We believe passionately in the power of multiple perspectives to build and sustain innovation ecosystems.
And yet we are all creatures of habits, following schedules and routines that enable us to continue to perform at high levels, but which might leave us with little room for exploring the new. So unless we proactively seek out fresh perspectives, we run the risk of remaining in our own personal bubbles, surrounded by people who think only like us, so increasing the risk of biases like groupthink, not-invented-here and confirmation bias.
We always ask our guests what they do to remain fresh, to seek out diverse perspectives, and the answers are often surprisingly simple and practical. Here we provide a selection of tactics, all of which are easy to do, but are equally easy not to do. By regularly exercising your innovation muscles, the benefits to you and your organization will build up and compound over time, as these world class performers have discovered.
How do you remain creative and expose yourself to fresh perspectives?
We founded innovation ecosystems in order to help individuals and companies become more open to multiple perspectives and to deliver them those multiple perspectives in a range of formats. As a listener to this podcast, you will know that we discuss the topics of innovation and change and leadership with world-class performers from the worlds of business academia Sports science and the arts. Over the course of the last 2 ½ years we have been fortunate enough to attract a wide variety of guests onto the show all of whom have given us the benefits of the unique perspectives they bring to the world.
At the end of each of our interviews I ask our guests three questions. The first question, what have you changed your mind about recently, is designed to encourage guests to reflect on their unconscious biases and the extent to which they are able to overcome them, based on new data, in order to take their thinking in new directions. This is a key skill for leaders and you can listen to the responses of a number of our guests on season four in episode 75.
This week’s episode focuses on the second question I ask guests relating to the personal work habits and routines that they use in order to remain fresh, creative, and consistently to perform at a high-level. We are after all creatures of habit and unless we proactively seek out fresh perspectives, we run the risk of remaining in our own personal bubbles surrounded by who think the same way that we do, falling victim to the perils of groupthink, availability bias, confirmation bias.
So let’s start with a great example from a senior corporate executive in an industry leading business talking about how he critiques a PowerPoint presentation in service of improving in an end product. This practice often yields breakthroughs or failing that, incremental small i innovations which he talked about at length in our interview. Specifically he talks about how he leverages his predisposition for worry and stress to raise the performance of his colleagues.
“Andy Billings there, talking about rooting out the shortfalls and problems and in doing so, creating new ideas and opportunities.
As an aside here in Switzerland there is a political party called the anti powerpoint party, dedicated to decreasing professional use of presentation software, which the party claims “causes national-economic damage amounting to 2.1 billion CHF a year and lowers the quality of a presentation in “95 % of the cases”. In many companies PowerPoint is a fact of life, and Andy’s approach to challenging a presentation is a lovely example of how both incremental and breakthrough ideas can come from the humble powerpoint deck.
“That was Scott Anthony speaking in episode 58, in which he talked in-depth about how his experience in Asia has really changed how he thinks about business and capitalism in general and the role played in it by family-owned businesses and governmental organizations.
Let me say a little bit about David Pearl and the movement he created called Street Wisdom. He describes Street Wisdom as a powerful, innovative tool that helps reboot thinking, set new directions and unlock ideas, teaching individuals to use city streets to find fresh answers to the questions on their mind. Street Wisdom helps your business like solve tough problem, get fresh ideas.
Now the principal behind Street Wisdom has been echoed by lots of previous guests and this is one of the reasons that the movement David started is active in over 30 countries worldwide. I often hear all companies sending their executives to silicon valley to do some innovation tourism and even if they don’t bump into the competitors, the likelihood is that they are doing the same thing. As an early guest Rob Wolcomtt, professor of Innovation at Kellogg Business School said way back in episode 3, if you’re going to the same conferences as your competitors, if you’re talking to the same people as your competitors and using the same suppliers and hiring from the same pools as your competitors, then you’re probably finding some of the same answers as your competitors. So why not look closer to home, and start on the streets that surround your office? That’s the promise of Street Wisdom.
MARK: “Now, like David Pearl, in episode 61 my guest Tyler Gage talked about something similar to spotting the gap; although Tyler’s approach was more about prolonging the gap until both mind and body are ready to do battle with the day.
TYLER: “So, one that I find very important which is quite simple in my daily practice is not looking at my phone when I wake up for at least thirty or forty minutes. Seems very simple but I find that giving my body and my mind at least a little bit of time to not jump immediately into technological world and fluttering e-mails, I find that the mindset that puts me in for the day carries me from start to finish, and when I immediately look at blue light, e-mails, and my mind jumps from what is ultimately sensitive dream resting space, zero to a hundred, it creates a certain level of stress in my system that is really not worth it. So, it’s something I think is extremely easy to do, it just takes fending off the anxiety of looking at e-mails and what happened and what I have to do today for even thirty or forty minutes.
For those of you not familiar with Tyler’s story he established and built a fast-growing natural energy drinks company that goes head-to-head with companies like Monster Energies, sourcing not just raw materials but also business Wisdom and insight from shamans and village elders in the Peruvian rainforest. Tyler has developed practices to filter out distractions and to ease into each day in a way that maximises the likelihood of getting the outcomes he’s looking for.
And overtime the benefits of creating this the beginning of the day Will compound.
MARK: Here is another practice that those of us who travel a lot can perhaps benefit from.
DAVID: “I have the fortune of travelling a lot, so when I go to different cities – I used to, when I first started traveling, I would go someplace, then airport, hotel, sleep, wake up, speak, airport, fly out, and it quickly became sterile, I guess, and so now I always have what I call my ‘plus one’, where I would say ‘Where can I go here?’, physical places for some reason, like a statue or a battlefield or a museum, and in my sort of engineer mind I’m always drawn to the Natural History Museum or something like that, but I would try and do something different.
Now as a parent I read quite a lot of children’s books to my kids and I am always on the lookout for authors who write both for children and adults. So David’s comment resonated with me. A couple of examples in case you are interested are Ian Fleming who wrote the childhood classic Chitty Chitty Bang Bang as well as the James Bond series and Wayne Dyer, author of personal development books like your Erroneous Zones as well as children’s books like Unstoppable Me and No Excuses. David makes a really important point here about the need to break out all our existing routines for example I would love and Amazon recommendation engine that pointed me towards completely different box versus recommending more of the same. The other point about museums resonated. Previous guest Caroline Webb in episode 36 described taking a group of executives to the National portrait Gallery in London to help them look at a business problem in a completely different way.
And I am reminded about a quote by George Lois, describer by Business Week as the original Mr Big Idea who has had a titanic influence on world culture. He claims some of his best ideas have come while meandering through the metropolitan museum of art and describes “museums are the custodians of epiphanies”.
This reminds me of Woody Allen’s quote that 99% of success in life is just showing up.
So Frans has a routine to do things differently in the knowledge that he will expose himself to different stimuli, spot new patterns and make new connections.
In the interview with Robert we discussed his book Lattice Work which is all about learning from different disciplines such as biology physics psychology Philosophy and applying some of the main models of those disciplines to in his case and investment management.
So here is Luis killing two birds with one stone, making calls whilst exercising but also recognizing some of the shortcomings of his office environment and adapting his habits accordingly. And now let’s go to Whitney, an early guest on the podcast who came back recently to talk about her new book.
Gibb’s book, The Intrapreneur, was set in a mental-health ward in Scotland and it’s well worth a read it.
So we have highlighted a number of very different practices and routines that our guests use to remain fresh and creative to access diversity and multiple perspectives. Just because they work for them doesn’t mean that they will work for you. Reading children’s books, visiting museums, getting really present in the moment, tapping into the wisdom of the street, getting off the elevator a couple of floors early. Trere are easy to do, but they are also not easy to do. What struck me is that these are all easy things that are easy to do, but that they are also easy not to do. And we know from our work that it is the small eye innovations that compound overtime, and that by recombining ideas from multiple domains and perspectives you can create new solutions to your business problems. And while all of us can build our innovation muscles by doing these simple exercises it does take discipline but like exercise and healthy eating the benefits build up overtime. I suspect I am not alone in overestimating what I can achieve in the short-term, and underestimating what we can achieve in the long-term. So bear that in mind next time you have the opportunity to expose yourself to a fresh perspective be it on your daily commute, how are you spend your time on a business trip or what you choose to read when you have some free time.
I hope you found this second season four wrap up episode of value and until next time, have a great week. This is Mark Bidwell phanging perspectives, one podcast at the time.