First Step to Innovation: Build New Habits
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Understand yourself better, innovate better. That's the premise (Rai-Dupree) for change, especially when you realize that you are:
- set in your ways,
- habits already formed, and that
- innovation requires you to look at things differently than you normally do.
How to do it? We train ourselves to believe we can do anything. It's not really so. The simple solution is to do more of what you're good at, not just anything.
We're all used to stretch goals, those a bit beyond comfortable goals and less demanding than stress goals. Stress yourself a bit by learning things about what you are already good in order to increase your innovation results (Rae-Dupree). Kaizen - continuous improvement - is part of the solution. Continuallly improving a simple processes leads to incremental innovation and new solutions.
So, know yourself better, continuously improve, innovate better. Where to start? Markova sets out a process starting with understanding how you process information. She suggests that first you understand how you process information, then understand how your teammates do the same thing, and then try to increase communication - and innovation - by incrementally focusing on change and improvement on the projects you are working on.
The key point in all this was the realization that we all can not be the best at everything and that better results (change and innovation, as well) comes from leveraging what you are good at while playing of your skills and those of your team.
There is a best seller in this space right now that will help us in deciding what to focus on (Buckingham). His three myths (Buckingham. 69.) about strengths are useful:
- As you grow, your personality changes. Nope: you become more of who you already are.
- You will grow in your areas of greatest weakness. Nope: you grow in your areas of greatest strength.
- A good team member does whatever it takes to help the team. Nope: a good team member volunteers for those task she is best at, not what the team needs.
The point? Know yourself. Know your team. Focus on strengths. Focus on incremental change. Innovate better.
Reference
Buckingham, Marcus. Go. Put Your Strengths to Work. 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance. Free Press. 2007.
Markova, Dawna. The Open Mind. Exploring the 6 Patterns of Natural Intelligence. Conari Press. 1996.
Rae-Dupree, Janet. Unboxed:Can You Become a Creature of New Habits? New York Times. 4 May 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/business/04unbox.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=janet+rae-dupree&st=nyt&oref=slogin