Facilitation

    Innovation is for All Employees

    Operations Can Make or Break Growth Projects

    Enhance Acceptance of New Innovation With Training

    Innovation teams often do their work away from the day to day action of the company. In bigger organizations they may not even be located in the same office, plant, or even city.

    Operational employees often don’t even see those fun looking offices with ping pong tables and walls full of white boards.

    If they do see the ping pong tables — they might resent them.

    Innovation employees are trained in innovation theory and skills, even if it’s been done informally. They are true believers and do their best to come up with new ideas. Ideas that become projects, that evolve into the new services, products, methods, or processes that spell real world innovation. These teams have an eye on future growth.

    It’s not this culture that needs to be more innovative — they’re already there.

    Operational Culture is Powerful

    New innovations fail, sometimes, because the “new thing” is not seen as helpful by everyone else. Operational cultures are powerful. In many ways this is the core corporate culture. The organization evolves from an entrepreneurial state into a production state. It needs to, that’s how profits are made.

    To many ops employees, even management, new ideas are seen as an intrusion. An intrusion that prevents them from doing what they believe is their real job — cranking out the existing widget. Keeping the existing train running on time. From this perspective, innovation is looked at as off-mission and not helpful to production or profit.

    Operational employees are rewarded for not making mistakes and perfecting the status quo. They’re rewarded for not trying things which disrupt operations. So, asking them to try something new goes against all their training and incentives. It goes against their culture. The exception is an incremental innovation which clearly, and at low risk, helps them crank out widgets faster and more error free.

    But an organization needs a balance of incremental and disruptive innovation. Incremental is good but over time it’s not enough.

    How might you shift operational culture to be more helpful to innovation?

    Training, Incentives and Recognition Balance Culture

    So, what’s the answer? Three things!

    1. Training. Awareness of Innovation Training. People need to understand that their long term future depends on continuous innovation.
    2. Incentives. Incentives for aiding the effort sends the right message.
    3. Recognition. When a contribution, large or small, for implementing a new innovation happens it needs to be recognized, acknowledged, and rewarded.

    Innovation Awareness Training can start with a 90 minute workshop. Done in-person or virtually.

    Provide Insight to Operational Employees & Answer These Questions:

    • Why do we need innovation?
    • Why we need a mix of types of innovation?
    • How does innovation work? What does that team do? How do they do it?
    • How can I contribute even if it’s not my daily job?
    • What’s in it for me? What’s in it for us?
    • How might we actively assist innovation starting now?

    Gregg Fraley Innovation provides this type of Innovation Awareness Training. Get in touch to schedule training. Shift your operations people to a more helpful perspective, align your culture, and grow through Innovation.

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    Wish Wildly With Abandon

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    The 10 Commandments of Effective Brainstorming

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    Fractional Chief Innovation Officer (CINO)

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    Announcing Momentum Creative Problem Solving (MCPS)

    A highly creative new method for solving difficult problems Accelerate the Momentum of Work and Life Projects With Focused Creativity Improvisation works for problem solving AND comedy. MCPS Training Available on Wednesday, April 28th, 1 to 4:30 Eastern Three Oaks, Michigan, Wednesday April 21st, an announcement on International Creativity and Innovation Day Momentum Creative Problem Solving (MCPS) is a powerful new method for solving difficult problems. If you are stuck, fearful or intimidated with a challenge — or delighted with a messy and perplexing opportunity — this is the process to use. More focused creativity means more Momentum MCPS leverages creativity in a dynamic balance with thoughtful analysis. MCPS is a three-phase structured process of exploration, ideas, and action. If

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    Tune-In To Taster Tools On Thursday

    Free Weekly Webinar of Facilitation Tools with Gregg Fraley Every Thursday at 2 pm EST, Master Facilitator Gregg Fraley demonstrates a facilitation tool online. The weekly sessions are FREE. Sessions begin on Thursday March 18th. The 30 minute weekly webinar features demonstrations of various facilitation tools for: strategy, challenge clarification, idea generation (aka brainstorming), problem framing, idea selection, innovation projects, and idea development, etc. Thinking Differently Takes Tools At some point everybody needs to think differently. It might be a really thorny, hairy, awful, complex problem. It might be a juicy opportunity you don’t know how to seize. When you ask your mind to think differently, what happens? Does it come easily? Do new thoughts and ideas spring forth? Or,

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    How to Be Brilliant at Innovation

    Kick Start Ideas That Lead to Growth Accelerate Your Career Dodge the Pitfalls & Establish an Innovation Cycle Three Hour Virtual Training, February 5th, led by Innovation Master Trainer Gregg Fraley Being Brilliant at Innovation is within your grasp, but, it’s a minefield out there. There are more pitfalls in an innovation initiative than the moon has craters. Getting started is challenging because there is a great deal of conflicting advice in the form of books, consultancies, methods, and anecdotal stories. Does one need to take a Stanford course or read 35 books about innovation to get started? No, but, you do need good training in the fundamentals. In fact, you (and your organization) can be brilliant and effective at

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    The Shining Digital City On the Hill

    Digital Technology Remains An Unharvested Field There is so much innovation potential being left on the table, right now, that our future could truly be that shining city on the hill. The potential, much of it, lays in digital technology. Your future could be that company that thrives amidst chaos. Your future could be that person who surfs above the waves of massive change. But there’s a big IF isn’t there? You won’t get any results if you don’t invest in innovation now. That phrase “city on the hill,” thanks to Ronald Reagan, has come to represent American exceptionalism, but, here, I intend it to mean something bigger, and more akin to the biblical source it comes from. What it

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    MoshPit Workshop — Reinvent Your Business @ The NIIC

    Intensive Program Helps Small Business Owners in Indiana Survive and Grow Indiana Business Owners: Sign Up Now, It’s FREE, Starts August 12th. MoshPits, those crazy human-smashing dance scenes at heavy metal concerts are deliberate chaos. Those who participate dive in because they want that wacky experience. They Choose to Dance. What business leaders are going through to survive the economic chaos of Covid19 is a MoshPit nobody really chose to be a part of, but, we’re stuck with the situation. Make no mistake, these are tough times, and they cause business leaders anxiety and fear. But, they can Choose to Take Control. Control means thinking your way out of this crisis. Did you know there’s another kind of “MoshPit” that

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    Time for Virtual Innovation

    Coronavirus Crisis an Ideal Time To Leverage an Underutilized Technology Idea Management Systems: A Solution for Effective Innovation Remote Work What if this Coronavirus crisis could be turned into a positive for your innovation program? Who said “never let a good crisis go to waste?” With innovation there definitely is an obvious opportunity at hand right now. An Idea to Help You Maintain Momentum Do a virtual idea campaign while your people are away from the office. It is entirely possible to have the best idea generation session you’ve ever had, and done virtually. A well-executed, carefully facilitated, virtual session, using a modern Idea Management System (IMS) could drive innovation projects for the next year or more. Wouldn’t this be

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