May

13

Jump on….or wait a bit (Part 3 of 3)

Inspiration / Momentum / Productivity

 

OK, so if you’ve read the previous parts of this blog (link and link) you may have started thinking about how to predict trends, and how to jump off a trend before it crashes. The key to thinking about innovation is flexibility of thought. When you’ve identified a trend, movement or technology which you think might be a great development of what you do, here are some questions to ask yourself in order to apply that:

• What is the minimum I can do which moves me towards this?
• What is the maximum extent to which I can adopt this – what would that mean?
• Is this innovation a vehicle for what I do?
• Can I do the equivalent of what this innovation achieves in my market?
• Can I amend what I do to offer new services or products for people who are early adopters of this innovation?
• Does anything I do solve a problem for people who are part of/users of this innovation?
Try to answer all the questions without pre-judging the answers. It can be surprising what comes from this exercise.

Posted by | 0 comments
May

06

Jump on….or wait a bit (Part 2 of 3)

Inspiration / Momentum / Productivity

 

 

In our last blog (link) we look at bit at early adoption as a route to innovating. This time we want to explain why it is as important to know when to get off the bus as to know when to jump on.

When we experience or see anything, that will trigger a series of associations in our brains. This can mean that as things become more prevalent we have more associations with them – some good, some bad, and that can affect the effectiveness of an approach.

Let’s take an example of a widespread internet approach – the “free-report and squeeze page” combo. You will probably will have experienced this one before – a site offers a free report/eBook/training course/video blog …. all you have to do to get it, is enter your email address. This approach works for a number of reasons, the first is that (provided you think there is value in the freebie) giving your email address feels like a small price to pay, and secondly it works because targeted, elegant email marketing to an interested and engaged prospect can be effective.

However…. this “innovation”, like many others has a half life. Over time, the amount of marketing email we receive as a result of signing up for freebie increases. Even if it doesn’t if the amount of spam we receive increases independently we may associate these emails with this type of marketing. Also… as the number of these approaches proliferate we have a wider number of experiences of this type of selling which we associate with it, some great, some not so great. The result is that overtime the value of the freebie needs to increase before we are willing to part with something which we now understand to be valuable (our email address).

This is a classic case of why we need to know when to get off the bus – as techniques increase in prevalence, we may need to stop using them, just to stay ahead (and protect our brands).

Which previous innovations do you think have now had their day?

Posted by | 0 comments
Apr

29

Jump on…. or wait a bit (Part 1 of 3)

Inspiration / Momentum / Productivity

 

We’ve been doing a lot of work with teams recently to help them increase the levels of innovation in their interactions, ideas and services. In one exercise we’ve talked about different types of innovation, and thought it might be an idea to outline 3 of the categories on here, to get you started (or keep you going) with innovating.

People often think that innovating is about inventing brand new stuff, but that is relatively rare…. so we’ll start with an easier way:

Being an Early Adopter. Some of the best, bankable innovation for businesses comes from identifying upcoming trends, new ways of operating and new types of technology. Some people are natural early adopters. But if you aren’t here are some questions to get you thinking:

1. What are the emerging trends and where will you hear about them? Read widely and subscribe to blogs and content outside your specific sphere of operation – look for ideas, technologies and approaches which start to appear regularly. Make time to find out a little bit about emerging trends and how it could affect what you do.
2. Work out what would be involved for you to respond to a trend – what would it cost in terms of time, energy and money? Is it worth a punt?
3. If you aren’t sure, work out whether there are specific advantages for being an early adopter- if you trial something while it is still in development, does that give you a useful advantage over people who come to the party later?
4. Does this innovation depend on volume? Will you get the benefits you need from it before it really takes of, or do you need other people to jump first?

What do you do to keep ahead of the latest trends?

 

Posted by | 2 comments
Apr

02

Standing up to fear

Goals / Inspiration / Momentum

 

When I work with people we are often talking about things that really scare them – selling, telephoning, networking. By arming people with skills and supporting people to practice we help people overcome these fears and often find that when they get started…. there’s no stopping them. This year a chance comment from a client caused me to challenge myself to do something that scares me. And… fates (and one of my colleagues) conspired to put an opportunity in front of me which was both too perfect and too terrifying to ignore. So in February of this year, with no small degree of trepidation I headed down to London to learn all about stand-up comedy.

The course was really enjoyable, but scary at every stage. I surprised myself by which bits I found most tricky, and which things (by comparison) felt more comfortable. And…. in common with what we hear time and time again from clients….. when I took the plunge and survived I was left with a huge sense that if I could do this, no obstacle was insurmountable.

Trying to take my own advice I made the most of the feeling of being invincible and on the way home on the train I set my next challenge, I arranged to do my first stand up comedy performance in front of an audience. As you can imagine, I immediately regretted it, and spent the following weeks quaking in terror, but when the time came, I survived that too. More than survived it, I loved it….. so much so I may even have agreed to do it again. The only problem is that now that performing stand-up comedy is a tiny bit less terrifying than it was at the start of the year, I’m now looking for my next challenge.

So… I’d love your thoughts on what you’ve done that scared you, how it made you feel, what you did next and how you choose your challenges. And… if you have any ideas for my next challenge, let me know!

Posted by | 0 comments
Mar

26

Business Tips for Comedians

Featured / General / Inspiration / Momentum

 

In keeping with our love of comedy – here’s an article recently published in Funny Women Magazine… http://www.funnywomen.com/magazine/article/770/business-tips-for-comedians

Posted by | 0 comments
Mar

19

Flipping the Coin

Goals / Inspiration / Momentum

 

We’ve realised that in recent months on the blog we’ve concentrated a lot on evidence and how it can be used to make better decisions for your organisation. Today we want to talk about the other area of our work, and something which many people see as being the opposite end of the spectrum to evidence – innovation. Few people would argue that you don’t need both, so how do you keep flipping from one to the other without losing the point (or your mind)?

  1. Where something is well researched or established, start by understanding the evidence about what is likely to work.
  2. Try out things which should work, but keep your own evidence so you can see if it works for you.
  3. Where you need to try something different, or when you are exploring areas where there is limited or no research… create a test hypotheses, try out hunches and give things a whirl… but…
  4. Test these too – see what works, see what doesn’t and keep testing and experimenting all the time.

Being informed by data and evidence is powerful and can be a massively effective way of driving your business forward… but it’s not the whole story – invention, design and creativity are vital too, and are the only way that true leaps of progress can ever be made.

Posted by | 0 comments
Mar

11

Getting some balance about work life balance

Career / Communication / Momentum / Productivity

 

This week there have been a slew of stories, like this one: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21588760, about Yahoo’s decision to put an end to homeworking. Given that as a team we all operate remotely at Ruby Star, but that much of our client work is about bringing teams together to collaborate and innovate, we thought we’d throw in our tuppence worth to anyone who’s listening.

And our position is one of being slightly baffled by the debate we’ve seen on social media and on blogs – with two polarised sides advocating either total office-based teams or 100% flexible and remote working. We can’t be the only ones who’d like to see a bit more balance here. We’d no more advocate that teams need to be together all day every day in order to operate and innovate than we’d advocate entirely remote working. Here are some of the reasons why we are big fans of balance:

1. Working remotely, when done well and for the right reasons allows people to work more flexibly, expands the diversity of the available team and allows people to focus and deliver in the way that produces the best results for them.
2. Lazy, unproductive home working is a result of flawed intrinsic motivation systems in a team – not a flaw in the concept itself.
3. Innovation and ideas develop best when teams spend time together, and that includes both focussed and unfocussed time together – teams need plenty of this.
4. Our experience of working with teams who are mostly remote who don’t have sufficient opportunities to meet and get together is that in the limited times when the team is together it can be impossible to address both the need for social contract, general catch up and focussed development: More time together is part of the solution to this.
5. Most productive teams are made up of people who work well individually, are experienced and comfortable working as a team, and are also capable of working in small, temporary teams to address specific challenges.
6. It’s easier than ever for people to work remotely – but that doesn’t mean we should do it all the time.

So… far be it from us to disagree with Yahoo….. but we disagree with Yahoo.
A mix of team together time and individual working (remotely or otherwise) aren’t any barrier to effective innovative time…….. but cultural issues and a lack of intrinsic motivators can be.

What’s your view?

Posted by | 0 comments
Mar

08

THE PERKS OF CLOWNING AROUND

Featured / Inspiration / Momentum

http://www.emeraldstreet.com/home/article/2249/the-perks-of-clowning-around

Posted by | 0 comments
Feb

20

Self-Employment… What can we do?

Business Development / Career / Inspiration / Momentum

 

Recently we blogged about people being “persuaded” towards self employment, and some of the risks that we think that poses to individuals. You can read it here (link). On reflection, there are a whole other set of risks from this trend (if indeed it does turn out to be a trend- figures pending).

If we encourage people into self employment when it is not right for them, and without providing sufficient support to them, two things seem likely to happen:

1. We’ll have more self employed people and more micro business start ups.
2. Proportionally fewer self employed people and micro start ups will thrive. (for these purposes by thrive I mean: survive, grow, or provide adequate income for the individuals).

If we project those trends forward here are just some of the unintended consequences we could predict:

• Increased numbers of start ups will increase demand on free and low cost business support services and may reduce accessibility or quality of these services
• As “targets” for start ups are being met, less investment will be made
• Increased failure in the start up market will make it harder for start ups to get contracts or funding
• More people will experience failure, which they may (correctly or incorrectly) interpret as a reflection on their skills, experience or even worth

A pretty bleak (albeit hypothetical) picture. So…. what can we do?
Many of you know that at Ruby Star we are big supporters of volunteer mentoring. Providing voluntary mentoring is a large proportion of our pro bono commitment. We think far more people could do this. If you don’t already, but could, please consider how, with a relatively small time commitment, you could provide support and experience to someone starting out in business.

Posted by | 0 comments
Feb

15

X-factor syndrome (and how to avoid it)

Communication / Goals / Momentum

 

You know those contestants on the X-Factor who are truly awful, but are surprised to receive negative feedback?
The ones whose friends and family have always told them how great they are. That’s you that is.

One of the biggest risks to your business is underestimating how hard you need to work to convince others of your (product/service’s) brilliance. When you start a business the proceeding months and many of the initial months (or even years) will be spent having conversations about your venture. And everyone, or at least most people, will have told you what a great idea it is. So it’s easy to underestimate how hard you are going to have to work to get the same sort of reaction from people when you want them to accompany this verbal validation with parting with some cash.

This underestimating is very common among start-ups, but as you can imagine the consequences can be unpleasant:
• decreased confidence
• cashflow challenges
• increased pressure to close sales with existing leads
• and most worrying of all…. lack of clarity of message.

You see, we both know that you are fantastic, and great at what you do……. but it might just be safer for your business to base your level of confidence in your business on the sales you achieve, and the feedback you get from people who are willing to pay for your service, even if that means that some of your initial ideas don’t survive the buzzers.

Posted by | 0 comments
© Copyright The Ooomph Tank