Let’s take for example the process of signing up visitors at the reception desk for buildings located in active business districts. There definitely is a faster and less complex way of doing registration for guests coming for appointments with tenants in the building. Almost everyone complains about how long and difficult it is to line up to get an identification card and finally receive clearance to proceed. Why has the system not changed despite the fact that it needs changing? Why has there been no effort to simplify the system even if it has proven itself to be a time-waster? No change has happened because no one has taken the responsibility towards making things simple. Someone has to stand responsible for implementing simplicity in the workplace.

Here are some tips you can use when you decide to take charge:

1. Identify procedures, rules, regulations, etc. where you have heard feedback regarding how difficult it is or complex it is to work with. They can be comments made by people in your organization or remarks and observations given by your clients or the public.
2. Develop a ranking system that could show you exactly how complex your process is at this point. You could use the traffic light as an instrument of measure. Green could mean that it is satisfactory, yellow would put you in the border between simple and complex, orange tells you that it is complex, while red sets the alarm that your system is highly difficult and complex. You could position four drop boxes in a row, colored green, yellow, orange and red, in a strategic location in your office where people could leave notes on their ratings of systems or procedures.
3. Encourage suggestions on how you could make things simpler. The suggestions are made to address a system that has been pointed out as complex and was placed in any of the four colored boxes. You then assign a white box with the capital letter “S” where ideas can be placed to address the identified complex procedure. After an evaluation of the suggestions you could recognize and give rewards for the ideas that were submitted.
4. Continue to educate your organization in creative solutions towards simplicity. Continue to allow people in your company to evaluate you or the group in charge just to make sure you yourselves have not hit the red light.

“Please don’t, please don’t. There’s no need to complicate. Cause our time is short.” This is from Jason Mraz’s triple platinum single, “I’m Yours”. Time is too valuable to waste. Complexity eats up precious time. Simplicity doesn’t come naturally. We have to learn to make simplicity a habit. There are tools available that can help us create ideas that will move us from complex to simple. Allow us to share them with you. Call Dada at the numbers listed on our website.

If it’s none of your business, don’t ask questions.

As a young kid there would be occasions when we would hear the grownups talk about some problem during dinner and curiosity getting the better of us would prompt us to ask what it was they were talking about. Many times the answer would be a curt, “It’s none of your business!” In our minds our response was, “I’m old enough to be part of that”, but of course you knew better and you kept your mouth shut.

It was a good lesson to learn and it was even better if you learned it early. Knowing when something is not your business is a good thing to know when gossip comes your way. Gossip is almost irresistible. It feeds a few very basic human needs: to feel significant and important. Having a hot, juicy secret about someone puts them above everyone else. Having something to gossip about or someone’s life to talk about tells everyone that they are in the know and that they are superior to those they are sharing it with and better than the person they are gossiping about.

A gossip loves prestige and popularity. Gossiping is a tool they use for social manipulation. When we allow ourselves to be recipients of rumors or gossip then we fall into their trap.

We sort of feel indebted to them because we were given the privilege to be in the know and somehow fool ourselves into thinking that we are immune from being talked about too because we are part of the circle. Nothing could be further than the truth.

Once they get hold of some information worth spreading about you everyone will be privy to it and you will be the last to know.

Keep the gossips away by taking these steps:

one. When they begin to unleash rumors your way ask them if the person they are talking about knows that this information is going around about him or her. Tell them that you would be willing to listen to whatever the news is but would only do that if the person in question is around.

two. You can take the process one more step and mention that what you are hearing now is something new and invite the gossip to come with you and present this news to the person the gossip is talking about.

three. You can also make a stand and say that you are not someone who takes well to people talking about you and will never consider talking about others as well.

Taking these steps gives the message to everyone in the office that you are someone who can keep a confidence and that you can be trusted. It will also reveal to them that they will not have to worry about gossip coming from you because you would come to them directly and not talk to people who have no business in the matter. What is even better is that developing this character makes you less prone to being talked about as well.

A solution your office could implement is to post certain subjects on the bulletin board that people can freely talk about. The topics could be on how to get involved helping out communities that are in need of health care, food, clothing, education or shelter. You could get a discussion group going on how the office can save more on electricity or how you could think of ways to help save the environment. The point is there are lots of other topics out there that are more exciting than some other person’s private life. So if it’s none of your business, don’t ask questions.

Call Dada on how building the right values in the workplace can lead to workable creative solutions.

Camouflage techniques are learned early enough in school. You needed to have the right lead pencil, the right size notebook, uniform handwriting, the accepted haircut, the right accent, etc. Learning to be the right gear for appropriate fit is ingrained again and again via rules, tests, more tests, uniform standards of measurement, and quality control. You are taught to do this until you’re like everyone else and when you’ve become like everyone else then you’ve created the perfect camouflage. When you graduate from school, rules and tests will be put in place so that everyone is sure you are still the right gear for the job. In school and in our jobs we develop the best camouflage ever because this protects us from our biggest fear – the fear of not being the right fit. When we even attempt to begin to change the questions an alarm in the corporate system goes full blast and screams, “INTRUDER ALERT!!!!”

Conformity buries whatever skills or gifts an individual can give to the team. They can’t bring in their gifts because that would mean ruining part of their camouflage.

When they can’t use their skills or bring in their gifts then everyone in the organization loses out. We all lose out because of one rule – you have to be the right fit or else.

Now, if you’re talking about an assembly line of workers putting pieces of clothing together to make a shirt, then maybe some form of conformity should be in place, but when you need new ideas to improve production or improve quality, then conformity isn’t the way to go.

Many years back, a company that wanted to innovate on the extra bra cups they were making changed the questions and moved from bra cups to developing the cups as surgical masks for hospitals and patients. If the team that developed this idea was hiding behind their camouflage suits, then this wonderful idea would never have made it out into the world. Imagine the proponent of this idea placing a bra over his mouth and saying, “Hey, isn’t this a great way to keep the germs away?” If the organization was obsessed with the “right fit” then they would have found this idea too unpredictable and embarrassing. Having broken his camouflage this man with the cup idea will then be promptly marked for shaming or execution – INTRUDER ALERT!

It really is time to reconsider and change our mindset about finding the right fit. The world is changing and it is looking for people who not only can keep their word but for men and women who are willing to shed their camouflage suits and make positive change via fearless innovation. Individuals who are guided by words like conformity, predictability and right-fit are out. What we need today are people who are not afraid to try, want to learn how to lead, brave enough to ask the naïve questions, and wise enough to shed their camouflage suits.

Free your team from the fear of having to fit in. Ask Dada how working together can make it happen.

Your playmate fires a nuclear missile at you and in the blink of an eye you are Superman. Your playmate then tells you it won’t work because the missile is made of kryptonite and so in nanoseconds you decide you will try to be the Hulk and absorb the power of the Kryptonite missile allowing you to become even stronger. You then give chase to your missile throwing friend but can’t find him because in the time it took you to transform from Superman to Hulk, he altered his physical state and became the Invisible Man.
If we don’t get permission to try along the way then we end up with the following results:

1. We become afraid to make mistakes.
2. We wait till everything is perfect before we begin a project which means it will never get done because perfect will never exist.
3. We procrastinate like crazy until we convince ourselves to abandon an otherwise wonderful idea.
4. We will never see failure as part of the process to getting things done.
5. If you don’t get things done because you are afraid to fail, then getting to the meaty parts will never ever happen.
6. You will never catch the Invisible Man because you would have stayed as Superman, waiting forever for the permission to try something else, while the kryptonite missile hits you dead center and turns you into cosmic dust.

The permission to try is really important to learn. It is the only way to get things moving and to get things done. There is only going to be one you and the contribution you will make by trying will be unique. No one else will make that same contribution.
Are you afraid to try because someone might laugh at you? Consider our Superman/Hulk playtime story. Did you hear anyone laugh during the whole scenario? When we were young enough to imagine and play out this entire scenario in our minds not one of our playmates laughed because this was all serious stuff. This was no less than a matter of life and death, not just for one person but for the whole universe.

Of course the older we got the less permission we felt we had until finally we sort of lost it altogether. Trying brings about failure but failure and mistakes get things done and when we get to done then better things come our way.

We never quite lose our desire to play. The lessons we learned are always going to be there. Have you by any slight chance lost sight of your permission to try? Call Dada and ask her how we can get to catch the Invisible Man.

This is a classic example of a company keeping an eye on their primary goal which is to sign up as many motorists as they can for the extra credit card. It also is an example of an organization that did its homework by listening to the customers.

Many innovative twists come from outside the company and not from the inside.

What this company did was ask themselves the question, “What if I were a motorist who had very little time to spend at the gas station but was interested in getting a gasoline credit card?” “How can we speed up and simplify the process?”

When being asked to be creative many ideas come into play and many of them during your brainstorming meetings will seem workable. The key is to make a short list of all the ideas and decide which of the projects has the maximum potential to solve the problem at hand, which in this case was getting members signed up as quickly as possible when they stopped for gas. You then focus your resources on what project you have decided is best and push it to produce the results you want.

Again, looking at this case, one has a few questions in mind. How do we get the ideas out during the meetings? How do we make a short list of all the ideas coming in? For years the digital camera has had the potential to record documents and yet only this year has it been recruited, at least for this situation, to speed up the card application process.

How does one connect one idea to the other? How does a team produce wild ideas that don’t go over the edge? How will someone in your team use his or her broad experience to produce solutions that will add to the organization’s longevity in the industry?

With our credit card example, a creative solution was created to help willing people in a hurry. The willing people are everywhere! They just have different scenarios and different needs. The creative breakthrough that you are looking for will come when you learn how to put yourselves in their shoes and experience their lives even for a moment. Will you find out what needs changing? Will you create and carry out a plan? Will you give your creative solution the attention, manpower, and funding that it deserves?

The creative solutions are out there. You only need to know where to look, and have the follow-through to carry it out.

We would love to come in and help you find creativity. Ask Dada how you can have your team learn more about living in the creator’s economy. Call her at the number listed in our website.

It was a simple rule – “if you don’t know how to operate it, leave it alone.” Mom and Dad would drill this into our brains on an almost daily basis. Sometimes we would totally get it and sometimes we would miss the wisdom in it altogether. It was not about our parents being selfish with the car or the power tools. It was really about minimizing the consequences or avoiding the penalties of a decision we did not take the time to think about.

It wasn’t a matter about whether the move was right or wrong, but that if it would be wise or unwise.

There are quite a few things today that we get into what seemed easy enough to handle in the beginning but transformed from being a spark to a forest fire. The simple decision to be angry about losing a parking lot space to an aggressive driver and then pick a fight over it is something that we really need to think about. This type of anger seems controllable at first but ends up with a kind of monstrous rage in a few seconds. Before you know it you are in a shouting match, a fistfight maybe or could end up losing your life or taking someone’s life instead. Well it looked like you could handle your anger when you first marched toward the other driver but when he started shouting back at you, everything just went into overdrive.

We are responsible for taking care of our health. Making a decision not to take dangerous drugs is a wise resolution to make. How many times have we heard stories where someone with an addiction just started off trying it out so to speak and is still trying it out many years after? In the meantime his job, his family and whatever self-esteem he once had is now all gone. There are many things we believe we can handle but in reality cannot.

It happens to the best and the worst among us. Lying, cheating and stealing have consequences that all of us given the breadth and width of these would surely think twice before attempting to go down this path. Our parents were trying their best to work out some wisdom into our lives by telling us time and time again – “If you don’t know how to operate it, leave it alone.” Are you about to enter a situation that you know will cost you more than you will be able to pay? Are you about to do something that will take you on a journey you will ultimately regret? Allow us to help you rethink your values via our team development program. Call Dada at these numbers.

What some of us would consider lazy could well be a development of simplifications over a period of time. Edward De Bono, cited as one of the world’s top thinkers today, said “The lazier a person is, the more likely that person is to seek simpler ways to do things.” This statement, in turn, places a whole new viewpoint on the word “lazy.” Today, one cannot imagine watching television without the remote control in hand. Does that actually mean one is lazy to stand up and change the channel every time there is a need? We are sure some of you still remember being reprimanded by your elders by being too lazy to stand up and change the channel instead of having to use the remote. Well none of those who use to think using the remote was a lazy person’s way of doing things thinks that way now. The remote is, shall we say, standard issue and what is lazy today is the fact that we don’t want to stand and look for the remote when it isn’t in its usual place.

It would be worth our while to observe the “lazy” people so to speak. They spend their lives trying to think of short-cuts, making life easier and simpler. It is very possible that people in the workplace could have developed a less complicated way to get their work done. People who take care of pets have moved on from the tedious and time consuming work of having to fill the drinking bowls on a daily basis to installing drinking bottles that release water on demand just by animals licking at the edge of the metal tube. We are sure that this drinking bottle system was developed by some “lazy” person who just decided one day that life should be made easier.

Supermarket shelves offer shoppers pre-sliced cheese portions. These machine-cut slices are uniform in thickness, size and shape, and fit your sandwiches perfectly. Although we still have cheese slicers operated by hand in our homes, we must admit that having a supply of the machine cut slices offers us an easier way to prepare our food. Could the idea have come from a “lazy” person who just got tired of having to cut the slices from a block of cheese and then hated having to clean the slicer after? The “lazy” person stepped into the challenge of making his life easier and the world is a better place today (or at least sandwiches are undeniably easier to make today) than before the pre-cut era.

How do we harness innovation from “laziness”? Our seminars on “The Six Thinking Hats Course” can show you how. Call Dada!

By the time we reach adulthood many of us are thought to focus on getting our rewards via results and effort is at most given the traditional pat in the back ceremony.

What we want our team to learn is to view effort as its own reward.

It will involve opening their minds by consistently keeping up the enthusiasm in your voice and the words that you choose to fill their minds with.

Studies have shown that the reason managers and other top level executives quit is because they feel that their efforts are not acknowledged or recognized. Ideas that are contributed during meetings, mentioned casually in office hallways, sent through text or made via 2AM emails have required effort and therefore must be acknowledged and be given rewards. Now rewards can run from a simple thank you note to a leave early and watch a movie kind of prize. The important thing is to make sure your team knows that you saw the effort they put in and that you are recognizing it by giving a reward.

It is important to keep in mind that cheering your staff on or saying thank you to them for their efforts needs to be done with the utmost sincerity.

They can very quickly tell if you are faking it and that will in the end only make them distrustful and distant. If you notice that someone in your team is contributing more ideas than he or she used to contribute be quick to acknowledge this by saying, “Wow Ron you sure are full of great ideas today! Keep in mind that when you reward with praises they have to be truthful and they have to be specific.

It is also vital for you to keep not just your ears open but your eyes as well. It is possible that some of those in your team may not be able to express themselves well verbally but may already be doing things that can be considered great ideas. They may have developed shortcuts that are taking the organization to better performance levels. The efforts of these individuals should be recognized and rewarded as well.

When we begin to show our team that their ideas have value then they in turn learn to value the ideas of their teammates as well. Soon after, recognition for good ideas become the norm and a culture of nurturing and appreciation embeds itself into the organization on a very high level of intensity.

Call Dada and ask how creative thinking can implement an environment of recognition in your workplace.

If you’ve ever attended reunions what you will hear mostly is how good everyone is doing. The best jobs, the best cars, the best career paths – not one mistake ever.   No hint of failure, just an impeccable, spotless, immaculate life.  It almost seems like everyone is out there to tell everyone else, “Hey look I can do everything well!”

The truth is, for each and every perfectly written resume there are hidden behind these, stories of failure and adversity. If we were to look back, the lessons we learned from adversity are the lessons we keep for a lifetime.  We waver on speaking about our failures perhaps because our culture is more concerned about achievements rather than building character.

Anton Chekov wrote, “One must be God to be able to distinguish successes from failures and not make mistakes.” Success and failure are so intertwined that viewing it is not a matter of saying you either succeed or you fail but more that one succeeds and fails. One’s life is really made up of a series of rough ups and downs that together represent the knife edge that still makes the cut.

Our judgment call for recognizing a person as a success or a failure is oftentimes pronounced too rapidly. So much so that we end up having to eat our words. Winning and losing depend really on so many dynamics such as the economy, weather, public perception- changeable criteria. Speaking about public perception – Bill Gates, branded a success by many was considered a failure by his mother because he dropped out of Harvard. Dropouts have been considered failures especially in countries were educational attainment is part of the achievement culture. But then looking at how Bill Gates and Steve Jobs have done and are doing so far, in which category do we place them in now. Do we position them as failures or as successful individuals?

In hindsight, we discover that failures lead to success and the other way around. Many best selling ideas or items from the past decades are now hidden away in some taped up box in the attic that is never to be opened up again. We had things like Wordstar and Wordstar Pro, floppy discs, pagers, and espadrilles (a light shoe with a fabric upper and a sole made of twisted cord).  These things represented success during their glory days but today are nowhere to be found except perhaps in some obscure museum that isn’t at all on the roadmap.

J.K. Rowling, author of the wildly successful Harry Potter books, said that ultimately we decide what have been failures in our lives. She went on to say that it is impossible to go through life without experiencing failure in one form or another. She was grateful for the failures that she had because they taught her to sift through the unimportant things in her life.

Failure oftentimes can be the greatest teacher of all and we need not be discouraged when we fail.

J.K. Rowling is no failure today. She probably will never be poor again but she realizes now that one’s curriculum vitae is not one’s life. Is it really about winning and losing?  Grantland Rice said,

“When the One Great Scorer comes to write against your name, He marks not that you won or lost, but how you played the game.”

Want to know how we can help teach your team to play the game right?  Ask Dada about our values training programs.

“Since the spring of 2006, we’ve incorporated playgrounds into most of our new schools, and we have also been working to retrofit a few of our existing schools with swings, seesaws and slides. Our loyal donors love this idea and have been more than happy to chip in. The playgrounds have also won fans in some unexpected quarters.

In the summer of 2009, for example, a group of elders who sympathized with the Taliban paid a visit to one of our schools in Afghanistan with a request to tour the facility. As they walked into the compound and put down their weapons, the leader of the delegation, a man named Haji Mohammad Ibrahim, spotted the playground and broke into a big smile. For the next half hour, he and his companions gleefully sampled the swings, the slide, and the seesaw.

When they finally quit playing, Haji Mohammad Ibrahim announced that they did not need to see the inside of the school. “But don’t you want to take a look at the classrooms?” asked the principal. “No we have seen enough,” replied Haji Mohammad Ibrahim. “We would like to formally request you to come to our village in order to start building schools. But if you do, they absolutely must have playgrounds.”

Where did this wonderful idea come from? Well Greg had a young daughter named Amira and she asked Greg one day what the children in Pakistan do for play.  Finding out from her father that there were no playgrounds in the school she told him that there absolutely must be playgrounds,“all children need to play, especially ones that are suffering and hurting like the kids in Pakistan.” Greg admitted that in their effort to build the schools, lay water distribution pipes, work out the red tape, his team had forgotten one of the most essential facets to a school – play.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) reported that free and unstructured play is healthy and in point of fact help children reach important social, emotional, and cognitive developmental milestones. Play also helps the individual manage stress and develop resiliency.

An organization that consents to the practice of strategic free play to transpire in connection with idea generation, problem solving, situational analysis, and brainstorming increases the possibility of a better creative harvest for itself.

Including play in your organization stimulates the creative output of the individual. Play gives permission for your organization to first identify the box and then think out of it.

Call Dada to know how you can introduce play in your team and reap the benefits that come with it.