While traditional firms grab, bend, choke and drop under the weight of rigid rules and lock-step procedures – entrepreneurs take advantage of newly discovered brainpowers. Modern trends are rising up to transform workplaces through sheer innovation.
Just look at Google’s policy to reward innovation by paying for people to risk new innovations … daily. How can it happen at your firm?
Here are 5 brainpower benefits that jumpstart successful entrepreneurship:
1. Solutions that draw from a wider mix of intelligences at meetings. It’s the opposite of expecting talented people to passively sit and listen to one or two talkers in boring meetings. Instead facilitators ask 2-footed questions and answers pop up from hidden and unused parts of underused brains.
2. Fitness that welcomes planned outdoor events together. I’m talking here about the opposite of belly fat – through kinesthetic and naturalistic intelligences. Ratchet up these keep fit areas of the brain - for better productivity in the workplace. Be it golf, hikes, or a simply jogging a couple of miles together – people kick start rejuvenated insights when blood to the brain kicks in from nature.
3. Tone that pulls people together to face challenges with courage and determination. It’s opposite the all too common cynicism, sarcasm or negativity that robs talents and holds back the best brainpower in ordinary workplaces. Neither is it meta messages … that emerge when people fear speaking their minds on controversial issues.
4. Laughter that fades out misfires and supports bumper crop talents. Want innovation’s increases where you work? When diverse people chase a mutually beneficial vision on one hand – and encourage diverse pathways to reach it on the other… higher productivity results through innovative offerings.
5. Evidence of consistent new growth that transforms practices and encourages reflection. It’s the opposite of holding onto hebbian hobo leaders and the same as rewarding mental acumen based on modern merits. Entrepreneurs glance back at time-tested traditions with a forward gaze to new processes and evidence of growth in targeted visions.
Why adopt brain based practices? Perhaps it’s better to ask… why not?
Each of the above 5 brain benefits for innovation - creates a surefire way to pound new neuron pathways with economic benefits for an internet era. The rules of engagement have changed – with business benefits in the pike for entrepreneurs - who introduce brain based secrets that jumpstart enough talent to transform the modern workplace.
Good points all, Dr. W. But let's try a different example instead of
Google. We won't really know about Google until they hit a rough patch.
That's when you find out if people really value those policies or value
them only when cash flow is good.
A better example might be 3M which has had a similar "devote part of your
time to something that interests you" policies, but for decades, not years.
In addition we can look at how they both held to their values and didn't at
different times.
Most recently, under Jim McNerney, they had one of the "didn't" times. He
brought his Six Sigma toolkit and attempted to apply it to 3M's product
development and innovation processes. It's an excellent example of how a
process can be excellent for one application and dead wrong for another.
Now we'll see how things go at 3M under McNerney's successor, George
Buckley.
Buckley wins points from me for saying the following: "You can't put a Six
Sigma process into that area and say, well, I'm getting behind on
invention, so I'm going to schedule myself for three good ideas on
Wednesday and two on Friday. That's not how creativity works."
Wally Bock
Posted by: Wally | September 3, 2007 9:23 AM | Permalink to Comment