Innovation Blog
The Why of an Innovation Factory
The What of your Asset Portfolio
The How In the Empathetic Arts
Approachability Menu (IP)
Approachability is an advantage. Making coaching easy is an advantage. This tool minimizes the effort to manage expectations, manage perceptions, and share helpful feedback across three communication channels.
Pre-Project and Cross-Project Information
In innovation, most attention is the work within the project. Before your next project begins, consider what questions your team should answer. This documentation provides transparency, alignment, and sets you up for success.
User Chore Detail
It’s one thing to identify what a user wants to be able to accomplish. It’s another thing to capture what they consider a chore and want to leave their scope of responsibility.
Workload Report
Your colleagues, especially your manager, need to know if you’re bored, buried, or somewhere in between. Share your workload so the team can balance the workload!
Stoplight Report
Perceptions of health are important! They can be as easy to share as Red, Yellow, and Green. THEN the conversation starts!
Go Live Announcement
The big day! Showtime! Opening Night! Let your stakeholders know that the new experience is ready for them. The Go-Live Announcement fulfills the latter “A” in ADKAR.
I Like I Wish I Hope I Wonder
In a fast-moving world, you need a simple framework for weekly reflection. Your colleagues don’t have to finish and share every sentence every week, but everyone must be thoughtful of these every week. Own your praise. Own your critique. Own your silence.
Approachability Menu
Don’t rely on HR to define and govern feedback. Own it. Conduct it yourself. Be approachable. Groom it in others. Isolate feedback into three communication channels: email etiquette, meeting etiquette, and deliverable contribution. Neutralize personality conflict. Ask and negotiate “What do you want me to do differently?”
Lessons Learned
A culture of reflection, honesty, and humility leads to healthy organizational improvements. Asking the two questions, “What did we do well?” and “What could we improve?” is lazy. These breed mediocrity and fail to bring out people’s best ideas. There is a pattern in the problems. Micro-mentor yourself monthly using constructive language. Make your success inevitable.
Improve Your Culture’s Speed
Which of your culture traits can you trace to impacting your speed? Consider trust, ambiguity, interruptions, fatigue, burnout, bottlenecks, egos, hero mentality, simplicity, complexity, silos, bureaucracy, meeting gridlock, and email overload. Fix your culture. Fix your Speed.
What Can Business Learn From Parenting
It’s a stretch to say parenting is one of the performing arts. It’s not a stretch to say that the language, habits, and culture of parenting are valuable to innovation. Autonomy, growth, grace, and self-sufficiency only start the list of ways that business learns, benefits, and profits from the art of parenting.