YOUR CREATIVE KICKSTART FOR 2019 - ideatime.co.uk · Download the free playbook for Creative Kickstart for 2019 here – kickstart-2019/ - no email address needed. A playbook, as

© 2019 The Big Bang Partnership Ltd | ideatime.co.uk Page 1

YOUR CREATIVE KICKSTART FOR 2019T H E P L A Y B O O K

IDEATIME.CO.UK

Designed to help you step back from your business for a few minutes a day, and see things from a different perspective.

© 2019 The Big Bang Partnership Ltd | ideatime.co.ukPage 2

Hello and welcome to the programme! My name’s Jo North and I’m the author of the Idea Time® innovation programme.

To get you warmed up and ready to hit the ground running in 2019, here’s my free 6-day programme, Creative Kickstart for 2019.

As you work through the Creative Kickstart activities, you will experience a mini- transformation every day, achieved by looking at your business from different perspectives.

Investing only 30 minutes a day for 6 days will give you a flying start to 2019, ready to skyrocket your business success. You will benefit from fun, science-backed and effective facts, creative thinking activities and videos, as well as access to me direct via the Creative Kickstart for 2019 private Facebook Group. I will be popping up in the Facebook group from time to time too, to chat on live video.

MONDAY - HELLO AND WELCOME

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As you work through the Creative Kickstart activities, you will experience a mini- transformation every day, achieved by looking at your business from different perspectives.

© 2019 The Big Bang Partnership Ltd | ideatime.co.uk© 2019 The Big Bang Partnership Ltd | ideatime.co.uk Page 3

Monday – today – is all about getting set up and ready to start. Here are 4 simple steps for you to take today to get set up for the rest of the week:

GET READY TO START NOW

Download the free playbook for Creative Kickstart for 2019 here – https://ideatime.co.uk/creative-kickstart-2019/ - no email address needed. A playbook, as you probably know, details the range of moves that a team, usually in sports, has mapped out in order to achieve the target outcome – the win. My playbooks are designed to help you to step back from your business for a few minutes, and see things from a different perspective and gain new insight by asking you to answer a small number of really powerful questions. Once you have this new insight, the playbook then walks you through a really quick and easy process to work out how you can take action simply, quickly and effectively to create a step change in your performance.

Make sure you follow the daily video posts on Youtube (IdeaTimeStudio), Linkedin (Dr. Jo North) or Facebook (@ideatime1), and on the private Facebook group( h t t p s : // w w w . f a c e b o o k . c o m / g r o u p s /CreativeKickstart2019/). It would be brilliant if you could post a quick hello to introduce you and your business in the private Facebook group.

Grab resources such as paper,coloured pens and sticky notes so that you’re ready for action!

Make sure you plan in 30 minutes each day between now and Sunday for the programme. You will spend this as quality time to work on your business. It doesn’t sound much, but with focus and consistency it will add to make a significant difference by the end of the week.

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Tuesday – Your Ambition

Wednesday – Creative Juices!

Thursday - Stretching and Layering for Better Thinking

Friday – Ideas: Your Competitive Currency

Saturday – Creative Thinking for Cost Efficiency

Sunday – Your Power Moves – A Compelling Plan for Success

If you have any questions at all, please get in touch with me at any time via email: [email protected], or tag me in the Creative Kickstart private Facebook group.

THE AGENDA

My playbooks are designed to help you to step back from your business for a few minutes, and see things from a different perspective.


The objective for today is to capture and review your thoughts on your present situation and your goals for the future, using the SOAR technique.

You will then be able to use the new tools and insights from the other sessions in the Idea Time Creative Kickstart programme to help you to work towards your aspirations and the outcomes you want to achieve, tailoring this programme to meet your specific needs.

In order to generate new ideas you need the skills and knowledge and, very importantly, the ability for flexible thinking. You will learn about some tools that will help you – although it’s important to appreciate that the tools themselves don’t give you the creative ideas, their role is to switch on the thinking behaviours that do.

First, you will spend about 5 minutes reading today’s Crucial Core (below), which focuses on reviewing where you are right now and the aspirations that you have.

If you’d like to do any further reading, I have provided you with Bumper Bonus Bits at the end of this section. Reading these is optional, but if you’d like to have a look at your leisure you’re free to do so, either before you begin today’s Idea Time activity, or at a later stage.

Your Idea Time activity today is a SOAR analysis. It focuses on current strengths and visions for the future. The Idea Time activity is likely to take you between 10-15 minutes. Get all your thoughts out and onto paper so that you can see them visually and prioritise where you’d like to begin. Try to work intuitively, relax and have fun with the process.

TUESDAY -YOUR AMBITION OBJECTIVE FOR TODAY

OVERVIEW


Depending on how you want to use this programme, you will use the SOAR tool to reflect on the current position of either:

• Your professional career;• Your team, or business.

You will then build on this activity throughout the rest of the programme, using the tools and tech-niques in each session to perform even better at work, so that you benefit both your career and your business.

Try to work intuitively, relax and have fun with the process.

Get all your thoughts out and onto paper so that you can see them visually and prioritise where you’d like to begin.


Focusing on strengths can produce more positive results than spending time trying to correct weaknesses. Where you can, only correct weaknesses if they are holding you back in some way.

Getting your thoughts down on paper helps you to gain a different perspective on them.

Being clear about where new ideas will help you most will help to make your creative thinking more effective and purposeful.

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Now it’s time to think about what you’d like to achieve in 2019, using the SOAR approach.SOAR is a tool from the field of positive psychology1. The letters stand for: Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations and Results.

SOAR is strengths-based, consistent with an approach known as ‘Appreciative Inquiry’. This focuses on achieving successful change management by identifying what is working well and then doing more of it, because people (and therefore organisations) will grow in whichever direction people focus their attention.

1 For more about the origins and details of the SOAR technique, read The Thin Book of SOAR: Building Strengths-Based Strategy, by Stavros & Hinrichs.

TOP TAKE-AWAYS

CRUCIAL CORE


SOAR is an alternative to the more common SWOT analysis tool (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats). The weaknesses and threats in SWOT are reframed as opportunities in the SOAR approach.

When conducting a SOAR analysis, the basic questions to be answered are:

1. What are my /our greatest strengths?

2. What are my / our best opportunities?

3. What is my / our preferred future, or aspirations?

4. What are the measurable results that will tell me /us I’ve / we’ve achieved the vision of the future?

SOAR is about...

• Action

• Strengths

• Becoming our best

• Innovation

• Planning

• Results

• Achieving the good vs. avoiding error

WHAT IS SOAR?

SOAR is a tool from the field of positive psychology. The letters stand for: Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations and Results.


IDEA TIME Complete your own SOAR analysis for your business here.


Strengths:

• What advantages do you have?• What do you do better than anyone else?• What unique resources do you have access to?• What do others in your industry see as your

strength? • What factors are helping you succeed?

Opportunities:

• Where are the good opportunities facing you? What partnerships might you develop?

• What new growth opportunities might you pursue? What are the interesting trends you are aware of? e.g. social, technological, economic, political

Aspirations:

• How will you build on and expand your strengths? What improvements do you want to see?

• Where will you be in 3 to 5 years?• What accomplishments will you have achieved?

How do you want others to perceive you?• What new things do you want to consider?

Results:

• What difference will you make?• What does success look like?• What measures of success will be most important?

SOAR PROMPTS Questions to help: What do

you do better than anyone else?


Before you begin to generate ideas, it is really helpful if you have thought through the outline of what you want to achieve. Doing so means that your idea generation will be more focused and purposeful. In fact, we know from research that just setting some focus areas, which in fact are a form of constraint, is likely to enhance your creativity! Whilst this might seem counterintuitive at first, it actually makes sense. Having complete freedom and infinite possibilities can leave us feeling somewhat overwhelmed and unsure where to start, whereas focusing on a specific challenge can actually help to get our creative juices flowing. Focus removes what is sometimes called the paralysis of choice.

Creativity is the use of imagination or fresh ideas to create something new, such as a product, service, opportunity or solution.

Appreciative Inquiry is an approach that helps us to be curious about situations and possibilities from a positive perspective, without being unrealistic or overly optimistic. It uses guided questions, focused on four key areas, which are:

BUMPER BONUS BITS

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Discover - to identify the things that are working well.Example: Which areas of the presentation do you think resonated the most?

Imagine - to think about new ways of applying what works well to other areas.Example: How else could we include the most successful elements of our presentation?

Design - to create an action plan.Example: How can we use the most successful parts of our presentation in our next session with the client?

Deliver - to set measurements for success.Example: How will we assess the impact that our presentation approach has with our client?

4The structure of the SOAR technique is based on these four question types.


FURTHER READING

We know from research that just setting some focus areas, which in fact are a form of constraint, is likely to enhance your creativity!

Appreciative Inquiry can be empowering and encourage proactivity. It can help with creativity because it complements some of the key requirements for great idea generation, which include deferring judgement, being affirmative and constructive, and unlocking potential.

If you’d like to learn more about AI, here are some recommended resources:

• Appreciative Inquiry, by Lori Pritchard

• Appreciative Inquiry, A Positive Revolution in Change, by David Cooperrider and Diana Whitney

• Appreciative Inquiry for Change Management, by Sarah Lewis


The objective for this session is to think about what ideas actually are, and how they are made, so that you can use this understanding to have even more, even better ones and skyrocket your performance by thinking more creatively.

Creativity is a skill that can be learned and developed.

By proactively focusing on the quality and diversity of the stimuli you experience, you will significantly improve your creative output.

Creativity tools and techniques will help you to have ideas, although it’s important to appreciate that the tools themselves don't give you the creative ideas, their role is to switch on the behaviours that do.

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Think about when you have had some of your best ideas. The chances are that they came to you while you were doing something unrelated, and especially when you were more relaxed.

WEDNESDAY - CREATIVE JUICES

First, you will spend about 5-10 minutes reading today’s Crucial Core (below) which focuses on what ideas are, why they are important, and how they are created. You will then go on to learn some top tips, all supported by scientific research and evidence, that you can action straightaway to improve your own creativity.

If you’d like to do any further reading, I have provided you with the Bumper Bonus Bits at the end of this section. Reading these is optional, but if you’d like to have a look at your leisure you’re free to do so, either before you begin today’s Idea Time activity, or at a later stage.

This week’s Idea Time activity is a reflective exercise to get you started and should take between 10-15 minutes.

OBJECTIVE FOR TODAY

OVERVIEW

TOP TAKEAWAYS


An idea is when different thoughts connect for the very first time. As Steve Jobs famously said, creativity is just about connecting things.

Good ideas are literally the results of everything in your head.

What actually happens in that ‘lightbulb’ moment when you have an idea? Scientists have studied this process using neuroimaging and electrophysiological techniques.

The creative spot for our flashes of insight happen in a brain lobe called the superior temporal gyrus. Our left brain has short dendroids that are great at pulling in easily accessible information from nearby, but the dendroids in the right brain reach out much more widely and can connect more disparate and more creative thoughts and concepts to combine them in a new way, giving birth to ideas that are pulled back into the superior temporal gyrus.

The frontal lobes of the brain come into play as well. Think about when you have had some of your best ideas. The chances are that they came to you while you were doing something unrelated, and especially when you were more relaxed, doing a repetitive task, or when your mind was wandering. This is because, when we are focused, or actively engaged in working in more deliberate mode, the frontal lobes act as a sort of gatekeeper to prevent apparently non-related information or thoughts interrupting our process. But when our minds wander, or we relax, our frontal lobes take the opportunity to go on standby, which means that ideas can flow more freely and new thought connections, or ideas, can happen.

Good ideas are literally the results of everything in your head

What is an idea, and what happens when we have one?CRUCIAL CORE


Researchers such as Kounios, a professor of Psychology, have discovered that literally milliseconds before these moments, just before you have your idea, your brain momentarily shuts down its visual area, in a sort of ‘brain blink’. In fact, all of us reduce visual stimulus when we need to have ideas, such as having to think on our feet to respond to a difficult question, which we do by looking down before we respond.

Shutting off visual stimulus allows us to focus on looking inwards just before the idea is created. But increasing visual stimulus at other times, for example by mindfully observing more of what is going on around us, increases creativity measured by the number, originality and usefulness of the ideas we have.

As well as consciously observing your surroundings more, other simple things that you can do help yourself to generate more ideas are to use your emotional intelligence to keep your mood positive, and to get more sleep.

The reasons are that when we worry, we trigger more analytical and rational thinking, which gets in the way of us having fresh ideas. And when we sleep, our memories are processed and our brains subconsciously make connections between our thoughts and experiences from the day. Getting a healthy amount of restful sleep, especially REM, promotes creativity.

Those moments when we are just about to drift off to sleep, and when we are waking up in the morning, are golden opportunities for ideas and solutions to problems because our brains are in the zone of making connections between any unresolved or disjointed thoughts and information from our day.

HAVE YOU HEARD OF BRAIN BLINK?

HAVING MORE GREAT IDEAS DOESN’T HAVE TO BE HARD WORK


Our challenge is that, like other aspects of how we are made, our brains are inclined to take the path of least resistance, and do what comes easiest and most naturally to us. So we literally can get into a rut with regard to how we think.

To be purposefully creative, it helps us to go out of our way sometimes to deliberately disrupt how we normally approach things, to challenge our brains to take on new information and work from different perspectives. This can feel uncomforta-ble and clunky at times when we start to do this, but that’s good news because it means that we are waking up different parts of our minds! And as with any exercise, the more we disrupt our thinking, the better and more fluid our thought processes will become, and ideas will begin to flow more naturally, in the same way that when you start to lift weights in the gym at first it feels challenging and heavy, and your muscles become sore soon after your sessions. But by lifting the weights regularly, your muscles strengthen and the same weight feels less challenging over time, at which point you can increase the weight so that you continually feel challenged and grow in strength.

To be purposefully creative, it helps us to go out of our way sometimes to deliber-ately disrupt how we normally approach things, to challenge our brains to take on new information and work from different perspectives.

AVOID THE PATH OF LEAST RESISTANCE


AVOID THE PATH OF LEAST RESISTANCE

Some really easy and surprisingly highly effective creativity hacks include:

CREATIVITY HACKS

- Focus on getting the right amount – i.e. 7-8 hours – of good quality, restfulsleep.

Disrupting or challenging your routines from time to time. For example, takinga different route to work, working from a different location, reading andwatching fresh content that we might not usually consider.

Relaxing your frontal lobes for a while :-) and making sure you build in some quality downtime every single week, regardless of how busy you are. In fact, studies show that leisure time spent on active hobbies, or those involving some skill or ‘mastery’, improves in-work creative performance as measured by the quality, volume and originality of the work-related solutions that peoplecontribute.

Incorporating short breaks throughout the working day to allow your frontallobes to go on stand-by for a short while. This only needs to be for a fewminutes 5-6 times throughout the day, ideally every 50-60 minutes.

Actively seeking out new and challenging experiences, from attending a key conference inside or outside your line of work, studying something new, such as music, a craft, a new language, dance classes, to traveling for newexperiences.

Mindfulness meditation slows down our brain activity, helps us to balance ourcognitive functions and notice more of the details around us. It can help in different ways at different stages of the creative process:

By meditating before you go into idea generation, you can promote divergent thinking, a mode of thinking that opens up your mind to new possibilities and ideas.

When you want to reflect on, or further develop, your ideas, walking meditation can be a great way of working them through without any conscious effort or attention to your problem or opportunity.

More generally, practising regular meditation can help us to become more likely to notice those moments of creative inspiration when we have them. It quietens the mind, which means that that we have clearer visibility of our insights as they come up.

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IDEA TIME

Using your head as an office isn’t helpful because it clogs up your thinking capacity.

You can also use creative thinking techniques to get your brain working more creatively. Writing instead of typing is great because it stimulates our mind in a different way. Adding in shapes, colour, doodles and images, drawing and creating connections also help. You can think more creatively without not much effort simply by going old school with a pad and pens for a while!

Your Idea Time session today is get everything in your head in relation to your aspirations (from your SOAR activity yesterday) out onto paper, with pens and paper, and possibly sticky notes, depending on which activity you choose.

Using your head as an office isn’t helpful because it clogs up your thinking capacity. Getting things down on paper lets your brain know that your thoughts are in a safe place, so that further thoughts, ideas and solutions - i.e. creativity! - can follow, instead of having the same thoughts going round and round in your mind, and getting in the way.

To help you do this, I’ve given you two creative options to choose from:

1. Mind mapping2. Sticky note brain dump

Pick the method that appeals to you the most. They each achieve the same goal, but in different ways.Here’s how to do each one. If you’re familiar with each technique, you can skip this explanation and just crack on.


The term mind mapping was devised by Tony Buzan for the representation of ideas, notes, information and so on in radial tree diagrams, sometimes also called spider diagrams.

Either watch the short video that shows you the process, or you can follow these steps.

Write the title for your mind map in the middle of the page – “my aspirations for 2019”.

Then write down immediately everything that comes to mind as you think of it around your title, connecting it to the centre with a branch, and linking similar or connected items together with sub-branches.

Continue in this way for ever finer sub-branches, going into as much detail as you can to really empty your head and get into the nitty gritty.

If you find that you want to put an item in more than one place, you could just copy it into each place or simply draw a line to show the connections.

Use colour, doodles and to have fun with your mind map. This stimulates more right brain, creative thinking.

When you have completed your mind map, write a sentence or two that summarizes what you notice about the items that you have come up with.

OPTION 1 - MIND MAPPING

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--You can use mind mapping for groups as well as individually.


This activity is super simple and effective. You will need plenty of sticky notes and pens.Either watch the video that shows you the process, or you can follow these steps. The activity has a few key stages. I will explain each as we go along.

If at this stage you think you have finished, it probably is just a mental pause. The best thing for you to do is to look out of the window or move around briefly because you are likely to have a second burst of thinking.

OPTION 2 - STICKY NOTE BRAIN DUMP

Focus on the challenge of achieving your aspirations for 2019.

Take a pile of post-it notes and a pen, and get as many items down on the post-it notes as you can, writing only one item on each post-it note so that you have a pile of written notes in front of you (as many as you can!).

If at this stage you think you have finished, it probably is just a mental pause. The best thing for you to do is to look out of the window or move around briefly (but not look at your phone, laptop or disturb other people!) because you are likely to have a second burst of thinking. This is really important because it means you will get more thoughts down than just the obvious front-of-mind ones that come out early on. Allow 5-10 minutes for this step.

When you have got a pile of sticky notes and genuinely have run out of steam, “cluster” your notes into similar themes on a large sheet of paper, a bit like playing the card game “Snap”. Things that don’t go with anything else can be included as a cluster of one item.

Put a ring around each cluster and give it a name that summarizes the content.

Write a sentence or two that summarizes what you notice about the items thatyou have come up with.

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-You can use this technique as a group as well as individually, getting everyone to work alone and then combining them into similar themes at the end. This is a really good technique for...

...getting input from everyone. The noisy ones have much less opportunity to dominate!

...getting all the thoughts that people have out of their heads and onto paper.

...getting you started. It’s a very accessible technique that is easy to run.

...getting people talking and engaged.

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It is reported that Larry Page had the idea for Google aged 22, in the middle of the night, when he had the vision of being able to download the whole web and just keep the links. A great example of how sleep and relaxing the frontal lobe helps us to come up with ideas!

BUMPER BONUS BITS SLEEP IN ACTION

Did you know that losing your inhibitions really can help you to think more creatively? Specifically, I mean losing some of your cognitive inhibitions, rather than behavioral ones.

Inhibitions are those conscious or unconscious restraints, or filters, in our thinking that prevent is from taking action.

Behavioral inhibitions are useful because they prevent us doing socially inappropriate things.

Cognitive inhibitions are useful because they stop us from overprotecting all the masses of information that our senses are continually absorbing: light levels;. This includes many kinds of noise; full details of what we see; our background thoughts and so on. We are literally absorbing hundreds and hundreds of items of external and internal data at any moment. Cognitive inhibition means that that we are able to filter all of the background stuff out so that we can instead focus on what matters to us to survive or to perform.

To be creative, we need both freedom and constraint in our thinking.

Whilst cognitive inhibition is really helpful for us most of the time, some of the information that we are naturally filtering out can be quite useful from a creativity perspective. We can learn to consciously turn our cognitive filters down to access more information for greater insight. How we do this is by changing the electrical frequency of our brain activity. Normally at work, when we are ‘switched on’ and engaged in active thinking, our brains are using high frequency, low amplitude beta waves. To access a more relaxed and open mental state, we need to slow down the frequency and increase the amplitude of the electrical activity in our brains. These slower frequencies and wide amplitudes are alpha waves (when we are engaged in relaxed, reflective thinking) and theta waves (a more drowsy state than alpha waves).

Research by the late Colin Martindale and his team shows that highly creative people access low frequency states more readily. The good news is that this is something that we can all practise and get better at. Here are a couple of evidence-based, research-supported ways of losing some of your cognitive inhibitions and engaging in lower frequency brain states.

LOSING YOUR INHIBITIONS


If you’d like to learn more about meditation and walking meditation, here are some really great resources:

Turning the Mind into an Ally, by Sakyong Mip-ham.

The Miracle of Mindfulness, by Thich Nhat Hanh.

How to Meditate, by Pema Chodron.

Meditation for Beginners, by Jack Kornfield.

How to Walk, by Thich Nhat Hanh.

To be creative, we need both freedom and constraint in our thinking.

MEDITATION AND WALKING MEDITATION


MEDITATION AND WALKING MEDITATION

The objective for today is to understand the importance of stretching and layering your ideas, to make sure that you don’t necessarily go with the most obvious and predictable solution, as it’s not necessarily the best one for moving you or your business forward.

Getting your early ideas out of your head and onto paper clears the way for fresh ideas to follow.

It is important not to be satisfied wIth your first set of ideas. Instead, build on them, stretch them and improve on them.

Using a combination of different idea generation and development techniques to address same challenge or opportunity will enrich your creative thinking.

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THURSDAY - STRETCHING AND LAYERING FOR BETTER THINKING

First, you will spend about 5-10 minutes reading this week’s Crucial Core (below) which focuses on two creativity precepts:

1. ‘Explore the givens’; and2. ‘Cycle often, and close late.’

You will then go on to learn some top tips, all supported by scientific research and evidence, that you can action straightaway to improve your own creativity.

If you’d like to do any further reading, as always I have provided you with the Bumper Bonus Bits at the end of this section.

This week’s Idea Time activity is a creative exercise to apply your learning from this week to building on the SOAR analysis and mind mapping or sticky note brain dumping you did earlier this week. It should take between 10-15 minutes.

OBJECTIVE FOR TODAY

OVERVIEW TOP TAKEAWAYS


Idea proliferation is all about increasing the number of available ideas, from which a small number high-quality ideas can be selected for further development. Quantity on its own is not enough to generate quality, however. Essential ingredients for generating potential creative solutions are to:

1. Make sure that you thoroughly understand the different dimensions of the challenge you want to work on, potentially by defining it as tightly as you can: and

2. To move away from coming up with ideas that come to mind relatively easily, going beyond the most obvious solutions, and stretching to think of approaches that you haven’t considered previously.

Writing down all you know, followed by all the thoughts and ideas you have in your mind about the challenge, is a good way of clearing your head to make way for fresh and more innovative thinking.

Once you get into more idea generation and idea development, remember the importance of two key creativity precepts:

1. ‘Explore the givens’; and

2. ‘Cycle often, and close late.’

Quantity on its own is not enough to generate quality

CRUCIAL CORE


Exploring the givens means questioning what might seem to be obvious, and breaking down your challenge or opportunity to better understand it, asking questions about it such as ‘Why?’ and ‘How?’.

This is important because many challenges seem problematic due to the assumptions we have made about them. Our assumptions are not always correct or up-to-date due to our relevance bias, which our brains evolved to filter our information that we think will be less useful for us. Our relevance bias prevents us from becoming overwhelmed, but the downside is that sometimes we do not recognize important or helpful information. Thoroughly exploring the challenge that you have set yourself, and challenging your own assumptions about it, will undoubtedly lead to a better quality solution and outcome.

Thoroughly exploring the challenge that you have set yourself, and challenging your own assumptions about it, will undoubtedly lead to a better quality solution and outcome.

Get all your thoughts out and onto paper so that you can see them visually and prioritise where you’d like to begin.

EXPLORE THE GIVENS


‘Cycling often’ means that we can generate ideas, refine them, learn, and continue to repeat the cycle to build the most optimal solution with the time and resources available.

‘Closing late’ means making the final decision at the last possible moment. This has the benefit of us being able to include last-minute information and updates, networking, iterating, being open to unexpected events and so on.

The best route from A to B is not necessarily a straight line. Problem solving may involve iteration and blind alleys, often going backwards for a while in order to move forwards, but a number of factors can get in the way of us taking the time to explore out options fully. These are:

An expectation, imposed on ourselves, or by others, that we should be decisive, and have the ability to make good decisions instantly. Rapid decision-making may be genuinely necessary in fast-moving, emergency situations, but the time pressures in most business situations do not really fall into these categories.

Being so pleased or relieved that we have our ‘solution’ when we come across our first potential options sometimes gets in the way of us seeing that a little more time ad extra effort might have given us the opportunity to discover a better one. However, we can’t keep going and going, of course, or else nothing would be decided or get done, but often we can go directly from idea to solution too readily.

The enthusiasm for starting an exciting, new project. Remember, though, that it’s generally more cost effective to generate big, new ideas at the beginning of any process to achieve something new than towards the end. The costs of rejecting an early idea are much less than the costs of abandoning one that is well into development. By ‘cycling often’, you can keep your implementation costs lower.

We all have to balance the benefits from solving the problem against the costs of the problem-solving process. Idea generation and development are only worth doing if we have put enough time and effort into it to come up with a reasonable solution, but not so much that we get into diminishing returns.

CYCLE OFTEN, AND CLOSE LATE

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Now it’s time to build on your work from the previous days. If you haven’t got your work handy, it would be a good idea to get it now so that you can use it in this Idea Time activity. You’ll also need a pen and paper, and some more sticky notes if you have them and want to use them (but they aren’t essential).

1. Get out the mind map or sticky note braindump from yesterday.

2. Identify all the things that you’ve written down that are:

a. Helping you (mark them with a tick).

b. Hindering you (mark them with a red dot).

For each of your items in a. and b., ask yourself why these items are helping or hindering you, by completing the following statement for each one, and writing down your answers as you go:

This is helping / hindering me because....

3. Now ask yourself these questions and make notes on your answers.

a. How could I leverage this? (for ‘help’ items).

b. How could I improve or get round this? (for ‘hinder’ items).

Simply asking yourself, and answering these questions, and writing down your responses, creates new layers of ideas that will help to move your forward. These are very simple steps, and almost seem common sense. The reality, though, is that in practice, because we are busy, or short of time, we go straight from problem mode to solution mode, and then directly to action, without stopping to develop our understanding of the challenge at hand, or developing ideas for potential new, different and possibly better solutions.

IDEA TIME

Simply asking yourself, and answering these questions, and writing down your responses, creates new layers of ideas that will help to move your forward.


Of course, the two creative precepts you’ve been thinking about in this ses-sion shouldn’t be confused with ‘analysis paralysis’.

Analysis paralysis is when we overthink a situation to such an extent that we don’t move forward. It can happen for a number of reasons, for example, feeling that we have either so much information that we feel overwhelmed, or not enough data to make a good choice on our next steps. Decision-making is stalled, and progress is frustratingly slow, or there is no progress at all. The inaction it causes can lead to missed opportunities.

Often uncertainty or lack of confidence in decision-making is at the root of analy-sis paralysis. Although individuals who demonstrate analysis paralysis tenden-cies will often deflect it by saying they want to get things exactly right, what they frequently mean is that they don’t want to get things wrong, and are afraid of failure or looking bad, which is quite different.

BUMPER BONUS BITS

ANALYSIS PARALYSIS

Separate those decisions that need your immediate attention from the ones that can wait.

When a decision needs your attention, question how important it is and the impact it will have.

Make sure that you are clear about what you want to achieve when you are making your decision.

Get all the relevant information into one place in front of you, and then write down the options as you see them.

If you have what seems to be a big decision to make about a complex matter, break it down into a series of smaller decisions to make things more manageable.

Remember that while we need to get as much relevant data as we can, that there is very rarely any such thing as ‘perfect’ data or a ‘perfect’ decision - making environment. It’s not about making a decision that is correct or right, but rather about making the best decision you can with the information available to you at the time.

If you are still putting off making your decision, create a deadline that you can’t miss, for example promising a response to others by a certain date.

7 STEPS TO BEING MORE DECISIVE

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7If you have a colleague who shows signs of analysis paralysis, you can use these steps to support your influencing approach, and help them by giving the information that they need to make their decision in a user-friendly way that works for them.

USING THIS INSIGHT TO HELP OTHERS


7 STEPS TO BEING MORE DECISIVE

The objective for this session is to learn and apply two highly effective idea generation and development techniques for coming up with entrepreneurial ideas. You can do these techniques individually or with your team.

FRIDAY - IDEAS ARE YOUR CREATIVE CURRENCY OBJECTIVE FOR TODAY

In the Crucial Core you will learn how to create entrepreneurial ideas from customer dissatisfaction.

Your customers can be external, i.e. people who pay for business for your products or services – or internal, i.e. colleagues for whom you provide expertise and support at work.

In the Idea Time section, you will have the opportunity to apply 2 different creative techniques to help you use your target customers’ pain points as a springboard for innovation. You will learn how to use each technique, why it works and apply it to your own role and organisation to begin generating ideas for new opportunities right away.

The 2 techniques that we will focus on are bug listing and customer journey experience mapping.

You might want to gather some resources such as sticky notes, used newspapers and magazines, a glue stick, paper, pens and scissors before you begin.

OVERVIEW


Market disrupting entrepreneurs have a talent for identifying what is wrong with an industry, finding a solution and then turning that into a commercial opportunity.

Spotting causes of dissatisfaction is a potentially rich area for entrepreneurial ideas.

Ideas come from identifying your target customers’ pain points, and by co- creating solutions with customers.

Knowing your customers’ pain points can also help with your sales and marketing approach, as well as with your new product and service development.

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TOP TAKEAWAYS


Many entrepreneurs are successful because, amongst their wider skills, they are able to turn dissatisfaction into opportunity.

CRUCIAL CORE

INDUSTRY WEAKNESS AS GAME CHANGING ENTREPRENEURIAL OPPORTUNITY Market disrupting entrepreneurs have a talent for identifying what is wrong with an industry, finding a solution and then turning that into a commercial opportunity. They have developed the skill of seeing the industry with fresh eyes, often because they come from a different sector, working out what customers want and how to deliver a new, more compelling proposition that can often out compete the traditional business model. These entrepreneurs sometimes see this opportunities through serendipity, which means fortunate discovery by chance, or by intention and design.

Some case study examples , which are included on the Forbes Global Gamechangers list, are:

John and Patrick Collison, Cofounders, Stripe

These brothers made it effortless for merchants to accept online and mobile payments. Stripe processes billions in transactions every year in 25 countries.Its new business-in-a-box product, Atlas, will help countries like Cuba leap into e- commerce.

“Stripe’s mission is to accelerate the internet economy as a whole, to increase the GDP of the internet,” says Patrick.

Taavet Hinrikus, Kristo Käärmann, Cofounders, TransferWise

TransferWise uses peer-to-peer technology to challenge the world’s largest banks and giants like Western Union in the $3 trillion consumer money-transfer business. “We realized there is actually no need to move the money. No need to make an international transfer because the money already exists where it needs to,” says Hinrikus.


Jeff Lawson, Founder, Twilio

Twilio has enabled around 40,000 customers, including big brands such as Airbnb and Salesforce, to enhance their apps with voice, text and video messaging. Its usage-based pricing system has saved businesses millions, obviating the need for hardware or costly pre-packaged solutions. “The future of communications will be written in software by the developers of the world,” says Lawson.

Adeem Younis, Founder, SingleMuslim.com

One of the businesses I have worked with, SingleMuslim.com. is one of the biggest dating matrimonial sites in the world and after 18 years, it has led to over 50,000 marriages. Founder and Managing Director Adeem Younis came up with the idea for SingleMuslim.com when he was just 19 and at university in the UK. Many of his male friends had already completed their education, had professional qualifications, and came from good families, but were unable to meet suitable marriage partners. Adeem recognised that Muslim males and females tended to stay in their separate groups, so opportunities to get to know each other socially were limited.

Adeem said: “As a web designer, I found myself becoming increasingly preoccupied with trying to develop a modern solution for that age-old problem: how to find a way for Muslims to meet potential partners in an Islamically safe environment?

“Marriage is extremely important in Islam – it completes our faith – so I started to wonder whether there were any unexplored avenues that might provide a solution. And that’s when I had the idea for SingleMuslim.com.”

On 1st August 2000, Adeem launched the website from his small office, above a fast food shop in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, and has grown the business into the international success that it is today.


Exploring the givens means questioning what might seem to be obvious, and breaking down your challenge or opportunity to better understand it, asking questions about it such as ‘Why?’ and ‘How?’.

This is important because many challenges seem problematic due to the assumptions we have made about them. Our assumptions are not always correct or up-to-date due to our relevance bias, which our brains evolved to filter our information that we think will be less useful for us. Our relevance bias prevents us from becoming overwhelmed, but the downside is that sometimes we do not recognize important or helpful information. Thoroughly exploring the challenge that you have set yourself, and challenging your own assumptions about it, will undoubtedly lead to a better quality solution and outcome.

Exploring the givens means questioning what might seem to be obvious

Many challenges seem problematic due to the assumptions we have made about them

EVERYDAY CUSTOMER-FOCUSSED INNOVATION FROM DISSATISFACTION

The Tangle Teezer

The Tangle Teezer. After years of working in salons and realising the need for a quick and easy hairbrush which detangled hair without tugging and pulling, hairdresser Shaun Pulfrey had a ‘lightbulb moment’ in 2003 which kick-started his research and development for the first professional detangling hair tool. In 2017 the business turned over £28.6 million.

Bridechilla Not for the faint-hearted, but lots of fun and hugely pragmatic, the Bridechilla brand, founded by Australian Aleisha McCormack, has successfully identified a gap in the wedding market for a truly inclusive, often feisty, irreverent and unconventional approach to wedding planning. Have a look at her site at www.thebridechilla.com to see what I mean!


Using dissatisfaction to drive commercially focused idea generation is something that we can all learn to do. The key is to identify your target customers’ ‘pain points’.

Pain points are those things that your target customer frequently worries about, or is frustrated by. They make tasks difficult for customers and get in the way of what they want. By taking time to learn about what your customers’ pain points are, you can develop solutions in the form of products and services to offer them.

This works for both product and service businesses. The Tangle Teezer example above solves the (very literal!) customer pain point of the discomfort of having to brush tangled hair. The Bridechilla business solves the customer pain point for people who don’t want traditional wedding advice, but who still feel they need support, knowledge and ideas that are appropriate to them, offering products (the Wedding Planner books), and services (the associated advice and recommendations through the website, blogs, and podcasts).

IDENTIFYING YOUR TARGET CUSTOMERS’ PAIN POINTS

If you have existing products and services that you want to promote, you can also use your insight into customers’ pain points to create your marketing content, e.g. blog posts, videos, advertisements, website copy and so on. I am working with a specialist engine manufacturer at the moment who is about to launch a new, high- value product. The traditional method would be to market the product based on its functionality, technical specification and price. The company will retain all of those elements, and to differentiate and reach more potential customers, it is also going to create content and campaigns based on the pain points of their customers, which are ensuring resilience, keeping maintenance costs low and assurance of excellent after-sales service.

USING PAIN POINTS IN MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS


Constructive feedback and complaints from customers can be a gold mine for the growth of your business because it provides direct insight into how you can improve your offer to retain customers, and help to attract new ones.

You’ll gain even more valuable insight if you make it a point to engage with customers on an ongoing basis to truly understand their needs and ‘co-create’ the solutions with them.

Co-creation is the process where companies and consumers work together to create better ideas, products and services.

Making the time to understand your customers’ challenges, perspectives, goals and thoughts can bring you significant benefits, and also reassure you that your efforts and investments are going into the right activities.

CUSTOMER FEEDBACK AND CO-CREATION AS A RICH SOURCE OF INNOVATION POTENTIAL

Co-creation example – Inclusivity at Northumbrian Water Group

A wonderful example of customer co-creation that I have been really proud to be part of is the Inclusivity Strategy 2018-2030 for Northumbrian Water Group. In developing this strategy we involved customers who face financial, mobility and communication barriers, among others. We heard first-hand from them what they would want from a company that gave them unrivalled customer service. We held workshops with customers to design our services together, asking:

• Wouldn’t it be great if...?• How can we find you?• How do we help and hinder?

We asked customers to highlight what excellent service looks and feels like to them. They gave us examples of where they have received this, from both within and outside the water industry.

The key messages were very clear. To deliver against Northumbrian Water Group’s vision for inclusivity, the customers said that the business needs to:

• Make sure that their services are inclusive and affordable for all.• Listen, and think beyond the obvious. Own the customer’s problem. Proactively offer extra support when customers need it.• Design customer policies with sensitivity to the needs of customers who may benefit from extra help and support.• Engage the experts and promote Northumbrian Water Group’s great work locally. Spread the word to customers by partnering with trusted local organisations and charities.

Northumbrian Water Group has put plans in place to deliver each of these. If you would like to see the strategy, there is a link to the document on your online course page for this session.


Are you ready with your pens, paper, sticky notes, and perhaps a glue stick, scissors and a few old magazines and newspapers?

The 2 idea generation techniques that you will experience in this session are:

1. Bug listing2. Customer experience mapping

Constructive feedback and complaints from customers can be a gold mine for the growth of your business

Co-creation is the process where companies and consumers work together to create better ideas, products and services.

IDEA TIME


Many great entrepreneurial ideas come about because of something that ‘bugs’ the entrepreneur, that they then take action to do something about.

This technique is significantly adapted from the original bug list approach by Adams, in Conceptual Blockbusting: A Guide to Better Ideas.

A bug list is a list of things that ‘bug’ – i.e. frustrate, worry, or irritate - your customers. You can focus specifically on the products and services that your business offers, or go wider and include their bugs in the context of your industry and competitors.

BUG LISTING

First, spend five to ten minutes getting as many customer bugs onto your sticky notes as you can, writing one bug per sticky note.

Identify which ones, even at a stretch, you could do something about, and which ones are exceptionally difficult to change. For example, Trump’s trade tariffs may be customer pain points that you would find it really, really hard to do anything about (unless you’re Donald Trump and you’ve decided to do this programme. In which case, Donald, you can keep this in your ‘can do’ category ).

Attach the sticky notes for the bugs that you could potentially resolve to a big piece of paper. For each sticky note, write at least 3 potential solutions that you could do. Don’t judge, critique, overthink or discount your ideas at this stage, just get them out and keep going until you’ve got 3 for every do-able bug on your sticky notes.

Now step back, review your work and create a final shortlist of your best ideas for further consideration and development.

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HERE ARE THE STEPS

A bug list is a list of things that ‘bug’ – i.e. frustrate, worry, or irritate - your customers


Begin by identifying the key stages a customer passes through in their interaction with your com-pany. That often involves steps such as:

• Discovery• Research • Purchase• Delivery• After sales

You might want to adapt these stages to suit your products or services.

For each stage of the journey, add in your notes for each of these prompts:

• Tasks. What is the customer trying to achieve at this stage?

• Questions. What does the customer want to know at this stage?

• Touchpoints. How does the customer interact with the business at this

• point?• Emotions. What is the customer feeling at this

stage in the process?• Weaknesses. How does the company let the

customer down at this• stage?• Influences. Who or what is helping to influ-

ence the customer’s decision-making process at this stage?

Now begin to create the ‘story’ of what you want your customer to experience from your company at each stage, taking into account resolving any pain points on the way. Add these onto your page. You can use images and headlines cut out from your old newspapers and magazines to help with your creativity and inspire some different ideas.

Now summarize the actions you would need to take to achieve the customer experience that you’re aiming for.

What do you want your customer to experience from your company at each stage of the journey?

Your customers

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MAPPING

Customer experience mapping is a powerful way of visualizing the customer journey. You can do this activity alone, with a wider team, or even better, with some of your customers.

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In most sectors we can see differentiated eras when it comes to how businesses and their customers relate to each other.

BUMPER BONUS BITS CUSTOMER 4.0

Customer 1.0: This is the era in which product was king, illustrated by Henry Ford’s ‘any colour as long as it’s black’ attitude. In times when companies held the manufacturing and distribution power, customers had limited influence, and were just pleased to have access to buy the product.

Customer 2.0: In the following era, branding and advertising started to create more differentiation between products, and claims for what the products could do through slogans and aspirational marketing became common. A good example is Carlsberg’s ‘Probably the best lager in the world’.

Customer 3.0: This is the space that many would say most companies operate in today. In Customer 3.0, the marketing focus is on providing an experience as well as a product. The purpose of providing the experience is to draw customers into the business’ brand, delighting the customer and creating high engagement and loyalty. Starbucks’ slogan ‘The best coffee for the best you’ and instore experience is a classic example of this.

Customer 4.0: We’re moving more and more into an era that’s led by customers who are becoming increasingly outcome-driven. Companies who are successfully meeting customer demand are making themselves highly relevant and valuable to their target customers, positioning themselves into customers’ daily lives, being there when customers need them, and getting out of the way when they don’t. The Amazon logo, which says, ‘And you’re done’, is a good example.

When you reflect on each of the 4, where would you place your business, and why? Jot down your thoughts.

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The purpose of the session is to introduce you to some techniques that you can use to help you make cost efficiencies in your business, without negatively impacting the customer experience.

SATURDAY - CREATIVE THINKING FOR COST EFFICIENCY OBJECTIVE FOR TODAY

In the Crucial Core you will learn about three creative thinking approaches that you can use to identify areas to reduce costs in your business, without affecting your product or service delivery.

The approaches are:

1. Reducing error, duplication and unnecessary effort in your business processes.

2. Seeing your proposition from the customer perspective, strengthening the items that add value, and removing or reducing those that don’t.

3. Improving your productivity through virtual working, apps and technology.

In today’s Idea Time®, you will create your own efficiency plan that will save you time and money when you put it into action.

Because habit and learned behaviours influence people’s choices of what they do, and how they do it, you will also consider some tips and techniques to help you, and others, stop doing the things that hinder your efficiency, and start doing the things that help.

You might want to gather some sticky notes and pens before you begin.

OVERVIEW

Most activities can be done more cheaply, quickly or efficiently with no negative effect.

By stepping back and viewing how we operate from a fresh perspective, we can find new ways to improve productivity.

Doing routine things differently, especially when they have been done the same way for a long time, can be a challenge until new habits are formed. Awareness of this, and using helpful techniques to support the change, can help to accelerate and embed the more efficient way of working.

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TOP TAKEAWAYS


TOP TAKEAWAYS

For the purposes of this session, cost efficiency means creating and delivering your work, product or service to the right standard, with minimum waste and at the lowest achievable cost.

If we all are really honest (myself included), there are projects, tasks and approaches we all take to our work that contain inefficiencies.

To achieve the most cost efficient and effective results for yourself as a leader, and for your business, an essential practice is to focus on continuously improving what you do, to reduce waste and unnecessary cost and effort, and improve the productivity of yourself, and those who work with you.

Whilst reading this section, you might think that some of the suggestions are common sense, and I would, in the main, agree with you. That said, just knowing something does not mean that we always apply it!

If we all are really honest (myself included), there are projects, tasks and approaches we all take to our work that contain inefficiencies. Sometimes these are obvious, sometimes they become visible to us only when we step back, challenge and be more creative about what we are doing.

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CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

CRUCIAL CORE

If you want to become more efficient either in your individual professional work, or as a team or business (or all three), these 3 approaches could really help you:

3 APPROACHES FOR COST EFFICIENCY IDEAS

Spotting opportunities to make your processes slicker, quicker and more reliable.

Sharpening your customer offer by focusing on your strengths, and removing or reducing any additional elements that your customers either don’t find valuable, or wouldn’t miss if they were gone.

Honing your productivity by selecting inexpensive, easy-to-use digital solutions that could really work for you.


Both our individual and business processes evolve over time, due to changing needs and opportunities. When I work with client teams I often find that they are running elements of their processes that no longer serve a purpose. These elements were introduced to serve a need which does not exist anymore, but perhaps due to routine and habit, the unnecessary steps were not removed, and the process was not updated to reflect the new situation.

Here are some good places to look for cost inefficiency in what you do:

Movement – is there any unnecessary movement or transportation of products, materials or parts? For example, a train company I know found that train engineers were wasting a lot of time walking backwards and forwards from the engineering stores to the train maintenance sheds. Following feedback from the engineers, the company moved the stores much closer to the sheds, saving a significant amount of time and money by improvingproductivity.

Waiting – is there any unproductive downtime that happens because people or machinery needs to stand idle until an earlier part of the process is completed? A manufacturer I work with identified that one of their processes was being slowed significantly by literally waiting for paint to dry. This was resolved by introducing inexpensive and effective drying machines.

Defects or errors – do you need to redo work on a recurring basis because it is not up to standard? For example, a service company’s invoicing was causing issues due to repeated inaccuracy, meaning that the invoices were frequently rejected and had to be resubmitted. This was resolved by retraining the staff involved.

Duplication – do you double up on any activities, for example checking things more than you need to, or filing duplicate copies? Are multiple inspections and signatures required when fewer would suffice?

Spending more money than you need to on products and services.

Making more stuff than you need to – for example, printing extra handouts in case you need extra.

Having more stuff than you need, for example too much stock, or even general clutter in your office, on your shop floor, or even your laptop.

Not making the most of employees’ talents and capabilities. This means that you are underutilizing the resources available to you.

MAKING YOUR PROCESSES SLICKER

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Your customers – whether they are external, i.e. the people who buy from you, or internal, i.e. colleagues who need your expertise – are the ones who define what they see as being value from you. Usually they will only buy from you when they believe they are getting a fair exchange, unless they have no other option. This also applies internally, too. I think we have all avoided asking a certain colleague or department to do something at some point and gone round them, or done it ourselves, because the thought of dealing with them was so off-putting. I know I have!

SHARPENING YOUR CUSTOMER OFFER

In product development, the minimum viable product (MVP) is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers, and to provide feedback for future development

THE MVP PRINCIPLE

That said, sometimes we can over-deliver for customers, often without realizing it. This is great if customers genuinely appreciate it, and it’s costed in to your business model and pricing. Surprisingly, though, that’s not always the case with over-delivery, and using the concept of MVP – Minimum Viable Product – can help us to see our customer offer creatively through fresh eyes.

In product development, the minimum viable product (MVP) is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers, and to provide feedback for future development. The idea is that rather than waiting to perfect and polish every aspect of a product before it gets tested, or goes to market, the MVP helps entrepreneurs and corporates alike be more agile, ship their concepts much more rapidly, and get customer feedback that helps them to continuously improve the product to make it better, stronger and more attractive more quickly. Waiting until the business has developed the ‘perfect’ product often means wasting time and money, and in some cases allows the competition to get there before you do.


I find it really helpful to remember, for every product, service, task or project, that it’s important to invest just the right amount of time and effort to get the outcome that my customers want. Any more is a waste. Any less is failing to deliver.

For some things it means really pushing to do the most amazing, ‘delight-ing’ and stellar job I can because the outcome I want is to blow people away. This is my aim, for example, for the events I design and facilitate, and the coaching I do with clients, and I get intrinsic reward from doing so as my aim is to make a real and positive difference. This outcome makes me happy, too.

For other things, quick, decisive action is more important, and it’s better to do something and get it mostly right than do nothing at all. For example, sending through action notes from most meetings promptly is often better than sending a word-perfect document two weeks later, meaning that progress and momentum fade away.

What is the customer’s MVP? Any more is a waste. Any less is failing to deliver.

THE MVP PRINCIPLE CONT.

Key prompts that are helpful when considering your MVP are:

• Functionality• Packaging• Form and fit• Price• Customer buying experience• Performance• Reliability• Support and maintenance requirements• Perception• Speed• Accuracy• Convenience• Customer service

MVP PROMPTS

It is worth revisiting this periodically, as customers’ needs do not stay the same. For example, business travellers who were accustomed to inflight meals and higher service standards from the classic airlines were soon happy to migrate to low cost airlines such as Easyjet as availability grew.


In the previous session, you may have read about the era of Customer 4.0 in the Bumper Bonus Bits. Connected with that is Industry 4.0.

The World Economic Forum has described the current age as the fourth Industrial Revolution, or Industry 4.0 – often shortened to 4IR, which is all about digital. The technology opportunity now available to businesses means that countless processes, for example in mass production manufacturing, can benefit from huge streamlining and productivity enhancement with capital investment.

It’s important to invest just the right amount of time and effort to get the outcome that customers want.

The World Economic Forum has described the current age as the fourth Industrial Revolution, or Industry 4.0

HONING YOUR PRODUCTIVITY WITH TECHNOLOGY

THE FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

These technologies include:

• Additive manufacturing, more commonly known as 3D printing, but also rapid prototyping and direct digital manufacturing (DDM)

• Robotics and autonomous systems• Modelling and simulation• Augmented and virtual reality• Data analytics• Artificial intelligence• IoT, or ‘Internet of Things’, which is

the connection of devices (other than usual items such as computers and smartphones) to the Internet. Cars, kitchen appliances, and health monitors can all be connected through the IoT.

Businesses could significantly increase productivity and competitiveness by increasing the 4IR technologies to enable connectivity, flexibility and agility.

Examples of companies that are famously using these technologies in manufacturing are:

• Bosch• Siemens • Audi

4IR is also being adopted in wider society, for example there are numerous Smart City projects around the world. (A smart city is an urban area that uses different types of electronic data collection sensors to supply information which is used to manage assets and resources efficiently). Examples of smart city projects include:

• Singapore• Barcelona• London• San Francisco & Las Vegas• Oslo• Eindhoven, Utrecht and Assen in Holland


It all doesn’t have to be about the big investment initiatives, though. Technology can really help with productivity, including at the individual, team and business levels. In some cases, using technology might be a natural progression for processes you may already have in place in your business. In others, you may need to make some tweaks to get all the benefits of the digital options.

Whilst you may need to make some changes, it’s important to remember that the benefits will often make the temporary challenges of making the change well worth it, once your new systems are in place.

For example, when I founded my business, The Big Bang Partnership Ltd, the accounting software packages available were costly and over-specified for what I needed, so we developed manual processes. As technology has developed there is now a whole range of inexpensive book keeping apps and cloud solutions for businesses that make life much easier. It took a couple of weeks, and we had to develop new ways of doing a few things, but we successfully moved our accounting from being manual to using Xero.com online software. Everything is now much more streamlined, we don’t spend hours reconciling invoices, payments and bank statements. As a result, my team saves at least one full day each month on our accounting processes, and they are now more accurate and timely, too.

DIGITAL OPPORTUNITIES FOR PERSONAL AND TEAM PRODUCTIVITY

Productivity is about more than big investment initiatives


IDEA TIME Think about a regular process that you do that takes time, and isn’t straightforward. Jot down the key stages here, or use a separate piece of paper if you prefer.

Alternatively you could do this activity with your team, and use sticky notes and flipchart paper to map your process together.

MAKING YOUR PROCESSES SLICKER

Now go back and review your process, using the checklist below to identify any potential efficiencies. Not all of the potential efficiency areas may apply to your process, so focus on those that have the most benefits to you. Again, you can work through this individually or as a team.


PROCESS EFFICIENCY CHECKLIST

Process efficiency question

Where, if at all, is this an issue in your

process?

If it’s an issue, what ideas do

you have to resolve it?

What benefits will you get

from resolving it?

What action do you commit to

taking?

Movement – is there any unnecessary movement

or transportation of products, materials or

parts?

Waiting – is there any unproductive downtime

that happens?

Defects or errors – do you need to redo work on a recurring basis?

Duplication – do you double up on any

activities?

Are you spendingmore than you need to?

Are youmaking more stuff than

you need to?

Do you have more stuff than you need?

Are you making the most of employees’ talents?


For this exercise, you could choose to focus either on external customers, i.e. the ones who pay for your products and services, or internal customers, i.e. your colleagues.

For a core product or service, review how well you are achieving the most effective and efficient solution using this checklist.

Look for anything that you could either eliminate completely or reduce without negatively affecting customers’ perceptions of your product or service.

Once again, focus on those elements that are most relevant to you and your business.

How well are you achieving the most effective and efficient solution using this checklist?

SHARPENING YOUR CUSTOMER OFFER


SHARPENING YOUR CUSTOMER OFFER CHECKLIST

Element of customer offer

What, if at all, could you eliminate or

reduce?

If you could eliminate or reduce

it, what ideas do you have to make

this happen?

What benefits will you get

from making it happen?

What action do you commit to

taking?

Functionality

Packaging

Form and fit

Customer buying experience

Performance

Reliability

Support and maintenance requirements

Perception

Speed

Accuracy

Convenience

Customer service


There is a lot of great material that can help you to go into much more detail on the themes that you have been working on in this session. If you’d like to delve deeper, here are some resources that I recommend:

BUMPER BONUS BITS

Many of the principles in the Crucial Core section above are taken from the philosophy of Lean Thinking. This is a really rich, detailed and well-documented approach, and I have only provided a very, very high level introduction in this session.

1. MAKING PROCESSES SLICKER

If you’re new to Lean Thinking and would like to learn more, I recommend that you take a look at one or more of these books:

• Lean for Dummies, by Natalie J. Sayer and Bruce Williams

• The Lean Manager: A Novel of Lean Transformation, by Freddy Balle and Michael Balle

• Lean Thinking: Banish Waster and Create Wealth in Your Corporation, by James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones

• The Toyota Way, by Jeffrey Liker

If you’d like to learn more about the concept of eliminating and reducing, you may be interested in exploring the ERRC grid (Eliminate, Reduce, Raise, Create) which is a Blue Ocean Strategy tool.

2. SHARPENING YOUR CUSTOMER OFFER

Check out the Blue Ocean website at www.blueocean.com, or have a look at the book:Blue Ocean Strategy, by Kim and Mauborgne

If you’d like to learn more about 4IR, try this book: The Fourth Industrial Revolution, by Klaus Schwab.

3. HONING YOUR PRODUCTIVITY WITH TECHNOLOGY

If you’d like to learn more about the concept of eliminating and reducing, you may be interested in exploring the ERRC grid (Eliminate, Reduce, Raise, Create) which is a Blue Ocean Strategy tool.


If you’re interested in improving your personal or team productivity, here is a bonus Idea Time activity.

These ideas will help you use technology to do more with less and become more efficient and versatile. Don’t worry if you don’t feel confident with tech. Many of these suggestions are really intuitive and easy to use, and they all have online guides that will help you get up and running quickly and easily.

Go through these suggestions (you’re probably doing some of them already) and identify a couple that you could either:

• Start to use• Use more effectively, and more consistently, if you already

have them in place

Use time tracking software to see where you are spending your time so you can become more productive.

LOOKING FOR MORE?

GETTING WORK DONE Use time tracking software to see where you are spending your time so you can become more productive.

Examples to explore: • www.timeiq.com • www.hourdiary.com • www.kronos.co.uk• www.getharvest.com

Accelerate your work processes, especially written tasks, with digital dictation.

Examples to explore: • www.winscribe.com • www.lexacom.co.uk • www.nuance.com

Use project management and task management tools to stay on top of your daily business responsibilities.

Examples to explore: • www.asana.com • www.trello.com • www.slack.com

Create a digital filing system to make it easier to sort, save, share and find documents.

Develop an efficient email management process that makes it easier to stay on top of the flow of messages.


Create a new income stream by selling your products online.

FINANCES AND BUDGETS

Use online book-keeping to streamline your financial management tasks.

Examples to explore: • www.sage.com • www.xero.com• www.quickbooks.intuit.com

Set up the facility for online banking and card payments for your clients.

Examples to explore: • www.stripe.com • www.paypal.com

Create a new income stream by selling your products online.

Examples to explore: • www.shopify.com • www.ekm.com • www.bigcommerce.com


Create a mobile office that allows you to work productively from anywhere, and get started fast.

COLLABORATION AND LEARNING

Before you book a meeting, or decide to travel to see colleagues or clients, consider if a telephone conference or video call would be appropriate instead.

If you’re running some internal training, or doing a briefing, consider holding a webinar or web conference for travel-free face-to-face time.

Examples to explore: • www.zoom.us • www.gotomeeting.com • www.webinarjam.com

Explore online courses and coaching that are more flexible than traditional classroom options.

Examples to explore: • www.whatspp.com• Yammer• Google Hangouts Chat

Share files and data with the Cloud.

Communicate quickly with your team through instant messaging.

MOBILE WORKING AND TELECOMMUTING Create a mobile office that allows you to work productively from anywhere, and get started fast.

Use remote desktop applications to access files on your office computer.

Examples to explore: • www.teamviewer.com • www.techinline.com • www.splashtop.com • www.remotepc.com

Go paperless to save money on supplies and storage in your office.

Use your smartphone and select apps (that sync with the Cloud) to stay connected when you’re out and about.


The objective of this final session is to provide an opportunity for you to reflect on your learning from this programme, bring the stand-out elements from your perspective together, and help you to create a plan for action and further learning.

In the Crucial Core you will learn about some really valuable evidence-based approaches based on behavioral science to help you to successfully progress the work that you have begun on this programme.

Your Idea Time provides you with an activity to help you put the principles from the Crucial Core into action.

SUNDAY - YOUR POWER MOVES OBJECTIVE FOR TODAY

OVERVIEW

Research shows that people who are successful in achieving their goals both set a specific goal, and then make a plan for how they are going to achieve it.

To increase your chances of achieving your goal, create a clear vision for it.

Having a clear vision for your goal is not enough. You also need to pre-empt the obstacles that you will likely encounter and then plan for them in advance.

Breaking your goal down into a maximum of 5 Power Moves will also increase your chances of success.

Making a public commitment to achieve your goal also substantially improves the probability that you will attain your aspiration.

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TOP TAKEAWAYS

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Research, for example by Gabriele Oettingen, from New York University and the University of Hamburg – shows that people who are successful in achieving their goals both set a specific goal, and then make a plan for how they are going to achieve it.

An important part of making the plan is to do something called ‘mental contrasting’. This means having a clear vision for your goal, and a realistic assessment of the obstacles you’re likely to face on the way and pre-emptive strategies for how you will overcome them. This is because having an inspiring vision without thinking of the obstacles makes us feel too comfortable, and gets in the way of us putting in the work in the way that we need to.

When you make your plan to achieve your goal, breaking it down into no more than 5 smaller plans will also enhance your likelihood of achievement. This is for 2 reasons:

1. The overall goal feels more manageable.2. You have greater visibility of the specifict hings you need to

do.

To increase your chances of success still further, committing to achieve your goal to other people, especially those who matter to you, will make a significant difference.

When you make your plan to achieve your goal, breaking it down into no more than 5 smaller plans will also enhance your likelihood of success.

CRUCIAL CORE

An important part of making the plan is to do something called ‘mental contrasting’.


Now it’s time to put the Crucial Core into practice to help you succeed.

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Review all the great work that you have done on this programme. Revisit your notes from your Idea Time activities, and go back to your SOAR analysis. Write a statement that summarizes the next big goal that you want to achieve as a result of Idea Time - Creative Kickstart for 2019 using these sentence-completion prompts:

IDEA TIME

I commit to achieving this goal by [insert date]:

I will share my goal with these 3 people to improve my likelihood of success:

The key obstacles I’m likely to face are:

My overall goal is to:


3 If and when these obstacles happen, I will overcome them by:

4 The 5 Power Moves that will help me to achieve my goals are:

Power Move

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5

Specific action(s)

Measurable outcomes

Target completion

date


Congratulations on your fantastic work throughout this programme.

Well done on seeing it through to the end and making a plan for your continued success.

Share your commitment with me in the comments section online so that as a community we can cheer you on!

I would also love to hear from you personally. Do email me at [email protected] to let me know how you’ve got on.

CONGRATULATIONS!

Email me at [email protected]

Documents

YOUR CREATIVE KICKSTART FOR 2019 - ideatime.co.uk · Download the free playbook for Creative Kickstart for 2019 here – kickstart-2019/ - no email address needed. A playbook, as