Tag Archives: Tom Kelley
We Have Change Covered for You – Our Three Public Workshops: November 12-13
No matter what your circumstances, you WILL deal with change in any organization, and no matter how you want to work with it, we have you covered….
Please spread the word about our November 12-13 public workshops on change. We hold these three workshops at the Richardson Civic Center, and to facilitate interaction among the participants, we limit seating to the first twenty persons registered for each program. See additional discounts at the bottom of this blog.
Our schedule and details follow:
Wednesday, November 12 – 8:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
MANAGING CHANGE Facilitator: Randy Mayeux
In the midst of ever-increasing change, the ability to manage your own effectiveness is now required for virtually every position in an organization. In this program, learn how to turn change into a powerful competitive advantage, and into a friend, rather than an enemy. Register for this program if you want to:
- cope with change you must implement
- work in a change-friendly environment
- reduce personal anxiety about change
- produce an environment of freedom
- look for positive changes to implement
- use change as a tool to boost productivity and effectiveness
Price: $695.00 per person,* which includes breakfast, manual, and “work-with’s”
Wednesday, November 12 – 1:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION FROM CREATIVE AND INNOVATIVE EXPERTS Facilitator: Randy Mayeux
Randy will brief you on four separate business books on creativity and innovation, and build on the transferable principles from these books. Each participant receives a copy of all four books.
Part 1: Think Creatively
- Identify strategies to actively seek out and hire people with diverse backgrounds and thinking styles
- Explore steps to effectively manage resistance to novel or experimental proposals
Part 2: Demonstrate How to Develop Processes, Products, and Services
- Describe how to evaluate new opportunities unconstrained by existing paradigms but keeping an eye towards organizational goals
- Identify and describe steps to maintain the organization’s competitive edge with breakthrough solutions and disciplined risks
The four books are: (1) The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp, (2) The Ten Steps of Innovation by Tom Kelley, (3) Weird Ideas That Work by Robert Sutton, and (4) Creativity, Inc., by Jeff Mauzy and Richard Harriman
Price: $775.00 per person,* which includes lunch, manual, four books, and “work-with’s”
Thursday, November 13 – 8:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.
LEADING CHANGE Facilitator: Karl J. Krayer, Ph.D.
Why sit in the passenger’s seat for the next change initiative in your organization? Instead, sit in the driver’s seat and lead it! Your organization can maintain productivity and achieve results while in the midst of change by following three key principles to make the initiative you lead to be: (1) inclusive, (2) systemic, and (3) systematic. Register for this workshop if you want to:
- take a proactive approach to an issue, problem, or opportunity
- gain commitment by influencing others affected by a change
- measure and evaluate the effectiveness of a change initiative
- design a change initiative that you can implement in an inclusive, systemic, and systematic way
- boost the positive impact of a change initiative that you organize
Each participant receives a copy of Karl’s book, Organizing Change.
Price: $1,370 per person,* which includes breakfast and lunch, manual, CDROM template, book, and “work-with’s”
———————————————-
*SPECIAL DISCOUNTS
Both MANAGING CHANGE and CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION FROM CREATIVE AND INNOVATIVE EXPERTS for $1,200 (save $270)
Either MANAGING CHANGE or CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION FROM CREATIVE AND INNOVATIVE EXPERTS and LEADING CHANGE for $1,770 (save $375)
Best value – all three workshops for $2,200 (save $540)
We offer discounts for multiple registrants from the same organization with a single payment:
- 2nd person – receives 10% discount from the per-person price
- 3rd person – receives 15% discount from the per-person price
- 4th person – receives 20% discount from the per-person price
- 5th person – receives 25% discount from the per-person price
————————————————
REGISTRATION AND CONTACT INFORMATION
You can use this registration form and return it to us. Simply click on the image below and you will see a full, printable page.
If you prefer, we can also mail, fax, or e-Mail this registration form to you.
We are glad to answer questions from you, so please call or send an e-Mail. The number is (972) 980-0383. The e-Mail is:
We look forward to hearing from you.
Click here for full image
We Have Change Covered For You – Three Great Public Workshops in November
No matter what your circumstances, you WILL deal with change in any organization, and no matter how you want to work with it, we have you covered….
Please spread the word about our November 12-13 public workshops on change. We hold these three workshops at the Richardson Civic Center, and to facilitate interaction among the participants, we limit seating to the first twenty persons registered for each program. We offer an early-bird discount of 10% for all registrations paid on or before October 20. See additional discounts at the bottom of this blog.
Our schedule and details follow:
Wednesday, November 12 – 8:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
MANAGING CHANGE Facilitator: Randy Mayeux
In the midst of ever-increasing change, the ability to manage your own effectiveness is now required for virtually every position in an organization. In this program, learn how to turn change into a powerful competitive advantage, and into a friend, rather than an enemy. Register for this program if you want to:
- cope with change you must implement
- work in a change-friendly environment
- reduce personal anxiety about change
- produce an environment of freedom
- look for positive changes to implement
- use change as a tool to boost productivity and effectiveness
Price: $695.00 per person,* which includes breakfast, manual, and “work-with’s”
Wednesday, November 12 – 1:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION FROM CREATIVE AND INNOVATIVE EXPERTS Facilitator: Randy Mayeux
Randy will brief you on four separate business books on creativity and innovation, and build on the transferable principles from these books. Each participant receives a copy of all four books.
Part 1: Think Creatively
- Identify strategies to actively seek out and hire people with diverse backgrounds and thinking styles
- Explore steps to effectively manage resistance to novel or experimental proposals
Part 2: Demonstrate How to Develop Processes, Products, and Services
- Describe how to evaluate new opportunities unconstrained by existing paradigms but keeping an eye towards organizational goals
- Identify and describe steps to maintain the organization’s competitive edge with breakthrough solutions and disciplined risks
The four books are: (1) The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp, (2) The Ten Steps of Innovation by Tom Kelley, (3) Weird Ideas That Work by Robert Sutton, and (4) Creativity, Inc., by Jeff Mauzy and Richard Harriman
Price: $775.00 per person,* which includes lunch, manual, four books, and “work-with’s”
Thursday, November 13 – 8:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.
LEADING CHANGE Facilitator: Karl J. Krayer, Ph.D.
Why sit in the passenger’s seat for the next change initiative in your organization? Instead, sit in the driver’s seat and lead it! Your organization can maintain productivity and achieve results while in the midst of change by following three key principles to make the initiative you lead to be: (1) inclusive, (2) systemic, and (3) systematic. Register for this workshop if you want to:
- take a proactive approach to an issue, problem, or opportunity
- gain commitment by influencing others affected by a change
- measure and evaluate the effectiveness of a change initiative
- design a change initiative that you can implement in an inclusive, systemic, and systematic way
- boost the positive impact of a change initiative that you organize
Each participant receives a copy of Karl’s book, Organizing Change.
Price: $1,370 per person,* which includes breakfast and lunch, manual, CDROM template, book, and “work-with’s”
———————————————-
*SPECIAL DISCOUNTS
Take 10% off the listed price for all registrations received by October 20
Both MANAGING CHANGE and CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION FROM CREATIVE AND INNOVATIVE EXPERTS for $1,200 (save $270)
Either MANAGING CHANGE or CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION FROM CREATIVE AND INNOVATIVE EXPERTS and LEADING CHANGE for $1,770 (save $375)
Best value – all three workshops for $2,200 (save $540)
We offer discounts for multiple registrants from the same organization with a single payment:
- 2nd person – receives 10% discount from the per-person price
- 3rd person – receives 15% discount from the per-person price
- 4th person – receives 20% discount from the per-person price
- 5th person – receives 25% discount from the per-person price
————————————————
Registration and Contact Information:
We can mail, fax, or e-Mail a registration form to you. We are glad to answer questions from you, so please call or send an e-Mail. The number is (972) 980-0383. The e-Mail is:
We look forward to hearing from you.
8 Assumptions and 8 Questions about Innovation
Even the staid British publication The Economist recently claimed, “Innovation is now recognized as the single most important ingredient in any modern economy.”
(Tom Kelley: The Ten Faces of Innovation)
——
For the SMU Cox School of Business – Business Leadership Center, I recently presented my new session on innovation: Adaptation, Exaptation, Innovation: Processes and Environments That Invite Successful Innovation.
I quote from many books that discuss creativity and innovation, including books by Tom Kelley, Steven Johnson, Gary Hamel, Twyla Tharp, Bernd Schmitt, and Roger Martin, among others. As I developed the material, I stole/borrowed/compiled/wrote eight assumptions about our current situation, and asked 8 questions… Here are the assumptions and questions:
• 8 Assumptions:
1) What worked yesterday will not work as well tomorrow
2) Someone is trying – now! — to leave you in the dust
3) Everyone; every product; every process…can get better
4) Creativity, as a habit, can be developed
5) Innovation, as a practice, can be achieved
6) It takes time, training, effort to be creative, and to be innovative
7) It is far better (it works best) to be innovative “together”
8) Innovation is a habit/a discipline/a routine – in other words, it needs constant attention and focus… always• 8 Questions for the Innovator:
1) What are we doing now that could be done better tomorrow? (hint – practically everything)
2) What could we learn from a totally unexpected source/field/discipline?
• how could we take some “field trips” – how could we open our eyes a little wider?
3) What could we learn from the best within our industry?
4) What could we learn from the worst in our industry (what should we never do?)
5) Where are our bottlenecks – how are we killing good ideas?
6) Where are our records – that is, where are we recording all of our possible good ideas? (Where are we losing our good ideas?)
7) Where do people experience hassles, of any kind, in their interactions with us? How can we get rid of these hassles?
8) And – what could go wrong? (Beware of the problem of unintended consequences. – Consider the parable of the “free refill”).
Let’s Try Something; Let’s Try Something Different; Let’s Try Something New
In the book The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America’s Leading Design Firm by Tom Kelley, we find this simple suggestion:
Observe real people in real life situations to find out what makes them tick…
This is step # 2 in the IDEO five step methodology:
• The IDEO five step methodology…
#1 Understand the market.
#2 Observe real people in real life situations to find out what makes them tick…
#3 Visualize new to the world concepts and the customers who will use them.
#4 Evaluate and refine the prototypes in a series of quick iterations. Plan on a series of improvements.
#5 Implement the new product for commercialization.
This week, I’ve had a chance to do a “ride along” with an account manager for a client (in preparation for some training sessions). I watched, listened, and learned.
As we talked afterwards, it was clear that a new pair of eyes (mine) could see some things that someone constantly in the midst of an endeavor misses. Not because of a lack of desire to see – but simply because it is tough to see what is always in front of you. Thus, the wisdom of IDEO’s approach: they always start by going out and observing real people, at work or at leisure, with real products, in their own settings…
As I observed, I thought of some recommendations to make. Some of these are in fact “new.” Some are, in fact, quite old – you know, the tried and true, but so easily ignored or forgotten.
So, I am preparing a list of “try these” items for our client. I think it could be valuable.
Now, it’s your turn – and my turn. Conduct a “ride-along” with yourself. Yes, it very difficult – to look at and observe your own practices, to look at what you are doing, or not doing, with a new set of eyes. (It is easier for an “outsider” to see what you have become oblivious to). And ask these questions, all in the quest to do your work better:
• What can I try?
• What I try that is simply different?
• What can I try that is new?
This much I do know – there is a competitor lurking right around the corner that will offer some of these different/new approaches. You may as well be the one to come up with them yourself.
———
You can purchase my synopsis of The Art of Innovation, with handout + audio, at our companion web site, 15minutebusinessbooks.com.
Before Creativity, Before Innovation, You Need An Idea
The first steps of a creative act are like groping in the dark: random and chaotic, feverish and fearful, a lot of busy-ness with no apparent or definable end in sight. There is nothing yet to research. For me, these moments are not pretty. I look like a desperate woman, tortured by the simple message thumping away in my head: “You need an idea.”
You need a tangible idea to get you going. The idea, however miniscule, is what turns the verb into a noun – paint into a painting, sculpt into sculpture, write into writing, dance into a dance.
Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit
———
I was just revisiting my handout from the book Where Good Ideas Come From. Steven Johnson argues that a lot goes into the discovery of those really good ideas. To get to “good idea, “ you have to: go with the “flow;” you have to have, and then jettison, a bunch of bad ideas; you have to learn to rely on hunches much more than those fast/sudden/amazing eureka moments (which, really, is not the secret sauce behind most good ideas); you have to come to realize that good hunches are slow in coming – -they are “slow hunches.”
You have to build, and take advantage of, an environment that nurtures good ideas:
This is a book about the space of innovation. Some environments squelch new ideas; some environments seem to breed them effortlessly.
Good ideas come from many places:
Good ideas are not conjured out of thin air; they are built out of a collection of existing parts, the composition of which expands (and occasionally, contracts) over time.
A good idea is a network… an idea is not a single thing. It is more like a swarm.
Good ideas come from people – notice that that is “people” (plural!):
The most productive tool for generating good ideas remains a circle of humans at a table, talking shop.
And, remember, that creativity, and then innovation, are the result of good ideas. Johnson’s decision to talk about good ideas was significant:
I have deliberately chosen the broadest possible phrasing – good ideas – to suggest the cross-disciplinary vantage point I am trying to occupy.
So…pretend that you have a group of people who have nurtured the idea generation skill that is needed. You come together to work on generating new, good, usable ideas.
What do you do?
You have some brainstorming sessions. And then, you have the chance of sparking/catching those good ideas. You are looking for that someone in that crowd that can help you come up with just the right next new idea:
This is not the wisdom of the crowd, but the wisdom of someone in the crowd. It’s not that the network itself is smart; it’s that the individuals get smarter because they’re connected to the network.
So, what do you in this brainstorming session? You brainstorm. But, we all know, brainstorming done poorly does not work.
Here is some genuinely important “how to brainstorm well” counsel from The Art of Innovation (Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America’s Leading Design Firm) by Tom Kelley.
• Seven Secrets for Better Brainstorming…
1) Sharpen the focus.
2) Playful Rules. (e.g. – at IDEO: Go for quantity. Encourage wild ideas. Be visual).
1. Number your ideas. (it creates quantity – it makes it easier to refer to specific ideas…)
2. Build and Jump.
3. The Space Remembers.
4. Stretch your mental muscles.
5. Get physical. (including: big blocks; competitors products; use the body itself!)
• Six ways to kill a brainstormer…
The boss gets to speak first (the boss gets to speak!)
Everybody gets a turn.
Experts only please.
Do it off-site.
No silly stuff.
Write down everything.
And, like with every other skill that you develop, you’ll have to do it a bunch — practice brainstorming, that is. Remember the tried and true adage: “perfect practice makes perfect.”
Blockbuster, R.I.P. — Lessons for us All
You know, at one time there must’ve been dozens of companies makin’ buggy whips. And I’ll bet the last company around was the one that made the best goddamn buggy whip you ever saw. Now how would you have liked to have been a stockholder in that company? You invested in a business and this business is dead. Let’s have the intelligence, let’s have the decency to sign the death certificate, collect the insurance, and invest in something with a future.
(Lawrence Garfield — “Larry the Liquidator” – played by Danny DeVito, in the movie, Other People’s Money)
———
Blockbuster: R.I.P.
news item: Blockbuster finally files for Chapter 11
Blockbuster:
Born, 1985: (The first Blockbuster store opened in Dallas, Texas on October 26, 1985 at the corner of Skillman and Northwest Highway. By the way, I used to rent videos at that specific store. I had no idea that it was the first).
Died, September 23, 2010: (though some smaller version might last a little longer).
The lessons are many. Like:
#1 Customer loyalty is dead. Really dead.
#2 Someone intends to go right past you — you’d better beat them to the punch.
#3 If the product you are selling is no longer the product that works best, you have no future.
#4 If these three are true, then you will go under – it’s just a matter of when, not if.
These are the thoughts that I have as I reflect on Blockbuster going into bankruptcy. Netflix, and redbox, and youtube, and iTunes, all simply passed them by. And Blockbuster simply was not nimble enough, not quick enough, not able to react and change fast enough, and now they are on the verge of gone.
Lots of thoughts, from plenty of books, come to mind, like:
Verne Harnish, in Mastering the Rockefeller Habits, reminds us that all business starts with the functions of Making or Buying something. So, if people no longer want to buy what you offer, you’ve got real trouble…
In Get There Early: Sensing the Future to Compete in the Present (Using Foresight to Provoke Strategy and Innovation) by Bob Johansen (Institute for the Future), we learn about the VUCA world of (VUCA originated at the U. S. Army War College – the graduate school for Generals-to-be):
• Volatility
• Uncertainty
• Complexity
• Ambiguity
It’s the volatility that helped doom Blockbuster.
In The New Experts: Win Today’s Newly Empowered Customers At Their Decisive Moments by Robert (Bob) Bloom, Bob basically wrote Blockbuster’s obituary. Consider these quotes from his book:
Today’s buyers – empowered by the Internet, assured by the enormous choice in every segment of commerce, and capitalizing on the acute vulnerability of sellers struggling in this new selling climate – have taken control of the entire purchase progression.
Buyers no longer care who they buy from.
Today, buyers are in control.
This reversal of supremacy has placed every business around the globe in a perilous situation.
This confluence of technology and choice started customer loyalty down the slippery slope – ultimately, customer loyalty died.
It is a scary world out there. Somebody is out to beat you in tomorrow’s market.
I’ll end with a well-known quote from Gary Hamel (quoted by Tom Kelley in The Art of Innovation):
To those few companies sitting on the innovation fence, business writer Gary Hamel has a dire prediction: “Out there in some garage is an entrepreneur who’s forging a bullet with your company’s name on it. You’ve got one option now – to shoot first. You’ve got to out-innovate the innovators.”
