Courtesy Seth Godin:
People don’t believe what you tell them.
They rarely believe what you show them.
They often believe what their friends tell them.
They always believe what they tell themselves.

Too much money can actually stifle innovation in business. Seth Godin explains:

First rule: great product development and marketing almost always comes from organizations that don’t have enough money. Having less money keeps you from trying to buy your way out of trouble.
Second rule: learning to live with less money means you will develop skills and resources instead of buying them. And it means that when you have less money (again), you’ll be prepared.
Third rule: When you need money for something specific, go get it. But just for that. With good terms. As soon as you spend money to protect your money or leverage your money or account for your money or send a message about your money, the money is not only wasted, it hurts you.

Sounds like a paradox. What profit-oriented business — or individual, for that matter — doesn’t strive to create a boatload of cash? Yet once you’ve filled the boat and carved out your share of the market, it’s all too easy to become fat, dumb and happy. And as Seth suggests, that mentality can hurt you more than ever before — and quicker than you may think.

It takes discipline to live lean — thus maintaining the best conditions for innovation — when [seemingly] easy fixes are affordable. It also takes discipline to continue increasing individual and organizational capabilities when what you’re doing today is generating major cash.

The going has been getting tougher for IBM recently, as this article discusses:

Grand-scale innovation breakthroughs have never been more important for IBM. The company’s current reputation for constant incremental innovation hasn’t inspired investors. IBM’s stock price has remained fairly flat for the past three years…Recent earnings gains have come through cost-cutting, not the top-growth spurred by new business. As Asian competitors like [InfoSys] eat into its core business, IBM needs to bring to market new products and services.

IBM’s response? An Innovation Jam:

[IBM used] online brainstorming sessions to mine for new business opportunities in 2001, to exchange ideas about good management in 2002, and to discuss IBM values in 2003. But the current [Innovation Jam] is the biggest ever and the first to go open source. IBM is inviting [approximately 100,000] clients, consultants, and employees’ family members to tinker with its technologies in pursuit of new ideas. IBM won’t own any of the nuggets that emerge during the two 72-hour sessions — they are fair game for anyone who logs on. [IBM CEO] Palmisano says the company will put up to $100 million behind the strongest ideas.

Business Week highlights the risks and rewards in employing an online brainstorming event:

Of course, there is danger in IBM’s open-source approach to sharing ideas…It’s possible that competitors could lurk in virtual chat rooms, listening in on new ideas. “Without risk, there is no innovation,” said Ed Bevin, vice-president of communications for IBM research and one of the jam’s chief architects.

The event could have payoffs beyond new ideas. It will build IBM’s image as a forward-thinking global competitor…

What a concept! Rather than wishfully wait for new markets to appear fortuitously, create an online brainstorming session which [hopefully] catalyzes them.

During Phase I of the Jam (July 24-27), IBM had 53,000 participants, 37,000 posts, about 3 million web pages viewed, and 67 participating companies [in addition to IBM]. I’d bet that IBM’s data miners are having a blast analyzing the participant posts.

I’m going to participate in Phase II of the Innovation Jam. If you’d like to join what appears to be a first of its kind, open online event for generating new business ideas, go here to enroll.

Garr Reynolds has suggested that TV commercial creators and conference presenters share some similarities of purpose. Huh? When I’ve made presentations at conferences on behalf of vendors, I’ve almost always been warned to steer clear of a sales pitch. Isn’t that what commercials are all about?

Think about the real purpose that drives each of these roles. Both want to, as Garr says, “connect with the audience and get the message across in a short amount of time.” He continues:

[T]he goals in many ways are similar: Get noticed. Be understood. Be memorable. Get people to take action.

He explains that the best commercials and the best business presentations share two common traits: They appeal to humor, and are highly visual. His tips for making high-impact presentations:

• Have compelling, well-organized content with the appropriate depth and scope for the occasion
• Make it visual.
• Make it large.
• Make it [high-resolution].
• Mix in photography, text, video, perhaps a small bit of animation.
• Synchronize visuals with the spoken word.
• Make it vocal. Your voice is a powerful tool. Your presentation is not a “slideshow with narration.” It is you telling your story with compelling visual support.
• Be different. Not different for the sake of being different, but honestly different. Get in touch with your “inner presenter” — everyone has it inside them somewhere, and it’s different in each of us.
• Stand front and center. Don’t look back.
• Be proud of your topic. Don’t be arrogant (duh), but be confident and show it.
• No one should have a clue how many slides were used. If they are counting, you’ve already lost.
• No one cares about your software. At the end of the day, no one should really know or care what software you used. No PowerPoint clichés, tired templates, etc.
• Never, ever go over your allotted time. Period.

Garr points us to Dick Hardt’s Identity 2.0 keynote as a good example of a business presentation incorporating these features. And here’s his TV ad example, titled “I am Canadian”:

Most folks in business tend to think of brainstorming as the generation of ideas in a group setting. Research by psychologist Paul Paulus suggests that people brainstorming in groups crank out only about half the ideas they would if they brainstormed alone.

According to Robert Sutton, group vs. individual brainstorming isn’t an either-or proposition. In Eight Tips for Better Brainstorming, he challenges claims made in a recent Wall Street Journal article endorsing solo brainstorming:

[C]omparing whether creativity happens best in groups or alone is pretty silly when you look at how creative work is actually done. At creative companies, people switch between both modes so seamlessly that it is hard to notice where individual work ends and group work starts.

Drawing a hard line between “individual” and “group” creativity…is pointless. What really matters is that the two modes mingle as the creative process unfolds.

The WSJ article sparked some criticism by bloggers (summarized by Chuck Frey). For example, Grant McCracken points out eight errors in the article, then offers this blunt conclusion:

It is hard to imagine that an institution as smart [as] the WSJ should be capable of generating so many stupidities about brainstorming. And this at a time when the corporation is having to flourish in an innovation economy where creativity is the new name of the game.

Bruce Nussbaum added that group brainstorming is the real deal:

I’ve put some time into studying the art of brainstorming, indeed, the art of having a productive meeting in general, and the WSJ piece was just so wrong on so many levels.

My own experience is that if you craft the meeting, mix the people correctly, set rules on not interrupting and “yes, butting,” and keep the focus, brainstorming sessions can be incredibly productive.

Sutton didn’t stop with his critique of the WSJ article. His Business Week article offers eight guidelines for running effective group brainstorming sessions. Here’s a moderately edited version of the list (note especially #7, which I found particularly interesting):

1. Use brainstorming to combine and extend ideas, not just to harvest ideas.
Andrew Hargadon’s How Breakthroughs Happen shows that creativity occurs when people find ways to build on existing ideas. The power of group brainstorming comes from creating a safe place where people with different ideas can share, blend, and extend their diverse knowledge. If your goal is to just “collect the creative ideas that are out there,” group brainstorms are a waste of time. A Web-based system for collecting ideas or an old-fashioned employee suggestion box is good enough.

2. Don’t bother if people live in fear.

3. Do individual brainstorming before and after group sessions.
Alex Osborn’s 1950s classic Applied Imagination, which popularized brainstorming, gave advice that is still sound: Creativity comes from a blend of individual and collective “ideation.” Skilled organizers tell participants what the topic will be before a brainstorm.

4. Brainstorming sessions are worthless unless they are woven with other work practices.
Brainstorming is just one of many practices that make a company creative, and it is of little value if it’s not combined with other practices—such as observing users, talking to experts, or building prototype products or experiences—that provide an outlet for the ideas generated.

5. Brainstorming requires skill and experience both to do and, especially, to facilitate.
In all of the places that I’ve seen brainstorming used effectively…brainstorming is treated as a skill that takes months or years to master. Facilitating a session is a skill that takes even longer to develop.

6. A good brainstorming session is competitive—in the right way.
In the best brainstorms, people feel pressure to show off what they know and how skilled they are at building on others’ ideas. But people are also competitive in a paradoxical way. They “compete” to get everyone else to contribute, to make everyone feel like part of the group, and to treat everyone as collaborators toward a common goal.

7. Use brainstorming sessions for more than just generating good ideas.
Brainstorms aren’t just a place to generate good ideas. At IDEO, these gatherings support the company’s culture and work practices in a host of other ways. Project teams use brainstorms to get inputs from people with diverse skills throughout the company. In the process, a lot of other good things happen. Knowledge is spread about new industries and technologies, newcomers and veterans learn—or are reminded—about who knows what, and jumping into a brainstorm for an hour or so to think about someone else’s problem provides a welcome respite from each designer’s own projects. The explicit goal of a group brainstorm is to generate ideas. But the other benefits of routinely gathering rotating groups of people from around a company to talk about new and old ideas might ultimately be more important for supporting creative work.

8. Follow the rules, or don’t call it a brainstorm.
This is true even if you only hold occasional brainstorms and even if your work doesn’t require constant creativity. The worst “”brainstorms”" happen when the term is used loosely, and the rules aren’t followed—or known—at all. Perhaps the biggest mistake that leaders make is failing to keep their mouths shut.
The rules vary from place to place. But Alex Osborn’s original four still work: 1) Don’t allow criticism; 2) Encourage wild ideas; 3) Go for quantity; 4) Combine and/or improve on others’ ideas. To steal from IDEO, I’d add “One conversation at a time” and “Stay focused on the topic,” as both help save groups from dissolving into disorder.

Hugh MacLeod employs an interesting analogy for contrasting the traditional control-the-one-way-message marketing with the growing uncontrolled market discussion…

A traditional marketing “message” acts like a wave. In the future, I believe marketing messages will behave more like particles…A wave stays connected to its source, a particle does not. Once the particle leaves you, it is no longer yours. You no longer control it, anymore than a dandelion spore controls the wind.

…and gives these particles a name:

What is an Object of Sociability [OoS, or “Ooze” for short]? “Ooze” is simply something that allows you to engage with another person. It could be anything. It could a party. It could be a bottle of wine. It could be a hyperlink. It could be a social gesture…A blog post is an Ooze.

I propose a new metric (I’m a statistician — I can’t help it): Oozes per month. (I’m not kidding.) As the saying goes, what gets measured gets done. Tracking your production of Oozes will increase the likelihood that you’ll actually create and release them.

Days/Weeks/Months later (depending on your industry), start correlating your monthly Oozes data — categorized by type, of course — with your meaningful outcomes data (e.g. sales, profit, customer satisfaction) . Tweak your Oozes strategy as required. Repeat.

If (or when?) you take your firm to great heights, you write a book about it. Make tens of thousands in fees at speaking gigs. Become a rock star. Write your autobiography.

Just remember that it all started from Ooze. Thanks for the new acronym, Hugh.

Christopher Kenton weighs in on why businesses really fear blogging (bold text is mine):

[T]he control of information is becoming distributed…businesses are having to learn how to shift from polished monologue to broader dialog with their audience.

The old paradigm of corporate communications that businesses understand—the one-way broadcasting of a tightly designed and controlled message—is giving way at an accelerating pace to a chaotic and uncontrolled market discussion. Bulletin boards, chat rooms, blogs and list groups allow consumers to share information and influence public perceptions about companies and products, and businesses are quickly being relegated to just another participant in the conversation. Some companies are actively engaged in the discussion, some are trying out various schemes for influencing the dialog, but most are just standing on the sidelines scratching their heads.

The advice that has become standard among blogging experts is that any business engaging in a dialog with their market must be authentic, open and responsive.

Why do so many businesses fear the give-and-take dialog that is the currency of our new communications technology? Not primarily because of the lack of control…What far more businesses fear is the lack of a consistent, cohesive and compelling story – much less business operation – they can be confident in sharing and defending clearly to win the hearts and minds of their market. After all, it’s easy to package, polish and publish a perfect message for mass consumption. But to embody that message as a business, to understand its meaning and its implications throughout every commercial function, to champion that message and to believe it, that takes something that most businesses just haven’t spent a whole lot of timing working out.

Most professional male golfers appear to consider a display of emotion on camera an embarrassment. A crack in the voice or a tear shed following a life-changing tournament victory seems taboo. The irony is that, while most of them manage to resist the temptation to weep, they also manage to lose control of their inner emotions during play in major championships.

Yesterday, Tiger Woods showed the golfing world the opposite.

Like so many major Sundays prior, he controlled his thoughts and emotions on the course while delivering a best-of-world performance. This time, he also showed millions of viewers that he’s not afraid to display raw emotion after the last putt fell, with the cameras still rolling.

When I ponder the whole thing — his skillful shotmaking under intense pressure, his between-shot demeanor, his rise to Chris DiMarco’s challenge, and his post-win reaction (captured in the video below) — only one word comes to my mind.

Beautiful.

I risk being teased by pals for using that word. I don’t care. I can’t think of a better way to describe it.

Welcome back, Tiger.

David Maister recently urged his blog’s readers to get good at getting feedback. Yesterday, Seth Godin suggested how to give feedback.

David on getting it:

Remember that people NEVER tell you the truth on formal occasions…If you’re ever going to develop the skill of getting feedback (and it is a skill) then you need to find ways to make it informal. Get out of the office to have this conversation.

Seth on giving it:

No one cares about your opinion…What I want instead of your opinion is your analysis…Analysis is a lot harder than opinion because everyone is entitled to his or her own taste (regardless of how skewed it might be). A faulty analysis, however, is easy to dismantle. But even though it’s scary to contribute your analysis to a colleague’s proposal, it’s still absolutely necessary.

If you have something nice to say, please say it…It’s easy to interpret the absence of positive feedback as the absence of any sort of approval or enthusiasm.

Feedback. Give it. Get it. Repeat.

VC Rick Segal recently chatted it up with the CEO and CTO of a large firm (“couple of hundred million in revenue”):

[D]o you guys worry about some little guy coming out of nowhere and eating your lunch because you have all this major investment in existing systems, people, pricing, etc.

The [paraphrased] response by the CEO/CTO:

[W]e have tons invested, the best people, a lock on the market, a pile of customers and we just don’t waste time worrying about somebody that can’t out spend us or have all of our people or systems. As long as we just keep pressing on, we will be fine.

Rick, whose development skills have gotten rusty (by his own admission), mocked up something in minutes which had the CEO asking his CTO some tough questions about the company’s high IT costs, slow cycle times for software application revisions, etc.

Segal’s punchline:

The split second you get any traction, any success at all? Look over shoulder, they’re coming. You are already ‘the old way to do it.’

I believe this kind of “we’ll be fine” thinking is more common than both of us [you and I] think. It represents both problems and opportunities, depending on your position.

Are you the top dog on your block? Don’t stop innovating. In fact, throwing away some legacy hardware, software, and business processes may be the best thing you could do.

Are you overwhelmed by the assets and spending of the big dogs in your space? Starting with a clean[er] slate may be your greatest strength. There are plenty of opportunities in numerous industries for newcomers to do it better, faster, and cheaper than existing players overwhelmed by the forces of the status quo.