Ideas that spread...win

 

In the fight for attention in a world full of noise, how do you make your message interesting, engaging, actionable and viral?

Seth Godin asked 'how do you make something 'new'?" when he delivered a presentation on his tour in Australia last year. I visually captured his presentation ... and then my visual idea of his idea was shared. 

We have chances, opportunities and choices to connect with people and get our message across. How well are we really doing?

Think of the word 'remarkable' : what is it that makes what you're sharing, selling, saying remark-able, or worth making a remark about. 

Seth Godin encourages us to be impresarios: producers, creators, curators.
What's creative about your message, your thinking and the change you're leading?

PowerPoint slide decks are dull and boring; bullet points are bullish*t!

What's the cost of people not seeing (or sharing) your message? Or the cost of you not seeing another way to create and deliver it?

Seth says attention is precious.

Make the most of it when you get the opportunity to share your idea. 

Fire up the BBQ - it's ideas time

It's summer in Australia; there's sunshine, beaches, cool drinks and plenty of barbeques to be had. Before you put anything on the BBQ, turn it on, heat it up and prime it, ready for the tasty treats to be grilled and flamed... beyond recognition!

Priming the BBQ is like getting people ready for doing good work, producing tasty treats and creating great stuff. 

Too often we expect things from people when they're 'cold', as in "come up with some ideas on ..." or "tell me what you think about ...'

We've all got lots on our mind; give people time to get up to speed and be focused on what you're asking. 

You need to warm people up, prime them and create the environment so they'll deliver, and cook up some goodness. 

I think there are four stages or elements to priming people to come up with ideas or respond to your request:

1. environment - creating the right space so it's possible to think creatively and generatively;

2. mindset - framing why we're doing this ideas thing and how it will be used;

3. process - setting up the stages of the idea generation and gathering; what will happen now, next; and

4. acknowledge - reward and recognise early contributors, all participation and the success and progress being made. 

And then when it's done, finish it. Shut it done and stop.

Then move on to the next thing.

Fire them up, prime them and frame it so you will all get to taste the great stuff created. And you'll want to come back for seconds! 

How to have the best job ever

I saw a speaker at a conference a week or two ago; she walked on stage with some Bollywood dancing music pumping out loud … and she danced and danced! She used this as a metaphor for loving the work you do.

It was Diana Larsen, speaking at Agile 2014 in Orlando, Florida. Diana presented on how to have the Best Job Ever. Here are my visual notes to her wonderful and energetic keynote. I hope this gets you thinking about what you're doing and whether it's what you really want to be doing!


Diana's advice is to:
1. Do work you love to do (and you might need to think back to when you were doing work you loved)
2. Work with purpose - work that inspires, focuses and motivates
3. Care for your tribe - this is about collaborating. Working on working better together is the best team building!
 

I'm just back from presenting at and attending some brilliant events in Berlin, the Florida and Sydney and will share some of the great learnings, insights and thinking from these events with you over the next few weeks. 

For now, get thinking about how much of what you're doing is contributing to you having the best job ever. 

How to explain your ideas…

Product design company Zurb was in Melbourne recently at a session on ideation. These creative people spend their every waking hour creating; they're constantly designing products, websites and online services. 

But it's not always a smooth path... uncovering your awesome ideas so you can get your thinking 'out there' to people in the shape of a product or service. 

My visual notes reflect some of the hottest tips on ideation:

• Use stories (more engaging than boring zzzzz features and benefits)
• Set a time limit or 'time box' so brainstorming time is constrained 
• Get user feedback to inspire and generate new thinking
• Use a Sharpie marker to sketch out your thinking
• Keep your sketches 'lo fi' and rough
• Go for quality ideas not quantity

Then once you've got some ideas down, group them together in chunks or clusters so they're easier for people to see, understand and digest. 

Go ahead and encourage some wild ideas with the team this week! It's the actual process of coming up with ideas, the 'ideation', that gives structure to creative thinking.

In the words of Albert Einstein: "If I can't picture it, I can't understand it'. 

Looking for creativity? What's your boarding music?

Next time you're about to fly in a plane, listen. No, not to the engines... listen as you're getting on board.

Over the past week I've flown Melbourne to Sydney, Brisbane, Singapore and I'm now Bangalore, India ... at the Agile and Lean Software Development Conference.

With some airlines, when you step on board, find your seat and settle in, there will be some music playing over the speakers.

These tunes helps set the mood, calm anxious or busy travellers and create an environment in the cabin.

I love Qantas' music selections so much that I've contacted them over the years to find out the names of the artists and songs.  

In their reply to me, they named these tunes 'boarding music' and sent me a list of the artists and songs.

Boarding music.

Here's what's special about boarding music:

• It's not the music that plays on the radio channels on the aircraft 
• The tunes are specially selected by the airline 
• It's not instrumental zzzzzzz 'muzak' like in a lift or elevator
• They're contemporary sounds from a range of genres, which people may not have heard before.

So it's often this music I choose to play in workshops, meetings, at team and board (Ha! No pun) events and whenever I'm facilitating in a group environment. Music gives people thinking time, breathing time, shifts the focus, fills the silence and helps make for a creative environment. I think it's even better if it's not instantly recognisable!

• How could you use music to make your - and your team's -environment productive, collaborative and creative?
• What sort of 'boarding music' could you use at the start of an event, conference or meeting?

Way too many events start to the sounds of silence! (Yawn!)

Think about what will inspire you and the people you work with to do your best work and choose tunes wisely. 

Even better... how's this: you can create your very own cafe sound effects (because that's one of the most creative and productive environments) using a mix of these great sounds from Coffitivityplus your own playlist.

It will drive creativity and build an awesome environment to get good work done, in a conference or event, in the office or in your headphones.

Now... press play.