Why do some of the best ideas start on cocktail napkins?
A scribble on a cocktail napkin is your first rough prototype, inviting engagement, experimentation, co-creation, and iteration.
Are you warming up your brain?
We know it’s important to warm up and stretch our muscles before we exercise. We can also use warm-up activities to wake up our brains before we work, activating the circuitry best suited to the tasks at hand.
The Fat Bet
Executives and people leaders are wrestling with getting everyone back in the office or continuing with remote and hybrid workforces. Organizations are concerned or convinced they are missing collaboration and culture building that was there when everyone was in the office. Many are desperately looking for ways to have “being in the office” be perceived as highly desirable.
I don’t know the answer, but I know where to look. The first thing that popped into my mind when I thought back to what I missed about being in the office was The Fat Bet.
Get Comfortable
Learning and growth begin when we step out of our Comfort Zone. Neuroscience supports this. But we can only step out of our Comfort Zone from within our Comfort Zone. We must first experience comfort before we are open to new ideas.
Are you living backwards?
Are you waiting until you have that title to do the things the person in that job does so that you can be effective, influential, and successful? Many have told me they recognized they were doing this and the “waiting” wakeup call helped them take action.
Is your brainstorming boring?
Be intentional about using brainstorming as a technique and be willing to facilitate to get the best results.
Type and Collaboration Tools
This post was originally submitted and shared for the MBTI Users Conference 2015 in San Francisco as supplemental content for my keynote presentation. This post considers how engagement behavior on collaboration tools may be influenced by MBTI preferences.
The Psychology of Innovation - Part 2
Damian Killen and Gareth Williams conducted a study of 500 people from around the globe using the MBTI® and data collected in workshops. Their goal was to discover the link between personality and innovation and highlight how each of the different types are critical to the innovation process.
The Psychology of Innovation - Part 1
Are you ever afraid that you don’t have what it takes to be an innovator?
The pressure to innovate is pervasive. It’s the buzzword that just won’t quit. Innovators are celebrated as people who have been gifted with a mythical combination of genius and nerve that sets them apart.
It’s easy to fall into this trap. Instead, let’s apply research from the field of psychology to gain a broader understanding of types of innovation and see ourselves and others as innovative.
Teambuilders for Remote Teams
Educators have long known that opening and closing activities enhance learning. Asking a class to solve a puzzle or maze as a warm up activity uses the brain pathways for problem-solving, making learners more receptive to a problem-solving lesson. Meeting facilitators know that closing a gathering on a high note facilitates memory encoding of the high points of the experience.
A Culture of Safety
Leadership experts emphasize the importance of habits and behaviors in understanding what an organization truly values. Weyerhaeuser instills a culture of safety as well as any organization I know.