innovation

The Benefits of Having Both Optimists and Pessimists on Your Team

By in Communication, Learning 1 Comment Tags: , , , ,

Friendly_and_Grumpy_Cats

Optimists are positive, upbeat, and enthusiastic. Pessimists are realistic, cautious, and somewhat negative. Optimists are full of ideas. Pessimists tend to oppose new ideas because they focus on all of the bad things that could happen if those ideas were put into practice. Thus, this can sometimes lead to conflict at work.

On a team composed of optimists and pessimists, the optimists might feel angry and discouraged that the pessimists are always shooting holes in their ideas and preventing them from moving forward. The pessimists might feel annoyed that the optimists are always presenting unrealistic, underdeveloped ideas, and forcing them into the role of “the bad guy.” Both groups might secretly wish that they could work in teams in which everyone was like them – all optimists or all pessimists. But according to author Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, this would be bad for the organization.

  • In a group with all optimists, it’s likely that everyone would enthusiastically embrace new ideas without fully thinking through all of the possible ramifications. A phenomenon known as “groupthink” may also come into play. This is when bad decisions are made because the group members want to be positive and cohesive, and don’t want to voice a dissenting opinion.
  • In a group with all pessimists, it’s likely that not a lot of new ideas will be generated, because everyone will be too focused on the negatives. As a result, not a lot of progress will be made and necessary changes will not occur.

Tsipursky believes that the best teams include a mix of people. It’s important to have optimists who are enthusiastically generating ideas, as well as pessimists who play the role of the “devil’s advocate” and point out the flaws in those ideas. This is the only way that a team can develop a truly effective approach.

And according to Tsipursky, you can avoid conflict if everyone on the team has the right mindset. The optimists must understand that they’re needed to generate exciting new ideas – but that every idea needs to be developed and refined. And the pessimists need to know that they’re also essential, because it’s their job to take the ideas and shape them into something viable and effective.

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Tsipursky, G. (n.d.) How optimists and pessimists can get along. Entrepreneur. Retrieved from: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/348115

Do You Have a Messy Desk? You Might Be a Genius.

By in Innovation No Comments Tags: , , ,

Close-up of real life messy desk in office

At work, we recently had a “cleaning day.” My coworkers and I cleaned up our offices and our suite’s common areas. My desk looked pretty good afterwards – for about a week. But then the clutter just started to creep back in. My desk is pretty messy now, as it is most of the time. There are papers and Post-it Notes and doodads all over the place. I just can’t seem to keep it clean. It’s perpetually jumbled.

Do you have a similarly messy desk? If so, you might feel a little guilty about it. (I feel a little ashamed sometimes.) But according to author Geoffrey James, we shouldn’t feel bad about our messy desks. James believes that a messy desk might be linked to brilliance!

James points out that a lot of famous geniuses had messy desks, including Albert Einstein, Mark Twain, Thomas Edison, and Steve Jobs. Einstein was famously quoted as saying, “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?” Keeping an office clean takes time away from other useful endeavors that you could be engaging in. And researchers at the University of Minnesota actually found a connection between messiness and creativity.

The researchers asked two sets of students to generate unique ideas. One group was working in a neat and tidy setting. The other group was working in a messy setting. Both groups came up with the same number of ideas. But the students working in the messy setting had ideas that were more innovative and creative.

So if you have a messy desk, don’t feel guilty about it. Embrace it! It might just be a sign of your genius!

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James, G. (2017, July 9). A messy desk is a sign of genius, according to science. Inc. Retrieved from: https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/a-messy-desk-is-a-sign-of-genius-according-to-scie.html

The Upside of Being Forgetful

By in Living Well No Comments Tags: , ,

Forgetful_Guy

We all forget things from time to time. We forget to return an email or complete a task at work. We forget a project that we worked on a few years ago. We forget clients’ names. And we’re usually pretty hard on ourselves because of it.

But according to recent research, being forgetful is not necessarily bad. It’s not a weakness or a fault. There are actually a lot of positive things associated with forgetting, including the following:

  • It helps you to be more accepting of new ideas. When we forget the way we did something in the past, we become more open to new approaches and new ways of doing things. Forgetting outdated information allows us to learn new and better techniques.
  • It unclutters your mind. When we forget minor things, it’s often because we’re using all of our effort to focus on more important problems and issues. Forgetting prevents us from wasting our energy on minor stuff, and gives us the ability to be more creative, make better decisions, and produce more effective solutions.
  • It makes you feel better. Sometimes, forgetting something embarrassing or vaguely upsetting that might have happened at work or on a past project can be a good thing. It can help you to move on and feel better about yourself and your abilities.

 

Shellenbarger, S. (2019, January 22). Why forgetfulness might actually help you. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from: https://www.wsj.com/articles/forgive-yourself-for-that-thing-you-forgot-11548169275?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=12

 

Who’s to Blame?

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Blame

Quite a long time ago, I realized that when something goes wrong at work, we can waste a lot of time trying to figure out who the “culprit” is. Perhaps the habit is developed in our educational systems! When I was a small boy, some teachers would refuse to let anything go until someone owned up. Otherwise, everyone would be punished! We were placed in a horrible position knowing that we’d be humiliated and punished if we stepped forward, and that the equally awful alternative was to see all of our friends punished if we didn’t. I resolved never to behave like those teachers when I grew up and went to work.

In the workplace, I try to probe deeply enough to gather information so that we can avoid the mistake in the future, but it’s never really beneficial to single out the person who made the mistake. It’s counterproductive because if you inflict pain on the “culprit,” you’re encouraging people to cover up mistakes, and you never discover the cause of the problem. As a result, we repeat mistakes and we never improve. I have a wonderful colleague who has absolutely no problem telling me when she thinks she’s messed up (she usually hasn’t), and we roll up our sleeves and figure out how to fix things. Mistakes are part of the cost of doing business, and we can embrace them as opportunities to learn.

When I was driving in to work today, I listened to an interview that reaffirmed these beliefs. Ed Catmull, the president of Pixar Animation Studios and Walt Disney Animation Studios was talking about the book he co-authored, Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration. He told a great story about a mistake that happened while they were making the film, Toy Story. Someone deleted all the files, and, for a while, they thought they’d lost everything. Toy Story was Pixar’s first film, and the loss of the files was devastating. Losing these files wouldn’t just be the end of the project; it might be the end of the whole company. 

In his interview, Catmull discussed the futility of finding the culprit and added some very valuable insight. There is very rarely a single person that can be blamed for a mistake. Certainly, someone actually deleted the files. They never found out or bothered to find out who that was. The team reflected that there were other things wrong. Wasn’t it a mistake to have a system that would allow one person to destroy a whole project? Wasn’t it a mistake not to have made sure that the back-up systems were working properly? By focusing on the system rather than the culprit, the team was able to strategically figure out how to make their business better.

As it happened, one member of the team had taken all the files home because she’d been planning to work remotely. So, she had a back-up that nobody knew about. She stepped forward and they found that almost nothing had been lost. Toy Story became the top grossing film on its opening weekend and went on to earn $361 million worldwide. Today, many critics think of it as one of the best animated films ever made! In 2006, Disney bought Pixar for $7.4 billion.

Catmull, E., & Wallace, A. (2014). Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the unseen forces that stand in the way of true inspiration. London: Transworld Publishers Limited.

 

Innovation and Problem Solving

By in Innovation and Problem Solving, JHU No Comments Tags: , ,

Innovation

There’s an old adage that goes, “don’t re-invent the wheel” when it comes to creating new concepts, programs, or projects. Instead, try making something better through innovation! A simple way to define innovation is to think of it as problem solving.

Contrary to what many people may think, innovation is different from invention, in that when you innovate, you’re creating something new by applying a new method to an existing invention. It requires you to use problem-solving skills to see the flaws in an existing invention, or to envision better ways of using existing inventions.

Want to learn more about innovation and problem solving? Click here to access the Johns Hopkins Innovation and Problem Solving e-course.

 

Multipliers

By in Leadership No Comments Tags: , , ,

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Multipliers bring out the intelligence in others. They build collective, viral intelligence in organizations. Everyone around them gets smarter and more capable. Multipliers invoke each person’s unique intelligence and create an atmosphere of genius — innovation, productive effort, and collective intelligence.

There are also Diminishers in many organizations. These leaders are absorbed in their own intelligence, stifle others, and deplete the organization of crucial intelligence and capability.

While Diminishers underutilize people and leave capability on the table, Multipliers increase intelligence in people and in organizations. Multipliers leverage their resources. By extracting people’s full capability, Multipliers get twice the capability from people than do Diminishers.

We’ve all experienced these two types of leaders. What type of leader are you right now? Are you a genius or are you a genius maker?

You Can Be a Multiplier

You can choose to think like a Multiplier and operate like one. For Multipliers, there are four active practices that, together, catalyze and sustain this cycle of attraction:

  1. Look for talent everywhere. Multipliers cast a wide net and find talent in many settings and diverse forms, knowing that intelligence has many facets.
  2. Find people’s native genius. A native genius is something that people do, not only exceptionally well, but absolutely naturally. They do it easily (without extra effort) and freely (without condition).
  3. Utilize people at their fullest. Once a Multiplier has uncovered the native genius of others, he or she looks for opportunities that demand that capability. Some of these are obvious; others require a fresh look at the business or the organization. Once they’ve engaged the person’s true genius, they shine a spotlight on them so other people can see their genius in action.
  4. Remove the blockers. Multipliers go beyond just giving people resources. They remove the impediments, which quite often means removing the people who are blocking and impeding the growth of others.

Adapted from Executive Book Summaries, January 2011

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