ben damiano 6/6/21 ben damiano 6/6/21

Becoming Innovative

Photography by Alex Burke — *Photography by* *Alex Burke*

There are many definitions for what is innovative.

Often these definitions use the words “new” or “inventive” or “pioneering”.

I prefer this description of innovation: “fresh insightful connections”

Each of these three words; “fresh”, “insightful” and “connections” helps not only identify what is innovative but even more importantly, help one become innovative.

Insights

Insight brings humanity and people into the innovation equation. Since much innovation is eventually experienced by people, it is critical to understand peoples unstated needs by watching, listening, and learning from their behavior.

After all, the best innovation solves a problem, finds a better way of doing something or brings tangibility to an unspoken gap.

Data is not insights, but insights can be gleaned from data by looking for patterns or idiosyncrasies.

Netflix uses co-relation a form of pattern finding to both recommend and greenlight new content.

Amazon uses idiosyncrasies about how people navigate its experience (sudden twists and turns in their transaction journey for one) to ask why?

Fresh

Fresh is a better word than new.

New, really is about time and the calendar and not about a way of thinking.

Fresh implies something different from the status quo. It is about a never seen or never thought about approach. Today, we see so many of the same images, and find so many of the same things all over the world, that we really wake up when we see or come across something fresh. So fresh that it fits no cliché and often requires its own language.

You remember the unusual, the moments when your travel fell out of a well-planned itinerary.

Fresh awakens and makes for tattoo moments that will be embed in us (and our customers.)

Connections

Connections is a about the process where the human mind takes the same letters of the alphabet but puts them together in a unique way to create something that far more compelling than the parts that went before. All the components for innovation existed. The magic was in the connecting.

In the creativity of the connections, one unlocks the combination that unleashes innovation.

Google’s connected the insight that a more heavily referenced citation in an academic document should be ranked higher than a less cited one, with how pages linked to each other and gave birth to a fresh approach to search.

The iPad connects the insight that there was no computing device optimized for consumption and slouching (phones are for communication and walking while computers for creating and sitting), with a tactile, almost sensual approach to interacting with content to create a new object of lust.

In category after category, one sees these three factors in innovation. Fresh. Insightful. Connections.

So, begin by gleaning insights. Then put all the ideas one has down on paper that help solve unmet needs driven by these insights. Now shake and stir and step away and come back and see if you can connect things in fresh ways that still resonate with the insights.

Three simple methods to drive innovation.

a) Unbundling/Re-bundling: Break down your product or service or customer experience or journey into its component parts and ask what parts can be eliminated or how can they be re-configured or re-bundled.

A bank removed multiple steps from the process of opening an account by breaking down the steps and then eliminating some that were duplicative or no longer relevant, digitizing others, importing data into the process rather than needing people to fill in forms or bring data with them, and making the process available 24X7.

Unilever outsold Procter and Gamble shampoos in India by recognizing that instead of selling many head washes at a time in a bottle they should sell a single wash in a sachet that was more affordable to the millions who earn daily wages and do not have the money to buy an entire bottle.

Airbnb will soon launch a new threat to landlords and the legacy rituals of renting by asking why a need for a security deposit is there and why should leases be yearlong? This insight came from the fact that almost a quarter of their stays were over a month long during the pandemic. Why own a second home when you can have thousands of second homes available for a month or three months everywhere in the world without any of the fixed costs, maintenance hassles and the dreary ritual of returning to the same place?

b) Blank Sheet of Paper with a Red Team/Blue Team: Create two teams. One that works to find ways to enhance your current product or service based on insights, and a second whose only goal is to vanquish, destroy and put your brand out of business. Both teams are free to use all legal and scientifically available tools with some economic constraints like the need to break even within x months or years.

Often, the attacking team ends up being more innovative because of two keys to innovation which are a) no anchor of legacy structure or thinking and b) refusing to accept anything except the law and science as a given.

c) Diversity of Voices: A key to fresh insightful connections is to have different people with different backgrounds and experiences working together in an environment where every voice is heard. Diversity of ethnicity, gender and expertise are all key but even more critical is a culture where people can speak up, challenge the status quo, and take leaps of imagination. This requires both a diverse work force but also a culture that is supportive and provides trampolines of trust for the hesitant or questioning voices and the daring risk takers.

To be innovative think “fresh insightful connections” and then decompose and recompose your product, service or experience while suppressing legacy thinking and constraints.

You will be surprised at how many ideas you will come up with.

Then the key is to implement the good ideas.

Because if you do not someone will.

ben damiano 5/30/21 ben damiano 5/30/21

Leader = You

Watercolor by Thomas Schaller — *Watercolor by* *Thomas Schaller*

Every single person can be a leader.

Leader is not a title that is bestowed but a role that is lived.

Leader does not mean boss.

One can be a leader with zero minions or reporting staff.

People are assigned to bosses.

They follow leaders.

The six traits of leaders.

Everyone can learn and build the traits of a leader if they wish to and are disciplined about it. Becoming a leader does not entail anyone else allowing it, awarding it or being able to take it away.

The six traits are 1) Competence 2) Time Management 3) Integrity 4) Empathy 5) Vulnerability and 6) Inspiration

They are all internally driven and with discipline and time can be honed and sculpted.

So, if you want to be a leader you can.

Right now. Right away.

Competence

To be a leader in any field, at any level, you need to build proficiency.

You need to learn your craft, hone your skills, continuously improve, and remain relevant and up to date.

Too many “leaders” slip into irrelevance by letting their skills atrophy. Today due to the rapid change in demography and technology the half-life of whatever one has learned rapidly decays and the fuel tank of competence needs to be continuously filled. Organizations fail to keep up when their people fail to keep updated and re-orient themselves as the compass of the future calls for a new navigation path.

We are all blessed with the ability to learn both independently using the world of resources online but also most organizations are now investing in training and skill upgrading. In addition to these avenues one can build skills by volunteering for new assignments or switching jobs.

The day we stop learning our leadership capabilities stop growing and may begin to die.

Time Management.

The three “time” skills that one needs to build to become a leader are that of a) bi-focal focus, b) delegation/teamwork and c) zero based time budgeting.

Leaders learn to have bi-focal focus by recognizing the difference between the urgent (which often must be done to live another day) and the important (what needs to be done to ensure long term success). They put time on their calendars every week to ensure that there is time to focus on the strategically important or they will be lost forever in a swirl of tactical urgency. Take time every week to think of where you want to be or your company to be six or twelve or twenty-four months in the future and what you may need to get there.

To be a leader requires one to work with teams so one can focus on what one does best, leverage and learn from others who do things best and where one can delegate tasks that you have already mastered or which someone can do much better than you. Being “irreplaceable” or “nobody can do this as good as me” ensures that you will not grow and people around you will not grow.

We all have financial budgets, and we have time budgets. When you say yes to a new request ask yourself or the person who has given it to you what you can stop doing. Or one ends up doing a lot of things in a half-baked way and corners get cut which can cost the firm and you in time and trouble. This is a formula for poor results, burn out and a flushed and flustered demeanor which is not the look of a leader.

Integrity.

Trust is speed.

Trusted people rarely have the need to pull out multi-paged power point decks to convince their teammates, bosses, and clients about what they are recommending.

If one is not trusted it is hard to be a leader.

Trust can be earned by placing a primacy on facts, being clear about one’s intentions and transparent about how one is making decisions.

To be trusted one must face reality and deal with facts. Facts are stubborn things. Reality has a habit of breaking in. Truth matters. If one does not begin with these fundamentals, it is very hard for people to believe you. You may be able to mislead them for a time but once found out you may never recover. Looking reality in its face is what a leader does versus imaginative mind gaming and selling of hallucinatory fantasies. Sooner or later people wake up.

Be clear about your intentions. What are you trying to do and what do you hope to gain? This allows everyone to understand your goals and they may have better ideas of achieving them and neither you or they waste time in trying to figure out what you are up to or why they are being recruited to a cause.

Often decisions are made that people do not agree with. But they are much easier to accept if they are built on a foundation of facts, a clarity of intentions and a transparency on the thought process that led to the decision. There is no confusion about a “black box” or some demonic plan.

Everyone can be known for integrity by beginning with facts, stating intention and being transparent about their process.

In time this builds trust.

Empathy.

Leaders bring about change and achieve goals by bringing other people along with them.

To do so it is key to understand where people are coming from. What their fears, concerns, challenges as well as hopes, desires and dreams are.

A simple way is to ask four questions.

a) What is on your mind?

b) What else?

c) If you were not doing this, what would you be doing or how could things be better?

d) How can I help?

These questions allow both facts and emotions to emerge and a real conversation to ensue which is key to empathy.

After all being a leader is as much about other people as it is about you.

Vulnerability.

Vulnerability is strength and not a weakness.

By speaking about things, one worries about, one reveals humanity and comes off as believable.

It makes other people step up to try to help and offset your concerns or lack of competence with their or other people’s complimentary skills.

But as importantly it gives people the room to also speak up and point out other weaknesses that may exist not just with you but on projects that you are working on.

Leadership is not being the all-knowing, all-seeing, always-right demi-god but a human with good intentions, discipline and focus trying to figure out the best way forward. Does anyone truly believe the bombastic, bullying, blow hard? We may fear them, but do we follow them? No way Jose!

Inspiration.

As Blaise Pascal wrote “We choose with our hearts, and we use numbers to justify what we did”.

After the facts and the data, after the PowerPoints and the spreadsheets we often remain unconvinced, dis-believing, and hesitant.

Yes, we are living in a data driven, silicon based, computing world but all of us are story driven, carbon based, feeling individuals!

Joan Didion wrote “we tell ourselves stories in order to live” and thus storytelling and examples bring a vivid reality to get people to rise to another level.

Learn to communicate through words, stories, art, and example.

It will take you and everyone else to another level.

ben damiano 5/23/21 ben damiano 5/23/21

Eight Client and Customer Expectations.

Over the course of four decades of working with clients and customers all over the world, their needs regardless of industry, size, or the country they operate in, almost always distill down to eight key expectations from their service providers.

Four of these expectations are focused on outputs and outcomes and four of them focus on process or how the partner works.

Outputs: Insights, Ideas, Inspiration, and Implementation.

Process: Collaboration, Continuous Improvement, Operating Discipline, and Values.

4 Key Output Expectations

1. Insights: Clients pay the highest premium in not just economic value but their attention and their admiration to firms that bring them insights about their customers or their business. Client relationships can be salvaged, or business can be poached away by firms that can provide a new way of understanding the marketplace. Something that is so obvious and yet not obvious. If we are living in an age where people are in control and markets are being transformed, there is a premium placed on perspectives that allow a firm to better understand their customers and analyze their markets in ways that provide an edge against the competition.

2. Inspiration: External suppliers and partners see a world different than a client. Most work across different industries and have a different employee mix. Clients in these changing times want to know how they benchmark against the best. Not just their industry, but across industries. Showing them examples, exposing them to different stimuli, bringing in outside experts, all speak to this hunger, while underlining that their partners are in touch with changes happening around them.

3. Ideas: In the end despite debate as to whether they pay adequately for ideas, every client cares a lot about ideas and without a good flow of them it is hard for an outside partner to remain valuable. Even if a client does not buy the ideas, the inability to present ideas, including ones that stretch and are out there, often is reason for the clients eye to wander. Best partners provide “gifts” of a big idea or two every few months.

4. Implementation: Eventually insights, inspiration and ideas mean little if they cannot be implemented in the marketplace. Clients look for firms that have the skills either internally or thought tight partnerships to yield tangible programs, products or services into the marketplace in a cost-effective timely manner. Skills that are relevant to changing times and beat to the metronome of increasing rapidity are critical.

4 Key Process Expectations:

While insight, inspiration, ideas, and implementation are the wings of a healthy partnership, there are some processes or ways of working that are as important and often can carry a relationship when the ideas, insights, ideas, or implementation are wanting or can challenge a partnership when not present even if ideas, inspiration, and insights are flowing

1. Collaboration: Clients hate (and it is not too strong a word) the lack of collaboration between their various partners. They resent having to baby sit grownups who cannot play together. They see the friction as a loss of time and economic value. As industries blur in the digital world and many partners all claim expertise or rights to the same area (e.g., “social”) this has become an obsession with clients. The words “childish”, “soap-operatic” and” I wish I could dump the whole lot and start again” are heard. Yes, often the client’s incentives and structures encourage the petty and insecure behavior we engage in when our turf emotions and short-term economic incentives make us forget the big picture. The big picture is that clients are trying to build economic value of their brands via insights, ideas, inspiration, and cost-effective implementation and frankly will reward for that.

2. Continuous Improvement: In a world of change, businesses ask if the outside partner is continuously improving themselves. Are they remaining curious, challenging the status quo, and leveraging technology or other efficiencies costs, becoming more productive? Businesses are under intense pressure to enhance productivity and are looking for their partners to become more productive themselves. This is not just about cutting costs but also developing better product, re-using ideas from one part of the globe in another, eliminating or automating things that can be.

3. Operating Discipline: This is the least sexy and interesting part of what clients want because in many ways they expect it. Can their partner run their own business by managing budgets, schedules, legal clearances, and the like? Are they responsiveness and do they staff with capable people? Can the agency or partner make the trains run on time, read the signals, and ensure the engine stays on track? The wrong ad shipped to the wrong media company, lack of legal approval and non-responsiveness in an emergency get folks fired all the time.

4. Values: This is an expectation that has grown increasingly important over recent years as companies increasingly care about employee well-being, diversity, and purpose. Integrity and trust have always been critical to Clients, but they now want to know about the workforce of their suppliers and partners. Are they being treated well? Are the sufficiently diverse? Is the company giving back to society?

A way to build enduring Client and Partner relationships

One way to keep enduring relationships is schedule a meeting every six months with key partners and clients and provide a quick review of four areas.

What ideas, insights or outside inspiration were provided in the past six months?
What were the key challenges and successes in program implementation?
Where did collaboration thrive between partners with Clients and where can they improve?
Which products or services or employee programs were developed or enhanced over the past six months by your firm?

These meetings provide multi-faceted benefits:

They focus teams on making sure they are working the 8 key areas that clients evaluate their suppliers since there will be a meeting to share progress.
It allows clients and their partners to celebrate and often merchandise the progress they have made; share the issues they have uncovered and plan how to build on things that work and correct those that do not without all the emotion and drama of being fired or reviewed or put on notice.
It enables both sides to understand how expectations are changing and which areas are critical and need to be focused on.

Success in an increasingly connected world is the power of connections and relationships between people and partners. Constant updating of expectations, continuous communication and celebrations of successes build understanding and fuel enduring relationships.

ben damiano 5/16/21 ben damiano 5/16/21

Constrained Growth 2.0

Some 14 months ago, a few days into the US lockdown, on March 30, 2020, in a piece titled “Constrained Growth” I tried to imagine how the lockdown might change us:

Today’s constraints on our physical movements can provide the opportunity to enlarge our mental and emotional capabilities to such an extent that it may lead to a great re-invention.
Emotionally the crucible of change we are in can make us feel differently about our lives, our connections, and our work.
Mentally the stress in the foundry of uncertainty will twist our thinking in one or more ways as we seek to make sense of what has happened and plans for when the constraints lift.
In many ways it will make us appreciate what we took for granted.
In others as we forgo certain behaviors and have the time to ponder and ruminate on our previous days, we may question why we did certain things.
We will question many aspects of our lives and we will make resolutions.
Every one of us will adapt, evolve, and meld different versions of ourselves and interact with a world of people and institutions that are different.
We may have gone into this crisis as MS-DOS and focused on the narrow corridors of ourselves but if we spend the next few weeks correctly, we could come out as Windows 10 with expanded horizons…

Over a year later.

The pandemic is still with us, and it is causing great devastation in India. Many areas of Japan are back in an emergency lockdown with the Olympics only a few weeks away. However, in the US with significant portions of the population vaccinated and an easing of the need to wear a mask, life will likely return to familiar routines.

As the constraints ease and the limits are removed will we return to the way we were?

Every individual will be emerging from the past year in different ways. Over half a million people in the United States who were lost to Covid will not be here to register these days. The tens of millions who were connected to them will always see a gap, a shadow and an empty chair which was previously occupied. Others among us may have lost jobs or needed to move back home or move away to a different place. Relationships have been strengthened and sundered. Rituals were postponed, delayed, or virtually held. All these have made their mark and left their invisible tattoos.

Limits can lead to growth.

Many have found growth amidst the constraints and limits.

In the ordinary.

In less.

In enough.

In endings.

Ordinary.

There is a newly found appreciation for the ritual of the ordinary day.

We might have pined for the extra-ordinary, the special and the memorable eighteen months ago.

But as we sat socially distanced, masked, and locked down the little habits, movements and freedoms of every day loomed large.

Sometimes one does not know what one has until one loses it.

Happiness is not often in the one day in the future or getting promoted to the right level at work or when the right “number” is reached.

It is in the ordinary of good health, relationships, and freedom.

The extra-ordinariness of “everyday ordinary” is what is special to many.

Less.

All we may need is less.

For many people the tragedy of Covid-19 has been a lack of food, shelter, jobs, money, and health care. For many others especially people with white collar jobs that can be done remotely we are realizing that except for space we could do with less.

How many of the things you have, or the past harried routines or frenetic travel are you missing?

All the frenzy of movement and much more remind us of William Wordsworth’s lines.…the world is too much with us; late and soon. Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers...

Many people are using this time to re-consider their lives and many are discovering that all they need is less.

And if one needs less, it opens a world of options since we may be able to pursue the dream our previous lifestyle may have priced us out of.

Enough.

Jack Brennan the CEO of Vanguard has a new book out called “Straight Talking on Investing” in which he quotes the journalist Jason Zweig from a January 2000 Money magazine column:

“I once interviewed dozens of residents in Boca Raton, one of Florida's richest retirement communities. Amid the elegant stucco homes, the manicured lawns, the swaying palm trees, the sun and the sea breezes, I asked these folks - mostly in their 70's - if they'd beaten the market over the course of their investing lifetimes. Some said yes, some said no. Then one man said, "Who cares? All I know is, my investments earned enough for me to end up in Boca."

The moral of this story is three-fold.

a) What are our goals in life?

b) There is a need for finish lines. Comparison is the thief of joy. Continuous benchmarking is a recipe for always coming up short. Living in the minds of other people might leave us empty. Are we happy with what we have when we have them or only when we can show others that we have them?

c) Enough. The most satisfied people recognize the power of enough. Living in a fervor of continuous measurement means you live by the scoreboard, and we stop focusing on the ball.

Life is the ball and not the scorecard.

Endings

Franz Kafka wrote “The meaning of life is that it stops.”

In the future the ritual of the ordinary day will be special, just as we have come to realize after months of a new way of living that the simple pleasures of free movement, meeting friends, sitting in a crowded bar, and watching a sports game were so special.

Life does not have to be lived forward and understood backward if we decide to pay attention.

We can use the lessons of 2020 to be aware of the fading moments of now.

Look around you. Watch the special quality of light or listen to the hiss of the air duct. Treasure the conversations and even the repetition and lack of differentiation of day after day.

Because one day it will not be so…

So, as we get back to the way it was maybe the year of constrained living with anxiety, fear and uncertainty has grown all of us in ways that show that limits can free us and concentrate the mind and heart on what matters.

All Photographs by Rishad Tobaccowala

ben damiano 5/9/21 ben damiano 5/9/21

Slaying Our Inner Dinosaur

Many, if not all of us suffer from IDD.

Inner Dinosaur Disease.

The cause of this disease is change.

It is all around us. We all talk about it. We are buffeted by it. We participate in conferences about it. We hand down edicts and issue press releases about change initiatives.

But individually we abhor it. Change sucks. Particularly for decision makers.

Change exposes us to vulnerability and loss: of control, of clout, of turf and of face. It demeans the very currency of expertise, seniority, networks, and image we spend decades building. How dare some pompous young pup, some fresh idea, some innovative technology, some fearless startup, or bossy consumer challenge us?

The two-phase inner dinosaur shuffle.

We let our inner dinosaur roar and roam unleashed against these threatening changes to our ecosystem by indulging in a two-step shuffle.

First, we justify our refusal to change via the Deflection Dance!

Blame our myopic bosses who are approaching retirement or the organization that has too much money riding on status quo.
Attribute inaction to the profit pressures and business realities we carry on our shoulders.
Suggest the Client or Customer gave only lip service to change readiness.
Rebuke the employees. They are not trained or motivated for this stuff.
Exhume specimens from the when-things-went-wrong. Remember when?
Wait for others to find the landmines.

The second step is Change Botox—little injections of temporary surface embellishments to distract from real change. Common manifestations:

Announce the retention of a Consulting firm who, over the next X months, will benchmark and develop a plan of action.
Launch a Vision or Change 202X task force to “get out in front” of change.
Hire a talent agency, next generation modern marketing firm, or niche agency, then issue a press release.
Re-launch a quiet, unsupported brand or initiative with a small budget dedicated to a new way so there is something to point to.

Five weapons slay our inner dinosaurs (and dragons!)

Here are s ways of slaying inner dinosaur disease (IDD): a) own change, b) empower the iconoclasts, c) cross the line, d) leverage organizational inertia, e) act to change or change your act

1. Own change. If you change, others will follow. If they do not, change your partners, or your options.

It cannot be achieved via delegation, outsourcing or by committee.

Change would be easy if there were no people or organizations to get in the way. This draws a laugh, among leaders and often a pensive “so true.”

Less comfortable for the leaders who run organizations is that we are often the people who get in the way. Appointing a change agent, hiring some boutique agency with a hip name, securing a powered consultant to affect change, or just embracing cool and different behavior might be part of an answer. But it is our organization, and it is us who must eventually be the doer of new things.

2. Empower the iconoclasts. There are many talented revolutionaries within your corporate environment, but they are often dismissed as “too junior” to add value. Seek out your best thinkers at any level or age. Listen to them, give them a platform and the support they need to achieve their goals. Encourage them to attack your ideas, your company. Too many of us get delusional surrounded by sycophants who either fear them or lust for the dollars we control.

While organizations can clearly promote a culture that is conducive to innovation, it is ultimately the individual that matters—the passionate, risk-taking, caution-to-the-wind individual. Not some group think, an organizational grope or some socialistic, homogenized, outward bound team.

3. Cross the line. We all cower within self-drawn boundaries. Too often we self-edit ourselves, fearful of crossing a line. Or we wait for permission.

Remember you do not know where the line is until you cross it.

Let ethics guide you and start changing things. Now. You will be surprised to find that people will not stop you but most likely will follow you.

Cross the line. Often you will notice the line was in your imagination. You might learn that those who once prevented you from crossing this were not aware of a line at all.

4. Leverage organizational inertia: It is possible to get “The Company” to do what we want if we simply start doing it.

If getting approval requires lots of forms, presentations, and justification, it means your organization may suffer from so much inertia it might not actually know how to say no. This is a real opportunity for the daring. Instead of asking for approval to start something, why not take the initiative and see if the company stops you? No harm done, right? Key is that idea or initiative is ethical and legal.

Most important, in today’s fast moving and ever increasingly digital world, the lines we draw around our categories are disappearing. So are the barriers and lines that once controlled competition in our industries. Did any phone company executive a few years ago predict competition from Skype? Or Whats App? New competitors appear all the time, as do new threats, but so do new potential partners and opportunities.

Crossing the line is a lonely job. It is you who must eventually be the doer of new things.

If you are successful, why not be willing to take a risk? Are you not amazed at how many admired, world class organizations are overly cautious? If they cannot grasp the opportunity to fail at some greater thing, are they not already in the process of ossification?

5. Act to change or change your act.

You might be a highly talented individual cowering within some imagined or real constraint. If your company is repressing you and you are good, risk taking can only beget one of two outcomes. You will succeed or you will be asked to leave. If you are asked to leave and you are good, many companies will be ready to hire you, or you could go into business for yourself. But staying put and becoming some bureaucratic czar will eventually lead to you resenting yourself and reducing your market value.

Do yourself a favor. Cross the line. Most times no one will stop you.

Challenge yourself to fail once you have succeeded.

Seize bigger opportunities!

All non-dinosaur photography by Erin Babnik