Last weekend 5 tons of cobblestones were delivered to my meadow. Over the next three days a small team of three carved a space out of the woods (no trees were sacrificed!) and created a Chartres Cathedral style Labyrinth.  It was very hard work carrying all that stone and laying it down — my hamstrings still ache from pushing that wheelbarrow around. When we completed the 11 “circuits” and walked the path for the first time, I emerged with some insights about a challenge in my life I’ve been confronted with. It felt like magic. Now for the skeptics among my readers let me just say that I was where you are, and not so long ago. For a few

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Cirque du Soleil has always been an innovative organization, after all, they completely redefined what a “circus” could be. With their tribute to The Beatles, they’ve broken new ground. “Love” is a tour de force, a magnificent entertainment experience, a highly creative, and yes, innovative show.  It’s hard to come up with the perfect word to describe it — extravaganza doesn’t do it justice — it’s a mind-bending, visual, musical, acrobatic, and artistic smorgasbord. The music of The Beatles is a very good place to start when creating a multi-media experience.  According to the website George Martin, The Beatles original producer, was involved in creating a new, clean mix of sound from the original Abbey Road master tapes. The sound

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MJSI, Inc. – Innovation in Water Conservation I’m not what you call a great “do-it-yourselfer”.  In fact, I’m a Bozo when it comes to home repairs.  On occasion, I’ve nearly killed myself with power tools.  However, necessity is having a commode out on the weekend, in the countryside, with guests coming. The toilet was running water, and in trying to fix it, I broke the arm of the thing that holds up the ball thing.  Toilet now out of commission. Wife very unhappy. I went to Menards (as in “save big money at Menard’s”) in Michigan City with fear, uncertainty, and doubt. I thought maybe I could buy just the arm and the float and replace that.  I picked up

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I am surprised by the reaction to my last post. It appears I’ve hit on something of interest to my readers. One of the responses was basically a query as to “how” one might develop more interesting keynotes. The short answer is it requires creative thinking. The longer answer follows. Stories Getting your stories together is a real challenge. Keep a notebook and every time you think of something from your past, write it down. Even the ones that don’t seem big enough or good enough. Prototype your stories with friends for reactions — sometimes what you think is obvious is profound to others. Yes, you can tell a story about someone else, if — you give attribution (are honest

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I got an email from an old friend, somebody who has seen me speak on a few occasions.  He’s thinking about getting into the public speaking business and wanted to know if I could recommend any good books.  It got me thinking about speaking and innovation. I speak about innovation as a topic and when I think about “innovating” in the context of speaking I have to say that it’s not about re-inventing the format (although you could) it’s more about mastering the art first.  If you are truly self-expressed and understand what the role/job of a speaker is you are half way home towards your own personal speaking innovation. It’s a good question about a speaking book.  The bad

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Time has been kind to Mick Hucknall.  He must be approaching 50 years old and yet his voice is still as vibrant and rich as it was when he burst on the scene 30 years ago. I saw him perform with the latest incarnation of SImply Red last night at Sandown Park race track in south London.  It was a blistering set of R&B with Mick going 100% in front of a tight six piece band.  The 15,000-ish crowd sang along with almost every song. His face has a few more lines, but otherwise he’s given up nothing to his age — or fame. Surely, that takes work! Given the recent demise of Michael Jackson to remind us of the

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There is an awful lot of sanctimonious crap that gets handed down with regard to creativity. The “truth” of what matters with regard to creativity (and personal innovation) is much harder to arrive at because, really, self-expression is very different for all of us.  Real wisdom about creativity, the truth so to speak, is hard to come by.  After all this is a world that sells millions of copies of The Secret, which says wishing and believing is all it takes to achieve your dreams. I believe it takes wishing and believing, but it also takes structure, hard work, and good choices to leverage one’s creativity.  Everyone is creative, but not everyone knows how to be creative. I just finished

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I wrote this list, with the assistance of Kim Greene, for the 2009 CPSI Team Building participants. They had made the request for a bit of “real world” content (imagine!). 1. A strong bold initiative and vision inspires teams. It has the right people wanting to be involved. 2. If you are the organizer/leader know that Who is on the team may have more impact then any other choice you make. As they say in golf, all bets are made on the first tee. 3. If you can’t choose who is on your team, clarity of roles and task fit, are very important choices. 4. When a team member leaves or a new member comes on board, don’t forget you

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I often get the remark, after a speech or something, that “I can’t innovate at my company because…” — And then you get a lot of different endings to that starter, some printable, some  not.  Mostly folks say they can’t because their organization doesn’t want innovation, or isn’t structured to allow innovation.  I know the feeling, I’ve been in those positions, and, it’s BS. I now say to those folks, Shut Up and Start a Revolution.  I mean an Innovation Revolution. If you have ideas, express them, and let the chips fall where they may. If people slam your ideas, and they will, shake it off like a wet duck and dive into those waters again. Keep expressing until people

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The creativity and innovation field is a rather smallish group of people. It feels like a community, I know most of my competitors, and, I wish them all the success in the world. There are a few folks that have achieved nearly cult status within our community because of their unique achievements.  George Prince was surely one of them.  George was the co-inventor/enhancer of Synectics.  Synectics is one of the few comprehensive models for problem solving used in corporate innovation. Kimberly-Clarke was one of early, successful, users of the method. If you don’t know it, I highly suggest that you read Prince’s “Synectics-The Practice of Creativity” (or his partners/co-developer’s book, “Synectics,” by William JJ Gordon, which Prince contributed to).  It’s

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