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Idea management, Personal Branding, Innovation, Orange Academy, Kenny Badmus, Kenny Brandmuse
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5 LESSONS A MOUSE CAN TEACH YOU IN IDEA MANAGEMENT
KENNY BADMUS
5 LESSONS A MOUSE CAN TEACH YOU IN IDEA
MANAGEMENT
Kenny Badmus –
The Chief Imagination Officer of Orange Academy, Africa’s 1st practical school of Brand Experience
and Idea Managementwww.cluborangeng.com
IF YOU WANT TO LEARN HOW TO MANAGE YOUR IDEA, GO
LEARN FROM THE MOUSE
I caught a mouse in my trap last night and it begged me for a minute or two before throwing it into the
trash. It wanted to teach me a lesson of my life. Squeaking and rolling its eyes in the pains of the
booby traps, the mouse needed to leave me with 5 major lessons that provoked me to write this piece.
LESSON 1. Mice know how to invade new territories.
INVADE
If you ever wonder how a mouse found its way into your well-locked
apartment, think again. These creatures look for little cracks in the
walls and together, they burrow it further bringing in their kin one at a
time. You are not ready for business if you are not ready to drill
a hole in the competition's.
Case studies: Steve Job's Apple drilled a hole in the IBM concept in
order to launch the Lisa in 1984. Also in that same 1984, Richard
Branson took on the almighty BA by bringing ‘Virginness’ into an industry
plagued by dullness.
Mice smell opportunities in distant places and launch an offensive. If you are coming into an industry
with the same convention of offering, why would anyone do
business with you? You gotta leave some hole in the walls so they can notice you and literarily smell a rat
LESSON 2. Mice know how to litter the place. They are very
fertile. CREATE
There is almost no other way to build your personal branding
without producing what we can see. And number matters here.
How many articles have you written in your area of expertise?
How many Blogs have you contributed to? How many
papers have you submitted to the local institutions in your city? Every 4 week, a mouse is ready
to produce new litters.
You are laughing at the other lady whose work is almost
everywhere online, right? Well, you need to laugh at yourself.
Revolutionists write their thoughts down..
They produce prototypes of their works. They keep doing it. You are as good as your last job four weeks ago. Don’t tell us you have an idea
of how to change an industry. Write it down. Post it online. That’s
littering. .
LESSON 3. Mice can Infect your precious little ones. Be
INFECTIOUS .
When a mouse pee on it, you better leave it. It's called the power of
infectiousness. Don't do things for doing things sake. Leave them with an infectious messaging or style. To
be infectious is to start something that can go places. Online, you call it
viral. What's more viral than a mouse?
Don't just update your Facebook page, leave it with a poison. Tweet with some infectious
words and see the world at your doorstep.
Learn the power of infectious messaging. Learn how to tell story that can be retold.
Check your area of influence on your marketplace. Are you being infectious or you are just a sweet little something that leaves no bite. Pee on that industry and let people smell it from afar. Don't strive to litter for litter's sake. Make sure your works have a
bite to it.
Case study 2: The little Black dress by Coco Channel was a revolution that has never left womenfolk’s closets. Prior to 192O's, no one
would touch a black dress except they are mourning. Coco tapped into the World War 1
fatalities and created a sexy dress women could wear to just about anywhere. That's
being infectious.
Infectious works create movements, cool cultures and counter cultures. They help us make sense of our world without providing an absolute answer to our many questions. They are deeply layered leaving us wanting for more. Above all, they are brutally simple
like the LBD.
LESSON 4. Mice can adapt to a new environment quite faster than fast, making them one of the animals you find anywhere
on earth. ADAPT OR DIE
Like Darwin said. Only the creature that adapt in the circle of life truly survives. Things
change all around us. Economies change. Consuming patterns change. Industries
change. From diskette to CD, from CD to flash drives, from flash drives to clouds. Things are
bound to change and you don't just stand there crying foul and blaming your stepmom
for your misfortunes.
Case study: There was a time we clutched our Encyclopedia in forms of books and CD-
ROM. Today, the Wikipedia has changed all of that. What do you do? Change.
Yea, you heard me. Change. Change your operational model. Change your office. Who needs that over-decorated reception when most of your prospects are online? Change.
Change the way you see work hours for your staff. The cities are getting overpopulated.
Transportations are barely enough for all. Do people have to come to work from 8 to 5pm when they can get most jobs done on their computers at home? Change. Adaptation is
the no 4 rule of the mouse.
LESSON 5. Mice are the lab rats. Experiment. EXPERIMENT WITH FAILURE.
You know the popular saying about the lab rat? It's not a legend. Most laboratories of
human science today have to thank the mice for allowing themselves to go through such
gruesome exercises in the lab. Mice embrace experiment. So should you. You can't know if it will work if you don't experiment with it.
Case Study: History has it that Thomas Edison tried for a thousand times before he got the light bulb right. After many experiments with platinum and other filaments, Thomas Edison returned to Carbon filament to give the world
a long lasting bulb.
I created a workbook out of this to teach the ‘how’ of each lesson. The workbook gives you detailed steps to take. These are techniques gleaned from over thousand best practices in Brand and Idea Management as taught at Orange Academy.
If you want the workbook or you want to attend our next Personal Branding workshop, send a mail to the Program
Officer at Orange Academy via [email protected] or [email protected].