The 5 Gifts of Uncertainty

The 5 Gifts of Uncertainty

by | Sep 30, 2020 | Innovation, Leadership, Stories & Examples

“How are you doing?  How are you handling all this?”

It seems like 90% of conversations these days start with those two sentences.  We ask out of genuine concern and also out of a need to commiserate, to share our experiences, and to find someone that understands.

The connection these questions create is just one of the Gifts of Uncertainty that have been given to us by the pandemic.

Yes, I know that the idea of uncertainty, especially in big things like our lives and businesses, being a gift is bizarre.  When one of my friends first suggested the idea, I rolled my eyes pretty hard and then checked to make sure I was talk to my smart sarcastic fellow business owner and not the Dali Lama.

But as I thought about it more, started looking for “gifts” in the news and listening for them in conversations with friends and clients, I realized how wise my friend truly was.

Faced with levels of uncertainty we’ve never before experienced, people and businesses are doing things they’ve never imagined having to do and, as a result, are discovering skills and abilities they never knew they had.  These are the Gifts of Uncertainty

  1. Necessity of offering a vision – When we’re facing or doing something new, we don’t have all the answers. But we don’t need all the answers to take action.  The people emerging as leaders, in both the political and business realms, are the ones acknowledging this reality by sharing what they do know, offering a vision for the future, laying out a process to achieve it, and admitting the unknowns and the variables that will affect both the plan and the outcome.
  2. Freedom to experiment – As governments ordered businesses like restaurants to close and social distancing made it nearly impossible for other businesses to continue operating, business owners were suddenly faced with a tough choice – stop operations completely or find new ways to continue to serve. Restaurants began to offer carry out and delivery.  Bookstores, like Powell’s in Portland OR and Northshire Bookstore in Manchester VT, also got into curbside pick-up and delivery game.  Even dentists and orthodontists began to offer virtual visits through services like Wally Health and Orthodontic Screening Kit, respectively.
  3. Ability to change – Businesses are discovering that they can move quickly, change rapidly, and use existing capabilities to produce entirely new products. Nike and HP are producing face shields. Zara and Prada are producing face masks. Fanatics, makers of MLB uniforms, and Ford are producing gowns.  GM and Dyson are gearing up to produce ventilators. And seemingly every alcohol company is making hand sanitizer.  Months ago, all of these companies were in very different businesses and likely never imagined that they could or would pivot to producing products for the healthcare sector.  But they did pivot.
  4. Power of Relationships – Social distancing and self-isolation are bringing into sharp relief the importance of human connection and the power of relationships. The shift to virtual meetups like happy hours, coffees, and lunches is causing us to be thoughtful about who we spend time with rather than defaulting to whoever is nearby.  We are shifting to seeking connection with others rather than simply racking up as many LinkedIn Connections, Facebook friends, or Instagram followers as possible.  Even companies are realizing the powerful difference between relationships and subscribers as people unsubscribed en mass to the “How we’re dealing with COVID-19 emails” they received from every company with which they had ever provided their information.
  5. Business benefit of doing the right thing – In a perfect world, businesses that consistently operate ethically, fairly, and with the best interests of ALL their stakeholders (not just shareholders) in mind, would be rewarded. We are certainly not in a perfect world, but some businesses are doing the “right thing” and rea being rewarded.  Companies like Target are offering high-risk employees like seniors pregnant women, and those with compromised immune systems 30-days of paid leave.  CVS and Comcast are paying store employees extra in the form of one-time bonuses or percent increases on hourly wages.  Sweetgreen and AllBirds are donating food and shoes, respectively, to healthcare workers.  On the other hand, businesses that try to leverage the pandemic to boost their bottom lines are being taken to task.  Rothy’s, the popular shoe brand, announced on April 13 that they would shift one-third of their production capacity to making “disposable, non-medical masks to workers on the front line” and would donate five face masks for every item purchased.  Less than 12 hours later, they issued an apology for their “mis-step,” withdrew their purchase-to-donate program, and announced a bulk donation of 100,000 non-medical masks.

Before the pandemic, many of these things seemed impossibly hard, even theoretical.  In the midst of uncertainty, though, these each of these things became practical, even necessary.  As a result, in a few short weeks, we’ve proven to ourselves that we can do what we spent years saying we could not.

These are gifts to be cherished, remembered and used when the uncertainty, inevitably, fades.

Originally published on Mat 19, 2020 on Forbes.com

Intuition or Data: Which Leads to Better Innovation Decisions?

Intuition or Data: Which Leads to Better Innovation Decisions?

by | Jul 23, 2020 | Innovation, Tips, Tricks, & Tools

“We need more data.”

How many times have you heard this?  How many times have you rolled your eyes (physically or mentally) and then patiently tried to explain that, when you’re doing something NEW, there is NO DATA.

There are analogous innovations, things that are similar in some ways that can be used as benchmarks, but nothing exactly like what you’re creating because nothing like it has existed before within your company.

As Innovators, we constantly balance our need for and comfort with gut decisions so we can move forward at speed with the broader organization’s need for data and certainty as a way to minimize risk.

But what role should intuition and data play in the early days of innovation?

This is exactly the question that my friend and former colleague, Nick Pineda, sought to answer in his thesis, “Are relevant experience and intuition drivers of success for innovation decision-makers?  An interview-based approach”

 

Robyn: Hi Nick!  Thanks for taking the time to speak with me today.  The topic you explore in your thesis is fascinating and something every innovator struggles with.  I’m curious, what led you to decide to explore it?

Nick: Interestingly, the process of deciding what to write my thesis on actually inspired the topic itself.

For the capstone of my Masters program, we were told to do a consulting project but I had spent so many years in consulting that I wasn’t terribly excited about that prospect.  One day, as I was walking to work, I felt this feeling in my gut that said, “Nick, this is not why you’re in the Masters program.”  I shared this feeling with my professor and faculty advisor, and they were open to a different approach.

As we discussed what I could do, the same topic kept coming up – a lot of what is published about innovation, especially with Agile, is about measurement and that we need to have evidence before we take action.  I don’t disagree with that but viewing things only through that lens kills the wisp of an idea that has the potential of becoming something amazing.  Ultimately, we decided to focus my thesis on what happens on the front-end of the innovation process and whether intuition or evidence and data lead to success.

 

Robyn: And, what did you learn?

Nick: Two things, one that wasn’t surprising and one that was.

First, what wasn’t surprising is that innovation decision-makers have a really clear awareness about the role that gut feel or intuition, knowing without knowing how you know, play in their process.

Second, what was surprising, is that anyone who leans much more heavily in one direction versus another (data vs intuition), had many more failures, and struggled to process what they learned from those experiences and incorporate those learnings into future actions and decisions.  Successful innovators know how to create a dance between their rational processes and their intuitive processes.

 

Robyn: It seems so, well, intuitive that using both intuition and data to make decisions will lead to better outcomes.  However, so many innovators rely on intuition and so many companies require data, how can you encourage that “dance” that’s required for success?

Nick: You need to start small.

First with the person who’s innovating, to help them enter that inner space and recognize all the different ways that intuition can show up.   It can manifest as a sensory experience, a change in temperature, even a color.  It varies by person and by moment and the key is to recognize when it’s happening.

A simple way to create this awareness is to reflect on how you decide whether to trust someone.  Every time you meet someone new, you have to quickly decide whether or not to trust the person.  How do you do that?  What is the feeling or sense that you get that leads to your decision?  How often are you right?

Next, you need to create a language or process within the team to externalize the intuitive sense.  In my research, I found examples of visionary leaders who were constantly able to use their intuitive sense, but their teams were constantly felt left out and wondering why they did all the work when the leader was just going to decide on gut.  More successful teams were much more open about why, when, and how they were using their intuition, even specifically asking other team members to share their intuition in meetings.

Then, as leaders, we need to normalize the fact that we’re not always going to have precise evidence to know what the right call is and that we’re trusting what we’ve learned as leaders in this space to make a decision.

 

Robyn: That last point is really critical, leaders must role model the behavior they want to see and that includes using and communicating their intuition.  Anything else pop up with respect to leaders and decision-making?

Nick: Ideally, leaders will go beyond normalizing the use of intuition to actively working to dismantle the organization’s bias against it.

Most organizations consciously or subconsciously, defer to the highest paid person or the most credentialed person in the room when making decisions.  This is a highly rational behavior, but it doesn’t lead to the best decision.  The reason is that it overlooks the fact that diversity of experience surfaces other data points and intuitive experiences that need to be part of the conversation to get to a better decision.

Innovation is a group experience and when intuition is allowed to show up in groups a group intelligence starts to manifest and the group makes better decisions.

 

Robyn: That’s quite a To-Do list for leaders and decision-makers:

  1. Manage your personal dance between intuition and data
  2. Normalize intuition by creating a language around it
  3. Create ways to tap into diverse experiences and intuition

Thanks so much for sharing these great insights, Nick!

Nick: My pleasure.

 

****

 

To learn more about intuition and innovation, Nick recommends that you:

READ:

WATCH or LISTEN TO:

TAKE ACTION and Conduct an idea retrospective

    1. Anchor on an idea
      • Think back to a memorable innovation success or failure?
      • What was the idea?
      • Where did the initial idea come from?
      • If you had to pick 1-2 of the most important decisions you had to make in the process of bringing this idea to life, what were those decisions?
    2. Did you use intuition?
      • Intuition defined: Intuition is a process of rapidly recognizing things without knowing how we do the recognizing, which results in affectively charged (somatic, sensory, or emotional experience) judgements.
      • To what degree was your process intuitive?
      • To what degree were you aware of what your brain was doing to seek an answer / path forward?
    3. How did your intuition show up?
      • Signals / Cues: What signals or cues did you have about which course of action to take or not to take?
      • Knowing: How did the answer for which path forward to take “show-up” for you? Where were you? What did it feel like?
      • Feeling: What did you feel during this process?
    4. Apply More Broadly
      • In what ways is the way you explored your intuition in this case similar (or not) to other decisions you make in your life?
      • How might you be more intentional about how to bring your personal brand of intuition into your innovation process?
Is Your Brain Friend or Foe? Make It Your Friend with Positive Intelligence

Is Your Brain Friend or Foe? Make It Your Friend with Positive Intelligence

by | Jul 15, 2020 | Book Club

“If you spend a lot of time in your own head, you’re spending time in a bad neighborhood.”

 

I was deep in a bit of worry and self-doubt when my friend uttered that sentence.  Immediately, my mind conjured an image of falling gown building, boarded up doors and windows, overgrown yards, and empty streets (basically downtown Cleveland in the 1980s).

 

“Man, I do not want to be here!” I said, probably a bit too loudly.

 

Everyone I know spends a lot of time in their bad neighborhoods.  It’s a consequence of the world we live in – more demands, responsibilities, and expectations running into greater uncertainty, fewer options, and weaker safety nets.

 

There are lots of ways to spruce up our neighborhoods, cultivating a Growth Mindset is one.  In his book, Positive Intelligence: Why Only 20% of Teams and Individuals Achieve Their True Potential and How You Can Achieve Yours, author and executive coach Shirzad Chamine, lays out a powerful framework and action plan to build your Positive Intelligence by increasing your PQ (Positive Intelligence Quotient).

 

Why Should I Care about Positive Intelligence?

Because research proves that a high PQ creates better results

  • An analysis of more than 200 different scientific studies, which collectively tested more than 275,000 people, conduced that higher PQ leads to higher salary and greater success in the arenas of work, marriage, health, sociability, friendship, and creativity
  • Salespeople with higher PQ sell 37% more than their lower-PQ peers
  • Project teams managed by high-PQ managers perform 31% better
  • Doctors with a high PQ make accurate diagnoses 19% faster
  • People who demonstrated high PQ in their 20s (as evidence by journal entries) live, on average, 10 years longer

Better sales, better performance, better health, longer lives.

Seems like something worth learning more about.

 

What is Positive Intelligence and PQ?

Chamine defines Positive Intelligence as “an indication of the control you have over your own mind and how well your mind acts in your best interest.”  Basically, what kind of neighborhood is your mind.

PQ, your Positive Intelligence Quotient, is “the percentage of your time your mind is acting as your friend rather than your enemy.”  It’s expressed on a scale of 0 to 100 and research shows that a PQ of 75 (meaning your mind is your friend, or a good neighborhood, 75% of the time) is a tipping point.  “Above it, you are generally being uplifted by the internal dynamics of the mind, below it you are constantly being dragged down by those dynamics.”  80% of teams and individuals score below the tipping point.

 

How you can increase your PQ

People with high PQs use one or more of the following 3 strategies:

STRATEGY 1 – Weaken your Saboteurs:

Saboteurs, also called Inner Critics, are the voices, beliefs, and assumptions in your head that work against you.

There are 10 and every person has at least two actively chattering away

  1. Judge: The “Master” Saboteur in everyone’s head. It constantly finds faults in you, others, your circumstances, and anything else it can get its hands on.
  2. Avoider: Focuses on the positive and pleasant to avoid dealing with difficult and unpleasant tasks, conflicts, and people.
  3. Controller: Takes charge, seeking to bend people to its will because it believes that the only way to get the best outcomes from people and situations is to control them
  4. Hyper-Achiever: Relies on constant external rewards, recognition, and praise as a way to feel self-respect and self-validation
  5. Hyper-Rational: Focuses on logic and reason as the sole means through which to understand people and situations, often leading to impatience or outright dismissal of anything or person deemed not logical
  6. Hyper-Vigilant: Sees threats in every moment and is constantly on guard and preparing for the worst-case scenario
  7. Pleaser: Seeks to gain acceptance and affection by constantly helping, pleasing, rescuing, or flattering others
  8. Restless: Searches for the next adventure, new thing, or adrenaline rush and distracts from the relationships and work that really matter
  9. Stickler: Needs perfection, order, and organization to such an extent that it makes everyone anxious and uptight
  10. Victim: Gains attention and affection by focusing on internal feelings, especially negatives ones

To weaken your saboteurs, first identify which one is currently active, then recognize the story its telling you (often, the story will seem helpful so this part is tricky), and then either call it out (“oh, it’s you again, making up stories) or thank it (“thank you for trying to keep me safe.  I’ve got this.”)

STRATEGY 2 – Strengthen your Sage: 

The Sage perspective is essentially the opposite of the Judge.  Whereas the Judge finds everything that is (or could be wrong), the Sage accepts every single thing as a gift or opportunity.

OK, I know this sounds like some new-age woo, especially in the midst of COVID-19 and its impact on every single thing in our lives.  Chamine’s C-Suite clients are skeptical of this too, which is why he teaches them the Three Gifts technique – write down the horrible thing then write down 3 ways it could turn out to be a gift or opportunity at some point in the future.

You can strengthen your Sage by using one (or more) of its 5 powers:

  1. Empathize: When strong feelings are involved and emotional reserves are running low, picture yourself, or the person or situation causing problems, as a small child and interact with it
  2. Explore: When the situation is complex or you want more information before making a decision, pretend to be a fascinated anthropologist and seek out info by asking questions
  3. Innovate: When the usual answers aren’t working, adopt an innovator’s mentality greet ideas with “yes….and….”
  4. Navigate: When faced with multiple options, “flash forward” and imagine yourself at some point in the distant future after having taken each path and consider how you feel in that future place
  5. Activate: When your Saboteurs are in control, preempt them by writing down everything they could say and recognize, respond, and thank it.

STRATEGY 3 – Strengthen your PQ brain

Your PQ brain is comprised of the middle prefrontal cortex, the right brain, the mirror neuron system, the ACC, and the Insular Cortex (these last three areas control your empathy reaction).

Strengthening your PQ brain is as “simple” as focusing all of your attention on your physical body and/or the experience of at least one of your 5 senses, for at least 10 seconds 100 separate times per day for 21 straight days

Yes, 100 times per days sounds like a lot, so Chamine offers some tip:

  • During Daily routines, for example when you’re brushing your teeth, focus on the feeling of the toothbrush against your gums
  • While working out
  • Before or when you’re eating
  • As you listen to music
  • When you’re playing sports (including e-sports)
  • Being with friends and family

 

Bottom Line

The data proves that Positive Intelligence has a real and tangible impact on your performance at work, in your relationships, and in life.  This book contains a variety of case stories to show the power of Positive Intelligence in action.  Even better, it offers an easy to understand framework and totally do-able approach to make Positive Intelligence work for you.

 

***

To learn more about Positive Intelligence, visit Shirzad Chamine’s site here.

To buy the book, visit you can buy it from independent online bookstores Bookshop or IndieBound, or at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

 

Innovation Starts with EPIC Conversations

Innovation Starts with EPIC Conversations

by | Jun 24, 2020 | Customer Centricity, Innovation, Tips, Tricks, & Tools

Innovation doesn’t start with an idea.  It starts with a problem.  Sometimes those problems are easy to observe and understand but, more often, those problems are multi-layered and nuanced.  As a result, you need a multi-layered and nuanced approach to understanding them.

You need to have EPIC Conversations.

EPIC stands for Empathy, Perspective, Insights, and Connection.  As my clients have experienced, conversations rooted in these elements consistently produce unexpected, actionable, and impactful insights capable of getting to the root of a problem and shining a light on the path to a solution (and meaningful business results).

 

EMPATHY for the people with whom you’re talking

According to Brene Brown, empathy is connecting to the emotion another person is experiencing without requiring us to have experienced the same situation.”

For example, I have a friend who struggles to stay focused and deliver on deadlines.  I can empathize with her because, while I have no problem focusing or delivering on deadlines, I know what it’s like to struggle with something that other people think is easy.

Take the time to connect with people’s emotions, to understand not just what they’re feeling but also why they’re feeling that way and to connect with the experiences in your life and work that led you to feel that way, too.

 

See things from their PERSPECTIVE:

When we’re working on something – a project, a product, even a task – it gets a great deal of our time, attention, and energy.  But it can lead us to over-estimate how important the work is to others.

Instead, ask people about the topic you’re interested in AND all the topics and activities around it.  Take the time to understand where the things you care about fall into your customers’ priority list

For example, when I worked on developing and launching Swiffer, all I thought about was cleaning floors.   One day, we had to decide whether to source the hair for the dirt that would be used in product demos from people, yaks, or wigs.  We obsessed over this decision, debating which hair would “resonate” the most with consumers.  Turns out, consumers didn’t spend a lot of time analyzing the hair in the demo dirt, they only cared that it was picked up immediately by Swiffer.

 

Be open to INSIGHTS

Most people use conversations to get confirmation that their ideas and recommendations are good ones.  They’ll spend time explaining and convincing and very little time listening.  And they definitely don’t like surprises.

This is wrong.  The most successful and impactful conversations as those in which you are surprised, in which you get an unexpected piece of information and has an insight, an “a-ha!” moment.

Years ago, while conducting research with people who self-identified as environmentalists, my team spoke with a woman who had the most sustainable house I’d ever seen.  Everything was reused, recycled, or composted and they generated most of their own power.  But, in the garage was a huge yellow HUM-V.  It would have been easy to dismiss it as an anomaly, until we asked about the contradiction and she explained that the reason she owned a HUM-V was the same reason she and her family lived such a sustainable lifestyle: her highest priority was keeping her kids safe.  At home, that meant doing everything possible to help the planet, but on the roads, that meant driving around in a tank.

 

CONNECT with the person you’re speaking with

It’s tempting to jump right into the conversation, to ask the questions that brought you together.  But that’s like proposing on the first date – you’re not going to get the answer(s) you want.

The best conversations aren’t information transactions, they’re trust building exercises.  Take time to get to know each other.  Make small talk, talk about the traffic and the weather, share a bit about yourself and ask about them.  Throughout the conversation, share a bit about yourself, commiserate over shared frustrations, and laugh at silly stories.

By sharing a bit about yourself, the person you’re talking to will share a bit of themselves, they’ll feel comfortable admitting to things that might not make sense, and to the feelings and rationalizations that drive their behaviors.

 

EPIC Conversations can happen with anyone anywhere from customers in focus group rooms to employees in conference rooms.  You don’t need an executive mandate to have one, so have one today and let me know how it goes!

Originally published on February 10, 2020 on Forbes.com

The 5 Why’s of Working From Home

The 5 Why’s of Working From Home

by | Mar 25, 2020 | Stories & Examples

In middle school and high school my dad and I would have massive arguments about my math homework. And by “massive,” I mean arguments that make episodes of The Real Housewives look like polite differences of opinion over tea and crumpets.

The issue was not my struggles to understand the work (though I’m sure that played into things) but rather my insistence on knowing WHY I needed to learn the content in the first place.

My dad, a metallurgist before becoming a computer engineer, seemed to think the answers to “Why?” were (1) you will need to know this in the future and (2) because this is the assignment.

To which I would respond, (1) no I won’t because I’m going to be a lawyer or a writer and even if I’m not those two things I can say with 100% certainty I won’t be an engineer and (2) that is not an acceptable reason.

As you can imagine, things would escalate from there.

In the decades since, with the exception of some single-variable algebra and basic geometry, I have yet to use most of the math that I was forced to learn and I still insist that “because that’s the assignment/the rules/how things are done” is not an acceptable answer.

Usually I apply that same stubborn curiosity to help my clients find and capitalize on opportunities to do things differently and better, create value, and innovate.

But, in the last week as I, like most Americans, find myself largely confined to my home, my curiosity is extending to my own environment and habits and I’m not always prepared for the insights that emerge.

WHY am I trying to maintain all my pre-pandemic habits?

  • Initial Answer: Because the experts say I should
  • Insight: I have a choice and now is the perfect time to decide which habits to keep and which to change. So far, I’m keeping all habits related to basic personal hygiene, dressing, and eating, while also experimenting with other habits, like how I schedule my time
  • Real Answer: We’re in an unusual time of collective uncertainty which makes this the perfect time to examine, re-evaluate, and change the things we often take as given. Like our own habits

WHY am I watching non-stop news?

  • Initial Answer: Because information is empowering in uncertain times
  • Insight: A screen showing “Breaking News” AND the global and US COVID-19 diagnosis and death counts AND numerous experts AND a crawl with dozens of other stories is not information. It’s noise. If the “news” has been known for 4 hours, it’s not “breaking,” it’s broken, move on.
  • Real Answer: I need to schedule my information consumption and focus on facts.

WHY am I not using this time to get feedback from my own customers, especially since this is the first thing I tell my clients to do?

  • Initial Answers: (1) I don’t want to bother them, (2) They’re busy with more important things, (3) They never complained so I’m sure it’s all good (4) I need to focus on the future, not the past, (5) I have other things to do, (6) Oh look, another email/text/Facebook post/bird/distraction!
  • Insight: I don’t want to for the exact same reasons most of my clients don’t want to have open-ended EPIC (empathy, perspective, insightful, and connected) conversations with their customers — I’m afraid that even though they say they love me they also know that I’m not perfect and will have really great and helpful suggestions that will require me to change. (in all honesty, this is the nice version of what I say to myself)
  • Real Answer: Time to put on my big-girl pants, follow my own advice, and go ask for feedback. It’s the only way improvement, innovation, and most importantly, client delight will happen

WHY do I suddenly feel the need to go outside and spend all time with people?

  • Initial Answer: Because it’s Spring, the weather is nice, and I like people
  • Insight: I want to go outside and be with people because I have been specifically told NOT to do those things. Just as I’m an introvert who does not like bugs or pollen, I also have a rebellious (intrapreneurial?) streak which makes me want to do exactly what I have been told not to do.
  • Real Answer: I can go outside or open a window, stand in the backyard, or sit on the front porch. I can socialize, I just need to use technology and bring my own drinks and dinner to the FaceTime/Zoom/Skype/Google Hangout

WHY are there 6 dozen eggs in the refrigerator?

  • Initial Answer: My husband is losing his mind OR he forgot that he bought 2 dozen eggs in each of the last two trips to the grocery store.
  • Insight: These are strange and uncertain times and that rattles even the most stoic and level-headed of people. My husband was a submarine warfare officer in the nuclear navy and often tells stories of sleeping on the missiles because they were more comfortable than his bunk and unarmed. This is not a guy who reacts emotionally to events or who worries about the apocalypse. He is cautious and practical and, sometimes, annoyingly reasonable. But he also bought 6 dozen eggs in less than 7 days.
  • Real Answer: Be patient, have empathy, listen to, and support everyone. Especially they people who you think may least need it. Also, I need to get over my aversion to quiche and other egg-heavy dishes.

In conclusion

Stay curious, turn off the news, be open to feedback and change, be supportive of others, let me know if (1) you’ve ever had to use calculus in your personal life and/or (2) have a great egg-heavy recipe