Carla Johnson — RE:Think Innovation and the Wheel of Innovation - The Innovation Show

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Innovation isn't a gift, it's a process.
A simple, , repeatable five-stepprocess that anyone at any level
can learn with nothing morethan a stack of Post-it notes.
Observe, distill, relate,generate, pitch, and that's it.
That's how the world's most prolificinnovators consistently come up with
ideas that are new, great, and reliable.

(00:22):
She's on a mission to teach onemillion people to do exactly that.
It's a pleasure to welcome the authorof Re-Think Innovation, Carla Johnson.
Welcome to the show.
Thank you.
I'm so happy to be here.
We've been talking about thisfor a while, so I'm happy we
get to sit down and chat today
It's so great to finally meet you andfinally share your work, and you've

(00:43):
been on that mission to teach a million.
You're nearly there as well, whichis absolutely fantastic to hear.
But let's start with the title.
… That wasn't an overpronunciationof rethink innovation.
It's a very specific reasonyou picked that title
It is.
And also I was very thoughtful inhow, if you wanna show the cover,
how it's presented graphically.

(01:06):
it's RE:Think Innovation.
So say in the olden days when I wasearly in my career, we would have
these paper memos and it would sayto colon, from colon, colon, like
regarding what, what is this memo about?
so for me, that's what I wanted it to be.
It's yes, let's rethink innovationand who's involved and the

(01:29):
purpose and how we all look at it.
it's regarding the way we think aboutinnovation and really looking at it
from all different perspectives andre- reevaluating what we think it
actually is and who we give permissionto be a part of it or how willing we
are as individuals to give ourselvespermission to be a part of the process.

(01:52):
I actually still use re, so Idon't know what that says about me.
It's m- like I'm some oldEnglish lord or something.
I'll be sending messengerpigeons to people.
But yeah, I still, I use re in myletters and m- in my emails even as well.
But let's start with the cautionarytale of the thirsty pet story,

(02:14):
which you open the book with
You know for me it, it, I loved it.
I love to find quirky little stories,and it was so fun to come across this
story about the, the pet water companybecause they had these high hopes and,
and I think like a lot of companies,they looked around and they said,
"Here's this amazing opportunity forus to be a, you know, billion-dollar

(02:37):
company in a really short amount oftime." And they failed to look at the
signs that were right in front of them.
So the product was, you know,if, if you were a dog, it was
like a beef-flavored water.
If you were a cat, it waslike a salmon-flavored water.
Ideally, it was a health water, and theowner had been walking down the aisle

(02:58):
in a grocery store looking at of theoptions for your pet's food, care, all
of these things, and he's like, "Theonly thing we don't have is pet water."
And as humans, you know, we have havethe Fiji, we have all of our, you know,
Liquid Death, we have all of our waters.
He said, "Well, you know, why shouldwe why should we not allow our pets,

(03:20):
our beloved family members, to havethe same quality of water as we do?"
So they launched this company and,and when it first started out, it
looked like it was just i- incredible.
But what they didn't take intoconsideration is like the, the
health impact of this water.
so it was you know, the, the catsand dogs were getting fat because of

(03:43):
all the additional calories in it.
also they didn't take into considerationlike these are pets that will
literally drink out of the toilet.
their discerning taste wasnot at the same level as their
pet owner's discerning taste.
And, and as you can imagine, it justfell flat on its face and… But it,
it showed all the signs of what wetypically think of, you know, like a, a

(04:06):
disruptor, an incredible innovator insidean industry and, and yet it missed the
very signs right in front of it thatthe idea wasn't new, great, reliable,
one that could, could actually producemoney and, and sustain for the long term.
One of the things that story opensup is the question of a reliable
idea, and we'll come back to thatbecause it's a really important

(04:27):
aspect that's throughout the book.
But one- the only other things is,and I experienced this recently, I'll
share this with you 'cause you work asa practitioner in innovation as well.
I was asked by a well-known brand tow- come up with a workshop for their
senior team, an innovation workshop,and it was as person second to the
senior leader who was, I was dealingwith, and did the workshop, did- put

(04:51):
the workshop together, and then I hada call, and I gave the call, and it
was crickets, like, not going well.
It's the only time it's ever happened.
I was so disappointed by it.
But the problem was she wanted aninnovation workshop, but when I talked
to her, it was about innovation, andit turned out she wanted creativity,

(05:11):
which is something that, yes, linked toinnovation, but it's not innovation, and
it opens up the thing you talk about inthe book, which is you ask 100 people,
maybe even 1,000, for their definition ofinnovation, and it's often very different.
And an organization really needs toagree on what they mean by innovation.
Maybe you'll share a bit about that,but also your definition of innovation.

(05:33):
Yeah, and it was interesting.
I like, I like to poll peopleand see what their ideas are.
I mean, I, I have my own experiencesfrom my own client engagements and
from people I, I talk to after I,after I give keynotes and things,
and I love to hear their perspective.
But I did this, this question.
I put the question out on, onLinkedIn a number of years ago
of how do you define innovation?

(05:56):
And, I think whatever number itwas, there was probably twice
the definitions of innovation.
as I read through them, noneof… One, none of them were very
clear, and two, none of them weredefinitions that you could read
and then understand what behaviorshould I take next, what should I do?

(06:18):
And I think that's one of thegreatest that's one of the greatest
problems that companies have thatthey don't realize around innovation
is the word is thrown around, butnobody really knows what it means.
Like, if you and I are talking and Isay, you know, "I'm, I'm gonna go for
a run," you have a pretty clear pictureof what that behavior looks like.
Now, the speed might be verydifferent, that you do this.

(06:40):
Or if I say,
"I'm going to bake a soufflé,"you have a general, I think we all
have a general accepted expectationof what that behavior looks like.
we don't with innovation.
And I see it in organizations'values, I see it in their mission
and vision , and all of these things.
But without clarity ofdefinition, employees don't

(07:03):
understand what actions to take.
And when employees don't understanda clear action to take, then they
don't wanna perform that behaviorbecause there may be consequences.
And I think that's, that's oneof the most powerful things
that we have to understand.
even if there i- even if there may be adefinition, it's usually convoluted and
complicated and, you know, o- only certainpeople are gonna be able to figure it out.

(07:27):
But I, I believe innovationis everybody's business.
So I define innovation asconsistently being able to come up
with new, great, and reliable ideas.
And when I think of a new idea, it doesn'thave to be something that's never, ever
been done before, because, we've seen alot of amazing ideas over the centuries.

(07:47):
But it could be somethingthat's new to that industry.
So I tell a story about the GreatOrmond Street Hospital in London, it's
a children's hospital, and they had anerror rate of 30% from the time a surgery
was done until that pediatric patientwas moved down the hallway to the ICU.
And what they ended up doing is theypulled in the Ferrari's Formula 1 pit

(08:10):
stop crew to learn from them aboutprecision, speed, and process and things.
Now, were the things that they had doneabsolutely new and never been done?
Well, of course not, because Ferrariand Formula 1 pit stop crews had
been, had been doing them for years.
But it was a new approach insideof the pediatric surgery suite And

(08:31):
those standards, they dropped theerror rate by 20%, and they're,
continuing to slowly chip away at that.
But that process and the standardsare now incorporated into pediatric
surgery suites around the world.
And so that's, that's an amazing new idea.
Now, the second word is, you know, a newgreat idea, and I think of David Ogilvy.

(08:51):
He says, "You know, a great idea isone that kind of makes the, the hair
stand up and gives you goosebumps,"and y- it's more, it's more subjective.
Like, your definition of a greatidea might be completely different
than mine, but it, it gets somekind of, like, visceral reaction.
And then the third quality is that it'sa reliable idea, and a reliable idea
is one that actually has a financialimpact, grows revenue, cuts expenses

(09:17):
increases employee engagement, customerexperience scores, th- things like that.
Like, there's a concrete outcome from it.
And then I put the word consistentlyin front of that, consistently
coming up with ideas that have allthree of these characteristics.
Because we've all seen the companiesthat are the one-hit wonders.
They do have one idea that'snew, great, and reliable, but

(09:37):
they're not able to sustain thatoutput over long periods of time.
so when I think of innovation, innovativethinkers, innovative organizations,
they're those companies that consistentlycome up with new, great, and reliable
ideas that we all get excited about
And that brings us to thatidea that you talked about.
You call these companies or these peoplein the companies perpetual innovators.

(10:01):
We better give a definition for thatas well before we get stuck into the
framework and the updated framework
absolutely.
So I, I think of a perpetualinnovator as, as someone who , they
constantly think in the frameworkof the process that we're going to,
that we're going to walk through.
And it's not necessarily that theyhave a different degree or they're
smarter or anything like this.

(10:21):
Like we've I've known people inevery kind of industry at every level
of seniority or experience in anorganization who can think like this.
And we all know people who, if wesee them in the hallway or if we feel
stuck, it's like, "Oh, I can just callthem and I, I know I'm gonna get like
8, 10, 12, 40 ideas just like that."And it's because they're able to think

(10:42):
in this perpetual cycle of how do wecome up with the ideas and, and be
able to articulate and share them.
by the way, I wanna tell our audienceas well, it's the anniversary
of your book, and I'm delightedwe got this episode out in time.
So an anniversary of thebook, so buy the book.
We're only gonna cover part onetoday, so we're gonna leave you
hanging for part two, so you'llhave to buy the book to find that.

(11:03):
But you start p- you start chaptertwo with another cautionary tale,
and this is one that every innovator,many, many people listen to this show,
will feel salt in the wounds or oldwounds opened up with the story of a
startup in Canada and poor old Mohammed
Oh, yes.
Mentorina.

(11:23):
So I I still feel for Mohammed.
So I, I was sitting at my desk inDenver and, and the phone rang, and
it was, it was Mohammed Hail Saeed.
And he he was an amazing thinker,and I loved his, his passion, his
vision, his desire to do things in away that consistently brought forward

(11:45):
new, great, and reliable ideas.
And so they had started a learningmanagement software platform
that helped students learn.
And the interesting thing aboutworking with this group is that we
were able to get to a place wherethe reason behind why they were
doing the product technical reasons.
They were truly to improvethe lives of students.

(12:08):
And I think that, like, that shiftfor a lot of organizations in how
that definition of like why are weactually doing the work is a really
important one that I don't thinka lot of companies actually get to
or take the time to investigate.
So I give, I give Mentorina and theleadership a lot of credit for that.
And so Mohammed and I put togetherthis… It, it was a strategy we were

(12:30):
both so excited about and, and I alwaysask people when they come and want to
start down this innovation journey,like, "Who inspires you? Is, is it a
brand? Is it a person?" And it couldbe, you know, a, a Taylor Swift, an
Anthony Bourdain, or it could be, youknow, a neighbor who's always coming up
with quirky ideas and things like that.
Mohammed told me that the, the companythat inspired him was Disney, because

(12:51):
it didn't matter where you enter thebrand, you always have an amazing
experience, you know, whether that'sa store, a theme park, a movie, a,
you know, what- whatever it is, theconsistency of that amazing experience.
And so with Disney as our North Star,we started to say, "If Disney created a
learning management software platform,what would this look like?" So we put

(13:13):
this strategy together present it to theexecutive team, and you, you know, it
was… I'm, I'm normally very good atthinking all the what-ifs through, but we
were so excited about this strategy and,and as Mohammed finished presenting it, I,
I watched everybody around the table, likeheads nodding, "Yes, this sounds amazing."

(13:35):
But there was one person I hadn'ttaken into consideration in the
room, and I call him the CF-uh-O.
You know, I think, I think anybody'swho, who has been in a meeting where
something needs money, we have afinance person, but this was the,
the CFO who I call the CF-uh-O.
And, and when Mohammed was doneThe guy took his glasses off and

(13:56):
put them on the table and pushedhimself back and he, he crossed his
arms and he's like, not doing this.
We're, we are a serious company.
We have a lot of PhD, very smart people.
We sell to schools and universities,like, they're very smart people.
We're not doing something thatcame from a princess ride or a

(14:18):
goofy dog or something like that.
What I need you to do, Mohammed,is just go back and essentially
do the things we've always done.
Cold call, put ads in industry trademagazines." I watched it… As I sat
there in the room, like I watched thedeflation of Mohammed, and I think
this is something that almost everybodylistening can relate to at one time or

(14:38):
another, when you're so excited about anidea and somehow how it's packaged, how
it's presented just doesn't work the wayit, way you hope and think it should.
I think that, that really sent me downthe path of understanding what happened
in that room how can we fix it so othersdon't experience the same outcome.

(15:01):
And we'll get to solutions as well,because your process actually helps there.
There was some steps that Mohammedcould have gone through as well and
that we'll help other people with.
But one of the things that happenedthere is what you… We've heard of
ADD, attention deficit disorder, butthis is BDD, which is brand detachment
disorder, and we've all done it.

(15:22):
And actually, you know, I, I bothread the book and listened to it.
I got the audiobook as well, so Ilistened to it, and it was read by you.
Well done.
You did a great job.
And you talked about this.
You did it yourself.
So even though you speak at conferencesall over the world, you run conferences
all over the world, sometimes you'resitting in the audience yourself
and you're kind of going, "Yeah,yeah, that's not relevant to me."

(15:42):
And we all do it.
And I was listening toyou talk about this.
I was like going, "Ohmy God, I do it too."
absolutely.
And, and it kind of ties in with itwouldn't have mattered what brand we used
as inspiration for Mentorina and presentedthat day because the CFOO couldn't see
the vision of what we were trying to do.

(16:02):
And it brought me back to, I wassitting in a conference in Las Vegas,
a customer experience conference,and my biggest client at the
time was a mining conference…
It was a mining company.
They mined boron.
And I'm listening to the speakerfrom Zappos talk about their customer
experience process and journey and allthose things, and I'm like, "Ain't nobody

(16:24):
in this mo- boron mining company gonnado any of this." And you know, I, as we
do, I pick up my phone, I start checkingmy socials, my email, my all the things.
I look around and think, you know,who, who, who do I know in this session
that I can go to happy hour with?
And I was thinking about it a littlelater, and I know that wasn't the
first time I'd ever done that.
And to, to be honest, it's not thelast time I ever did it, but I call it

(16:49):
brand detachment disorder, it's thistendency that we have to dismiss how
relevant another company's experience,approach, vision, whatever it is,
how relevant it is to us becausewhat we sell is different or unique.
And I hear people say this all the time.

(17:11):
"That's not how we do things around here.
Yeah, that, that worked for them,but that would never work there.
We don't have that kind of budget.
We don't sell that kind of product." Imean, versus, you know, mining materials.
We're not that kind of company. Wedon't have that kind of culture."
There's all sorts of excuses, and that'swhat I put together and just defined
as this brand detachment disorder.

(17:32):
And the interesting thing is itapplies… And like, I hear it all of
the time, it will be an organizationthat brings me in to talk about, like
you said, innovation or creativity.
"Help us learn from other industries.
Help us bring the outside in."And inevitably they will say,
you know, "That's not gonna workhere because…" it's some sort

(17:56):
of psychological protectionism.
You know, we don't… This might not beworking the way we want it, but we're
so white-knuckled on holding onto thestatus quo way of doing things that
we can't see that's doing more damagethan trying something new, that they
don't see that the risk of stayingthe same actually the high- is higher

(18:17):
than the risk of trying something new.
And if you're thinking of tuning out,don't tune out yet because we're gonna
talk later on about a brand transplant,which is actually the antidote, in a
way, for this brand attachment disorder.
But one of the things you m- madea great point about was complexity
bias and how if you're being soldinnovation or you've bought in

(18:38):
innovation, you need, the consultantsneed to make it seem complicated
because, A, they have a frameworkthat only they can do maybe, perhaps.
But also, if it's simple and the rest ofthe company turn around and go, "Well,
why didn't you think of that, dumbass?"It, it doesn't look good for you, and
you might be ejected out of the company.

(18:59):
So I'd love you to share this concept
absolutely.
And, and complexity bias is itapplies to every, every topic
and, and every- everything we lookat, is that we think something is
only valuable if it's complicated.
And what we don't understand isthat hard part is to simplify it.
And so if I-- like when I look at workthat McKinsey or Deloitte or BCG does,

(19:25):
lo- lots of paperwork, lots of diagrams,lots of things, it's not something that
the average employee could understand.
And I found a really interesting statisticwhen I was researching this book, is
that 90% of innovation happens outsideof a traditional R&D or innovation team.
So if we think about that, if we, ifwe've made innovation so complicated

(19:49):
90% of our organization isn't capableperforming the action, we have just wiped
out the most powerful and productive partof our workforce to truly change things.
And so y- when you, when you talked aboutthat point about if people look at the

(20:11):
answer and it's super simple, I mean,it seems simple after the curtains have
been pulled apart and it's revealed, butwhen you're standing right in front of
the problem, that's part of the blindnessthat comes is, is our own experience,
our own history, our own way of thinking.
And sometimes it's just that outsideperspective that can say, "Oh, all you

(20:35):
need to do is unplug this one and plugthat one in, and like literally now it
will work." It's hard for, for a lot ofpeople, a lot of executives, it's hard
to give credit to something so simple.
But I look at the, the organizations,I mean, Apple was all about
how much can we simplify this?
Like what's, you know,des- design is everything.

(20:57):
Let's think different and let'smake, let's make this as easy
and simple as we possibly can.
I mean, Netflix did that withvideo ac- you know, with access to
video and to movies and everything.
Let's make it a s- you never evenhave to leave your couch now.
You don't even have to push abutton to watch the next episode,
like they've made it so simple.

(21:19):
sometimes simple is hard, andI think when, when we look at
companies who say, you know, we,we… This is a complicated process.
This is a complex situation.
The assumption is that the answer alsohas to be complex and complicated, which
generally also means time-consumingand expensive and convoluted.

(21:42):
And I just, in my experience, itdoesn't have to be that way nearly
as much as people make it out to be.
I always think that, like, likeyou've done a good job if people
kinda go, "Oh, that was, that madea lot of sense to me," you know?
And it's not like they'rehaving these huge aha moments.
It's more like kinda going, "We got this.We can do this." Like, job done when

(22:04):
you're working with an organization.
But I loved…
So chapter three, you move on to an ideaI absolutely love, and we'll come back
to it properly when we talk about theprocess, which is the brand transplant I
mentioned earlier on, because it was rightat the heart of what Kerry Smith did with
his company that became a fan companywith a name that people would not forget.

(22:25):
And the inspiration of thebrand transplant came from
a deli company in Ann Arbor.
I'd love you to share this
So, so Kerry Smith, he had startedthis company called The High
Volume Low Speed Fan Company.
So you can see,
Forgettable.
A forgettable name
I, I know the thing and Istill had to stop and, and

(22:45):
think about what order it was.
when I interviewed him,he's such a delightful man.
I interviewed him and he tells methis story about they were all sitting
around a table in a big warehouse, andthe phone rings and it's whoever is
closest to the phone answers the phone.
And they say, "Hi, this is theHigh Volume Low Speed Fan Company.

(23:05):
Can I help you?" And there's this, asyou can imagine, big silence on the
other end of the phone, and the personfinally says, "Are you the people who
sell those Big Ass Fans?" And they heardthat enough, and Carey's a smart guy and
he has just an amazing sense of humor.
He said, "Well, why don't we givethe people what we want, what they
want?" And so they renamed thecompany the Big Ass Fan Company.

(23:27):
But as he was looking at the wholeindustry how it serves customers, how
it designs a product, how it looks atthe customer life cycle, said what he
was seeing is, is companies that wereand selling essentially a lower quality
product and making money on repairs and,and you know, back end kind of things.

(23:51):
And then he happened to be inAnn Arbor, Michigan, and he went
to Zinger- Zingerman's Deli.
And he said, like Zingerman's isknown for their incredible sandwiches.
So here he is, know, in line to get hissandwich, and it's all these different
cheeses and they're, and they're localand the meats and, and the little cards

(24:13):
inside the, the case that describethe meats are so detailed and, and
the bread and all of these things.
And then he gets up to the counterand he said it's not just like a
high school kid who's working therefor the summer or a part-time job.
It was actually an employee who cared,whether it was a high schooler or
not, and who could get into the verydetail of the texture of the bread

(24:34):
and how it blends with the meatsand cheeses and all these things.
And he said he was presented a sandwich.
It wasn't just likeslung across the counter.
And he said that, that thing rightthere, that experience inspired him to
how he wanted to build Big Ass Fans.
He wanted to make the originalproduct so amazing and so delightful

(24:55):
and so trusted in quality that thatwas the thing that made people buy.
And so he said what he did is he the, theideas and the perspective and the vision
of Zingerman's Deli and he transplantedthose into Big Ass Fans, and that's,
that's what I call a brand transplant.
And how you fix brand attachment disorderis, you look at what is it… Like what

(25:18):
Carey did is he looked at the, the detailsand the quality of that experience at
Zingerman's Deli, and obviously theydidn't sell sandwiches, but he said
there's so much of that that we cantransplant into Big Ass Fans that can
help us be an incredible organization.
And, and that's exactly what he did, anda huge part of why they were so successful

(25:39):
One of the things I really took out ofthat was when you said to do it right,
to, to do it the way he wanted to do it,like Zingerman's will never be a Walmart.
It will never be that big because tohave that level of excellence and to
keep that level of quality, just likeBig Ass Fans can't compete with the
Chinese, for example, you have to keepwithin a certain constraint of size

(26:03):
here, and constraint's an importantthing we'll come back to later.
But I thought that was a reallykey point that cannot be overlooked
I, absolutely, and I think when you whenI look at big organizations and what
innovation looks like inside of them,constraints that smaller organizations
don't have, and a lot of it is thelegacy way of thinking, the legacy pace

(26:29):
movement, the legacy of everything hasto be systematized, put into a process.
And almost if you think about bigcompanies acquiring small ones, a lot
of what made it beautiful and specialand unique and, and desirable as an
acquisition gets stripped away at scale.

(26:49):
I think that's what Corey or Carey wasso great at understanding and thinking
about, and he now runs a, an investmentcompany, and he understands, like those
are characteristics that he looks forin these companies that he invests in
One last thing on the brand transplantessentially, but you work with
companies to innovate also with theirmarketing processes and ideas as well.

(27:11):
I love this one, which was, you say forexample, you met the head of marketing
for Red Bull, and he's like, "Oh my God,if I only had the budget of Coca-Cola."
And you're like going, "What the heck?This guy, this guy has amazing brand."
That so we do this everywhere, but I lo-
does it.
Yeah, and I remember my jaw just droppingand thinking if Red Bull is saying,

(27:32):
"If only I had," you know, fill in theblank, it's, it's just incredible where
I think everybody's we all have thesereasons and excuses that hold us right
back from the edge of what we thinkis, is possible, the if onlys, yeah
I, I, I, you know, I really took thatfrom the book that no matter what you're
doing, like you can aim for excellence.

(27:55):
It just depends if you want it.
Yeah.
I, I don't mean that, yeah, sometimesthings that aren't going your way,
sometimes you might have debt or whatever,but I mean the imagination to aim big.
And then obviously it's gonna bea, a tough journey to get there.
But to have the… And it's one ofthe reasons I love doing the show,
is just to bring concepts to peopleto go and just think a bit bigger,

(28:16):
just think outside the box, orthink, get rid of the box altogether.
But the box is important,which is the constraint.
But the last one we'll share, I loved,loved this one, was how the CDC used
brand, essentially brand transplantfrom a totally different concept to
totally get out something really boringabout how to deal with pandemics or

(28:40):
how to deal with hurricanes, et cetera,to be able to market to the public
Absolutely, and, and I think thiswas one of my one, one of my top
favorite interviews to do because itwas with Dave Daigle with Center for
Disease Control, and the departmenthe worked in is communications about

(29:01):
preparing for natural disastersand then how to recover after them.
So if you think of, like right nowas we were talking, I'm in Colorado,
we have terrible wildfires right now.
You think about hurricanes, you thinkabout tornadoes, any, any kind of
a natural disas- floods, any kindof a natural disaster like that.
And as a communication person, I mean,my background is in marketing, one of

(29:21):
the big challenges is just to get peopleto pay attention to the important things
so it will change people's behavior.
And that was a struggle that Dave, andhe has, he had two people on his team,
that they were dealing with because e-every year in, in the Midwest in America,
it's, you know, usually l- late Maythrough August, it's tornado season.

(29:44):
And they're trying to helppeople understand, like, here's
how you prepare for a tornado.
You know, like water, you know,dry packaged food, you know,
some, some extra clothes, matches,candles, things like that.
You know, put, put them in a, put themin a place that you can grab and go
to the basement or, you know, at thetimes in some places in, in the Midwest,
cellars, which are, you know, dirt,food storage, underground kind of thing.

(30:07):
and people didn't care.
They didn't… You know, there wereso many other things to pay attention
to as, as summer was coming andkids were, kids were out of school.
And it was one particular, it was oneyear when the hurricanes or tornadoes
had already been particularly badin, in Oklahoma, devastation and,
and the hur- the tornadoes, theywipe out, you know, legacy farms

(30:30):
and towns and everything, and it'sdevastating to have to try and rebuild.
And he said, "We have to figure out a wayto get people to pay attention earlier
and sooner and deeper because the, like,this, this affects people's lives and
can help save lives." And they were kindof chit-chatting before they started one
of their meetings, and one of the peopleon his team said like, "Did you watch

(30:51):
the last episode of The Walking Dead?"
And they were laughing because inthat episode, everybody runs into one
of the CDC offices to get away fromthe zombies that were chasing them.
And they were laughing about it, andthey said, "Oh, you know, maybe that's
something that the CDC needs to helppeople deal, deal with." And then it was
like, ding, maybe that's the connection,and that, that was their brand transplant,

(31:13):
is that they looked at something thatwas so popular right now at the…
or, you know, at the time, so popularin mainstream society, and they said,
"How can we transplant what peopleget excited about, what they love?"
I mean, people were doing like zombie5K, zombie dances, zombie raves.
You know, it was, everything was a zombie.
How do we transplant some ofthat zombie en- zombie energy

(31:36):
and excitement into our work?
And he had an idea About positioningdisaster preparedness as in we're
preparing for a zombie apocalypse.
And, and he went into his boss and he saidhis boss was Dr. Ali Khan at the time,
and he said, "You know, I have this idea.
Are, are you okay with it?" And Dr.Khan said, you know, "I love it,"

(31:58):
or, or something to that effect.
And so they published a blog that saidh- apocalypse, Zombie Apocalypse 101,
like how to survive a zombie apocalypse,and they put it out on the CDC blog.
And Dave said, you know, "We kindacovered our head and winced, and nobody
got fired and nobody got yelled at." Sothen two days later, they promoted it on
social media, and within an hour had over60,000 hits and the server went down.

(32:24):
Now mind you, a great blog postbefore this was maybe 2 or 3,000 hits.
he absolutely knew theywere onto something.
And, and what they had done is takingthe same information they had been
sharing with people to prepare forthis disaster, but now just packaged it
literally like you're preparing for azombie apocalypse, and they went on to

(32:46):
put it into a, like a comic book formand posters and all of these things.
It was so popular, not only did it helpoutcomes and preparedness, but Dr. Ali
Khan was invited to speak at Comic-Con.
And you think of two things that,you know, oh, oil and water kind
of thing is the CDC's disasterpreparedness and, and Comic-Con.

(33:07):
It was just such an amazing story and ahit in, in how they were able to connect
and get results and outcomes becausethey were willing to think differently.
Brilliant, brilliant.
We, we set it up beautifullyfor what used to be called the
perpetual innovation process.
Maybe we'll just say you've upgraded this,you've updated it, which is great to see

(33:28):
as well, because obviously things change,evolve, and you've evolved the process
And, and every part of creativityand innovation is iteration.
And so I now call itthe wheel of innovation.
One, it's a little easier to say,but two, it, it just a great visual
for once we get the process going,it builds on its own momentum

(33:48):
I like the perpetualinnovation process, the PIP.
The PIP.
But let's get stuck into it, and Iwanted to start where you did, which
is the objective statement and theidea that great ideas actually come
from working within the box or workinginside constraints, not despite them.
And you give the brilliant exampleof Tim Washer at Cisco, the man who

(34:10):
managed to turn the launch of a metalbox full of wires, a router, the ASR
9000, into a Valentine's Day love story.
So let's walk, our audience through thatand then tie in the objective statement
on why do constraints matter so much?
And, and Tim is a, is a dear, dearfriend, and he's… At the time he

(34:32):
was telling me about this projecthe's working on, which is a, a new
router box that Cisco was launching.
And he goes, "You know, Carla, here,here's the typical process. Like we have,
we have the technology specs, we have theengineer, we, you know, do a video, and we
do a press release, and we do a launch."And Tim's background is in stand-up

(34:53):
comedy, in co- you know, comedy writing.
He was a writer for Amy Poehler'sWeekend Update on Saturday Night Live.
He worked for Conan O'Brien, and he'sjust a dry, funny, witty guy who ended
up in corporate marketing at Cisco.
And he worked at IBM for a while as well.
And he said, "You know, I just, I justfeel like we have a better opportunity

(35:15):
here." And what we talked about is,i-is sometimes the reason that our
creative ideas or our approach toinnovation doesn't work is because
we aren't actually clear on theoutcomes that we're looking for.
And that's, was the, the impetus forcreating the objective statement, which

(35:35):
is, "We need new ideas to…" oftentimesthat's very easy for a company, you
know, to, to specify, you know, toimprove our customer experience scores,
to, you know, im- you know, have agreat product launch or whatever.
the next part is, "So we can…"And I tell you, every single
person, group I've ever workedwith struggles for this definition.

(35:59):
And this is why outcomes generally neverhit expectations, is because there's no
agreement and alignment on what is it thatwe're actually trying to accomplish here.
And I think so many organizations,I mean, we see it now, we're running
at such a fast pace, and we just,we throw technology at it, we throw
AI at it, we thr- we throw so manythings at it, but we don't understand,

(36:24):
have defined, or agree on what isthe actual outcome we're looking for.
And then we also say, "With theseconstraints." Now, oftentimes
the constraints are budget, time.
It could also be, "Will Kevin in,in branding allow us to present like
th-" you know, things like that.

(36:45):
So everything we do has constraints, andonce Tim was able to define those clearly,
then it was very natural and made sensehow to transplant comedy this approach.
And, and as anyone, they study theirprofession, and Tim was at a comedy club
in New York City, and he was watchingRay Romano, he said the way he talked

(37:09):
about things people in, in understanding.
He was talking about, you know, in-lawsand marriage and kids and things that
people in the audience could understand.
And the more he talked about it andmade, made people laugh, the more he
watched the audience lean in laugh.
And he said it was a group of strangerswho came together, lot of it was based

(37:31):
on just laughter and humor, and hewatched people's walls go down and their
tension go down and their stress go down.
And he said, "You know, even though thisis a box of metal and wires, it's a major
purchase." He said, "How do we take thatidea of humor in relieving the stress
and pressure of, of a buy or a sale?
How do we put that together?" And sothe, the product was launching right

(37:55):
around Valentine's Day, and he puttogether video about, you know, for
Valentine's Day, a lot of times wethink it should be, you know, flowers
or chocolates or carving your heart intoa tree and, and those kind of things.
But now you can say, "I love you"with the new Cisco ASR 9000 router.

(38:16):
And, and he describes it in the way thatyou would a, a Valentine's Day gift.
And, and it was so humorous, theydidn't put a big PR campaign behind it.
They didn't put a lot of money behind it.
They put it on YouTube.
They sent it out to the salespeople.
The salespeople laughed, then theywould go into sales meetings, and they
would open meetings with this video,and that laughter right there their

(38:41):
tension and their stress and, and,you know, th- those walls go down,
and all of a sudden conversations werehappening that had never happened before.
And he said it was, it was, you know, a,a lot of it due to humor and laughter.
And they were able to get two newcustomers who they had been trying
for years to get in the door.
And it was a beautiful way forCisco to show up as a very human

(39:02):
company, you know, somebody that'srelatable, and that's how the media
and the analysts responded to it.
if he would've started out tosay, "We need to make the funniest
video ever about a productlaunch," would never have worked.
But he understood the details of thatexperience in that comedy club with Ray
Romano what humor did, and he, that's whathe transplanted into his idea the video.

(39:29):
We're all set up now for the wheel.
That's right.
So, 'cause when you, when you- the reasonI, I thought it was so important to share
those stories, and thank you for doingsuch a great job of sharing them, i-
is they exemplify what the wheel shows.
And one of the main things is observation.
So observing Ray Romano and then kindagoing, "Oh, hmm, what if I transplant

(39:53):
that onto what I'm doing as a marketer?"
Or observing The Walking Deador the, whatever the show
is, Dead, The Waking Dead.
I never watched it, but I, Ido like the odd zombie movie.
But observing it and then kinda going,"Hmm, I wonder if…" And it's that
observation, and y- you talk about theimportance of this observation down to the
fact that we should have an observationjournal if, if we're perpetual innovators,

(40:18):
if we're always doing this innovation.
So what I'm gonna propose for our audienceis if you're listening, it's fine, we'll
have empathy for you as a listener, buton YouTube, for those people joining
us on YouTube, we're gonna share thediagram, the wheel, and we're gonna take
you through the wheel, take you throughthe steps so you have no excuses anymore.

(40:38):
But you still , need to readpart two of the book afterwards.
So over to you, and let'stake it away with observe
Yes, absolutely.
So the first step of theWheel of Innovation is to
observe the world around you.
And I know I am guilty of havinga little screen in front of me,
probably more than is not onlyhealthy, , but productive many days.
And we get into our habits and ourrituals, we drive the same way to

(41:03):
work, and so , when there's repetition,our brain just becomes efficient, and
it's like, "Oh, I don't need to payattention to that or that or that."
And so we don't observe little details.
And I remember one time I rode with mykids to school one day, and I thought I
turned on one street, and it was another,and it was like I had never seen this

(41:23):
world before, and it literally was a routeI had run four days a week for five years.
But because it was outside ofmy normal pattern, I observed
it completely different.
And this is so important for usbecause process of observing is
neutral, it's not full of judgment.
It's not looking at something andsaying, "Is that right or wrong?"

(41:47):
It's purely sitting and lookingat a comedy club experience.
You know, maybe you're at amall, or, you know, you're
watching your favorite TV show.
Like, what are the littledetails that make it something
that's so interesting to you?
Is it how the character looks?
Is it the, the litany of the dialogue?

(42:08):
Is it the coloring?
Is it the, the lighting of the scene?
Like, what are all ofthose little details?
And I encourage people to literally,like, I have a note- I have a notepad
right here, but I have notebooks Icarry with me everywhere, I'll write
the date, I'll write where I am,and I just start writing down, you
know, what do I see, colors, sounds.
Like, am I sitting on a park bench?

(42:29):
How does that feel?
Am I laying in the grass?
Like, all five of your sensesreally, truly observe the world
around you, which for some peoplecan give them a physical discomfort
because it requires us to slow down.
And I think at the pace that we work rightnow, we think, "I don't have time to do
this," like, "I have to get to the realwork." this really is the foundation of

(42:54):
the real work And even if we're looking atwhat work are we creating, let's observe.
Is it being used?
people responding to it?
And I'm not talking about like thedata and analytics, but just like
between you and I and the conversationsthat you and I've had, you know,
I look at do you nod your head at?
What do you find interesting?
There's a… it's it's such afascinating skill that I think we've

(43:17):
been trained and rewarded out of.
But it is the foundation of every singlehighly creative, highly innovative person,
highly creative and highly innovativepeople are also highly, highly observant
people, and they see things that therest of us miss that literally are right
in front of us because they observe

(43:39):
I think there's an important thingbehind that, that it's not just
that you turn observation from apassive thing into an active thing.
It's actually you're disciplined about it.
You're, I mean, you have a notebook.
And one of the things that alwayssurprises me is people will go,
kinda go, "Oh, do you not run out ofthings to write about or thoughts?"
So I write a weekly article calledthe Thursday Thought, but I'm having

(44:02):
conversations like this all the time.
I've read your book.
Like, I'm connect- I'm collecting dots allthe time, and then comes the next step, to
distill the ideas.
And, and under there lies d- discernment,but distillation is connecting
them and creating constellations.
But it, I find it f- just fascinatingthat, you know, you cannot write, you

(44:24):
cannot write or you cannot have thoughtsif you don't collect the dots in the
first place, which is observation, andthen the distillation comes afterwards.
Because if you collect enough of thedots, they start to connect in, and
usually in weird ways like zombiemovies or whatever it might be,
And that's where the marination happens.
And you told me, for example, your bookmarinated for five years before you, you

(44:47):
wrote it, and that's necessary, I think.
The, but in there, those dots, the rightones bubble to the top and the right ones
connect, and they connect in a uniqueway to you, which is a way to bring us
to the next step, which is distillation
is, and, and you mentioned a, an importantthing that I wanna make sure to really
emphasize is that the, the process ofobserving truly is collecting the dots,

(45:11):
and we'll get to the part where we connectthe dots, and we hear that all the time
like, "Oh, you know, creativity's great.All you have to do is connect the dots."
But if you only have four dots to connect,you're not gonna have very original ideas.
that's why people who consistentlyand intentionally put themselves
into new and different experiences,conversations, what, you know, what

(45:33):
they choose to read or learn or listento or watch, they're collecting all
sorts of very different kind of dots.
But we… Our brain does needto organize them, and our brain
naturally loves to find patterns,and so the second step is to distill
those observations into patterns.
And they can be totally random patterns.
It could be like, I remember sittingin Times Square in New York City going

(45:57):
through, and I had all of my observations,and as you can imagine, Times Square,
there's a lot of things to, to observe.
And it was, some of it was just thingslike tall buildings or tall things.
You know, the, the color red, whichis very prominent in New York City.
as we get further into the, into theprocess, like just something as simple
as that helps you understand whatmakes something else so successful.

(46:22):
So during the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge,where people would either pour a bucket of
ice water over their head or they'd writea check, it wasn't about doing something
dramatic and different like in pouringa bucket of ice water over your head.
It was about community.
It was about something thatwas super simple to share.

(46:43):
Like those were the patterns thatcame out of if you observed all
the details of, of that campaign.
Now, it would be hard for a lot ofpeople in many companies to get an
executive to s- to say, "Yes, ourcampaign should be dumping the ice
bucket of water over our head." Butwhat, what you can do instead is, is to

(47:03):
say, "You know, this was my inspiration.
Here's what I observed that workedabout that." The pattern here is
that we, is that they gave somebodyvery, something very simple to share.
Now, that right there is a patternthat an executive or a leader
of a team or, or whatever ismuch more likely to say yes to.

(47:23):
now we're taking something that's uniqueand different that we've observed and may
seem like it has absolutely no relevanceto our work or our company at all, and
we're starting to put context to itwhy it might start to have something
to do with the work that we're doing.
So that's the second step, is,is to distill all of these random

(47:43):
observations into patterns.
I kind of think of it also likeyou're, you're whittling away, so
it's, it's, it's like a funnel.
So yes, it's a wheel, but it'sgetting thinner as you go around, so
you're not gonna have a random idea
Yeah, exactly
to give to a, a CFO.
At least the idea's been somewhat,somewhat filtered before it gets to them.

(48:05):
But the next one then is the onewe loved, and this links to brand
transplanting, which is relate
Relate, absolutely.
And I believe that this is thestep that makes or breaks an
idea when you go to share it.
Because observe and distill arekind of outside in the world sort of
things, and relate is where we takethe outside world and start to bring

(48:27):
it inside our own walls, our own teams.
if you don't do it, or you don't do itcorrectly, is where you trigger that brand
detachment disorder of people saying,"That, we're not that kind of company."
Like it, the, the idea feelstoo risky and threatening.
And so with relate, it's, it'sreally that bridge from the outside

(48:48):
to what we are trying to accomplishas a, as a team or an organization.
And so the relate is, is starting to say,okay, if, if the pattern is something
that's easily is a, is an idea that'seasily shared, if it's about something
that, you know, is big and bold and redand tall, like those are things that we
can start to relate into our own world.

(49:08):
Well, if we're wanting to make ourproduct or conversation about our
product something that's super easy toshare, well, now that starts to give us
structure and context for when we go to,to generate ideas, which we'll get to.
But it's, it starts to bring inspirationinto the actual idea generation process

(49:33):
that's fresh, that's different, butwe've also started to minimize the
feeling of this is a risky thing to try,we can connect the dots and show the
journey from what is it that inspiredus, and truly, literally, how does
this relate to what we're trying to do?
One of the things people miss withthe work that we do, say working with

(49:56):
organizations, running workshops,facilitation, et cetera, is the language
we choose is very specific, and thatmight be just an afterthought for
some people, but there's a quote byWittgenstein I love, "The limits of my
language mean the limits of my world."
And in the book, I loved you citethe work of Min Bassador, th- this

(50:16):
lady who did decades of researchshowing the words we use can actually
kill an idea before it's even born.
I was delighted to see you, youhighlighted this, and something that
people often miss, and if they're doinginternal workshops or they're talking to a
CFO, it's important what language they use
Oh, absolutely, and I, andI'm happy you brought that up.
So Min Bassador, he worked for P&G on themarketing team, and he… It was this…

(50:41):
Sor-
no.
sorry, man.
I thought it
And
was a woman's name
nuance of how we ask a questioncan shift the entire mindset
around how we approach it.
if we say, "How could we be as creativeas an Apple? How could we be as
creative as…" You know, fill in theblank with any kind of organization.

(51:06):
Our brain starts to answer that question,and oftentimes it will say, "Well, to
be honest, I don't know if we could.
Yeah, I- we don't havethat kind of budget.
We don't sell that kind of product.
We don't…" You know, our brainanswers the questions that we ask it.
Or we say, "How should we…" Fill inthe blank. Your brain starts to go,

(51:26):
"You know, I don't know if we should.
That's a little risky.
It might, might go over budget.
It might be, might affect mycareer, my, that promotion.
I don't know that we should." sowhat he understood is that asking the
question in the context of how mightwe, there's no place for your brain to
go to put on the brakes, and it's the,the, the meaning of the word might.

(51:52):
It's almost like let's pretend.
There's no… Nobody saysthis is gonna be a real thing.
no consequences tied to it.
So your brain naturally goes, "Oh,well, how might that happen? Well, we
could…" And then it, it starts to go towork, and it starts to connect the dots.
Like, you know, how, howcould we be more shareable?

(52:13):
How could we build a bigger community?
You know, how could we be… Youknow, how could we be as interesting
and dynamic and create a hunger forour content like The Walking Dead?
How might we?
again, your, your brain is going, "There'sno risk here." Like there's no… Where
there's nothing on the line, and that'swhen it really starts to open up.

(52:34):
It's so important that language, Ithink, when you're selling ideas in a
corporate in particular where it's allabout de-risking and that, that language.
And sorry Min, I, you, you s- you subtlytold me, "Hey, Min's a, Min's a dude."
I feel I owe that to him and his work.
Yes.
I'll have to check his workout.

(52:54):
But i- in the relate step we lookedat how might we, which is important
language that Min talked about.
But in the generate step, which isnext, we ask what if we tried this?
So we start to get closer and closerto that pitch that we're so much after
and, and it's, to your point, likeit, it does feel like a funnel.
And there was another piece of researchthat I found interesting in that don't

(53:19):
get to truly creative ideas untilwe've gone through the first 200 ideas.
And if you look, like we've spent howmuch time already talking about the
first three steps of this process, buttypically what happens when we need a
new strategy or an idea, we say like,"Let's all get in the conference room.
Let's have our offsite.
Let's get our ideas together, andthere's no such thing as a bad idea.
Everybody throw out your ideas," and weknow what happens. There's a whole lot

(53:41):
of really bad ideas, and the person whotalks the loudest or talks the most or is
the highest ranking person, their ideasalways move forward, and everybody else
is going, "Well, why did we even bother?
And I'm so far behind in my work andmy email." And, and no wonder people
have this aversion creativity sessionsor innovation planning or any- anything
like this, because we don't giveit time to get to that great work.

(54:05):
And the reason the research says 200 ideasis because your brain will start out and
dump the most likely, the most familiar,the most safe, the most risk-averse.
it, you, it, it's, it'sa little bit like AI.
What's the most likely answerthat you will say yes to?
And we don't get to that new freshground until we essentially get that out.

(54:27):
We have to get that out, push it aside,and then we continue to push and almost go
into the, the ridiculous, the audacious,the, you know, things that are so crazy
they could never work, but you know what?
They're so ridiculous, they just might.
And that's when we get… Youknow, it's so ridiculous that

(54:49):
the head of the CDC's disasterpreparedness could ever be invited to
Comic-Con, but look at that outcome.
they, they didn't set that outas their objective, but it was an
outcome because they kept pushingand saying, " What if we tried this?
How about if we did this?
What if we remixed this?" And it canbe two crazy and ridiculous ideas that

(55:09):
come together and make a really amazingrealistic idea. Or maybe you've gone
through this process a couple of yearsago and somebody goes, "Oh, you remember
when we thought about that one thing thatwouldn't work then because of whatever?
This would be perfect right now."And that's when you see the whole
energy in the room and with thewhole group of people begin to shift.

(55:30):
The whole reason behind why wedo idegener- idea generation is
not to get the one right idea.
to generate as many ideas as possible,because in order to get to great ideas,
we have to start with a lot of ideas.
I love it.
And the next one, I, I'm guilty of this.

(55:53):
So I worked as head of innovation, headof digital in roles in the past, and
sometimes you think that your past successis enough to carry the idea through the
organization once again, … And you don'tput as much work into that, and even work
to understand the incentives of the CFOor the senior executive team, because

(56:14):
really they're almost like a VC buyingyour idea and to try and bring it to life.
So we underestimate the pitch, andyour big reframe in the book is
that the pitch isn't a sales ask,it's more like an idea journey.
And if you do bring it the, the teamon that idea journey with you, it
has a way better chance of survival.

(56:34):
But the one thing I want to emphasizeis the amount of work we did to get
here, and often that's skipped or wemight jump straight to the pitch or we
think that the idea is in order for,we have loads of ideas and we think
let's try and, a let a thou- a thousandflowers bloom, blah, blah, blah.
And I think that that's the piece that wemiss in innovation so much is that it is a

(56:57):
discipline, and it, it's counterintuitivefor somebody who feels creative and
innovative that they have to go throughall this feels like red, red tape.
It feels like bureaucracy.
But it's so, so important, whichis why I love the, your process.
But let's share a pitchbecause it's so important.
All the work we did to get tothis point, and this is the

(57:18):
point where we make or break
and I, and I always say badpitches kill great ideas.
a pitch isn't just like, "Hey, let me getyour buy-in." A pitch is truly telling
the story of the journey of your idea.
And I'm, I'm a big fan of Shark Tank,and I know there's a lot of different
versions of that in a lot of differentcountries, but I was watching it and,

(57:41):
it's one of those shows that seemsto be on all the time some channel.
There's… You can catch Shark Tank.
And I was watching it and, anda contestant was their pitch,
and Barbara Corcoran, she's myfavorite, she's like, "No, no, no,
no, no," like, "Stop right there.
Your pitch is so bad I don'teven care what your idea is.
I'm out." You know, andI think that's so true.

(58:04):
We don't understand, I mean, a,a lot of pitches start with data,
justification, all those things.
Yawn.
There's no emotional inta- attachmentor engagement, and if, if there's no,
there's no emotion, no attachment,there's no engagement in the idea.
We really do have to go back, and thisis the beautiful part about the Wheel of

(58:27):
Innovation, is that by the time you getto the pitch step, already put the pitch
together, because it literally is justgoing back to the beginning and saying,
"You know, here, here's something thatI observed in the world, and you know, I
observed this problem that we're havingin, in the company," which is secret.
That's your objective statement.
You know, "And I observed thesethings and I realized it's, there's

(58:48):
a pattern behind it, and here's thepattern." Tall things, community things.
And I started to see how those relatedto what we're trying to accomplish
inside our organization or team,that generated some ideas for me.
You never wanna go withjust one idea, you know?
There's lots of different options.

(59:09):
You have over 200 now.
and it's a discussion point, and thatcrazy, radical, or whatever thing that
you observed at the beginning has flowedvery realistically, and most of all,
it has context as you've brought peoplethrough the journey of your idea to why
you're standing in front of them rightthere and pitching and sharing that idea

(59:32):
the last thing I'd love to share, whichis so, so important, is the importance
of feedback, both as a recipient ofthe feedback if you've pitched the
idea, but also if y- if for example,and often heads of innovation will
find themself in this position wherethey're the judge and giving feedback
to other people inside the organization.

(59:52):
So you're not actually damning them sothey w- because they won't come back
with more because maybe you'll hurt theirfeelings or damage their ego in some way.
I'd love you to share, 'cause thisis a so often overlooked part of
the process that's so, so importantfrom the other side of the table
Well, you know, I talk to a lot ofexecutives, and I'll hear them say,
"My teams just don't come to me withideas." And I'm thinking, okay, you know,

(01:00:14):
there, there could be a lot of reasons.
You know, they don't feel safe, they don'twhat- whatever, whatever it is, you know?
Or maybe, you know, they usedto, but they just don't anymore,
and I don't know what happened.
And then I'll talk to the team, andthey'll say, "Why waste my time?
They say no to every single thing thatI do, or they give me so much homework,
so much more to just do with this simplelittle idea that I, I don't have time

(01:00:38):
to do that and my job, so why bother?
So why bother?" I believe thatproblem, that dynamic, is because
we don't understand how and inwhat ways we should give feedback.
So I think anytime somebody steps forwardand shares an idea, it doesn't matter
how bad it is, I'm gonna be honest, needto recognize their courage and bravery

(01:01:01):
for being willing to step forward.
Now, I personally have a very strongopinion about how to fix that bad idea,
and it's a process called the wheel ofinnovation that gives them structure for
how to come up with an idea that has atrue business objective, how to put it
into the context of the business problemyou're trying to solve, and, and how
to structure it and share that idea.

(01:01:23):
So there's, so there's that part.
But I think just acknowledging thatit takes a lot to put behind… You-
they're thinking of the business,they're thinking of ways to improve.
That's something that should beencouraged and supported and, and
openly celebrated and, and recognized.
move, moving on, assuming it is awell-thought-out, structured kind

(01:01:44):
of idea that they're sharing, togo into, you know, "Here's what I
like about it." You know, there'salways something good in the idea.
So let's, let's get down to the detailsof what are the good things, and I think
this is always really helpful to do in a,in a team setting where other people can
learn from that feedback and understandwith a real-life example, what does a good

(01:02:07):
idea look like, and see the very detail.
You know, "I, I like how you you know,m- thought through how it specifically
connected to this one problem we're havingwith customer retention," or something
like that, and the, and then the details.
Now, rarely ever is an ideapresented and it's just ready to go.
So there's going to be, there's going…

(01:02:29):
It needs to be iterated, it needs to be,you know, adjusted w- to whatever degree.
But it's important that how that feedbackis presented doesn't feel like criticism.
what we're looking at is how do weimprove this idea, not how do we make
this person sharing it feel judged.
And that's where when thereare opportunities instead of…

(01:02:51):
to, to make it better, instead of itfeeling like criticism and judgment,
we say, "What I wish this idea had,what I wish we could understand more
about is," and look at it like this.
And so what happens is in this kindof exchange, the leader can be very
specific and communicate what isit that they like about an idea.

(01:03:14):
Like, how does their vision comeinto play with what's been presented?
And also, here's what I'm looking for thatI'm not getting in this idea that would
not only help me understand it better,but maybe make it a better idea for
whatever problem we're trying to solve.
So that helps the leadercommunicate better and clearer,

(01:03:34):
which helps everybody on the team.
Now, it also helps the person presentingthe idea, because it's not unusual for
them to present an idea and they'reexecutive or their team leader says, "You
know, it's, it's not quite right, it'snot quite there. back and flesh it out
a little more," that means n- there'sno direction, there's no feedback.

(01:03:57):
Like, what does flesh itout a little more mean?
And so they have a clear directionof, "Okay, I, I did this right.
I n- I need some more of this.
This I need to dig into.
Maybe this I need to leave behindaltogether." it helps both sides be
more clear and have that alignment,back to that alignment, about what is
it that we're trying to accomplish here

(01:04:18):
Fantastic.
We've come full circle literallyaround the wheel, and we've
got to the end of the wheel.
As I said, there's way more in the book.
There's a way to understand yourself,what type of character you are in
the innovation journey as well.
But for people who wanna find you,I know you do keynotes, you help
organizations all, all over the world.

(01:04:39):
Where is the best placeto find you, Carla?
place is my website.
It's my name, carlajohnson.co.
It's not .com, it's .co.
I save for the great state ofColorado because I live in Colorado.
And there you can take theinnovation archetype assessment
that you just mentioned.
You can sign up for my newsletterthat's every other week that teaches
people detailed ways to build theirown innovation skills, their mindset

(01:05:03):
around it, how they can look atleading their teams, and truly building
that culture of original thinkers
It's been an absolutepleasure joining you.
I look forward to seeing more.
I know you've another book out thereas well, and looking forward to
sign up to your newsletter as well.
Author of Re-Think Innovation, CarlaJohnson, thank you for joining us

(01:05:24):
for having me.
It's been a great conversation

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Carla Johnson — RE:Think Innovation and the Wheel of Innovation

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Carla Johnson — RE:Think Innovation and the Wheel of Innovation