cultureofinnovation Archives - Page 3 of 6

A 90-year-old letter

Lately I’ve been thinking about retirement.
It’s funny to have these thoughts now considering that I have at least 20 more years, as per the professional standards. Knowing me, I don’t do retirement.

Yet the thought opened up new ways of making decisions today. What type of work will I be doing 20 years from now? What jobs will I leave behind? Where will I live? Am I a step closer to that destination and way of living?
A decade ago, I did a little exercise that had me writing my life in the past tense. I was to be 90 years old, and I was hand-writing a letter to someone interested to know what I had accomplished in my life. I wrote all my dreams in the past tense. I talked about my 3 kids, teaching at the university, traveling more, opening a creativity center, etc. I did lots of things on that paper. Once done, I folded and archived it.

3 years after I wrote that letter I did a major house clean in my new home (new continent) and this paper showed up. I read it and I couldn’t believe it.
85% of the things I said I will do in my lifetime I had either already accomplished or on my way to do so. At the time of writing it, I didn’t have 3 kids nor did I teach at a university level and I wasn’t traveling as much or doing my creativity consultations. Imagine that!

Time to write another 90-year-old letter.
Will you do it with me?

Are you sleeping at work?

Researchers have found that naps can result in improved energy and performance for employees and may be especially important following long periods of continuous work or during non-standard work schedules.

Ofcourse, taking a nap in the middle of a workday was easier during the pandemic while working from home. Going back to the office has its many advantages, but taking care of our mental health is not one of them. Unless the environment is fertile for such efficient daily recovery tool, we need to redesign the going back to work routines.

If you’re in charge of a team or oversee operations of a company, keep in mind that employees will be hesitant to take breaks if they are not encouraged to do so. It is the top management’s role if they wish to see high productivity levels in their teams to highlight and encourage taking breaks. This can be set up in a corner or an office and communicated in staff meetings and policies. You might need to directly tell your teammate it is time to take a 10 or 15-minute break when the stress is high so that he or she ca return to the task with a higher level of energy. This is not a lunch or coffee break. This is mental rest with no work involved.

Randah

p.s. If you found yourself continuously napping at work, it’s time to find another not-so-boring job for your mind

The woodcutter without a brain

I want to share with you a story and ask a question.

This story I learned during my years as a storyteller in Montreal in the early 2000s. I gathered a plethora of folktales from 22 Arabic countries for “My Arabic Story”, a nonprofit powerhouse that gathered and told Arabic fables to Canadians worldwide.

The woodcutter without a brain. A story from Morocco (retold by Inea Bushnaq)

Two woodcutters were walking in a thicket when they saw lion footprint on the road. “This is the mark of a lion,” said one. “What shall we do?” “Let us go on our way and do what we have to do,” said his friend. So they continued along the path and each collected a load of firewood. When it was time for them to return, the first man said, “Let us take another way home”. “No, this path is shorter,” said his friend. The first man said, “I’m not walking in the same path as the lion.” And he took a rocky path higher up the mountain.

The second woodcutter returned the way they had come. When he reached the place where they had noticed traces of a lion, he found the lion himself sitting in the middle of the road. “Peace be upon you O lion.” Said the man. “Peace, O son of Adam,” said the lion. “What are you doing here?” asked the man. “I am sick,” replied the lion, “and I need the brain from the head of a man to cure me. God in His mercy has led you to me and is offering me your brain, praise be to Him.”

“Listen, O lion,” said the man, “for what I am about to tell you is the truth. I am a brainless fellow. Had I the least bit of brain I should not have returned this way. The one with the brain is up there beyond the rocks!”

“God grant you happiness.” said the lion and began climbing up the mountain.

—————-

My two questions:

What type of brainless fellows are you surrounded with that might serve you on a plate to the lion?

How would you protect yourself, brain, and ideas from such experience while you continue collecting your wood and making sound decisions?

Like a jellyfish

What if you could go back to being your 15-year-old self again?

What lessons, life experiences, and ambitions did you have that you can learn from?

Going back in time is used for nostalgic reasons or reflective actions. Mostly when we miss our old life (or are worried of it coming back to bite us) or when we want to send an emotion or advice that we’ve made it and that we didn’t need to be so hard on ourselves. It’s rarely used to seek advice from.

But what if you’re looking back for the sole purpose of learning what to do next? What if your older wisdom knows exactly how to face a similar challenge to the one you’re facing now, albite it looks different on the surface?

This is what the immortal jellyfish does when faced with a stressful environment or physical damage. It reverses its life cycle back to an infant stage, settles at the bottom of the sea, and re-grows cells into a new polyp structure. It survives and lives a new life.

What can we do to be more like that jellyfish? Think of all the unique things your younger self knew that you no longer do (intuition power anyone?)

Excited to share with you the Biomimicry workshop. Next cohort starts October 15. Join with friends to grow your ecosystem and learn from nature, rather than about nature.

decisions. decisions.

Everyday you get to make new decisions.

You get to choose whether yesterday’s – or last year’s – decision is still valid for the time being and can be used given all the new insights you have.

We hold on too close for past decisions that don’t serve us anymore.

We grow and we flourish and yet some of our decisions don’t grow with us.

You have the right, and the responsibility, to tell your former self you made the best decision at that time. Thank you. But now I know better and I need to change. It doesn’t matter how much time or money we spent on this, we paid for learning.

The hardest ones are the emotional things that keep us from doing things our way, in today’s world. So don’t cover your eyes because your heart is aching. You’re actually being kind to it by letting all these non-needed decisions go.

“I don’t know”

It’s impossible to learn something if you think you already know it.
If you find yourself responding to every question asked, commenting on all conversation topics, or talking about your experiences without a breathing moment, you’re manifesting ignorance more than anything else.

When we pretend to know what we think we know, we ignore anything that will contradict our beliefs. When we strive to give others the impression that we know-it-all, we portray the image of being better, more important and smarter. We also shut off incoming signals from outside sources that can greatly educate us, leaving us less smarter than what we thought we were.

There’s nothing more powerful than a leader who says eloquently “I don’t know.”
This is the ultimate wisdom from those who know.
It opens mind, ears and attention to what might be the answer. It grounds the person and connects with others who are eager to explore the question together.
Are you open for knowledge?

Textures

Different textures evoke different moods and thinking patterns.

Rough, unfinished textures such as undyed linen or weathered wood feel warm and natural and signal rustic charm. Polished marble and ironed fabric, on the other hand, are cool, sleek and formal.

Same goes into what you touch and feel at the office.

Those big oak boardroom tables are beautiful. But they give you a feeling of being formal, decisive, unchangeable. You can’t easily move them around to fit the needs of the people. They are fixed.

They don’t allow a chance to pivot according to market input. They don’t give juniors the confidence to speak up nor the sense of being heard. They are made for a final act of war plan. The chain of command (that goes in one direction) is louder than the chain of communication, which needs to go in all directions.

Pick and choose wisely for the desired effect of creativity you wish to create in your meetings and conversations. Be where the flow is visible. Let the space help you think more creatively.

How to create a digital water cooler effect?

Organizations pay heavily for a big desk and a washed wall paint, yet little attention is paid for hallway interaction. How many ideas have sprung from the corner where the water cooler existed to host so many conversations with hidden opportunities of intra-departments idea collaboration? This is where creative ideas from different corners of the office floor emerge.

The situation of intra-disciplinary (or intra-departmentally) collaboration worsened is when we moved our work remotely and didn’t design for such interaction. Those non-essential conversations that don’t usually fall nicely into our over-crowded meeting schedules are the essence of creative ideas.

Some of us moved back into offices after long months of silo survival work. Others chose a hybrid situation, and some decided to move entirely online. Yet the question remains: How to design spaces that promote inter-department impromptu conversations? How to have more chance encounters and welcome serendipity into our manicured meeting schedules?

There are many ideas on this subject. Some with proven track record and others that don’t fit every situation. Back to you:

What have you done to design randomness into your daily work life?
How are you creating chance encounters with your team members?
What norms are you building to nurture a culture of innovation?
What have you done to create such spaces of loosely fit connections?

Expanding your experiences

For some people, work is life.

For others, they work is in the way of living life.

And then there are all who fall in the spectrum between those two.

Regardless of where you are and how much you love your job, there’s great value in finding experiences that help you detach from work and become more involved and absorbed in your non-work life.

Typically these experiences involve learning new things (i.e.g a new language), seeking out intellectual challenges (e.g., playing chess), doing things to challenge ourselves (e.g., competing in triathlons), or simply doing things to broaden our horizons (e.g., taking a class in a field different from our job).

The more varied experiences you get involved in, the more you broaden your view and create the conditions to sharpen your systems thinking and analogy making skills. Not only that, but getting involved in outside experiences help us in two ways:

First, they force us to devote our mental and intellectual resources to something other than work. Doing so enables us to achieve some level of detachment from it.

Second, they can be highly reinforcing. They allow us to feel a sense of achievement and accomplishment. This can add to our satisfaction on the job or compensate for it should we find ourselves not in the ideal work environment.

How many outside experiences are you involved in that help you detach from work at a psychological level?

Why keep learning?

I was recently asked the question: What is the main cost in maintaining an organizational learning environment and what is the greatest benefit?

I believe “time” might be the greatest cost in maintaining a learning culture. The time we take to understand our systems, our customers, our audience, our employees, and the time to find ways to better serve them and better work together.

The benefits are priceless.

If we don’t have a learning environment then we’re going to fall into the same problems on a regular basis and find ourselves firefighting most of the time. We may even be very successful in business but the tasks that we create become mundane, which affects the motivation of our people.

If we don’t have a learning environment, then people will not bother learning new ways to make things better. If they are constantly trying to finish off tasks and get things done and there’s no “time” to reflect and experiment with new methods, then we’re not learning as an organization and we will easily be outlived by our competitors. “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”, said Peter Drucker, and learning is one main ingredient in this culture.