Innovations get rejected when they are not well presented. Innovation killing can be said to be the situation whereby good ideas get dropped; sometimes for dumb and awful ones. This sometimes happen when the innovator won’t lick the shoes of the project leaders or s/he won’t submit to herd mentality on the project team. Rejection of ideas and innovation can be minimized when we develop the art and the science of presentation.
Another way is to be able to identify ahead of time what makes the people on your project team excited. If you want any idea to really have great impact. Tie it around sensitive issues. Look out for the emotional part, political aspects, or religious aspects of the society. Wrap the innovation around the most defining moments. Or tie the invention around diseases like cancer, HIV/Aids, Swine Flu, et.al. You can also tie the idea around celebrity. Tie it with gossip. Think of life and death. Make a big deal out of it and elucidate why it is a matter of life and death.
Some example of how to tie ideas and innovation around causes are as follows: You can start a cause that may be in favor of some victims of pollution in industrial sites, safety concerns, factory injured people, people who are unjustly punished, and soldiers who fell in war front and how to help liberate their families. Proposals for project such as these will sell. Move the cause farther by amplifying, elaborating and exaggerating the importance of such cause. Make media noise concerning it. Advertise it. Make the Government pay for it by registering it as a non profit business. You can then get donation from people all over the world.
The root for your innovation may be far apart from the cause but in a way try to tie them together so that it won’t get killed. Once dissociation, divergence are observed or done to the idea; it is as good as a killed invention even before it is introduced. Once you are able to tie the ideas together in such a way that they are inseparable; you will get funding, sponsor, grants, et.al for it.
Another way is to wrap your invention or idea, around history, gender, politics, race, religion, historical sites, heritage, sensitive culture, et.al. This is one of the ways to save your idea or innovation from getting killed by critics. Tie that idea around people’s emotion. Tie it around repressed and depressed minds. Tie it upon the oppressed groups who are searching for meaning. Tie it on the vagabonds who are waiting to escalate. They can be equally used. You can use their energies. Redirect their passions. Ride upon their negative anger by positively turning them around, do a reorientation for them and engage them in a more noble cause.
A leader must be able to motivate the entire team. A leader must be able to move his people to corporate action. For instance, look at the case of Holocaust. Could it be that Adolf Hitler was smart enough to be able to do all what he did to the Jews because he was able to work on people’s minds? He was able to use their emotion for his own greed? There's a way to tap and use some silent energy in people. Locate those repressed passion, those shut off anger and unearth them. That may be one certain principle used in Germany to mobilize those Nazis against the Jews?
Nations, businesses, families and individuals need to prevent innovation killings. Their bright ideas can only be realized if they are ready to protect their invention come what may. You can't afford to watch innovation killed wherever you find yourself. That is why it is not a bad idea to desire to be a part of leadership of any organization you may find yourself. Leadership determines if an innovation, idea will be killed, snuffed out, quenched, or not.
I’ve seen organizations where their leaders don’t have the required skills, strategies, or understand how systems can be built or run. Worst still, Ideas and gifting of the ordinary members, employees are even shunned. The bridge to move the organization forward is consequently cut off. Their visions get stuck and the organization cannot move to the next level because of pride in leadership. It is so amazing how much we can achieve together, individually, corporately once we set personal ego aside. Once we realize that this is beyond us, pride will not stop us from reaching our corporate goals.
Rather than stooping to conquer, I have seen leaders walk away from the people carrying the required solution. Sometimes those gifted people may even be on their very team. Yet they prefer to outsource for "the right person" and thereby missing on opportunities. Due to fear of losing control, supervisors, leaders, managers have stuck to their guns and refuted the idea of change. Sometimes, best practices in guise of innovation are put forward by colleagues in an organization but due to office rivalry. They are rejected. This is an art of Innovation killing.
When leaders are afraid of losing control; they are forced to hold on to traditions, old methods, obsolete systems, outdated information and principles that had been proven inefficient and ineffective. The outcome is not far fetched. It is gross failure. The clue is to allow freedom of expression, cooperation amongst team members...Instead of wearing uniforms or dressing strictly formal; some organizations usually wear business casual dress code just to break such stringent barriers and bureaucracy things as protocols and inability to socialize and solve corporate problems easily and as quickly as they arise. And your organization will skyrocket immediately.
Showing posts with label best practice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label best practice. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Saturday, May 2, 2009
“What you are doing wrong, that big corporations are doing right”
Let me fill you in on secrets and strategies of big corporations. What most entrepreneurs don’t understand is that they have sufficient potentials to beat “the big guys” in those big buildings. All you’ve got is more than enough to blaze the trail in the business world. May be you don’t recognize this. Let me list them for you. You have got your integrity, hard work, diligence, authenticity and above all, vision. You always deposit some vital part of you into every product and services that goes out from you. You are always there. How do I know that? You are here now reading this just because you want to improve your entrepreneurial skill! And you are always ready to learn. You want to give your all just to make your business a success. You’ve got it!
Truth be told, big corporations don’t always have it all together. They have politics, politicking, backstabbing, absence of authenticity, deficiency of integrity and more. All the worst things you can ever imagine are going underneath in some big corporations. They just try to cover it all up. And they do that by playing on the figment of your imagination in the way they use resources extravagantly. They appear flawless in the media, by adjusting reports, results and presentations. By showing just what they want you to see. By using false impression, phasard of confidence, branding gimmicks to work on your psyche. By thoughtful use of colours, advertisement, public relations techniques and more; by use of premeditated application of bank loans to sensitive emotional areas of human lives. By deliberately creating relationship with influential people, leaders, people in power; by adopting team spirit so that the strength of all cover the weakness of one. By rewarding stakeholders on paper even when in reality they have nothing, they have managed to create a buy in, a trusting strategy, a process with which they are able to convince you and I. They make us conclude that they don’t really need our money because they have more patronage. And thereby they have stylishly increased their sales and profit margins. These are just few of the secrets of increasing sales in the corporate business world.
However, on your part, you’ve been working tirelessly day and night, often going overtime to make it through in your business. They have always worked 9 to 5; and go on vacations while other staffs fill in for them. Thereby they are able to avoid burnouts and depression. What I am trying to show you here is that there is a subtle power of phasard, delusion and more in all they do. These are the secrets of big corporations. I have studied big corporations for some time and I have discovered that the more you look, the less you see. When you pierce through the blinds to the offices of the managers, all you see are people like you and I who are smart in maximizing potentials of other employees. By delegating work to team members and just doing whatever they know how best to do on their desks, they achieve more as a team. They have been able to produce more result better than the average entrepreneur who works alone on his business at the corner of the street somewhere.
There is an unquantifiable, immaculate power and productivity that comes from every entrepreneur who goes about his business with an extraordinary passion for what he does, with an undying love for his customers/clients and with an undying determination and dedication to success. I tell you this: You can grow better than big corporations if you can learn the good things they are doing and apply them to your business. For instance, rather than worrying about start up capital, you can deliberately build a winning team through partnership with people of like minds to raise capital for your business. Drive is one of those unnoticed things that distinguish the rich from the poor, the successful from the failures, and the ordinary from the great folks. People with drive are always on the go. They are ever looking on the horizon of improvement. You will wonder why some employees get promoted faster than their colleagues in big corporations. Sometimes, it is in the way they go about their roles at the workplace. The attitude and passion they add as spice. They have managed to become assets such that the organization can not do without them. I don’t call it luck. I call it drive! In order for your business to succeed you will need to develop your drive, have an understanding of the terrain, flexibility to change what is not working as soon as you discover that in your business. Extend your reach, by deliberately advancing your business environment in terms of who gets access to your product and services. I cannot overemphasis this that entrepreneurs need real drive to succeed in business.
Contrary to the myth that all he has to do is to assemble all the resources together and go to bed. An entrepreneur must be tutored! He needs information, strategies and continuous unstoppable action. The 21st century entrepreneur needs to understand that things are changing at the speed of light and businesses are evolving with time just as trends. Some basic things such as customer relations, quality product and services may remain the same in business but there is advancement in promotion, presentations, sales strategies, advertisement, which must be carefully presented. This is the rationale for branding your business uniquely. You cannot afford to present your business raw or mechanically to your customers and expect to out-sell your competition. You cannot get all the resources together and dump everything in the hands of a manager and expect him to work magic. There is a negative attitude in our present day entrepreneurs which I have seen. And that is, they want the money in the business but not the perspiration involved. This has made some entrepreneur lose their investment. An entire organization has gone down through mismanagement, bankruptcy, fraud and more. You are not free to go to sleep on your business yet. You have to go the extra mile on it. You need to be the cheer leader who motivate and encourage your staff. This is because the business atmosphere is not conducive as it should. You need to continually appreciate your sales people and encourage them to do more. Therefore, it takes an extraordinary push. Customer volume cannot increase by mere advertisement. You need to establish a bond with each customer such that they feel valued beyond the transaction.
In ideal environment, where the system works smoothly; where the government serve responsibly in playing her role. In settings where corruption is missing; in a place where you can just place your product on shelves and customers will walk in and purchase them without you having to be in touch with them. Then, you may not need drive as such. However, in this situation, you will need some force, energy, gut to push a little more. You will need more than mere push, to get the result you want. You will have to work at your best practice, auditing your business for what big organizations are doing right that you have been doing wrong. Set up a microcosm system that mirrors them. Simulate their strategies in a small scale and you will see the difference.
It is not in the number of hours given to the business alone, it depends on the quality of time, and the appropriateness of whatever you are doing. For instance, if you spend over ten hours at work doing the wrong thing. It does not matter how much sincere you are in a wrong thing. You are wrong! The question is what precisely are we supposed to be doing that we are not doing? What is the quality of our result, how productive are we? What is our yardstick? How are we measuring how progress? What result are we getting with respect to our target on profit? What is the actual goal we have set? How are we measuring them? What new target have we set after reaching the previous ones? Then we need to measure ourselves against these criteria. The most vital of all is to work on our relationships with people. People will become your customers/clients. Your customers/clients are people. In business world, you cannot reach anywhere without people’s involvement in your business. No business is run in vacuum. However, you need to know that people may buy your product based on pity but they will never stay with you forever if you keep producing sub-standard products and reeling out ineffective services. You will only lose all your customers to competition. That is why you must deliver a quality and affordable product because people want value for their money. You will only be patronized for a season. And people always want value for their money. Nobody in their right mind resist quality product and services. As you go out to take on your business world, I dare you to make these adjustments and you will see the difference. Believe in yourself. Value yourself. Believe in your business; value your staffs, and customers. Develop a unique product or service, get better at it. Believe in it. Go all out and offer the world what you’ve got because that is it! That is what the world need. You’ve got what the world wants. You’ve got it!
Truth be told, big corporations don’t always have it all together. They have politics, politicking, backstabbing, absence of authenticity, deficiency of integrity and more. All the worst things you can ever imagine are going underneath in some big corporations. They just try to cover it all up. And they do that by playing on the figment of your imagination in the way they use resources extravagantly. They appear flawless in the media, by adjusting reports, results and presentations. By showing just what they want you to see. By using false impression, phasard of confidence, branding gimmicks to work on your psyche. By thoughtful use of colours, advertisement, public relations techniques and more; by use of premeditated application of bank loans to sensitive emotional areas of human lives. By deliberately creating relationship with influential people, leaders, people in power; by adopting team spirit so that the strength of all cover the weakness of one. By rewarding stakeholders on paper even when in reality they have nothing, they have managed to create a buy in, a trusting strategy, a process with which they are able to convince you and I. They make us conclude that they don’t really need our money because they have more patronage. And thereby they have stylishly increased their sales and profit margins. These are just few of the secrets of increasing sales in the corporate business world.
However, on your part, you’ve been working tirelessly day and night, often going overtime to make it through in your business. They have always worked 9 to 5; and go on vacations while other staffs fill in for them. Thereby they are able to avoid burnouts and depression. What I am trying to show you here is that there is a subtle power of phasard, delusion and more in all they do. These are the secrets of big corporations. I have studied big corporations for some time and I have discovered that the more you look, the less you see. When you pierce through the blinds to the offices of the managers, all you see are people like you and I who are smart in maximizing potentials of other employees. By delegating work to team members and just doing whatever they know how best to do on their desks, they achieve more as a team. They have been able to produce more result better than the average entrepreneur who works alone on his business at the corner of the street somewhere.
There is an unquantifiable, immaculate power and productivity that comes from every entrepreneur who goes about his business with an extraordinary passion for what he does, with an undying love for his customers/clients and with an undying determination and dedication to success. I tell you this: You can grow better than big corporations if you can learn the good things they are doing and apply them to your business. For instance, rather than worrying about start up capital, you can deliberately build a winning team through partnership with people of like minds to raise capital for your business. Drive is one of those unnoticed things that distinguish the rich from the poor, the successful from the failures, and the ordinary from the great folks. People with drive are always on the go. They are ever looking on the horizon of improvement. You will wonder why some employees get promoted faster than their colleagues in big corporations. Sometimes, it is in the way they go about their roles at the workplace. The attitude and passion they add as spice. They have managed to become assets such that the organization can not do without them. I don’t call it luck. I call it drive! In order for your business to succeed you will need to develop your drive, have an understanding of the terrain, flexibility to change what is not working as soon as you discover that in your business. Extend your reach, by deliberately advancing your business environment in terms of who gets access to your product and services. I cannot overemphasis this that entrepreneurs need real drive to succeed in business.
Contrary to the myth that all he has to do is to assemble all the resources together and go to bed. An entrepreneur must be tutored! He needs information, strategies and continuous unstoppable action. The 21st century entrepreneur needs to understand that things are changing at the speed of light and businesses are evolving with time just as trends. Some basic things such as customer relations, quality product and services may remain the same in business but there is advancement in promotion, presentations, sales strategies, advertisement, which must be carefully presented. This is the rationale for branding your business uniquely. You cannot afford to present your business raw or mechanically to your customers and expect to out-sell your competition. You cannot get all the resources together and dump everything in the hands of a manager and expect him to work magic. There is a negative attitude in our present day entrepreneurs which I have seen. And that is, they want the money in the business but not the perspiration involved. This has made some entrepreneur lose their investment. An entire organization has gone down through mismanagement, bankruptcy, fraud and more. You are not free to go to sleep on your business yet. You have to go the extra mile on it. You need to be the cheer leader who motivate and encourage your staff. This is because the business atmosphere is not conducive as it should. You need to continually appreciate your sales people and encourage them to do more. Therefore, it takes an extraordinary push. Customer volume cannot increase by mere advertisement. You need to establish a bond with each customer such that they feel valued beyond the transaction.
In ideal environment, where the system works smoothly; where the government serve responsibly in playing her role. In settings where corruption is missing; in a place where you can just place your product on shelves and customers will walk in and purchase them without you having to be in touch with them. Then, you may not need drive as such. However, in this situation, you will need some force, energy, gut to push a little more. You will need more than mere push, to get the result you want. You will have to work at your best practice, auditing your business for what big organizations are doing right that you have been doing wrong. Set up a microcosm system that mirrors them. Simulate their strategies in a small scale and you will see the difference.
It is not in the number of hours given to the business alone, it depends on the quality of time, and the appropriateness of whatever you are doing. For instance, if you spend over ten hours at work doing the wrong thing. It does not matter how much sincere you are in a wrong thing. You are wrong! The question is what precisely are we supposed to be doing that we are not doing? What is the quality of our result, how productive are we? What is our yardstick? How are we measuring how progress? What result are we getting with respect to our target on profit? What is the actual goal we have set? How are we measuring them? What new target have we set after reaching the previous ones? Then we need to measure ourselves against these criteria. The most vital of all is to work on our relationships with people. People will become your customers/clients. Your customers/clients are people. In business world, you cannot reach anywhere without people’s involvement in your business. No business is run in vacuum. However, you need to know that people may buy your product based on pity but they will never stay with you forever if you keep producing sub-standard products and reeling out ineffective services. You will only lose all your customers to competition. That is why you must deliver a quality and affordable product because people want value for their money. You will only be patronized for a season. And people always want value for their money. Nobody in their right mind resist quality product and services. As you go out to take on your business world, I dare you to make these adjustments and you will see the difference. Believe in yourself. Value yourself. Believe in your business; value your staffs, and customers. Develop a unique product or service, get better at it. Believe in it. Go all out and offer the world what you’ve got because that is it! That is what the world need. You’ve got what the world wants. You’ve got it!
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