Living the Life Adventure

“I do not accept any absolute formulas for living. No preconceived code can see ahead to everything that can happen in a man’s life. As we live, we grow and our beliefs change. They must change. So I think we should live with this constant discovery. We should be open to this adventure in heightened awareness of living. We should stake our whole existence on our willingness to explore and experience.” -- Martin Buber

Fying High

"Breakthroughs require confidence in nonsense." Burt Rutan

Fear is Step Zero

Most of you know that The Innovise Guys blend structured problem solving with improvisation. Problem solving begins with identifying a problem you want to work on. What are the problems we don't work on? The ones where the fear is too great to even consider more conscious, deliberate, and creative thinking. Embracing your fears is Step Zero in creative problem solving. So, don't deny fear, explore it. Then get creative.

On this anniversary of 9/11 let me say this, let's not fear terrorism so much that we don't get deliberately creative about preventing it, and thwarting it.

FEAR-Fooey

“I will know my fear. I will live my fear. I will experience my fear …
and when it is gone, only I will remain.”

David Carradine as Kwai Chang Caine

"Godin-uff"

Thanks to Seth Godin for commenting on our last blog entry and pointing out that his book -- Survival is Not Enough was originally published in 2002. However, since much of it still holds true and he stands by it, I thought it appropriate to share some selected/edited key concepts from the book that he has bullet-pointed. Proof, in a way, that fresh ideas -- or fresh thinking does not grow old.

• Change is the new normal.
• If you and your company are not taking advantage of change, change will defeat you.
• Change presents new opportunities for companies to capture large markets.
• Change is the enemy of the current leader.
• Change also represents opportunities for individuals to advance their careers.
• Companies that introduce products and services that represent significant changes can find that they lead to rapid, runaway successes.
• Companies that cause change attract employees who want to cause change.
• The way species deal with change is by evolving. Companies can evolve in ways similar to those used by species.
• Companies will evolve if management allows them to.
• Companies that embrace change for change's sake -- companies that view a state of constant flux as a stable equilibrium - zoom. And zooming companies evolve faster and easier because they don't obstruct the forces of change.
• Once you train the organization to evolve regularly and effortlessly, change is no longer a threat. Instead, it's an asset, because it causes your competitors to become extinct.
• If your company is too reliant on your winning strategy, you won't evolve as quickly.
• Low-cost, low-risk, real-world tests are the most likely to have high return on investment.
• Your company's posture regarding the process of change is far more important than the actual changes you implement.
• If you have employees who don't embrace this posture, they will slow you down and cause you to make bad decisions.

Two Seth Godin books published in recent years that I recommend include: Small is the New Big and Free Prize Inside ... The Next Big Marketing Idea ...and he has a new one, published this last May -- Dip. (This guy is prolific! Do you think Stephen King feels the heat?)

Thanks, Seth! Doug Stevenson for The Innovise Guys

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

Purple Spots

Seth Godin has a new (oops/almost new -- 2002) book: Survival is Not Enough. This is an excerpt.

The Paul Orfalea Story: A Process, Not a Plan
One of my favorite entrepreneurs is a guy named Paul Orfalea. Paul is brilliant and quite successful, but he’s unbelievably modest and also very honest about his shortcomings. Paul is profoundly dyslexic. He didn’t learn how to read until he was well into elementary school and did nothing in high school that would be associated with the idea of success. He went to college but didn’t care an awful lot about his classes. It was the perfect background for an entrepreneur.

Paul started a little copy shop (so little he had to wheel the machine outside to make room for customers) on his college campus. He sold pens and paper and made copies. That store grew to become Kinko’s, a chain with more than one thousand outlets that he was able to sell for more than two hundred million dollars to an investment group.

The secret to Kinko’s success is disarmingly straightforward. "My reading was still poor and I had no mechanical ability, so I thought that anybody who worked for me could do the job better," Paul explains. He set up a unique co-ownership structure that let him grow the business with more flexibility than a franchise could offer. The end result is that for years, Kinko’s stores were partly owned by someone local.

Paul described his job to me this way, "I just go from store to store, see what they’re doing right and then tell all the other stores about it." By allowing local entrepreneurs to make millions of low-cost experiments every year (just three per day per store gets you to that level) and then communicating the successful ones to the other stores, he was able to set the process in motion that led to that all-night store I found in Cleveland.

The Cleveland store wasn’t part of a specific plan, but it was very much the outcome of a specific process. Very little specialized knowledge is required to open a copy shop. Yet Kinko’s dramatically outpaced every other competitor by reinventing what a copy shop was, every single day. Kinko’s did not have a patented new technology. Instead, it had a posture about change that treated innovations and chaos as good things, not threats.

The more successful Kinko’s got, the more likely it was to get job applications and co-venture deals with people who made the company even more successful. The more Kinko’s stores there were, the more likely it was that people would seek one out. The better Kinko’s did, the more successful it became.

Kinko’s became a success. Working there was fun because the company attracted people who could compound its growth. Kinko’s stopped worrying about surviving and enjoyed the ride.

It’s interesting to see that since the takeover of Kinko’s by an investor group, new management has bought out the individual owners and installed a command and control system. Kinkos.com is regrouping and the entire chain is experiencing slower growth, despite external economic and technical conditions that should have allowed it to grow even faster. Paul was right. All of us are smarter than any one of us.

SG

http://www.zoometry.com/zoom/excerpt.asp

Doug Stevenson for The Innovise Guys

Ch-Ch-Ch-Change

John Kotter's 1996 book Leading Change was required reading, along with Roger Firestein's Leading on the Creative Edge and Daniel Goleman's Primal Leadership in my Creative Leadership class at The International Center for Studies in Creativity at Buffalo State College (SUNY). In this book, Our Iceberg is Melting, the best-selling Harvard author teams with Holger Rathgeber to present his "Eight Step Process of Successful Change" in the form of an illustrated business fable about a colony of penguins which must deal with their shrinking iceberg home. (Sorry "W", there is no Cliff's Notes on the Classic Comics version of this book, but we can arrange for it to be read aloud to you.)

The book is a quick read, very accessible and is a great way to "break the ice" -- and communicate Kotter's 8 Step process which in short, is:

Set the Stage
1. Create a Sense of Urgency
2. Pull Together the Guiding Team
Decide What to Do
3. Develop the Change Vision and Strategy
Make it Happen
4. Communicate for Understanding and Buy In
5. Empower Others to Act
6. Produce Short-Term Wins
7. Don't Let Up
Make it Stick
8. Create a New Culture

If you find yourself in a situation requiring change (and who doesn't?) wherein change is being resisted (and when does that NOT happen?!) this little book could begin the thaw and start people warming up to the idea that change is necessary.

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus observed that "The only thing constant is change."

This little book, Our Iceberg is Melting teaches us that if life deals you a cracking iceberg habitat, you might as well make ice cubes and "party on dudes" to your next destination.

Doug Stevenson for The Innovise Guys

Why a Duck?

"These are my principles; if you don't like these, I have others." Groucho Marx

Today's quote comes from the dedication page of a new book called "Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar ... Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes", by Thomas Cathcart & Daniel Klein. We will review this pithy book on a later blog and hope to interview Messrs. Cathcart & Klein on a future podcast.

Doug Stevenson for The Innovise Guys

Happy Labor Day B/Lager Entry

"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." Oscar Wilde

Life's a Beach

"You can't stop the waves, but you can learn how to surf."

Jack Kornfield