Designing The One-Week Team Sabbatical That Will Transform Your Company

The image FAST COMPANY chose to lead this article isn't quite representative of the ideas discussed. They should have chosen something more like this ...

  

This article is about getting away from it all in order to work together and plan ahead. It outlines how to organise off-site sabbaticals, how to prepare for them and even gives you the debating points to counter the nay sayers who say you can't afford the time or the people.

Key points:
- Give everyone 3 months notice.
- Allow everyone to contribute the project ideas to be work-shopped in this lead time.
- Define project vision and scope in the lead time. Allocate team leaders to be responsible for this.
- Scope projects rigorously.
- The projects should provide value for your team and clients.
- Get away from it all, the hum drum, the distractions and the routine and go off-site.
- Make sure people get to have some fun.

Cohesive teams should expect productive efforts and innovation roadmaps for the years ahead. Troubled teams should expect some catharsis.

For the full details and case studies check out: Fast Company

Innovation Is about arguing, not brainstorming.

the idea behind brainstorming is right. To innovate, we need environments that support imaginative thinking, where we can go through many crazy, tangential, and even bad ideas to come up with good ones. We need to work both collaboratively and individually. We also need a healthy amount of heated discussion, even arguing. We need places where someone can throw out a thought, have it critiqued, and not feel so judged that they become defensive and shut down. Yet this creative process is not necessarily supported by the traditional tenets of brainstorming: group collaboration, all ideas held equal, nothing judged.

So if not from brainstorming, where do good ideas come from?

via fastcodesign.com

I heartily agree with this article. Read on for the protocols of workplace discourse and critique: http://www.fastcodesign.com/1669329/dont-brainstorm-argue

Demo or die -- innovation versus invention

We were talking "innovation" at work so I thought I would pull out this article. Innovation is such a buzz word it seems, to me at least; it loses its meaning each time it is uttered. But it's meaning is concrete.

"innovation is more than just the generation of novel ideas or the dissemination of knowledge, it is about making a change or doing something in a new way."

This distinction is crucial. Novel ideas by themselves have no impact on society. It is their implementation that separates invention from innovation.

In other words, good ideas are not enough. In my day job as Fairfax's resident mad professor we have a battle cry of "Demo or Die!" which I feel sums up the sentiment accurately. If we can't demonstrate implementation, then the idea doesn't have legs.

via smh.com.au

published in the SMH September 24, 2011: http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/innovation/blogs/smoke--mirrors/australia-a-nati...

Do you have a Chief Ideas Officer?

GE launched an intersting campaign site recently on "creative innovation" with short videos including an intervuew with Edward de Bono who talks innovation; namely:

  • about simplification being a skill
  • about the need to make someone responsible for simplicity
  • about someone needing to be responsible for innovation  - and their remit being to connect those with ideas to those who will receive and action those ideas.

Its a short video, so spare 2 minutes to check it out.

Are Australian's too risk averse to be innovative?

In an editorial for the SMH Josie Gibson addresses the questions -- just how innovative are Australian businesses, how innovative are they prepared to be or is the default state to go second and sit comfortably while others test the waters first?

What is increasingly clear is that the terms ‘‘innovation’’ and ‘‘employee engagement’’ are inherently linked. Innovation is, at its core, a leadership responsibility, and therein lies the real opportunity. Harness people’s natural curiosity and capabilities and the race is half won.

Research published last year by Harvard professor Clayton Christensen and his colleagues found that organisations regarded as high-performing by industry peers and investors actively encourage the behaviours that produce innovation. The strategy is clear and widely communicated. Responsibility and accountability are pushed down to those with direct carriage, leaving executives clear to survey the horizon. Questioning is encouraged and experimentation is the norm. Reasonable failure is not a sackable offence.

As Australians, by default, we gravitate to our comfort zone. But we have the resourcefulness, pragmatism and resilience that come from living in a harsh land far from just about anywhere perceived to matter.

...

Innovation is often couched in sweeping national terms – “frameworks” – or technological jargon that intimidate and divert leaders from the real task, which is to motivate their people to improve things and try new approaches.

The most thoughtful leaders I’ve met rarely mention innovation; they accept change as part of the operating environment. They constantly scan for trends and future opportunities. Their management style  provides clarity about big goals and autonomy for those under them. Their remuneration and reward structures encourage staff to collaborate, question, solve problems and strive to do well.

Today’s good leaders know that the only way to steer through uncertainty and ambiguity is to  focus on the big questions – “What might the world look like in five or 25 years, and what are the implications for us?” – instead of adopting somebody else’s stock answer, or being diverted by short-term market or political sentiment.

via Read the full article which contains links to research by GE on the subject. Via SMH -- Josie Gibson, The importance of being innovative

Growing too fast? Install a portal.

There's no news yet as to how this portal is being utilised but its a nice idea spawned by the desire to make an expanding team feel more connected.

Atlassian is growing…fast.  We expanded into a new floor and I was given the challenge of making it feel more Atlassian.  I wanted to make something decorative, but also functional.  Keeping the company connected becomes more challenging the bigger we grow, we span multiple buildings so some teams can go days without seeing each other.  Staff do chat through Instant Messaging (IM) frequently, but people communicate more effectively when they are face-to-face.
via blogs.atlassian.com

The importance of making it simple for staff

Tesco, a UK supermarket chain has 3 rules for innovation:

The first is that innovation must in some way be better for customers; second is that it should ultimately prove cheaper for Tesco; and, finally, the innovation must make things simpler for staff.

Innovators within Tesco are made accountable for simplicity -- and this does not mean training staff which can in fact perpetuate complexity. Nor does "usability" and "human factors" solve the problem as they evaluate but do not generate simple innovations that staff can execute. So how do Tesco deliver on their simplicity ethos? They make their people accountable for it.

Accountability means that someone has sat down with the process owner or appropriate business team leaders and asked, "What does 'simple for staff' mean and how do we measure it?"

Pick whatever measures of effectiveness you like — time, number of steps, rework, etc. — but doesn't "simpler for staff" deserve respect comparable to "better for customers" and "cheaper for the firm"? After all, those get measured.

Implications for service design

Can you apply the Tesco heuristics to your concepts? Do your strategies and concepts present improvements for customers, productivity for the business and simplicity for staff?

Read the complete report at blogs.hbr.org