[Review] Innovation You

I just finished Jeff DeGraff's book, "Innovation You: Four Steps to Becoming New and Improved," and I really enjoyed it.  I'd heard about DeGraff before  -- that he had good techniques to help people come up with creative solutions to life's challenges -- and I've learned a lot more about him through this well-written book.

In "Innovation You," DeGraff provides some very practical advice for how to approach problems and go beyond your "default" approach for innovation. The notion is that we all have preferred ways of handling various situations, but that we don't always do well at adapting our approach to better fit the situation.  The result? We stay in our comfort zone too long, while our situation fails to improve.

Why do we do this?  I think it's mostly habit and fear of trying the unfamiliar.  As DeGraff says so well, "To grow requires that we temporarily suspend our need for certainty and control."

Four zones - where's your comfort?

At the heart of this book is a model that DeGraff uses to articulate the most common approaches to innovation and problem-solving.  The model is known as the "Innovation You Model," which is what is represented by  the 4-color circle inside the letter 'o' on the cover (at right).  Each of the pie slices represents a different approach or bias for solving problems or pursuing innovation:

• Yellow is "Collaborate," which means you are most likely to team up with (or tap into) others as a default method for solving problems.
• Green is "Create", which means you are most likely to try to create your own new and innovative solutions to a problem.
• Blue is "Compete," which means you have a need to 'win' and are going to try to find a tangible goal within the problem space and doggedly pursue it.
• Red is "Control," which means you'll collect the facts, figure out the rules, and be very systematic in solving the problem.

if you're like me, you can easily figure out which one of these is your dominant approach, which ones you can use effectively, and which one you have the most trouble applying (green is my favorite, I'm good at yellow, I am handy with red in a crisis, and blue is my least natural position).

Throughout the book, DeGraff uses interesting and relevant stories to share how these approaches can be used to solve problems.  This includes some analysis techniques & tools you can use to try to figure out the best innovation approach to use, or diagnose why your current approach isn't working.

It, we, or I?

Another model used in the book is one that DeGraff describes as a sort of 3-layer Russian nesting doll.

• The outermost layer is the "universal" layer, or the "it" layer.  Things at this layer sort of happen to us and are not really within our direct control. Think natural phenomena, market forces, etc.
• The middle layer in is the "communal" layer, or the "we" layer.  Things at this layer involve our relationships with others, whether at work, in clubs, churches, and our family.
• The innermost layer is the "personal," or the "I" layer.  This is the layer that defines us as people - our values, health, intelligence, motivations, etc.

The interesting notion here isn't that we need to "pick a layer" when we solve problems or try to innovate - it's that we need to "consider other layers."  In other words, trying to find solutions that work on multiple layers - not just solve for a local optima at a single layer.

Again, DeGraff provides some great examples and stories (I think of them as mini case studies) to help you internalize what this really means.

Become new and improved, a step at a time

This book is an easy read - the concepts are straight-forward, the chapters are short, and the stories are engaging.  I think the thingI like most about "Innovation You" is that it is both prescriptive and practical.

This book would be a great gift if you know someone who feels stuck or overwhelmed by a difficult problem.  One line I liked from the book: "Where is the pain so high that trying something new would be an improvement?" - if that hits the mark, get them a copy of this book!

It is also the sort of book that would be great for a book study group, particularly if you wanted to go through the book with an intact team (at work, in an organization, etc.) that needs to work together to solve problems.

Evernote, convenience, and habits

I was recently catching up on some of my favorite blog stops, and just read an article from a few months back on the Success Begins Today blog, where John talks about the lovely marriage that is Evernote+iPad 2.  John and I are usually of like mind, and our fondness for Evernote is no exception.

Background

I'm a long-time user of Evernote which, if you aren't familiar with it, is an excellent capture and recall tool for storing all kinds of digital information.  You can take pictures of things and add them as a note, you can type things in, you can forward emails and PDF's to it, and much more.

Everything you send to Evernote gets indexed and stored in your account on its cloud-based service.  Once the information is indexed, you can quickly retrieve it based on tags, location, or keyword searches (it will even convert text in pictures to a searchable form - it is awesome for retrieving pictures you've taken on whiteboard diagrams with lots of text on them).

Evernote offers a robust free account, as well as a subscription option (faster indexing of your files, and more monthly storage - most people will be fine with the free version).

Evernote makes it easy to collect and interact with this data - you can run desktop clients on your computer, access it in a web browser, or from mobile clients on most tablets or smartphones.  Very simple.

Challenges

For me, the hardest things with adopting Evernote were:

1. Developing the habit of using Evernote
   • The number of clients available for Evernote (see above) makes this easier but, like with any new process, it took me a while to develop the habit of entering my notes into Evernote.  I wish there were some magic potion that would make this easy, but I don't know of one.
   • One thing that can help is to ditch your paper notepad for a while so you are encouraged to take notes directly into Evernote.
2. Taking notes directly into Evernote in meetings
   • There were a couple of problems in this area:
     • first, my computer was a bit bulky so I didn't carry it around to all my meetings;
     • second, the soft keyboard on my phone or iPad were kind of a pain to type on and I ended up spending more time concentrating on finger typing than I did on the contents of the meeting.
   • The best solution I found for this was to get the Zagg ZaggFolio for my iPad 2.  This is a combination iPad 2 case and Bluetooth keyboard.  When I use this in combination with the Evernote iPad app, I can use my touch-typing skills to easily take notes in my meetings.  The iPad's 10-hour battery life plus the long life of this keyboard (I charge it every month or two) makes this a much better alternative than my laptop.

So, if you're looking for a great way to centralize all your meeting notes, easily retrieve them, and you have an iPad, I think this is a great solution.

What can you change - yourself or others?

Just reading a thoughtful post on Management Craft, in which Lisa Haneberg raises two points:

1. You cannot expect people to be what you aren't.

2. You cannot expect your employees to think or act like you.

Interesting to think about, eh?  How does this match up with the notion that you should surround yourself with people who are weak in your areas of strength? It aligns very well, I think.

One of the temptations I fight is trying to get people to do what I would do in a given situation when, in fact, I may be asking them to fight their nature.  If I let them use their strengths instead of mimicking mine, maybe they'll come up with something awesome that I'd never have dreamed up on my own.

It seems to me that the finesse of managers is to stick to advising and steering our employees on the "how" instead of the "what."  In other words, letting people come up with their own solutions but providing guidance on the best ways to get the idea implemented in light of politics, personalities, and preconceived notions they may have to overcome to be sucessful.

What do you think?

Listen, don't just explain.

I've run into a bunch of situations recently (both work and personal) in which two people get more and more irritated at each other.  In each of these situations, both parties believed they were "right" and both parties went to great lengths to convince the other person.

This is "human nature 101" stuff, but why is it so hard for people to turn off their "explain" gene so they can listen to what the other person is saying?  It happens to us all, so what do you do about it?

If you can't turn off the urge to talk, sometimes it's useful to bring in someone to mediate.  I've found that in most of these cases, the viewpoints are not as far apart as they seem and a few tweaks can result in a solution both people can be happy with (or at least agree to live with).

What solutions have you found to this problem?  Are you a good mediator?  Please share your secrets.

"You - call 911!"

In times of great change, as in times of crisis, leaders sometimes need to jump into "directive" mode.

That's what I realized during some chatting today with fellow managers.  You see, we were talking about how managers and leaders can be more effective in times of change and uncertainty, as part of a discussion about 'situational leadership' and we reckoned that even experienced employees often welcome specific, unambiguous direction in times of crisis.  This is sometimes difficult for managers with experienced teams, as we often think the best thing is just to stay out of their way because they'll figure it out quickly enough.  In reality, even experienced employees can stall out and panic during these times of great change.

This rang true for me, and reminded me of my first aid / emergency medical training.  In that training, they tell you that when someone is having a medical emergency, one of the worst things you can do is trust / hope that 'someone' will do the right thing.  In medical emergencies, they tell you to take charge, look at a specific person and say to them, "You - call 911!" so you don't have to leave things to chance.  In other words, give a specific person a specific thing to do so they can focus on what's required of them.

In times of organizational upheaval or uncertainty, the same principle holds true.  Rather than hope that everyone gets back to work and figures out what to do next, many people look to company leaders to jump into "take charge" mode and start giving specific instructions.  "You - go work on x, and get it done by the end of the week."  This gets people working again, gets them focused, and takes their mind off the chaos.

I've been in uncertain and rapidly changing situations quite a bit in my life, and there are a lot of changes going on in my world right now.  Maybe it's time for me to be more directive to get people focused and moving forward.  What about you?  Any of this sound familiar?  Share your thoughts, please.