Reverse Project

Reverse Graffiti Project: "San Francisco's Broadway tunnel walls are caked with dirt, soot, and paint covered graffiti. It set the perfect canvas to create a beautiful work of art ... "

Creativity Ideas

100 ideas to spur your creativity ...

... "25. Take regular daydreaming breaks.

26. Dissolve turf boundaries.

27. Initiate cross-functional brainstorming sessions. " ...

Via The Heart of Innovation: Be More Creative

Innovation ROI

Philips CEO sees innovation as disciplined and process-oriented. He also expects a project ROI for innovation investments and a strong connection to profitability. Creativity is allowed within the boudaries. ...

... "Every innovation project should have a return on investment, an internal rate of return, a net present value. And, you need to hardwire it and keep yourself honest, because at the end of the day, it's about generating returns. " ...

Via Knowledge@Wharton: Philips Lighting CEO

Creativity Boosters

Nice list of creativity boosters in reference post. I'd just substitute Led Zep for Bach. ...

... "Read as much as you can about everything possible. Books exercise your brain, provide inspiration and fill you with information that allows you to make creative connections easily. ... Exercise your brain. " ...

Via IDEAS 108: Boosting Creativity

Project Influence: Check Your Ceiling

Need to focus your project team on getting work done: lower the ceiling. Need to get your team in a creative mood: raise the roof. ...

... " These researchers feel people under high ceilings are primed to think broadly because of the sense of freedom associated with the space, while the containment of a lower ceiling encourages people to think small and focused." ...

Via Good Morning Thinkers: The Roof

Innovate: Monday Morning Plan

Here's some ideas to jump-start your innovation tommorrow (Monday). Make some time for brainstorming. Don't penalize mistakes. Get folks interacting. Read on. ...

... "Creative or alternative thinking does not mean playing with brightly coloured balls all day long. It means selecting appropriate techniques and methods from as wide a variety as possible and matching them to the task in hand to get the best results possible. " ...

Via Derek Cheshire's Creativity and Innovation: Monday's Plan of Action

Problem Solving: See the Obvious with Questions

Creative thinker, Roger von Oech, challenges us with how we question ourselves as we approach a problem, so we do not miss the obvious. ... (1) Train yourself to document observations without jumping to conclusions. (2) Ask why's to drive to the root of the problem - problems aren't always well expressed - often solutions and / or desires are expressed. (3) Circle the problem and describe its impacts from multiple perspectives. What other approaches come to mind? ...

... "When you're in a situation (especially problem-solving, concept-developing), what questions do you ask that help you grasp the obvious aspects of that situation? " ...

Via Creative Think: How Do You See the Obvious?

21 Success Secrets of The Beatles

One thing I enjoy doing is studying excellence. There's something about unique, extraordinary human achievement that I find fascinating.

I love studying it, dissecting it, and extracting lessons from it. It's what attracted me to write about Napoleon. It's what led me to explore lessons from Einstein. And it's what leads me to dive into lessons from The Beatles.

Like them or not, nobody can argue that The Beatles didn't achieve amazing feats. I doubt there will ever be another musical group that could rival them for sheer impact on the music scene and the world.

They were the first pop artists to record in stereo. They were the first band to experiment in the studio. They were the first band to list lyrics on their album. The list goes on and on.

But what made them so successful? And are the lessons applicable to building successful and innovative individuals and teams in business? Here are 21 lessons that answer definitively "yes."

1) Focus on Strengths - They focused on their strengths, doing what they do best (songwriting and performing).

2) Engage a partner - They got help (from Brian Epstein, their manager, and George Martin, their producer). They couldn't have achieved such heights on their own.

3) Differentiate! - They dared to be different, whether it was their suits, their hair, the instruments they experimented with, their neverending search for new chords, and so on.

4) Have key values - They stuck to principle themes, such as love, peace, and the search for truth.

5) Adopt a cause - In the band and in their solo careers, they always had a cause that they were passionate about, whether peace, vegetarianism, eastern philosophy, or some other passion.

6) Worship change - They weren't afraid to change, even in the midst of success. At the top of the moptop craze, they changed their style, then they changed again with Sergeant Pepper, which was a virtual celebration of change.

7) Broaden your horizons - They continuously sought self-growth, learning new philosophies, new chords and instruments, etc.

8) Be passionate about everything you do. They treated each deliverable (i.e. song) as THE hit, which is why their "B-sides" did better than most people's A-sides.

9) Embrace conflict - They readily embraced creative conflict and friendly competition. It was precisely the conflict and competition between Lennon and McCartney that made each of them strive for new heights.

10) Keep moving - Fast! - They recorded constantly, always looking for some new and unique angle. They recorded first and asked questions later.

11) RMF (Risk Magnificent Failures) - They experimented with new chords, new concepts, and had some celebrated failures (Revolution #9-although some liked it; the Magical Mystery Tour Movie, in which they filmed everyone on a bus in the hopes that something neat would happen--nothing did). In a sense, each album was also an experiment in some way.

12) Aim for the Skies - They thought big ("To the toppermost!" they used to say) and they believed it! Similar to Napoleon Hill's principles in Think and Grow Rich, they aimed high and got there.

13) Talent matters - When all is said and done, they had the right talent. All the other elements wouldn't have helped if they didn't have a natural talent for music. Luck helps, but if you have the right talent in the right job, the luckier you get.

14) Use your whole brain - They used the left and right sides of their brain---using the right side when freeflowing creativity and innovation were needed, and the left side when the proper structure was important.

15) Have Fun!!! - Above all, they had plenty of fun, and even stressed the importance in the song "She's Leaving Home" (about a girl who left home to explore "something inside that was always denied for so many years---She's having fun, bye bye.")

16) Never Conform - They didn't conform to standard education, which led to their unorthodox style. In fact, I've noticed most great pop musicians hold their instruments "the wrong way." Tom Peters pointed the same thing out about great Tennis players and their rackets.

17) Field the right team - They were built for synergy -- each were different but shared the same values. The whole was truly greater than the sum of its parts.

18) Get noticed! - They wouldn't have gotten anywhere if they didn't get noticed in the first place. How did they get noticed? By playing in public, where they could get noticed. This should stress the importance of networking. Be seen.

19) Prototype and Test! - They prototyped and tested zillions of versions of their songs. For each hit, there were about 20 alternate takes in different styles and genres. And they practiced each version over and over.

20) Study the greats, Then forget them. - They didn't begin in a vacuum. They studied their idols, such as Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins, Fats Domino, and others. If you want to succeed at something, a good place to begin is studying those who have succeeded before. But then make your own way, just like The Beatles did. Carve your own niche.

21) Be Authentic - They were authentic to who they were - British lads from Liverpool.They could sing colorful lyrics about places like Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields, and could talk about TV shows like "Meet the Wife" ("It's time for tea and Meet the Wife" from "Good Morning"). They could sing about these things because it's who they were, not because they were trying to be cute or clever. It's important to be true to who you are, not who you'd rather be.

Enable Creativity to Generate Ideas ...

Need to increase the flow of ideas in your enterprise, department, or work-group. Build a creative environment and innovative mindset through fun meetings. Bill Repp provides insight on enabling creative meeting practices - all simple, yet effective. ...

... "Ask one or two people in the group who can draw to mind-map meeting ideas on a flip chart. Cartoon figures like a clock, book, tree, or computer are sketched in quickly to highlight key ideas. Colors, arrows, dotted lines, circles, boxes and squiggles can show relationships and movement of thought. " ...

Enable Creativity to Generate Ideas: Via Commercial Appeal: Mix some fun into meetings for good ideas ...

Innovation and Project Management - Part 3 of 3

This is a continuation of Part 2, and shows how Tom Kelley's The Ten Faces of Innovation is living proof that innovation and project management are not mutually-exclusive, and in fact, must coexist for true success.

In Part 1, we talked about the Learning Personas described in Kelley's book (the Anthropologist, the Experimenter, and the Cross-Pollinator). In Part 2, we discussed the Organizing Personas (the Hurdler, the Collaborator, and the Director). Now we'll examine the final batch of personas, The Building Personas. Again, these are all adapted from Tom Kelley's book, which offers much more details and many real-life stories to illustrate these personas in action (and no, I don't get commission).

The Building Personas

7) The Experience Architect – Designs the customer experience, beyond just the functionality of a product. Comes up with new and creative ways to awe the customer, yet with the same basic product functionality. An example is Cold Stone Creamery, which creates an entertaining experience where the server mixes ice cream with any number of desired toppings on a slab of cold stone. The servers even put on shows. [my added comment is that The Experience Architect can learn from observing others, even in other genres, and as such can gain from the “Cross-Pollinator” and “Anthropologist” personas.]

8) The Set Designer – Creates a fun and vibrant physical working environment that can spark creativity and collaboration. Allows employees great latitude in their personal work spaces. Avoids dull, repetitive spaces. Creates formal and informal public spaces where people can collaborate and brainstorm, with all the appropriate supplies and accommodations.

9) The Caregiver – Anticipates customer needs before, during, and after the engagement, and goes above and beyond normal expectations. Makes it easy for the customer to select the right services, provides useful and quick information when needed, insures easy accessibility by the customer, and builds lasting relationships with the customer.

10) The Storyteller – Builds internal morale and external awareness through compelling stories and case studies that reinforce key values or traits. Builds “corporate legends” that get passed around. Not “spin doctors,” the storytellers get their stories from first-hand accounts from customers or employees. Storytelling builds credibility, unleashes people’s emotions, helps teams bond, and generates lessons learned.

Well, that concludes my summary of Tom Kelley's The Ten Faces of Innovation, and its applicability to project management. As you can hopefully see, what project manager wouldn't benefit from these learning, organizing, and building personas that can lead to a better customer experience, a more satisfied team, and a memorable result?

Sure, we can (and should) still define the scope of the project, manage changes to the agreed-upon scope, and use project scheduling and budgeting techniques (we don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater). But we can take our projects to the next level with a strong dose of innovation, and these personas are as good a way to do that as any.

Innovation and Project Management - Part 2 of 3

This is a continuation of Part 1, and shows how Tom Kelley's The Ten Faces of Innovation is living proof that innovation and project management are not mutually-exclusive, and in fact, must coexist for true success.

In part 1, we talked about the book's three Learning Personas; The Anthropologist, The Experimentor, and The Cross-Pollinator. Now we'll talk about The Organizing Personas, again adapted from Kelley's book.

The Organizing Personas

4) The Hurdler – Bends the rules to get around roadblocks. Hurdlers tend to be street smart and can cleverly work around the system, undeterred by adversity. Seemingly stubborn at times, they listen to experts, but don’t let them have the final word.

5) The Collaborator – Brings diverse groups together, even if leading from the middle of the pack. Wins over skeptics and creates solutions that cross boundaries. Breaks through silos by being the glue that holds the diverse group together. Works “with” the client instead of “at” them. Prefers to coach rather than direct, coaching behind the scenes and letting the team run with the ball and have the glory. Doesn’t second-guess people from the sidelines.

6) The Director – Assembles the right people and gives them an environment that will allow their creativity to flourish. Has good strategic vision and sets the right theme. There’s no one style that works best. Some lead with calmness and others are bundles of energy. But they all give center stage to others, love sparking new ideas and projects, aim high, and embrace the unexpected with a variety of techniques, strategies, and resources. This role can be on a specific team and does not necessarily have to have a position of “director” authority in the corporation.

Just as an ideal project team should have the learning personas in order to position their project for success, these organizing personas can help turn chaos into order, and failure into success. As Tom Kelly mentions in his book, not every team must have every persona accounted for (and some people can adapt multiple personas), but like any toolbox, we need to know the available tools and use them when they're needed.

Up next in part 3, TheBuilding Personas...

Collaborative Thinking; The Project Manager's Challenge

Years ago, I read a wonderful saying by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, the author of The Little Prince. He said, "Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward in the same direction."

That saying stuck with me for some reason, and I was reminded of it again recently as I began to read an absolutely energizing book called Creating We, by Judith Glaser. The book carries the same basic intent as Saint-Exupery, except on an organizational level.

The basic premise is that in order to break through the typical silo thinking and toxic, fear-driven, autocratic environments that drive so many organizations today, one needs to get the players to focus externally on the customer, instead of internally at---or against---each other. Just take a look at this list from the book on why organizations fail:

• Lack of shared focus, shared purpose, and/or shared vision
• Lack of enterprise-wide communication
• Lack of organizational ambition and a strategic approach to getting there
• Lack of respect for others within the organization
• Failure to tap resources and inner talent, creativity, and responsibility
• Failure to break down the walls ("silos") between divisions
• Lack of team cohesion and failure to develop team agreements, rules of engagement, and decision-making processes.
• Failure to focus outside and see the customer
• Lack of hope and spirit; a punishing environment

Is this your organization?

Glaser, whose executive consulting company, Benchmark Communications Inc., has helped many of their A-list clients transform their culture from I-centric organizations to we-centric organizations, offers many compelling case studies and practical advice in the book. I highly recommend it to anyone trying to break down the silos in their organization.

For project managers, it's especially useful, as projects often require facilitating conflicting stakeholders and departments to some sort of agreement. Compounding the problem is that these people are often at higher levels in the organization. To address this, the book offers ways to facilitate we-thinking that are useful from any level in an organization, although ideally it should be driven from the top. For that matter, why not buy a copy for your senior executives (and no, I don't get commission).

Project Management Heresy; Is Gold-Plating Really that Bad?

PMI has drilled it into our heads for years about the perils of gold-plating, and how we need to focus on just meeting requirements, yada yada yada.

Yet, when I think back to the most exciting work that I had done (years ago), it was when I had met with a client (a customer service specialist) to look into a simple request to develop a few reports. She needed this so she could have more information readily available to solve customers' problems. I watched this person work for a while and felt immediate pain at what she had to go through to resolve customer problems and take orders over the phone.

She had to make a zillion phone calls and run back and forth to the plant flooor to see the status of an order, most of the time calling the customer back hours or days later. I went back to my team, and we decided it would be just as easy to give her an online "dashboard" right from her primary order inquiry screen (this was before dashboards were popular).

From there, she could see inventory allocation, and at what point material would be in stock to complete the finished products for the order, as well as other related info. She could track the customer's products from order through manufacturing. This saved her daily walks to the plant floor. Not only that, she could now address her customers' problems while they were on the phone!

Upon seeing the impact this made, we then asked if she'd also like to be able to look up shipping information, delivery tracking, and accounts receivable as well, and of course she was overjoyed. The system revolutionized customer service for this company.

One might call this gold-plating, but I call it excitement. We were excited about making a huge difference in the ability of the client to solve problems, and the client was excited to offer this benefit to her customers. Of course, I first watched the client in action so I could easily tell what was needed, so this was still a pragmatic approach.

As long as innovations have a practical use, then it's not really gold-plating. It's gold.

In our relentless pursuit of "meeting requirements" and "attaining better efficiency", let's not forget that passion and excitement can energize teams and customers, and often leads to further innovations. Above all, it leads to action and movement! Ironically, this critical mass can increase throughput even better than traditional efficiency and scheduling methods. Bottom Line: We need to bring passion and creativity back into the workforce!

Sustaining Innovation: Growth Through Creativity ...

Creativity fuels the innovation engine. How can we increase creativity to accelerate innovation? What are leadership principles necessary to drive growth through the creative organization? Here are some great insights ... Marc Babej provides excellent summary of Peter Georgescu, Young & Rubicam, on sustainable innovation from the Fortune Innovation Forum. Peter emphasizes three points on innovation: Embrace creativity, emphasize human values, and support active involvement in investing in future generations through education. Creativity is seen as a core enterprise competency that requires a special type of leadership to cultivate and sustain. ...

Via Being Reasonable: Peter Georgescu on Sustaining Innovation ...

... "First, embrace creativity as the most vital enterprise resource. The only leverageable asset on a company's balance sheet. Creativity is the cure for lack of differentiation, and in turn it begets profits. It's an inexhasutible resource, but also fragile. Creative output requires a new type of leader, one who refuses to manipulate or manage through fear. " ...

David Tanner, Tanner & Associates, Inc., discusses harnessing and increasing the creative capability in a research and development environment. These techniques should apply to most innovation scenarios. ...

Via Winston Brill: Creativity and Innovation in R&D ...

... "It's vital to set aside quality time specifically for people to learn the techniques of creative thinking. This first step satisfies an essential criterion for cultural shift - that is, it gives status to the effort. What resources can you use to focus on this subject? In-house seminars, books and articles on creativity, and outside creativity experts. " ...

Ben Simonton expands on the leadership techniques necessary to increasing the enterprise creativity competency ...

Via Corante: What Drives Innovation?. IdeaFlow: Discussion about innovation and creativity -- new products, strategy, open innovation, commercialization of technologies, patents, idea generation, customer input in the NPD process, more.

... "The brain controls creativity, innovation, productivity, motivation and commitment. I will attempt to explain a superior leadership strategy which turns on brains to the maximum extent and thus greatly enhances innovation. ... A superior leadership strategy inspires people to do more, dream more and learn more. We all know that people are our most important asset and that the best ones are self-motivated self-starters. Unfortunately, only 5% or so are naturally that way. A superior leadership strategy is capable of making the vast majority of employees self-motivated self-starters who are highly committed and highly productive, up to 300% more so than if poorly motivated. So what is this strategy? " ...

Systems Thinking for Project Managers

We couldn't call ourselves PMThink if we didn't talk about the importance of thinking now and then, could we?

Much has been made of Peter Senge's The Fifth Discipline, and its focus on Systems Thinking. Another Senge principle is to create and foster a learning organization. The enlightened organizations that have embraced this approach have discovered its substantial rewards.

One of the best sites I've come across on Systems Thinking (and thinking in general) is the Thinking Page. It offers a wealth of information on Systems Thinking, Creativity, Cybernetics, and more, which can hep us make better decisions and become more well-rounded project managers. The site received a "Top 5% of the Web" award from Lycos. Having read through it, I can see why.

I encourage all PMThinkers to explore this wonderful site, not only to challenge and inspire yourself to new heights, but to inspire others in your organization as well. Spread the word!


Thinking Page: better thinking using systems thinking, creativity, cybernetics, cognition research

Hit Project Barriers: Think Productively Like Genius

Hit Project Barriers: Think Productively Like Genius: Via Creativity Portal: Leonardo da Vinci: Qualities of a Genius and How to Think Productively

Runel Soria provides insights on creative thinking emulating the genius mind. Helpful tips for project managers when project teams hit the wall and need creative solutions to problems ...

... "eight strategies encourage you to think productively, rather than reproductively, in order to arrive at solutions to problems. These strategies are common to the thinking styles of creative geniuses in science, art, and industry throughout history. " ...