many people listen to this show,
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will feel salt in the wounds or old wounds opened up with the story of a
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startup in Canada and poor old Mohammed
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Oh, yes.
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Mentorina.
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So I I still feel for Mohammed.
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So I, I was sitting at my desk in Denver and, and the phone rang, and
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it was, it was Mohammed Hail Saeed.
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And he he was an amazing thinker, and I loved his, his passion, his
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vision, his desire to do things in a way that consistently brought forward
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new, great, and reliable ideas.
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And so they had started a learning management software platform
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that helped students learn.
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And the interesting thing about working with this group is that we
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were able to get to a place where the reason behind why they were
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doing the product technical reasons.
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They were truly to improve the lives of students.
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And I think that, like, that shift for a lot of organizations in how
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that definition of like why are we actually doing the work is a really
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important one that I don't think a lot of companies actually get to
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or take the time to investigate.
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So I give, I give Mentorina and the leadership a lot of credit for that.
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And so Mohammed and I put together this… It, it was a strategy we were
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both so excited about and, and I always ask people when they come and want to
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start down this innovation journey, like, "Who inspires you? Is, is it a
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brand? Is it a person?" And it could be, you know, a, a Taylor Swift, an
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Anthony Bourdain, or it could be, you know, a neighbor who's always coming up
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with quirky ideas and things like that.
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Mohammed told me that the, the company that inspired him was Disney, because
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it didn't matter where you enter the brand, you always have an amazing
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experience, you know, whether that's a store, a theme park, a movie, a,
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you know, what- whatever it is, the consistency of that amazing experience.
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And so with Disney as our North Star, we started to say, "If Disney created a
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learning management software platform, what would this look like?" So we put
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this strategy together present it to the executive team, and you, you know, it
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was… I'm, I'm normally very good at thinking all the what-ifs through, but we
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were so excited about this strategy and, and as Mohammed finished presenting it, I,
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I watched everybody around the table, like heads nodding, "Yes, this sounds amazing."
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But there was one person I hadn't taken into consideration in the
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room, and I call him the CF-uh-O.
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You know, I think, I think anybody's who, who has been in a meeting where
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something needs money, we have a finance person, but this was the,
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the CFO who I call the CF-uh-O.
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And, and when Mohammed was done The guy took his glasses off and
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put them on the table and pushed himself back and he, he crossed his
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arms and he's like, not doing this.
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We're, we are a serious company.
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We have a lot of PhD, very smart people.
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We sell to schools and universities, like, they're very smart people.
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We're not doing something that came from a princess ride or a
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goofy dog or something like that.
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What I need you to do, Mohammed, is just go back and essentially
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do the things we've always done.
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Cold call, put ads in industry trade magazines." I watched it… As I sat
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there in the room, like I watched the deflation of Mohammed, and I think
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this is something that almost everybody listening can relate to at one time or
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another, when you're so excited about an idea and somehow how it's packaged, how
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it's presented just doesn't work the way it, way you hope and think it should.
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I think that, that really sent me down the path of understanding what happened
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in that room how can we fix it so others don't experience the same outcome.
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And we'll get to solutions as well, because your process actually helps there.
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There was some steps that Mohammed could have gone through as well and
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that we'll help other people with.
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But one of the things that happened there is what you… We've heard of
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ADD, attention deficit disorder, but this is BDD, which is brand detachment
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disorder, and we've all done it.
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And actually, you know, I, I both read the book and listened to it.
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I got the audiobook as well, so I listened to it, and it was read by you.
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Well done.
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You did a great job.
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And you talked about this.
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You did it yourself.
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So even though you speak at conferences all over the world, you run conferences
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all over the world, sometimes you're sitting in the audience yourself
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and you're kind of going, "Yeah, yeah, that's not relevant to me."
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And we all do it.
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And I was listening to you talk about this.
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I was like going, "Oh my God, I do it too."
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absolutely.
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And, and it kind of ties in with it wouldn't have mattered what brand we used
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as inspiration for Mentorina and presented that day because the CFOO couldn't see
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the vision of what we were trying to do.
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And it brought me back to, I was sitting in a conference in Las Vegas,
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a customer experience conference, and my biggest client at the
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time was a mining conference…
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It was a mining company.
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They mined boron.
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And I'm listening to the speaker from Zappos talk about their customer
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experience process and journey and all those things, and I'm like, "Ain't nobody
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in this mo- boron mining company gonna do any of this." And you know, I, as we
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do, I pick up my phone, I start checking my socials, my email, my all the things.
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I look around and think, you know, who, who, who do I know in this session
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that I can go to happy hour with?
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And I was thinking about it a little later, and I know that wasn't the
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first time I'd ever done that.
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And to, to be honest, it's not the last time I ever did it, but I call it
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brand detachment disorder, it's this tendency that we have to dismiss how
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relevant another company's experience, approach, vision, whatever it is,
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how relevant it is to us because what we sell is different or unique.
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And I hear people say this all the time.
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"That's not how we do things around here.
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Yeah, that, that worked for them, but that would never work there.
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We don't have that kind of budget.
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We don't sell that kind of product." I mean, versus, you know, mining materials.
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We're not that kind of company. We don't have that kind of culture."
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There's all sorts of excuses, and that's what I put together and just defined
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as this brand detachment disorder.
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And the interesting thing is it applies… And like, I hear it all of
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the time, it will be an organization that brings me in to talk about, like
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you said, innovation or creativity.
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"Help us learn from other industries.
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Help us bring the outside in." And inevitably they will say,
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you know, "That's not gonna work here because…" it's some sort
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of psychological protectionism.
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You know, we don't… This might not be working the way we want it, but we're
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so white-knuckled on holding onto the status quo way of doing things that
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we can't see that's doing more damage than trying something new, that they
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don't see that the risk of staying the same actually the high- is higher
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than the risk of trying something new.
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And if you're thinking of tuning out, don't tune out yet because we're gonna
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talk later on about a brand transplant, which is actually the antidote, in a
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way, for this brand attachment disorder.
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But one of the things you m- made a great point about was complexity
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bias and how if you're being sold innovation or you've bought in
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innovation, you need, the consultants need to make it seem complicated
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because, A, they have a framework that only they can do maybe, perhaps.
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But also, if it's simple and the rest of the company turn around and go, "Well,
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why didn't you think of that, dumbass?" It, it doesn't look good for you, and
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you might be ejected out of the company.
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So I'd love you to share this concept
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absolutely.
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And, and complexity bias is it applies to every, every topic
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and, and every- everything we look at, is that we think something is
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only valuable if it's complicated.
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And what we don't understand is that hard part is to simplify it.
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And so if I-- like when I look at work that McKinsey or Deloitte or BCG does,
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lo- lots of paperwork, lots of diagrams, lots of things, it's not something that
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the average employee could understand.
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And I found a really interesting statistic when I was researching this book, is
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that 90% of innovation happens outside of a traditional R&D or innovation team.
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So if we think about that, if we, if we've made innovation so complicated
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90% of our organization isn't capable performing the action, we have just wiped
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out the most powerful and productive part of our workforce to truly change things.
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And so y- when you, when you talked about that point about if people look at the
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answer and it's super simple, I mean, it seems simple after the curtains have
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been pulled apart and it's revealed, but when you're standing right in front of
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the problem, that's part of the blindness that comes is, is our own experience,
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our own history, our own way of thinking.
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And sometimes it's just that outside perspective that can say, "Oh, all you
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need to do is unplug this one and plug that one in, and like literally now it
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will work." It's hard for, for a lot of people, a lot of executives, it's hard
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to give credit to something so simple.
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But I look at the, the organizations, I mean, Apple was all about
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how much can we simplify this?
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Like what's, you know, des- design is everything.
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Let's think different and let's make, let's make this as easy
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and simple as we possibly can.
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I mean, Netflix did that with video ac- you know, with access to
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video and to movies and everything.
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Let's make it a s- you never even have to leave your couch now.
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You don't even have to push a button to watch the next episode,
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like they've made it so simple.
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sometimes simple is hard, and I think when, when we look at
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companies who say, you know, we, we… This is a complicated process.
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This is a complex situation.
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The assumption is that the answer also has to be complex and complicated, which
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generally also means time-consuming and expensive and convoluted.
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And I just, in my experience, it doesn't have to be that way nearly
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as much as people make it out to be.
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I always think that, like, like you've done a good job if people
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kinda go, "Oh, that was, that made a lot of sense to me," you know?
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And it's not like they're having these huge aha moments.
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It's more like kinda going, "We got this. We can do this." Like, job done when
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you're working with an organization.
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But I loved…
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So chapter three, you move on to an idea I absolutely love, and we'll come back
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to it properly when we talk about the process, which is the brand transplant I
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mentioned earlier on, because it was right at the heart of what Kerry Smith did with
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his company that became a fan company with a name that people would not forget.
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And the inspiration of the brand transplant came from
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a deli company in Ann Arbor.
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I'd love you to share this
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So, so Kerry Smith, he had started this company called The High
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Volume Low Speed Fan Company.
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So you can see,
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Forgettable.
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A forgettable name
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I, I know the thing and I still had to stop and, and
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think about what order it was.
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when I interviewed him, he's such a delightful man.
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I interviewed him and he tells me this story about they were all sitting
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around a table in a big warehouse, and the phone rings and it's whoever is
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closest to the phone answers the phone.
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And they say, "Hi, this is the High Volume Low Speed Fan Company.
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Can I help you?" And there's this, as you can imagine, big silence on the
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other end of the phone, and the person finally says, "Are you the people who
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sell those Big Ass Fans?" And they heard that enough, and Carey's a smart guy and
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he has just an amazing sense of humor.
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He said, "Well, why don't we give the people what we want, what they
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want?" And so they renamed the company the Big Ass Fan Company.
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But as he was looking at the whole industry how it serves customers, how
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it designs a product, how it looks at the customer life cycle, said what he
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was seeing is, is companies that were and selling essentially a lower quality
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product and making money on repairs and, and you know, back end kind of things.
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And then he happened to be in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and he went
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to Zinger- Zingerman's Deli.
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And he said, like Zingerman's is known for their incredible sandwiches.
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So here he is, know, in line to get his sandwich, and it's all these different
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cheeses and they're, and they're local and the meats and, and the little cards
24:13
inside the, the case that describe the meats are so detailed and, and
24:17
the bread and all of these things.
24:19
And then he gets up to the counter and he said it's not just like a
24:23
high school kid who's working there for the summer or a part-time job.
24:27
It was actually an employee who cared, whether it was a high schooler or
24:30
not, and who could get into the very detail of the texture of the bread
24:34
and how it blends with the meats and cheeses and all these things.
24:37
And he said he was presented a sandwich.
24:39
It wasn't just like slung across the counter.
24:42
And he said that, that thing right there, that experience inspired him to
24:48
how he wanted to build Big Ass Fans.
24:50
He wanted to make the original product so amazing and so delightful
24:55
and so trusted in quality that that was the thing that made people buy.
25:00
And so he said what he did is he the, the ideas and the perspective and the vision
25:06
of Zingerman's Deli and he transplanted those into Big Ass Fans, and that's,
25:11
that's what I call a brand transplant.
25:13
And how you fix brand attachment disorder is, you look at what is it… Like what
25:18
Carey did is he looked at the, the details and the quality of that experience at
25:23
Zingerman's Deli, and obviously they didn't sell sandwiches, but he said
25:27
there's so much of that that we can transplant into Big Ass Fans that can
25:31
help us be an incredible organization.
25:34
And, and that's exactly what he did, and a huge part of why they were so successful
25:39
One of the things I really took out of that was when you said to do it right,
25:45
to, to do it the way he wanted to do it, like Zingerman's will never be a Walmart.
25:49
It will never be that big because to have that level of excellence and to
25:54
keep that level of quality, just like Big Ass Fans can't compete with the
25:58
Chinese, for example, you have to keep within a certain constraint of size
26:03
here, and constraint's an important thing we'll come back to later.
26:06
But I thought that was a really key point that cannot be overlooked
26:10
I, absolutely, and I think when you when I look at big organizations and what
26:15
innovation looks like inside of them, constraints that smaller organizations
26:22
don't have, and a lot of it is the legacy way of thinking, the legacy pace
26:29
movement, the legacy of everything has to be systematized, put into a process.
26:35
And almost if you think about big companies acquiring small ones, a lot
26:40
of what made it beautiful and special and unique and, and desirable as an
26:45
acquisition gets stripped away at scale.
26:49
I think that's what Corey or Carey was so great at understanding and thinking
26:53
about, and he now runs a, an investment company, and he understands, like those
26:58
are characteristics that he looks for in these companies that he invests in
27:02
One last thing on the brand transplant essentially, but you work with
27:07
companies to innovate also with their marketing processes and ideas as well.
27:11
I love this one, which was, you say for example, you met the head of marketing
27:16
for Red Bull, and he's like, "Oh my God, if I only had the budget of Coca-Cola."
27:21
And you're like going, "What the heck? This guy, this guy has amazing brand."
27:25
That so we do this everywhere, but I lo-
27:27
does it.
27:28
Yeah, and I remember my jaw just dropping and thinking if Red Bull is saying,
27:32
"If only I had," you know, fill in the blank, it's, it's just incredible where
27:37
I think everybody's we all have these reasons and excuses that hold us right
27:43
back from the edge of what we think is, is possible, the if onlys, yeah
27:47
I, I, I, you know, I really took that from the book that no matter what you're
27:51
doing, like you can aim for excellence.
27:55
It just depends if you want it.
27:56
Yeah.
27:57
I, I don't mean that, yeah, sometimes things that aren't going your way,
28:00
sometimes you might have debt or whatever, but I mean the imagination to aim big.
28:06
And then obviously it's gonna be a, a tough journey to get there.
28:10
But to have the… And it's one of the reasons I love doing the show,
28:12
is just to bring concepts to people to go and just think a bit bigger,
28:16
just think outside the box, or think, get rid of the box altogether.
28:20
But the box is important, which is the constraint.
28:23
But the last one we'll share, I loved, loved this one, was how the CDC used
28:30
brand, essentially brand transplant from a totally different concept to
28:36
totally get out something really boring about how to deal with pandemics or
28:40
how to deal with hurricanes, et cetera, to be able to market to the public
28:46
Absolutely, and, and I think this was one of my one, one of my top
28:51
favorite interviews to do because it was with Dave Daigle with Center for
28:55
Disease Control, and the department he worked in is communications about
29:01
preparing for natural disasters and then how to recover after them.
29:05
So if you think of, like right now as we were talking, I'm in Colorado,
29:08
we have terrible wildfires right now.
29:10
You think about hurricanes, you think about tornadoes, any, any kind of
29:13
a natural disas- floods, any kind of a natural disaster like that.
29:17
And as a communication person, I mean, my background is in marketing, one of
29:21
the big challenges is just to get people to pay attention to the important things
29:26
so it will change people's behavior.
29:29
And that was a struggle that Dave, and he has, he had two people on his team,
29:33
that they were dealing with because e- every year in, in the Midwest in America,
29:39
it's, you know, usually l- late May through August, it's tornado season.
29:44
And they're trying to help people understand, like, here's
29:47
how you prepare for a tornado.
29:48
You know, like water, you know, dry packaged food, you know,
29:52
some, some extra clothes, matches, candles, things like that.
29:55
You know, put, put them in a, put them in a place that you can grab and go
29:58
to the basement or, you know, at the times in some places in, in the Midwest,
30:02
cellars, which are, you know, dirt, food storage, underground kind of thing.
30:07
and people didn't care.
30:09
They didn't… You know, there were so many other things to pay attention
30:11
to as, as summer was coming and kids were, kids were out of school.
30:15
And it was one particular, it was one year when the hurricanes or tornadoes
30:20
had already been particularly bad in, in Oklahoma, devastation and,
30:25
and the hur- the tornadoes, they wipe out, you know, legacy farms
30:30
and towns and everything, and it's devastating to have to try and rebuild.
30:34
And he said, "We have to figure out a way to get people to pay attention earlier
30:39
and sooner and deeper because the, like, this, this affects people's lives and
30:43
can help save lives." And they were kind of chit-chatting before they started one
30:47
of their meetings, and one of the people on his team said like, "Did you watch
30:51
the last episode of The Walking Dead?"
30:52
And they were laughing because in that episode, everybody runs into one
30:56
of the CDC offices to get away from the zombies that were chasing them.
31:00
And they were laughing about it, and they said, "Oh, you know, maybe that's
31:03
something that the CDC needs to help people deal, deal with." And then it was
31:07
like, ding, maybe that's the connection, and that, that was their brand transplant,
31:13
is that they looked at something that was so popular right now at the…
31:18
or, you know, at the time, so popular in mainstream society, and they said,
31:22
"How can we transplant what people get excited about, what they love?"
31:26
I mean, people were doing like zombie 5K, zombie dances, zombie raves.
31:30
You know, it was, everything was a zombie.
31:32
How do we transplant some of that zombie en- zombie energy
31:36
and excitement into our work?
31:38
And he had an idea About positioning disaster preparedness as in we're
31:45
preparing for a zombie apocalypse.
31:48
And, and he went into his boss and he said his boss was Dr. Ali Khan at the time,
31:54
and he said, "You know, I have this idea.
31:55
Are, are you okay with it?" And Dr. Khan said, you know, "I love it,"
31:58
or, or something to that effect.
32:00
And so they published a blog that said h- apocalypse, Zombie Apocalypse 101,
32:06
like how to survive a zombie apocalypse, and they put it out on the CDC blog.
32:10
And Dave said, you know, "We kinda covered our head and winced, and nobody
32:14
got fired and nobody got yelled at." So then two days later, they promoted it on
32:18
social media, and within an hour had over 60,000 hits and the server went down.
32:24
Now mind you, a great blog post before this was maybe 2 or 3,000 hits.
32:29
he absolutely knew they were onto something.
32:31
And, and what they had done is taking the same information they had been
32:38
sharing with people to prepare for this disaster, but now just packaged it
32:43
literally like you're preparing for a zombie apocalypse, and they went on to
32:46
put it into a, like a comic book form and posters and all of these things.
32:51
It was so popular, not only did it help outcomes and preparedness, but Dr. Ali
32:57
Khan was invited to speak at Comic-Con.
33:00
And you think of two things that, you know, oh, oil and water kind
33:03
of thing is the CDC's disaster preparedness and, and Comic-Con.
33:07
It was just such an amazing story and a hit in, in how they were able to connect
33:13
and get results and outcomes because they were willing to think differently.
33:17
Brilliant, brilliant.
33:18
We, we set it up beautifully for what used to be called the
33:22
perpetual innovation process.
33:24
Maybe we'll just say you've upgraded this, you've updated it, which is great to see
33:28
as well, because obviously things change, evolve, and you've evolved the process
33:32
And, and every part of creativity and innovation is iteration.
33:35
And so I now call it the wheel of innovation.
33:38
One, it's a little easier to say, but two, it, it just a great visual
33:44
for once we get the process going, it builds on its own momentum
33:48
I like the perpetual innovation process, the PIP.
33:51
The PIP.
33:53
But let's get stuck into it, and I wanted to start where you did, which
33:57
is the objective statement and the idea that great ideas actually come
34:01
from working within the box or working inside constraints, not despite them.
34:06
And you give the brilliant example of Tim Washer at Cisco, the man who
34:10
managed to turn the launch of a metal box full of wires, a router, the ASR
34:16
9000, into a Valentine's Day love story.
34:20
So let's walk, our audience through that and then tie in the objective statement
34:25
on why do constraints matter so much?
34:27
And, and Tim is a, is a dear, dear friend, and he's… At the time he
34:32
was telling me about this project he's working on, which is a, a new
34:37
router box that Cisco was launching.
34:39
And he goes, "You know, Carla, here, here's the typical process. Like we have,
34:44
we have the technology specs, we have the engineer, we, you know, do a video, and we
34:49
do a press release, and we do a launch." And Tim's background is in stand-up
34:53
comedy, in co- you know, comedy writing.
34:56
He was a writer for Amy Poehler's Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live.
35:00
He worked for Conan O'Brien, and he's just a dry, funny, witty guy who ended
35:05
up in corporate marketing at Cisco.
35:07
And he worked at IBM for a while as well.
35:09
And he said, "You know, I just, I just feel like we have a better opportunity
35:15
here." And what we talked about is, i-is sometimes the reason that our
35:22
creative ideas or our approach to innovation doesn't work is because
35:27
we aren't actually clear on the outcomes that we're looking for.
35:31
And that's, was the, the impetus for creating the objective statement, which
35:35
is, "We need new ideas to…" oftentimes that's very easy for a company, you
35:40
know, to, to specify, you know, to improve our customer experience scores,
35:45
to, you know, im- you know, have a great product launch or whatever.
35:49
the next part is, "So we can…" And I tell you, every single
35:54
person, group I've ever worked with struggles for this definition.
35:59
And this is why outcomes generally never hit expectations, is because there's no
36:05
agreement and alignment on what is it that we're actually trying to accomplish here.
36:11
And I think so many organizations, I mean, we see it now, we're running
36:14
at such a fast pace, and we just, we throw technology at it, we throw
36:18
AI at it, we thr- we throw so many things at it, but we don't understand,
36:24
have defined, or agree on what is the actual outcome we're looking for.
36:30
And then we also say, "With these constraints." Now, oftentimes
36:34
the constraints are budget, time.
36:38
It could also be, "Will Kevin in, in branding allow us to present like
36:42
th-" you know, things like that.
36:45
So everything we do has constraints, and once Tim was able to define those clearly,
36:52
then it was very natural and made sense how to transplant comedy this approach.
37:00
And, and as anyone, they study their profession, and Tim was at a comedy club
37:04
in New York City, and he was watching Ray Romano, he said the way he talked
37:09
about things people in, in understanding.
37:13
He was talking about, you know, in-laws and marriage and kids and things that
37:16
people in the audience could understand.
37:18
And the more he talked about it and made, made people laugh, the more he
37:22
watched the audience lean in laugh.
37:26
And he said it was a group of strangers who came together, lot of it was based
37:31
on just laughter and humor, and he watched people's walls go down and their
37:36
tension go down and their stress go down.
37:38
And he said, "You know, even though this is a box of metal and wires, it's a major
37:42
purchase." He said, "How do we take that idea of humor in relieving the stress
37:48
and pressure of, of a buy or a sale?
37:50
How do we put that together?" And so the, the product was launching right
37:55
around Valentine's Day, and he put together video about, you know, for
38:01
Valentine's Day, a lot of times we think it should be, you know, flowers
38:06
or chocolates or carving your heart into a tree and, and those kind of things.
38:11
But now you can say, "I love you" with the new Cisco ASR 9000 router.
38:16
And, and he describes it in the way that you would a, a Valentine's Day gift.
38:20
And, and it was so humorous, they didn't put a big PR campaign behind it.
38:26
They didn't put a lot of money behind it.
38:28
They put it on YouTube.
38:29
They sent it out to the salespeople.
38:31
The salespeople laughed, then they would go into sales meetings, and they
38:36
would open meetings with this video, and that laughter right there their
38:41
tension and their stress and, and, you know, th- those walls go down,
38:45
and all of a sudden conversations were happening that had never happened before.
38:49
And he said it was, it was, you know, a, a lot of it due to humor and laughter.
38:52
And they were able to get two new customers who they had been trying
38:55
for years to get in the door.
38:58
And it was a beautiful way for Cisco to show up as a very human
39:02
company, you know, somebody that's relatable, and that's how the media
39:05
and the analysts responded to it.
39:08
if he would've started out to say, "We need to make the funniest
39:12
video ever about a product launch," would never have worked.
39:16
But he understood the details of that experience in that comedy club with Ray
39:20
Romano what humor did, and he, that's what he transplanted into his idea the video.
39:29
We're all set up now for the wheel.
39:31
That's right.
39:32
So, 'cause when you, when you- the reason I, I thought it was so important to share
39:36
those stories, and thank you for doing such a great job of sharing them, i-
39:40
is they exemplify what the wheel shows.
39:45
And one of the main things is observation.
39:47
So observing Ray Romano and then kinda going, "Oh, hmm, what if I transplant
39:53
that onto what I'm doing as a marketer?"
39:55
Or observing The Walking Dead or the, whatever the show
39:59
is, Dead, The Waking Dead.
40:01
I never watched it, but I, I do like the odd zombie movie.
40:04
But observing it and then kinda going, "Hmm, I wonder if…" And it's that
40:09
observation, and y- you talk about the importance of this observation down to the
40:12
fact that we should have an observation journal if, if we're perpetual innovators,
40:18
if we're always doing this innovation.
40:19
So what I'm gonna propose for our audience is if you're listening, it's fine, we'll
40:24
have empathy for you as a listener, but on YouTube, for those people joining
40:27
us on YouTube, we're gonna share the diagram, the wheel, and we're gonna take
40:34
you through the wheel, take you through the steps so you have no excuses anymore.
40:38
But you still , need to read part two of the book afterwards.
40:41
So over to you, and let's take it away with observe
40:43
Yes, absolutely.
40:44
So the first step of the Wheel of Innovation is to
40:47
observe the world around you.
40:49
And I know I am guilty of having a little screen in front of me,
40:53
probably more than is not only healthy, , but productive many days.
40:58
And we get into our habits and our rituals, we drive the same way to
41:03
work, and so , when there's repetition, our brain just becomes efficient, and
41:08
it's like, "Oh, I don't need to pay attention to that or that or that."
41:11
And so we don't observe little details.
41:13
And I remember one time I rode with my kids to school one day, and I thought I
41:19
turned on one street, and it was another, and it was like I had never seen this
41:23
world before, and it literally was a route I had run four days a week for five years.
41:29
But because it was outside of my normal pattern, I observed
41:33
it completely different.
41:35
And this is so important for us because process of observing is
41:41
neutral, it's not full of judgment.
41:43
It's not looking at something and saying, "Is that right or wrong?"
41:47
It's purely sitting and looking at a comedy club experience.
41:52
You know, maybe you're at a mall, or, you know, you're
41:54
watching your favorite TV show.
41:56
Like, what are the little details that make it something
42:00
that's so interesting to you?
42:02
Is it how the character looks?
42:04
Is it the, the litany of the dialogue?
42:08
Is it the coloring?
42:09
Is it the, the lighting of the scene?
42:11
Like, what are all of those little details?
42:13
And I encourage people to literally, like, I have a note- I have a notepad
42:18
right here, but I have notebooks I carry with me everywhere, I'll write
42:22
the date, I'll write where I am, and I just start writing down, you
42:25
know, what do I see, colors, sounds.
42:27
Like, am I sitting on a park bench?
42:29
How does that feel?
42:30
Am I laying in the grass?
42:32
Like, all five of your senses really, truly observe the world
42:37
around you, which for some people can give them a physical discomfort
42:42
because it requires us to slow down.
42:45
And I think at the pace that we work right now, we think, "I don't have time to do
42:49
this," like, "I have to get to the real work." this really is the foundation of
42:54
the real work And even if we're looking at what work are we creating, let's observe.
43:00
Is it being used?
43:01
people responding to it?
43:03
And I'm not talking about like the data and analytics, but just like
43:06
between you and I and the conversations that you and I've had, you know,
43:09
I look at do you nod your head at?
43:11
What do you find interesting?
43:13
There's a… it's it's such a fascinating skill that I think we've
43:17
been trained and rewarded out of.
43:19
But it is the foundation of every single highly creative, highly innovative person,
43:26
highly creative and highly innovative people are also highly, highly observant
43:31
people, and they see things that the rest of us miss that literally are right
43:37
in front of us because they observe
43:39
I think there's an important thing behind that, that it's not just
43:42
that you turn observation from a passive thing into an active thing.
43:48
It's actually you're disciplined about it.
43:49
You're, I mean, you have a notebook.
43:51
And one of the things that always surprises me is people will go,
43:55
kinda go, "Oh, do you not run out of things to write about or thoughts?"
43:58
So I write a weekly article called the Thursday Thought, but I'm having
44:02
conversations like this all the time.
44:03
I've read your book.
44:05
Like, I'm connect- I'm collecting dots all the time, and then comes the next step, to
44:11
distill the ideas.
44:12
And, and under there lies d- discernment, but distillation is connecting
44:17
them and creating constellations.
44:20
But it, I find it f- just fascinating that, you know, you cannot write, you
44:24
cannot write or you cannot have thoughts if you don't collect the dots in the
44:29
first place, which is observation, and then the distillation comes afterwards.
44:33
Because if you collect enough of the dots, they start to connect in, and
44:36
usually in weird ways like zombie movies or whatever it might be,
44:40
And that's where the marination happens.
44:42
And you told me, for example, your book marinated for five years before you, you
44:47
wrote it, and that's necessary, I think.
44:50
The, but in there, those dots, the right ones bubble to the top and the right ones
44:55
connect, and they connect in a unique way to you, which is a way to bring us
44:59
to the next step, which is distillation
45:01
is, and, and you mentioned a, an important thing that I wanna make sure to really
45:04
emphasize is that the, the process of observing truly is collecting the dots,
45:11
and we'll get to the part where we connect the dots, and we hear that all the time
45:14
like, "Oh, you know, creativity's great. All you have to do is connect the dots."
45:17
But if you only have four dots to connect, you're not gonna have very original ideas.
45:23
that's why people who consistently and intentionally put themselves
45:29
into new and different experiences, conversations, what, you know, what
45:33
they choose to read or learn or listen to or watch, they're collecting all
45:37
sorts of very different kind of dots.
45:41
But we… Our brain does need to organize them, and our brain
45:43
naturally loves to find patterns, and so the second step is to distill
45:48
those observations into patterns.
45:50
And they can be totally random patterns.
45:52
It could be like, I remember sitting in Times Square in New York City going
45:57
through, and I had all of my observations, and as you can imagine, Times Square,
46:01
there's a lot of things to, to observe.
46:03
And it was, some of it was just things like tall buildings or tall things.
46:09
You know, the, the color red, which is very prominent in New York City.
46:13
as we get further into the, into the process, like just something as simple
46:17
as that helps you understand what makes something else so successful.
46:22
So during the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, where people would either pour a bucket of
46:27
ice water over their head or they'd write a check, it wasn't about doing something
46:33
dramatic and different like in pouring a bucket of ice water over your head.
46:37
It was about community.
46:39
It was about something that was super simple to share.
46:43
Like those were the patterns that came out of if you observed all
46:46
the details of, of that campaign.
46:49
Now, it would be hard for a lot of people in many companies to get an
46:54
executive to s- to say, "Yes, our campaign should be dumping the ice
46:58
bucket of water over our head." But what, what you can do instead is, is to
47:03
say, "You know, this was my inspiration.
47:05
Here's what I observed that worked about that." The pattern here is
47:08
that we, is that they gave somebody very, something very simple to share.
47:14
Now, that right there is a pattern that an executive or a leader
47:19
of a team or, or whatever is much more likely to say yes to.
47:23
now we're taking something that's unique and different that we've observed and may
47:28
seem like it has absolutely no relevance to our work or our company at all, and
47:33
we're starting to put context to it why it might start to have something
47:39
to do with the work that we're doing.
47:40
So that's the second step, is, is to distill all of these random
47:43
observations into patterns.
47:46
I kind of think of it also like you're, you're whittling away, so
47:50
it's, it's, it's like a funnel.
47:52
So yes, it's a wheel, but it's getting thinner as you go around, so
47:56
you're not gonna have a random idea
47:58
Yeah, exactly
47:59
to give to a, a CFO.
48:01
At least the idea's been somewhat, somewhat filtered before it gets to them.
48:05
But the next one then is the one we loved, and this links to brand
48:09
transplanting, which is relate
48:11
Relate, absolutely.
48:12
And I believe that this is the step that makes or breaks an
48:16
idea when you go to share it.
48:18
Because observe and distill are kind of outside in the world sort of
48:22
things, and relate is where we take the outside world and start to bring
48:27
it inside our own walls, our own teams.
48:30
if you don't do it, or you don't do it correctly, is where you trigger that brand
48:37
detachment disorder of people saying, "That, we're not that kind of company."
48:41
Like it, the, the idea feels too risky and threatening.
48:45
And so with relate, it's, it's really that bridge from the outside
48:48
to what we are trying to accomplish as a, as a team or an organization.
48:52
And so the relate is, is starting to say, okay, if, if the pattern is something
48:57
that's easily is a, is an idea that's easily shared, if it's about something
49:01
that, you know, is big and bold and red and tall, like those are things that we
49:06
can start to relate into our own world.
49:08
Well, if we're wanting to make our product or conversation about our
49:13
product something that's super easy to share, well, now that starts to give us
49:19
structure and context for when we go to, to generate ideas, which we'll get to.
49:25
But it's, it starts to bring inspiration into the actual idea generation process
49:33
that's fresh, that's different, but we've also started to minimize the
49:38
feeling of this is a risky thing to try, we can connect the dots and show the
49:45
journey from what is it that inspired us, and truly, literally, how does
49:50
this relate to what we're trying to do?
49:52
One of the things people miss with the work that we do, say working with
49:56
organizations, running workshops, facilitation, et cetera, is the language
50:00
we choose is very specific, and that might be just an afterthought for
50:05
some people, but there's a quote by Wittgenstein I love, "The limits of my
50:09
language mean the limits of my world."
50:11
And in the book, I loved you cite the work of Min Bassador, th- this
50:16
lady who did decades of research showing the words we use can actually
50:20
kill an idea before it's even born.
50:22
I was delighted to see you, you highlighted this, and something that
50:26
people often miss, and if they're doing internal workshops or they're talking to a
50:30
CFO, it's important what language they use
50:34
Oh, absolutely, and I, and I'm happy you brought that up.
50:36
So Min Bassador, he worked for P&G on the marketing team, and he… It was this…
50:41
Sor-
50:41
no.
50:41
sorry, man.
50:42
I thought it
50:43
And
50:43
was a woman's name
50:44
nuance of how we ask a question can shift the entire mindset
50:51
around how we approach it.
50:53
if we say, "How could we be as creative as an Apple? How could we be as
51:01
creative as…" You know, fill in the blank with any kind of organization.
51:06
Our brain starts to answer that question, and oftentimes it will say, "Well, to
51:11
be honest, I don't know if we could.
51:13
Yeah, I- we don't have that kind of budget.
51:15
We don't sell that kind of product.
51:16
We don't…" You know, our brain answers the questions that we ask it.
51:21
Or we say, "How should we…" Fill in the blank. Your brain starts to go,
51:26
"You know, I don't know if we should.
51:28
That's a little risky.
51:29
It might, might go over budget.
51:31
It might be, might affect my career, my, that promotion.
51:34
I don't know that we should." so what he understood is that asking the
51:39
question in the context of how might we, there's no place for your brain to
51:44
go to put on the brakes, and it's the, the, the meaning of the word might.
51:52
It's almost like let's pretend.
51:55
There's no… Nobody says this is gonna be a real thing.
51:58
no consequences tied to it.
52:00
So your brain naturally goes, "Oh, well, how might that happen? Well, we
52:05
could…" And then it, it starts to go to work, and it starts to connect the dots.
52:09
Like, you know, how, how could we be more shareable?
52:13
How could we build a bigger community?
52:15
You know, how could we be… You know, how could we be as interesting
52:19
and dynamic and create a hunger for our content like The Walking Dead?
52:23
How might we?
52:25
again, your, your brain is going, "There's no risk here." Like there's no… Where
52:28
there's nothing on the line, and that's when it really starts to open up.
52:34
It's so important that language, I think, when you're selling ideas in a
52:37
corporate in particular where it's all about de-risking and that, that language.
52:42
And sorry Min, I, you, you s- you subtly told me, "Hey, Min's a, Min's a dude."
52:48
I feel I owe that to him and his work.
52:51
Yes.
52:53
I'll have to check his workout.
52:54
But i- in the relate step we looked at how might we, which is important
52:58
language that Min talked about.
53:00
But in the generate step, which is next, we ask what if we tried this?
53:04
So we start to get closer and closer to that pitch that we're so much after
53:09
and, and it's, to your point, like it, it does feel like a funnel.
53:13
And there was another piece of research that I found interesting in that don't
53:19
get to truly creative ideas until we've gone through the first 200 ideas.
53:23
And if you look, like we've spent how much time already talking about the
53:26
first three steps of this process, but typically what happens when we need a
53:30
new strategy or an idea, we say like, "Let's all get in the conference room.
53:34
Let's have our offsite.
53:35
Let's get our ideas together, and there's no such thing as a bad idea.
53:37
Everybody throw out your ideas," and we know what happens. There's a whole lot
53:41
of really bad ideas, and the person who talks the loudest or talks the most or is
53:45
the highest ranking person, their ideas always move forward, and everybody else
53:48
is going, "Well, why did we even bother?
53:50
And I'm so far behind in my work and my email." And, and no wonder people
53:54
have this aversion creativity sessions or innovation planning or any- anything
54:00
like this, because we don't give it time to get to that great work.
54:05
And the reason the research says 200 ideas is because your brain will start out and
54:11
dump the most likely, the most familiar, the most safe, the most risk-averse.
54:16
it, you, it, it's, it's a little bit like AI.
54:18
What's the most likely answer that you will say yes to?
54:23
And we don't get to that new fresh ground until we essentially get that out.
54:27
We have to get that out, push it aside, and then we continue to push and almost go
54:33
into the, the ridiculous, the audacious, the, you know, things that are so crazy
54:40
they could never work, but you know what?
54:42
They're so ridiculous, they just might.
54:45
And that's when we get… You know, it's so ridiculous that
54:49
the head of the CDC's disaster preparedness could ever be invited to
54:52
Comic-Con, but look at that outcome.
54:55
they, they didn't set that out as their objective, but it was an
54:59
outcome because they kept pushing and saying, " What if we tried this?
55:03
How about if we did this?
55:05
What if we remixed this?" And it can be two crazy and ridiculous ideas that
55:09
come together and make a really amazing realistic idea. Or maybe you've gone
55:14
through this process a couple of years ago and somebody goes, "Oh, you remember
55:18
when we thought about that one thing that wouldn't work then because of whatever?
55:22
This would be perfect right now." And that's when you see the whole
55:25
energy in the room and with the whole group of people begin to shift.
55:30
The whole reason behind why we do idegener- idea generation is
55:36
not to get the one right idea.
55:40
to generate as many ideas as possible, because in order to get to great ideas,
55:46
we have to start with a lot of ideas.
55:49
I love it.
55:50
And the next one, I, I'm guilty of this.
55:53
So I worked as head of innovation, head of digital in roles in the past, and
55:59
sometimes you think that your past success is enough to carry the idea through the
56:04
organization once again, … And you don't put as much work into that, and even work
56:08
to understand the incentives of the CFO or the senior executive team, because
56:14
really they're almost like a VC buying your idea and to try and bring it to life.
56:19
So we underestimate the pitch, and your big reframe in the book is
56:23
that the pitch isn't a sales ask, it's more like an idea journey.
56:27
And if you do bring it the, the team on that idea journey with you, it
56:32
has a way better chance of survival.
56:34
But the one thing I want to emphasize is the amount of work we did to get
56:39
here, and often that's skipped or we might jump straight to the pitch or we
56:43
think that the idea is in order for, we have loads of ideas and we think
56:47
let's try and, a let a thou- a thousand flowers bloom, blah, blah, blah.
56:52
And I think that that's the piece that we miss in innovation so much is that it is a
56:57
discipline, and it, it's counterintuitive for somebody who feels creative and
57:03
innovative that they have to go through all this feels like red, red tape.
57:08
It feels like bureaucracy.
57:09
But it's so, so important, which is why I love the, your process.
57:13
But let's share a pitch because it's so important.
57:15
All the work we did to get to this point, and this is the
57:18
point where we make or break
57:21
and I, and I always say bad pitches kill great ideas.
57:25
a pitch isn't just like, "Hey, let me get your buy-in." A pitch is truly telling
57:30
the story of the journey of your idea.
57:34
And I'm, I'm a big fan of Shark Tank, and I know there's a lot of different
57:37
versions of that in a lot of different countries, but I was watching it and,
57:41
it's one of those shows that seems to be on all the time some channel.
57:45
There's… You can catch Shark Tank.
57:46
And I was watching it and, and a contestant was their pitch,
57:51
and Barbara Corcoran, she's my favorite, she's like, "No, no, no,
57:53
no, no," like, "Stop right there.
57:55
Your pitch is so bad I don't even care what your idea is.
58:00
I'm out." You know, and I think that's so true.
58:04
We don't understand, I mean, a, a lot of pitches start with data,
58:08
justification, all those things.
58:11
Yawn.
58:12
There's no emotional inta- attachment or engagement, and if, if there's no,
58:17
there's no emotion, no attachment, there's no engagement in the idea.
58:23
We really do have to go back, and this is the beautiful part about the Wheel of
58:27
Innovation, is that by the time you get to the pitch step, already put the pitch
58:32
together, because it literally is just going back to the beginning and saying,
58:36
"You know, here, here's something that I observed in the world, and you know, I
58:40
observed this problem that we're having in, in the company," which is secret.
58:44
That's your objective statement.
58:45
You know, "And I observed these things and I realized it's, there's
58:48
a pattern behind it, and here's the pattern." Tall things, community things.
58:54
And I started to see how those related to what we're trying to accomplish
58:59
inside our organization or team, that generated some ideas for me.
59:05
You never wanna go with just one idea, you know?
59:08
There's lots of different options.
59:09
You have over 200 now.
59:11
and it's a discussion point, and that crazy, radical, or whatever thing that
59:16
you observed at the beginning has flowed very realistically, and most of all,
59:22
it has context as you've brought people through the journey of your idea to why
59:27
you're standing in front of them right there and pitching and sharing that idea
59:32
the last thing I'd love to share, which is so, so important, is the importance
59:37
of feedback, both as a recipient of the feedback if you've pitched the
59:40
idea, but also if y- if for example, and often heads of innovation will
59:45
find themself in this position where they're the judge and giving feedback
59:50
to other people inside the organization.
59:52
So you're not actually damning them so they w- because they won't come back
59:56
with more because maybe you'll hurt their feelings or damage their ego in some way.
1:00:00
I'd love you to share, 'cause this is a so often overlooked part of
1:00:04
the process that's so, so important from the other side of the table
1:00:07
Well, you know, I talk to a lot of executives, and I'll hear them say,
1:00:10
"My teams just don't come to me with ideas." And I'm thinking, okay, you know,
1:00:14
there, there could be a lot of reasons.
1:00:16
You know, they don't feel safe, they don't what- whatever, whatever it is, you know?
1:00:19
Or maybe, you know, they used to, but they just don't anymore,
1:00:22
and I don't know what happened.
1:00:23
And then I'll talk to the team, and they'll say, "Why waste my time?
1:00:27
They say no to every single thing that I do, or they give me so much homework,
1:00:33
so much more to just do with this simple little idea that I, I don't have time
1:00:38
to do that and my job, so why bother?
1:00:40
So why bother?" I believe that problem, that dynamic, is because
1:00:46
we don't understand how and in what ways we should give feedback.
1:00:52
So I think anytime somebody steps forward and shares an idea, it doesn't matter
1:00:56
how bad it is, I'm gonna be honest, need to recognize their courage and bravery
1:01:01
for being willing to step forward.
1:01:03
Now, I personally have a very strong opinion about how to fix that bad idea,
1:01:08
and it's a process called the wheel of innovation that gives them structure for
1:01:13
how to come up with an idea that has a true business objective, how to put it
1:01:17
into the context of the business problem you're trying to solve, and, and how
1:01:21
to structure it and share that idea.
1:01:23
So there's, so there's that part.
1:01:24
But I think just acknowledging that it takes a lot to put behind… You-
1:01:29
they're thinking of the business, they're thinking of ways to improve.
1:01:33
That's something that should be encouraged and supported and, and
1:01:37
openly celebrated and, and recognized.
1:01:40
move, moving on, assuming it is a well-thought-out, structured kind
1:01:44
of idea that they're sharing, to go into, you know, "Here's what I
1:01:48
like about it." You know, there's always something good in the idea.
1:01:52
So let's, let's get down to the details of what are the good things, and I think
1:01:56
this is always really helpful to do in a, in a team setting where other people can
1:02:01
learn from that feedback and understand with a real-life example, what does a good
1:02:07
idea look like, and see the very detail.
1:02:10
You know, "I, I like how you you know, m- thought through how it specifically
1:02:17
connected to this one problem we're having with customer retention," or something
1:02:20
like that, and the, and then the details.
1:02:22
Now, rarely ever is an idea presented and it's just ready to go.
1:02:27
So there's going to be, there's going…
1:02:29
It needs to be iterated, it needs to be, you know, adjusted w- to whatever degree.
1:02:33
But it's important that how that feedback is presented doesn't feel like criticism.
1:02:41
what we're looking at is how do we improve this idea, not how do we make
1:02:45
this person sharing it feel judged.
1:02:48
And that's where when there are opportunities instead of…
1:02:51
to, to make it better, instead of it feeling like criticism and judgment,
1:02:55
we say, "What I wish this idea had, what I wish we could understand more
1:02:59
about is," and look at it like this.
1:03:03
And so what happens is in this kind of exchange, the leader can be very
1:03:10
specific and communicate what is it that they like about an idea.
1:03:14
Like, how does their vision come into play with what's been presented?
1:03:18
And also, here's what I'm looking for that I'm not getting in this idea that would
1:03:23
not only help me understand it better, but maybe make it a better idea for
1:03:28
whatever problem we're trying to solve.
1:03:30
So that helps the leader communicate better and clearer,
1:03:34
which helps everybody on the team.
1:03:36
Now, it also helps the person presenting the idea, because it's not unusual for
1:03:41
them to present an idea and they're executive or their team leader says, "You
1:03:47
know, it's, it's not quite right, it's not quite there. back and flesh it out
1:03:52
a little more," that means n- there's no direction, there's no feedback.
1:03:57
Like, what does flesh it out a little more mean?
1:04:00
And so they have a clear direction of, "Okay, I, I did this right.
1:04:05
I n- I need some more of this.
1:04:06
This I need to dig into.
1:04:07
Maybe this I need to leave behind altogether." it helps both sides be
1:04:11
more clear and have that alignment, back to that alignment, about what is
1:04:16
it that we're trying to accomplish here
1:04:18
Fantastic.
1:04:19
We've come full circle literally around the wheel, and we've
1:04:24
got to the end of the wheel.
1:04:25
As I said, there's way more in the book.
1:04:27
There's a way to understand yourself, what type of character you are in
1:04:31
the innovation journey as well.
1:04:33
But for people who wanna find you, I know you do keynotes, you help
1:04:37
organizations all, all over the world.
1:04:39
Where is the best place to find you, Carla?
1:04:40
place is my website.
1:04:42
It's my name, carlajohnson.co.
1:04:45
It's not .com, it's .co.
1:04:47
I save for the great state of Colorado because I live in Colorado.
1:04:51
And there you can take the innovation archetype assessment
1:04:54
that you just mentioned.
1:04:55
You can sign up for my newsletter that's every other week that teaches
1:04:59
people detailed ways to build their own innovation skills, their mindset
1:05:03
around it, how they can look at leading their teams, and truly building
1:05:07
that culture of original thinkers
1:05:10
It's been an absolute pleasure joining you.
1:05:12
I look forward to seeing more.
1:05:14
I know you've another book out there as well, and looking forward to
1:05:17
sign up to your newsletter as well.
1:05:19
Author of Re-Think Innovation, Carla Johnson, thank you for joining us
1:05:24
for having me.
1:05:24
It's been a great conversation