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Thanksgiving is a Boon for more than the Black Friday Kickoff!

11/24/2016

Thanksgiving celebrations are a centuries-old tradition and they need no introduction. The wonderful truth is that just about every one on the planet has something to be thankful for. It doesn't have to be something new or big, just something that brings joy and gratefulness to our hearts.

There is no question that there's much that's wrong in the world, but today we can focus on what's right. The value of this age old tradition is enormous with many studies proving the emotional, social and physiological benefits of gratefulness, including:

Reduces aches and pains
Increases happiness
Inspires people to be more health conscious and spend more time exercising
Enables people to sleep better
Grateful people are much more likely to live longer
Gratefulness reduces negative emotions such as envy, frustration and resentment
Gratefulness can even reduce blood pressure and strengthen our immune system
Makes us more resilient and able to bounce back
Helps us relax
Makes us friendlier
Increases energy levels
Deepens friendships
Increases goal achievement
Reduces materialism
Improves self-esteem

And since this is a business blog... I'm thankful I can look back over the years of being in business and remember relationships with customers and work partners and subcontractors who trusted me and inspired me and taught me!

I'm grateful for every individual and every business that has brought a spirit of never ending improvement and excellence to their work!

I'm grateful for everyone who has revered collaborative relationships for the value they add to us as individuals, to our workplace cultures, to our communities and our world! I'm grateful for everyone who has shown me that the effort to improve, has its own reward no matter what the outcome!

I'm grateful for everyone in business who cares more about the value they are producing for their customers and partners, than the profit they're making!

With that I'm wishing you all a happy Thanksgiving holiday and a future filled with gratitude!

By: Kevin Minne
InnovationGrowthSystems.com
720-354-0291

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No Idea is Perfect, Mistaking Your Way to Better Products

11/18/2016

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Original thinking and innovative new ideas are to business and progress what bees are to the pollination of the food chain. Those little buzzing, bumbling, marvels amble about carrying the essential nectar that ignites new life and growth in plants that would otherwise be impossible. Likewise, original, outside-of-the-box thinking and ideas rarely come in a complete package. Big innovative ideas almost always come from bits and pieces of smaller, incomplete ideas that are brought together little by little to eventually form the usable and valuable whole. But getting to that whole can be a difficult and mistake prone process. The great idea that is without flaw doesn't exist! (In other words the queen bee needs all the worker bees to complete the hive.) Instead of a CEO maybe we need CPO's (Chief Pollinating Officer) someone that is constantly connecting with idea makers and spreading those ideas. But it goes deeper than that, in the immortal words of Ken Robison, "if you are not prepared to be wrong (and take input from others) then you will never create something truly remarkable!” Take a moment and remember the last time you were wrong and I mean wrong in a big way, then add to that, wrong in front of a crowd. Can you remember how it felt? Did you break out in a cold sweat, did your face and ears get flushed with heat, did you want to crawl under a chair or anything and just disappear? Being wrong is certainly not fun for any of us and the bigger the ego the harder it is to cope. So what are some ways to prepare ourselves for the inevitable “wrongs” when they come?
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Stop needing to have the answers and get back to perpetual learning. When we're learning, and admit to being a student, it's perfectly acceptable to be wrong.
Practice saying "I don't know or I'm not sure, what are your thoughts.”
Lose the ego, pride gets in the way of so much progress, humility enables us to learn and improve so much more quickly (and it's easier to live with!)
Believe that no idea is perfect, that way you will always be looking for input from others. (Which also helps build better teams.)
Learn to laugh at yourself, there's nothing that opens up creativity and broadened perspective better than humor! (There is scientific proof of this!)
Make sure your work includes some fun. A nerf basketball tournament was the simple tool that one creative art director used to ignite the creativity of his team!
Always lead by example, make sure you make it easy for others to be wrong by being willing to be wrong yourself. (In fact point out your mistakes, revere them!!)

Being wrong is essential to learning, it's the perfect drug to induce a fervent desire to learn. But unfortunately many work cultures see being wrong as the kiss of death rather than the building blocks of innovative progress that it truly is.

By: Kevin Minne
InnovationGrowthSystems.com
720-354-0291

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Business Picasso

11/11/2016

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Have you ever looked at the results of your work and thought….that’s art? Maybe it was at the end of a challenging sales call or an off-site weekend strategy session or the completion of a complex, multifaceted project. Real art takes work, lots of work and lots of practice. Maybe that's why they call it artwork because wherever you see something beautiful and evidence of unique design, craftsmanship and vision you can be sure there was lots of effort and labor to bring it about!

There is art “work” in figure skating, in a gymnastics routine, in music, in writing and yes even in a beautifully orchestrated business. I confess I have been having an affair with Starbucks for quite some time now! No I'm not there everyday and not even every week and I don't just go there for the coffee. I love the buzz of the atmosphere, I love the unique designs of each store, to watch an energized crew kick out a dizzying array of caffeinated elixirs with amazing speed and good-humored banter. When you get to a good cafe and watch it work, it is truly an orchestra of art, from the rhythm of the morning rush to the slow groove of the mid-day sip and good book. Unfortunately, most of us don't look at our work as a form of art. It's just work, and at the end of day, work takes energy, but art can give it back. Beauty has its own reward! Sometimes I have to get away from my daily work of managing and writing and selling and listening and learning and directing to create something with my hands that feels like art. Because when I get done art gives back, it's like renewable energy.

Too often we go through our workday trying to minimize the amount of effort we expend so that we have something leftover for the precious moments outside of our jobs and work life. But what would happen if we begin to look at all of our work from the shuffling of paperwork, the filing, the marketing, the accounting, the managing, the problem-solving, the mentoring, the communicating, the office organizing, the brainstorming, the product development and even the cleanup, as art work? What if we began to arrange the flow and the energy and rhythm of our work with the kind of pains taking care of a gifted composer? If we all began to create art and not just work, what would be the economic, emotional and social effect on our workplace, our families and our communities? We could give our customers many reasons to buy from us instead of just one!

Remember, if all Starbucks did was serve coffee in a cup like McDonalds I would stay home and their multibillion dollar revenue stream wouldn't exist! All Howard Schultz (the founder of Starbucks) did was turn coffee into art, why else would we pay over five times the price of a McDonalds cup? Creating real art takes lots of energy but it can also energize an entire workforce and the customers and communities we serve! Art will always have much higher value than just work, so don't stop until your work becomes art!!

Let us help you turn your business into art, call today to set up a consultation!

By: Kevin Minne
InnovationGrowthSystems.com
720-354-0291

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Stop Listening to your Customers!

11/4/2016

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Stop listening to your customers and start observing. Paco Underhill's brilliant book “Why We Buy," is filled with hard evidence of shoppers doing the opposite of what they say. And employees often think that more money is a major key to job satisfaction when in reality it’s way down the list. So, just listening without observing can be very misleading! It’s only when you take the time to observe and ask questions in order to really understand the problems customers are trying to solve (rather than the solutions they think they need) that you can invent some really great new solutions!
It’s the innovators job to see through the noise and come up with the innovative solution rather than just produce what the customer says they want. It’s very much like Henry Ford when he said, “if I had asked people what they wanted they would've asked for a faster horse.” But instead of listening to their demands he solved their speed problems and much, much more! Even the late Steve Jobs of Apple fame said “customers don't know what they want until you show them.” (I think most of us can agree with that, since we didn't know we needed an iPad or iPhone until we saw all the great solutions embedded in the device.) Getting to know the problems your customers are facing intimately (both inside and outside your company) will help you do that. There is a reason focus groups flop, many would-be customers think they know what they want but it's the actual shopping experience and the surprises they encounter while in the store that account for the additional sixty percent of purchases that were unplanned. According to Paco we begin to buy when we have an experience with the product as a solution in our minds, then when we touch it we begin to own it even more, long before the monetary transaction takes place.
If you can create a way for customers to try before they buy (begin the experience of owning) before plunking down money you will find you are able to close a lot more sales. Like the car dealership that lets you take home the new car without buying, it's a lot harder to give it up when it's been parked in your garage. The same goes for managers trying to inspire or induce employees to buy in to a new program or system change. Employees who have a chance to experiment with change or new systems before the mandatory rollout are far more likely to embrace and own the change than those who are just asked to trust management and make big leaps of faith.
Again, real research and observation is the key to break through innovation!

By: Kevin Minne
InnovationGrowthSystems.com
720-354-0291

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Thanksgiving is a Boon for more than the Black Friday Kickoff!

No Idea is Perfect, Mistaking Your Way to Better Products

Business Picasso

Stop Listening to your Customers!

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