Toolkit for Innovative Thinking

When you're working on a project, things always go smoother when you have the right tools at hand.

If your mind is working on something innovative, the same is true.The mind is full of ideas from past experiences and from observations gained through conversations, movies, television, etc. While you may chose to rely on your subconscious mind to access these ideas, why not take a more structured approach, using specific tools and techniques?

In her book “The Seeds of Innovation”, Elaine Dundon has created a systems thinking approach to innovation. At first those two thoughts seem contradictory, but in reality it can become a very powerful synergy. For example, here’s a “toolkit” you can dive into when you are faced with a challenge in your ministry.

Rummaging in the Attic – elements of previous solutions or ideas can prove to be very valuable fuel for jump-starting your idea engine. Find old ideas, dust them off, and reconnect them in new ways to your current problem or opportunity.

Cultivating Obsession – a great way to find new ideas it to become obsessed with the challenge that confronts you. It means you have to immerse yourself in the challenge, to seek out all the information you possibly can. Obsession will lead to better insights.

Analyzing Frustrations – one of the most fertile areas for identifying new ideas is discovering what frustrates others about the current problem. Focusing on what is not working will sometimes be the origin of a new breakthrough idea.

Identifying the Gold Standard – no matter what the challenge you are facing, someone else has already been down that road. Seek out these people or organizations that have solved a similar challenge in an outstanding way. Make a list of the elements of the process or program that made it work for them, and relate this list to your situation.

Adopting and Adapting – great ideas already exist all around you. Find them out and adopt them as your own. Look within the category of your opportunity, but also look outside the box. Innovators look beyond the borders of their own situation to find new ideas to adopt and adapt.

Combining Ideas – innovative thinking is a little like a cake you bake: take a little of this, a little of that, put them together and you have a delicious dessert. Creative thinkers are aware of the objects and ideas around them and look for new connections by combining diverse ideas and objects.

Finding Similarities – think of other challenges that might be similar. Draw analogies to similar situations, let your mind wander, and you will most likely discover a new connection from an unlikely source.

Breaking Down the DNA – what if your problem is overwhelming? Break it down into its component parts and focus on it bit by bit. Analyzing every step in the process will allow you to discover new answers.

Listing and Twisting – this is actually a follow-on step from the previous one. Once you have listed the steps in the process, you can “twist” them around to find new ideas.

Become a Visual Thinker – something happens when we move away from a linear process of thinking and start to doodle or draw. I’m a big fan of this method; I have a 4’ x 8’ whiteboard on my office wall that I’m constantly stepping up to and sketching out an idea. It seems that your subconscious mind takes over and new connections begin to appear.


Whether you use a process like the ones above, or just pull up a chair with a cup of coffee in hand to think, the point is that innovation is a process. You know where you are; hopefully you know where you want to be. Let your imagination run wild in the space between, and before long you and your team will have a plan to move forward.

Practice Innovation...

...whenever you can.

It's time to wrap up "Innovation Week," a look at some of the best innovation practices of IDEO, the award-winning, celebrated design firm. Tom Kelly, general manager of IDEO, has captured the essence of what the firm is all about in his book "The Art of Innovation." Even though it's been around for almost 10 years, I find myself coming back to it time and again to get a refresher on this thing called "innovation."

Kelley closes out his book with a simple but powerful list of innovation practice tips that IDEO has refined over the years. His advice is to "try jotting these down in your own words and posting them around your workplace. Above all, practice them whenever you can." Did you get that?

Innovation has to be practiced to be effective.

It's not a one time thing.

It's not something just for the management team.

It's not optional for your organization.

Here are Kelley's "innovation practice tips."

• Watch customers - and non customers - especially enthusiasts (note to church leaders: yes, you have customers)
• Play around with your physical workplace in a way that sends positive "body language" to employees and guests
• Think "verbs," not "nouns," in your service offerings so that you create wonderful experiences for everyone who comes into contact with your organization or brand
• Break rules and "fail forward" so that change is part of the culture, and little setbacks are expected (John Maxwell is smiling!)
• Stay human, scaling your organizational environment so that there's room for hot groups to emerge and thrive
• Build bridges from one department to another, from your organization to your prospective customers, and ultimately from the present to the future

Try it yourself. Innovation isn't about perfection. Get out of your cube/office/cave and observe your "market," your customers, and your services. Brainstorm like crazy and prototype in bursts. Assemble your own version of "The A Team," then turn them loose on your problem.

Prepare to be amazed.

Great Projects are Achieved by Great Teams

...but not just any old teams. Organizations may be all about groups and teamwork, but most of the time these are simply a collection of people who once had vaguely-defined objectives. Inertia has taken over, and they only exist because no one has enough gumption to suggest otherwise.

At the opposite end of the spectrum are what design firm IDEO calls "hot project teams." They start with a clear goal and a serious deadline. They know they might disband after the goal is reached but reform when another problems pops up. They are infused with purpose and personality. They have a passion about doing great projects.

Today.

What does a hot group look like? IDEO general manager Tom Kelley, writing in "The Art of Innovation," thinks these characteristics are present:

• They are totally dedicated to achieving the end result
• They face down ridiculous deadlines
• They are irreverent and nonhierarchial
• They are well-rounded and respectful of diversity
• They work in open, eclectic space optimal for flexibility, group work, and brainstorming
• They feel empowered to go get whatever else is needed
• They love a challenge
• They find ways to leap barriers
• They answer questions with actions instead of words

Teams should be ground zero for innovation in your organization. But always remember they start with individuals. There are plenty of extraordinary people at your place. Match them to projects, challenge them, and give them a chance to blossom - then back off and watch them blow you away with results.

Prototyping is a State of Mind

It's a given that the award-winning design firm IDEO utilizes prototyping in their quest to fulfill a client's request for a better shopping cart or when creating the mouse for Apple.

But how does this help when innovation isn't a daily ritual? And what if your organization doesn't make things, but provides a service? And what if your organization is a church?

Quick prototyping is about acting before you've got all the answers, about taking chances, stumbling a little, but then making it right.

Prototyping is a state of mind.

In the book "The Art of Innovation," IDEO general manager Tim Kelley outlines some of the key principles of prototyping the firm has developed over the years:

• Build to learn - when a project is complex, prototyping is a way of making progress when problems seem insurmountable
• Make your luck - once you start prototyping, you begin to open up new possibilities of discovery
• Prototypes beat pictures - living, moving prototypes can help shape your ideas
• Bit by bit - don't go for the touchdown all in one play; work on your project in stages, getting approval and/or revisions done in steps. Keep the momentum going
• Shoot the bad ideas first - don't stop when you're stuck; prototyping even an unworkable solution often generates new ideas

A playful, iterative approach to problems is one of the foundations of the creative culture at IDEO. It can be at your organization, too.

So, what are you going to prototype today?

Brainstorming, IDEO Style

The problem with brainstorming is that everyone thinks they already do it.

IDEO, the award-winning design and development firm known around the world for their creative solutions to everyday problems, begs to differ.

In the book "The Art of Innovation," IDEO general manager Tom Kelley shows how you can deliver more value, create more energy, and foster more innovation through better brainstorming.

Seven Secrets for Better Brainstorming

• Sharpen the focus - good brainstormers start with a well-honed statement of the problem
• Playful rules - don't start to critique or debate ideas
• Number your ideas - it's a tool to motivate the participants and it's a great way to jump back and forth between ideas without losing your place
• Build and jump - try building on an idea by encouraging another push or introducing a small variation; or take a jump, either back to an earlier path or forward to a completely new idea
• The space remembers - great brainstorm leaders understand the power of spatial memory. Use tools that allow you to write all ideas down, and as you move around the room, spatial memory will help people recapture the mind-set they had when the idea first emerged
• Stretch your mental muscles - mental warm ups (word games, content-related homework, etc.) will help you get in shape for better brainstorming
• Get physical - the best brainstormers often get physical; they bring in "props," prototype designs with materials, and act out possible solutions

Got a problem that's bugging you?

Find a suitable space, order some supplies, get a good group together, and brainstorm up several dozen possible solutions.

Innovation Begins with an Eye

What do stand-up toothpaste tubes, all-in-one fishing kits, high-tech blood analyzers, flexible office shelves, and self-sealing sports bottles have in common?

Only that they're all products designed by the legendary firm IDEO; products inspired by watching real people.

As IDEO human factors expert Leon Segal says in "The Art of Innovation," "Innovation begins with an eye."

It's not just about product design, either.Whether it's art, science, technology, or business, inspiration often comes from being close to the action. Once you start observing carefully, all kinds of insights and opportunities can open up.

Here are a few IDEO practices you should think about:

• No dumb questions - don't think you know the answers without first asking the questions
• Look through the child's eye - literally, if you want to understand what they are seeing, touching, and feeling; figuratively, if you understand that the best designs embrace people's differences
• Inspiration by observation - open your eyes and you'll be awakened to opportunities to improve things without leaving your office
• Embrace your crazy user - good, insightful observation combines careful watching with well-chosen questions asked to get at the psychology of a person's interactions
• Finding rule breakers - you learn best when observing people who break the rules
• People are human - sometimes we reduce personal interactions to numbers and statistics. Empathy is about rediscovering why you're actually in business, whom you're trying to serve, and what needs you are trying to fulfill.

Seeing and hearing things with your own eyes and ears is a critical first step in improving or creating a breakthrough in your organization.

Try it today!

Putting It All In Context

Here's a recap of the past few day's review of Tom Kelley's "Ten Faces of Innovation", a classification of the 10 different personas needed to create a culture of innovation in your organization:

• The Anthropologist observes human behavior
• The Experimenter works by constant trial and error
• The Cross-Pollinator takes new ideas from over the fence
• The Hurdler never gives up
• The Collaborator stands in the middle of different groups
• The Director gets the right people involved
• The Experience Architect probably used to work for Starbucks
• The Set Designer designs the best possible environments
• The Caregiver is focused on people's needs, often anticipating them
• The Storyteller loves compelling narratives

Think of the ten personas as a toolbox - you seldom need all the tools at once, but the perfect toolbox is one where you use all of them pretty frequently.

Innovation doesn't happen on its own, but with the right team, you're up to the challenge. Innovation doesn't just turn organizations around - it becomes a way of life. It's fun; it's invigorating.

And it works.

If you have all 10 personas on your side, you can drive creativity and build a unique culture of innovation.

What are you waiting for?

The Building Persona

Here's the final post of three about Tom Kelley's great book "The Ten Faces of Innovation." Previous posts have looked at Learning and Organizing personas.

The four remaining personas are building roles that apply insights from the learning roles and channel the empowerment from the organizing roles to make innovation happen. When people adopt the building personas, they stamp their mark on your organization. People in these roles are highly visible, so you’ll often find them right at the heart of the action.

• The Experience Architect is that person relentlessly focused on creating remarkable individual experiences. This person facilitates positive encounters with your organization through products, services, digital interactions, spaces, or events. Whether an architect or a sushi chef, the Experience Architect maps out how to turn something ordinary into something distinctive—even delightful—every chance they get.
• The Set Designer looks at every day as a chance to liven up their workspace. They promote energetic, inspired cultures by creating work environments that celebrate the individual and stimulate creativity. To keep up with shifting needs and foster continuous innovation, the Set Designer makes adjustments to a physical space to balance private and collaborative work opportunities. In doing so, this person makes space itself one of an organization's most versatile and powerful tools.
• The Storyteller captures our imagination with compelling narratives of initiative, hard work, and innovation. This person goes beyond oral tradition to work in whatever medium best fits their skills and message: video, narrative, animation, even comic strips. By rooting their stories in authenticity, the Storyteller can spark emotion and action, transmit values and objectives, foster collaboration, create heroes, and lead people and organizations into the future.
• The Caregiver is the foundation of human-powered innovation. Through empathy, they work to understand each individual customer and create a relationship. Whether a nurse in a hospital, a salesperson in a retail shop, or a teller at an international financial institution, the Caregiver guides the client through the process to provide them with a comfortable, human-centered experience.

What about your organization? Do you have individuals that regularly take on the personas listed above?

Why not?

Organizing Personas

Recap: today's post is the second of three which take a look at Tom Kelley's book "The Ten Faces of Innovation." Monday, the Learning Personas were reviewed. Today, it's the Organizing Personas. For a brief look at all ten, see here.

The organizing roles are played by individuals who are savvy about the often counter intuitive process of how organizations move ideas forward. Kelly found that ideas could not speak for themselves; instead, even the best ideas must continuously compete for time, attention, and resources. It's not just office politics or red tape; it's a complex game of chess, and they play to win.

• The Hurdler knows the path to innovation is strewn with obstacles and develops a knack for overcoming or outsmarting those roadblocks.
• The Collaborator helps bring eclectic groups together and often leads from the middle of the pack to create new combinations and multidisciplinary solutions.
• The Director not only gathers together a talented cast and crew but also helps spark their creative talents.

Every organization, no matter how small or large, has systems of how things get done (or don't). By adopting one of the roles above, members of your team can move ideas and innovations forward.

Facing a daunting task? Stymied by seemingly huge barriers? Become an organizing persona, and make things happen!

The Learning Personas

People make innovation happen through their imagination, willpower, and perseverance. The only real path to innovation is through people.

Tom Kelley, one of the founders of the legendary design firm IDEO, developed ten people-centric tools in his book "The Ten Faces of Innovation." By adopting one or more of the roles, your team can explore a different point of view and create a broader range of innovative solutions. Kelley organized the ten roles into three categories: learning, organizing and building. Beginning today and continuing through Wednesday, a brief introduction to the personas, as Kelley calls them. For a quick summary of the personas, see here.

Individuals and organizations need to constantly gather new sources of information in order to expand their knowledge and grow. Because the world is changing at an ever-accelerated pace, today's great idea will be tomorrow's passing fad, and the day afters history lesson. The learning roles described below will help keep your team from becoming smug about what you know; instead, these roles will keep you questioning your own views and remain open to new insights.

• The Anthropologist brings new learning and insights into the organization by observing human behavior and developing a deep understanding of how people interact physically and emotionally with products, services, and spaces.
• The Experimenter prototypes new ideas continuously, learning by a process of enlightened trial and error. The Experimenter takes takes calculated risks to achieve success through a state of "experimentation as implementation."
• The Cross-Pollinator explores other industries and cultures, then translates those findings and revelations to fit the unique needs of your own organization.

As you reflect over these 3 personas, and the seven to follow over the next two days, keep in mind that they are not inherent personality traits or types that are permanently attached to one individual on your team. These innovation roles are available to nearly anyone on your team, and people can switch roles, reflecting the multifaceted capabilities.

Take a look in the mirror - what Learning persona do you need to assume today to help your organization move forward?

Innovation, Relevance, and the Church: Paradox in Action?

One of the paradoxes of the church today is that it demands continual innovation yet often resists change.

In an effort to keep pace with fast-changing culture, churches of all types and sizes often implement various levels of change in order to reach the unchurched. These changes range from the relatively minor (different times and days for worship, different styles of worship) to the really edgy (launching an Internet campus, using building funds for missional activities and meeting outdoors).

But in ChurchWorld, there is no such thing as a minor change. Moving a worship time back one hour to accommodate another, different type of service can be very threatening to members who have grown used to patterns of attendance. And I won’t even start on worship styles!

On the other hand, churches – especially those started in the last decade or so – have so integrated innovation and change into their DNA that they are continually pushing the envelope of ministry possibilities in order maintain relevance in society.

The following quotes from Tim Manners, author of Relevance; editor and publisher of Cool News of the Day, and regular contributor to Fast Company magazine provide some things for church leaders to think about:

• Sustaining relevance can require a kind of innovation in reverse: finding new ways to continue doing things the way they’ve always been done.
• Relevance is designing and implementing meaningful solutions and providing them when and where people need them most.
• If some is good, more isn’t necessarily better. A disciplined focus on what matters most is essential to innovation and growth.
  

What, then, is the approach church leaders need to take when it comes to innovation? There certainly aren’t any easy answers, and every church must decide for itself how much and how fast it is going to innovate. But to me, the church is a living, breathing organism –the Body of Christ. If living things don’t constantly change, they die. It’s that simple. Craig Groeschel summed it up pretty good: “To reach people no one else is reaching, we’ve got to do things no one else is doing.”

How are you dealing with the paradox of innovation and resistance to change in your church?

Does Your Church Need a CIO?

That's Chief Innovation Officer.

In a great post by Larry Lundstrum at The Woodlands Church, a visit to their staff by Disney's Chief Information Officer leads to application to the church; you can read it here.

Disney is a great model for the church to study in a lot of ways, and Larry's post, along with notes from his friend Aaron, will make you think.

One of the most powerful quotes?
You don't have the resources that Disney has, but you have a power that Disney doesn't have.

That power is the Spirit of God - and it's lived out in the lives of His people, working in and through the church to serve the world.

That's innovation! How is your church being innovative to reach your community - and the world?

Innovation's Dirty Little Secret

Most innovations fail.

Larry Osborn's session at the Church Solutions Conference had a great title, and it did not disappoint. The subtitle, Confessions of a Serial Innovator, had me hooked from the moment I saw it - and he spoke with some great content. There is a lot of great material I could post about, but the most powerful and thought-provoking comments were a set of eight questions which I think every church leader should be asking themselves about all of their ministries - not just ones that are considering beginning.

• How are we going to market this in a way that gives us maximum flexibility?


• How can we prepare for a quick and relatively painless exit?


• How are we going to communicate if things go slower than expected?


• How are we going to communicate if we need to shut the whole thing down?


• How are we going to communicate if we need to go back to the old way?


• How are we going to absorb and limit the financial burden?


• What benchmarks will cause us to pull the plug?


• What benchmarks will cause us to keep going even though things are slow?

Ask yourself these questions - and be honest with the answers.

It's Planting Time

Change and innovation are two of my favorite topics to discuss and apply to church settings. Since change is a constant, there is never a shortage of the subject to talk about!

I participated in a Leadership Network webinar last week on 10 Discoveries About Innovation in the Church. They always do a great job, and this was no exception. I'm continuing to unpack the info from that webinar and will probably post about it later this week. It dovetailed with a book I'm reading; here are the main points.

Elaine Dundon, in her book The Seeds of Innovation, sees innovation as a process that can be cultivated. She finds that there are 3 main areas, with three steps in each one.

Understanding

• Gathering information
• Clarifying the real problem
• Setting innovation goalposts

Imagination

• Seeking stimuli
• Uncovering insight
• Identifying ideas

Action

• Developing the innovation road map
• Gaining commitment
• Implementing the innovation road map

She also depicts the process of innovation as a continuum, with efficiency innovation on one side, evolutionary innovation in the middle, and revolutionary innovation on the other side.

Church Solutions magazine's December issue featured innovation articles as well. Be sure to take a look online for more interesting information.

What's your take on innovation? What innovative seeds are you planting now, and what kind of harvest do you expect in the future from your efforts?