In recent years, the concept of microdosing has moved from the fringes of alternative therapy into the mainstream as a potential tool for enhancing mental performance and wellness. But is microdosing truly an innovation, or is it a passing trend destined for the annals of speculative practices? Through examining its revolutionary potential and analyzing its impact in real-world scenarios, we can better understand the role microdosing plays in our continuous pursuit of human-centered innovation.
Understanding Microdosing
Microdosing typically involves taking sub-perceptual doses of psychedelics, like LSD or psilocybin, approximately one-tenth of a recreational dose, to experience the potential therapeutic benefits without hallucinogenic effects. Advocates claim it can boost creativity, alleviate anxiety, and improve focus, leading to its rising popularity among entrepreneurs, artists, and the tech-savvy.
Case Study 1: Microdosing in Silicon Valley
In the competitive landscape of Silicon Valley, professionals are constantly seeking a competitive edge to enhance productivity and creativity. The tech hub has notably become a breeding ground for experimentation with microdosing. Tech workers claim the practice helps them to sustain high levels of innovation and problem-solving abilities in an environment where mental agility is highly prized.
For instance, a significant number of software developers and startup founders have reported that microdosing has supported cognitive function and stress reduction, leading to improved workplace performance and job satisfaction. Companies have begun embracing wellness practices, subtly endorsing microdosing as part of a broader strategy to cultivate employee well-being and foster an innovative work culture.
Case Study 2: Microdosing in Mental Health Treatment
Beyond corporate environments, microdosing has gained attention as a potential revolutionary approach in mental health treatment. Psychedelics-assisted therapy research has opened up dialogues about microdosing’s efficacy as a treatment for mood disorders and PTSD. Leading institutions are exploring the controlled use of microdoses as an adjunct to traditional therapies.
A pilot study conducted at a renowned university evaluated the impact of psilocybin microdosing on patients with treatment-resistant depression. Preliminary findings suggest a marked improvement in mood stabilization and cognitive flexibility among participants, renewing hope for alternative approaches in mental health treatment. This study has prompted further research and dialogue within the medical community, transforming discussions around treatment paradigms.
Case Study 3: Brez Beverages – Microdosing in the Consumer Market
Brez Beverages, a pioneering player in the beverage industry, has embraced the microdosing revolution by developing a line of drinks infused with adaptogenic and nootropic compounds. Their products aim to provide consumers with the benefits of microdosing in a more accessible and socially acceptable format.
The innovative approach of Brez Beverages lies in their ability to tap into the growing desire for wellness-centric consumer products. By integrating microdosed elements into beverages, they offer a unique alternative for individuals seeking mental clarity and stress reduction without committing to psychedelic substances. Brez Beverages represents a shift in how microdosing concepts can be commercialized and introduced to mainstream consumers.
Market feedback indicates a burgeoning interest among health-conscious customers who are drawn to the idea of enhancing their daily lives with subtle botanical blends, thus carving a new niche in the health and wellness sector. Brez continues to capitalize on the demand for unconventional health solutions, reflecting both the challenge and potential of integrating microdosing into consumer products.
The Verdict: Innovation or Not?
Whether microdosing is labeled as an innovation largely depends on one’s perspective. On one hand, it presents a novel application of existing compounds, showcasing unconventional problem-solving in enhancing human potential—an experimental departure from typical wellness and therapeutic practices. On the other hand, its lack of universal acceptance and scientific consensus makes it a contentious archetype of modern self-experimentation rather than unmistakable innovation.
In conclusion, microdosing embodies the dynamic nature of innovation—provocative yet promising. As we push the boundaries of what’s possible in the human experience, microdosing remains an emblem of the desire to enhance and evolve our capabilities. Whether it stands the test of time will depend on ongoing research, legal structures, and societal acceptance, but it undoubtedly shapes the current discourse on potential pathways for human-centered transformation.
Image credit: DrinkBrez.com, Pexels
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How one man’s innovation provided the missing link for a 20th century agricultural revolution
GUEST POST from John Bessant
There’s a lot of good stuff which comes out of Ireland. Leaving aside the wonderful music, the amazing countryside (complete with its ‘soft’ rain) and some excellent food and drink (including a drop or two of the black stuff to which I am occasionally partial). But it’s also a country which punches well above its weight in terms of ideas — it’s got a reputation for being a smart economy basing its progress on putting knowledge to work. Creating value from those ideas — innovation.
That’s something which you’ll find not only in the universities and hi-tech companies dotted across the landscape but also down on the farm. Farming’s a tough business — anyone who watches the series ‘Clarkson’s Farm,’ will recognize the multiple challenges farmers face, battling all that Nature can throw at them when she’s in a bad mood plus rising costs, increasing regulation and volatile markets. It’s a field (ouch) where innovation is not just a nice to have, it’s essential.
And in Dromara, County Down there’s a statue erected to honor a man to whom many farmers, not just in Ireland but around the world, have cause to be grateful. Harry Ferguson.
Of course farming innovation isn’t new; it’s been at the heart of our progress towards being able to feed ourselves and so move beyond subsistence to doing something constructive with our newly-found spare time. Like building cities and societies. Think back to your school days and you’ll recognize many of the key innovations which enabled the ‘agricultural revolution’, increasing productivity to help feed a growing population. The early days were all about ingenious implements — Jethro Tull’s seed drill, (1701), Cyril McCormick’s reaper (1840), John Deere’s steel plow (1847) — all these and hundreds of other innovations helped move the needle on farming practices.
But better implements still faced the limitations of power — and that aspect of innovation remained unchanged for centuries. We’d moved on from back-breaking manual labor but for centuries we relied on animals, primarily horses, to pull or occasionally push our implements. Power was the agricultural equivalent of the ‘philosophers stone’ for alchemists, the secret which would turn base metals into gold (or farms into more productive units). So with the advent of steam power in the early 1800s it looked like it had been discovered; as factories, mines and even early railways were showing, a steam engine could harness the power of many horses.
But (in an early example of the hype cycle) the promise of steam power failed to deliver — largely for technical reasons. Steam engines were big and heavy which meant they had to stay in one place with their power distributed to where it was needed by elaborate systems of pulleys, belts and wheels. They were unreliable and dangerous with an unpleasant tendency to explode unpredictably. For certain tasks they held out promise — they could plow a simple flat field ten times as fast as a team of horses— but their inflexibility limited their application.
Traction engines provided a partial solution since these machines could carry out basic tasks drilling and plowing. Though they were often too heavy to work directly on muddy fields they had the advantage of power which could quickly be moved to where they were needed. Set them up on the side of a field, hook them up to relevant implements like plows and put them to work. When the job was finished, uncouple everything and move on to the next field (as long as it was fairly flat and big).
(Interestingly it was the traction engine which inspired Henry Ford to work on transportation. Reflecting on his first encounter with a traction engine on the family farm he said ‘I remember that engine, as though I had seen it only yesterday, for it was the only vehicle other than horse-drawn I had ever seen….it was that engine that took me into automotive transportation’).
So steam power wasn’t really going to change the farming world. But another innovation was — the internal combustion engine. Engineers around the world had seized on the possibilities of this technology and were working to try and come up with a ‘horseless carriage’, something which Karl Benz managed to do with his Motorwagen in 1885 in Germany. It didn’t take a big leap of imagination to see another location where replacing horses could have an advantage — and John Froelich, an engineer from Iowa duly developed the first gasoline-powered tractor, mounting an engine on a traction engine chassis in 1892.
Unfortunately he wasn’t able to make the machine in volume, producing only four tractors before closing down the business. But others were more successful; for example in 1905 the International Harvester company produced its first tractor, and in 1906 Henry Ford invested over $600,000 in research for tractors, building on his growing experience with cars. An early outcome was the ‘Automobile plow’, a cross-over concept using the Model T as the base.
Pretty soon, just as in the personal transportation marketplace, hundreds of entrepreneurs began working on tractor innovation; a classic example of what Joseph Schumpeter (the godfather of innovation economics) would call ‘swarming’ behavior. By 1910 there were over a thousand tractor designs on offer from 150 different companies.
A key part of Schumpeter’s theory of how innovation works is that many of the early entrepreneurs active in a new field will fail, whether for technical or business reasons, and there will be convergence along key dimensions — setting up a technological trajectory along which future developments will tend to run.
That was certainly the case with tractors; key pieces of the puzzle were coming into place like an ability to deal with difficult terrain by using all-wheel drive (offered by John Deere in 1914) and the trend towards smaller (and more affordable) machines, pioneered by the Bull Company. Agricultural shows began to feature tractor demonstrations which allowed farmers to see first-hand the relative benefits of different machines and an early front runner in the move towards widespread market acceptance was International Harvester with their light and affordable Titan 10/20 model.
This was a growing market; by 1916 over 20,000 tractors had been sold in the USA. As with many innovations once the ‘dominant design’ has emerged for the basic product configuration emphasis shifts to the ways in which they can be made — process innovation. Those players — like Henry Ford — with experience in mass production had a significant potential advantage. His Fordson brand became the benchmark in terms of pricing and other manufacturers often struggled to compete unless they were large, like the John Deere company which offered its Model D in 1923 for around $1000. Ford had priced aggressively to try and capture the market, originally offering the Fordson for $200 in pre-sales advertising , but eventually selling the tractor in 1917 for $750 ( a price at which he was actually making a loss).
Ford understood the principle; he’d used it to open up the automobile market by offering ‘…to build a car for the great multitude’ at a price that multitude could afford. But things were a little more complex down on the farm. At first sight tractors seemed a great idea not least because of their running cost advantages. Animals, while a flexible source of power, were also a big cost since they needed food, shelter and veterinary services, plus there was an opportunity cost in terms of land needed to grow their feed which could otherwise be sued for more profitable crops. It took around 6 acres per horse over the farming year. Tractors ran on kerosene, becoming widely available and at low cost; and they only burned this fuel when they were working.
Ford’s strategy appeared to pay off; by 1923 he had over 75% of the US market . Yet only five years later things had deteriorated so much that the company exited the business. What led to this dramatic shift was a series of challenges to which cost advantages based on process innovation weren’t the answer. Product innovation once again became a key differentiator. This time the issue wasn’t around simply replacing the animal power unit with a mechanical one; it had everything to do with what you connected that power up to.
Early tractors solved the connection problem with a simple drawbar, essentially a metal stick to which you could attach different implements. Which worked fine when the going was flat, the surface dry, the field large and simple. Unfortunately most farming also involves uneven ground, plenty of mud and rain-filled potholes, trees and other obstacles and small fields with uneven boundaries. To cope with all of that you need a utility tractor — not for nothing was the IH Farmall a runaway success in the 1920s — the name says it all. Having spent a significant amount (for a small farmer) on buying your lightweight utility tractor you want it to carry out much more than just row crop duties — helping out with a wide range of construction and maintenance operations down on the farm,.
In particular one innovation which helped endear International Harvester to many a farmer’s heart was the ‘power take off’ device — essentially making power available to be hooked up to a variety of different implements. Introduced in 1922 this opened up the market by massively increasing the versatility of tractor. All manner of attachments — seed drills, rotary cutters, posthole diggers, snow throwers — all could be run off the core PTO. We could draw an analogy to today’s IT world; buying a tractor without the ability to attach tools to it would be like buying a computer without software.
Which brings us back to Harry Ferguson (in case you thought we’d lost the Irish connection). Because connecting farm implements to tractors became his passion — and the basis for a highly successful business. In doing so he provided the platform on which so much could happen, much as Steve Jobs with the smart-phone enabled users to find and deploy the apps they wanted . And along the way he was able to help Henry Ford re-enter and revive his tractor business.
Ferguson was born 1884 in County Down, Ulster and grew up in a farming family — though he wasn’t particularly taken with the life. Nor was he that keen on school either, dropping out at the age of 14. What saved him was a love of reading and a fascination with all things mechanical — which in the early 20th century was a good interest to have. His brother helpfully opened a repair shop to cater to the emerging motor trade and Harry joined him, kindling enough focused motivation to study at Belfast Technical College. Arguably, though, his skill set was less around the mechanical detail than in the front office — sales and PR. He persuaded his brother to sponsor him and he proved adept at motor car and cycle racing — even persuading his brother to fund the development of Ireland’s first airplane which Harry then learned to fly!
Eventually he set up his own automobile business, May Street Motors, in Belfast in 1911 and one of his first appointments (a 21 year old mechanic, Willy Sands) proved to be crucial in his subsequent success. Sands was a gifted engineer; he remained with Ferguson for nearly fifty years, working in the backroom and helping develop the technologies which built business success.
Ferguson was quick to spot an opportunity in the emerging tractor market and managed to obtain a franchise for sales and service of the John Deere Overtime tractor which was being built in the UK. That gave Ferguson and Sands extensive experience in the way the tractor was put together, the repairs it needed and the context into which it was being applied.
The miseries of the Great War on the home front included food shortages and problems with imports so the British government were urgently seeking anything which could help out with farm productivity — including subsidizing investment in tractors. Harry played a part in this when he was given a contract for the Irish Board of Agriculture in 1917 to oversee government-owned tractor maintenance and production records. The duo traveled the country to advise farmers, help set up equipment like plows and understanding the problems farmers faced in deploying the tractor. For example soil compaction, caused by the heavy weight of tractors and plows of the time, was a common complaint.
All of this honed their skills at repairs and improvements to the current stock of tractors in Ireland; their next break came when conversion kits for the Model T car began to appear to create a car/tractor. Ferguson took a franchise for the Eros, a kit which involved putting larger rear wheels on the car, together with a chain transmission to them and installing a bigger radiator to cope with the engine load. His experience with farmers paid off; he realized that this lighter weight car/tractor could solve the soil compaction problem and so got Sands to design a lightweight plow for the Eros.
This — the ‘Belfast plow’ — was launched in 1917 and was the first farm implement bearing Ferguson’s name; it was half the weight of a standard plow and crucially used a clever idea for the hitch connecting the tractor to the plow. This meant that the load from pulling the plow was shared equally by all four wheels instead of just the rear ones; this made it easier to steer and drive.
But Henry Ford was not about to let the tractor opportunity market fall into the hands of conversion kits for Model Ts; instead he commissioned design and manufacture of his own tractor with a large slow turning engine. He persuaded the British Ministry of Munitions to purchase 6000 units in return for his setting up a factory in Ireland. The Fordson tractor (as it was called) arrived in 1917 but quickly ran into problems as farmers began to use it. In particular it had a worrying tendency to flip over on its back if it hit an obstacle; its powerful engine and the relative lack of weight on the front end meant it could be pulled over by an obstacle or an unexpected drag while plowing. Nonetheless its arrival spelt the end of conversion kits — and dealt a blow to Harry Ferguson’s dream.
He was nothing if not resilient; in true entrepreneurial style he turned the arrival in force of Fordsons to an opportunity, adapting his lightweight plow for use with the tractor. In particular they worked on their hitch system so that it helped overcome the tendency for the front wheels to rear up; their design included a clever depth control device — a floating skid — which stopped the problem happening when the plow dug too deep and pulled the tractor over.
This worked well with the plow but for other implements they realized depth control could be enabled by the use of a hydraulic lever which adapted to the terrain. Putting all of this together led them to a system which worked on a variety of implements including disc harrows and cultivators. In 1925 Ferguson was granted a patent for this three point hitch — and it became the basis on which he built his future success. It was the key to unlocking the puzzle of how to connect power to implements and became the dominant design, one which is still widely used today.
The significance of this design should not be underestimated, and it’s something explored in depth in an excellent review by Scott Marshaus at the University of Wisconsin. Even though other factors helped contribute to the major increase in agricultural productivity like fertilizers, better seed strains and environmental management of pests the importance of completing the mechanization cycle is central. Yes, you can replace horses and mules with machine power but you can’t plant the seeds or distribute the chemicals unless you have the means to connect power with application. Which was the problem that Ferguson did so much to solve.
Just when all looked promising the market weather changed once again, another shift triggered by the business strategy of Ford. After years of making a loss the company decided to exit the tractor market in 1927, choosing instead to concentrate resources on their new Model A automobile. Which left Ferguson with no market for his Fordson-fitting plow.
So he (and Sands, as ever working away diligently in the backroom) developed their own lightweight tractor based on the Fordson design. They included their 3 point hitch and the prototype ‘Black Tractor’ appeared in 1933. Ferguson then went into partnership with the David Brown company to manufacture what became known as the Ferguson Brown Model A; production started in 1936. Disagreements quickly followed with Brown wanting to make a bigger tractor so Ferguson pulled out of the venture.
Instead he took one of the production Model A tractors into Henry Ford’s back garden — literally. In 1938 he showed it off and tested it against the Fordson and another tractor from Allis-Chalmers at Ford’s Fair Lane country estate. It performed so well that Ford wanted to make a deal on the spot and after brief discussion the two men shook hands. This handshake deal put a version of the tractor, called the Ford-Ferguson Model 9N into production in 1939 and it sold over 10,000 in its first year. By 1940 the factory was churning out 150 per day.
All should have been plain sailing but Ferguson’s prickly nature posed problems. He was, in many ways, a classic example of an entrepreneur, seeking opportunity wherever he could find it and adapting setbacks to become new directions for development. However he was also, according to his biographer Colin Fraser,‘someone who combined the extremes of subtlety, naiveté, charm, rudeness, brashness, modesty, largesse and pettiness; and the switch from any one to another could be abrupt and unpredictable. And, he had a penchant for confrontation.”
He had hoped that Ford in the UK would start production after the end of WW2 and he wanted a seat on the board; when this was rejected he threatened to walk away and start production on his own. But his position was weak; what he didn’t know was that Henry Ford 2nd, who took over in 1945, had discovered that the tractor business was still losing money at a desperate rate. He also discovered that the Ford-Ferguson 2N was being sold at a loss to Ferguson for resale to his dealers, an arrangement that cost Ford $25 million. Not surprisingly Ford wanted to stop and Ferguson was advised that 1947 would be the last year of the handshake agreement.
Ferguson fought back, putting his own version of the Ferguson/Ford tractor into production in 1946 in a war-surplus British factory. But competing with Ford was always going to be difficult; in response Ford introduced a new version, the Ford Model 8N in 1947, conspicuously missing the ‘Ferguson’ name from the badge. Ford’s engineers had tried to improve and sidestep Ferguson’s patented ideas but the core 3 point hitch and hydraulic system were retained. Although Ford’s marketing and distribution muscle backed him into a corner Ferguson in turn fought back, suing Ford in 1948 for $251 million for infringement of these patents.
Ferguson eventually won the bitter dispute and used some of the $9.25 damages agreed to continue to make tractors in the UK. But his attempts at working independently in the USA failed and eventually he merged his business with the Massey-Harris company in 1953.He retired from the tractor business but continued to develop ideas for the world of motor sport, including creating the first four wheel-drive system for use on Formula One racing cars.
He died in 1960 as a result of a barbiturate overdose; the inquest was unable to conclude whether this had been accidental or not. A sad end for someone whose passion and drive had helped enable the later stages of the agricultural revolution. But he left a powerful innovation footprint in farming soil all around the world. remembered in the tractor brand which bears his name and in the 3 point hitch design which is still in widespread use.
When the work is new for them, they don’t know how to do it. You’ve got to show them how to do it and explain everything. Tell them about your top-level approach; tell them why you focus on the new elements; show them how to make the chart that demonstrates the new one is better than the old one. Let them ask questions at every step. And tell them their questions are good ones. Praise them for their curiosity. And tell them the answers to the questions they should have asked you. And tell them they’re ready for the next level.
2. Do it with them, and let them hose it up.
Let them do the work they know how to do, you do all the new work except for one new element, and let them do that one bit of new work. They won’t know how to do it, and they’ll get it wrong. And you’ve got to let them. Pretend you’re not paying attention so they think they’re doing it on their own, but pay deep attention. Know what they’re going to do before they do it, and protect them from catastrophic failure. Let them fail safely. And when then hose it up, explain how you’d do it differently and why you’d do it that way. Then, let them do it with your help. Praise them for taking on the new work. Praise them for trying. And tell them they’re ready for the next level.
3. Let them do it, and help them when they need it.
Let them lead the project, but stay close to the work. Pretend to be busy doing another project, but stay one step ahead of them. Know what they plan to do before they do it. If they’re on the right track, leave them alone. If they’re going to make a small mistake, let them. And be there to pick up the pieces. If they’re going to make a big mistake, casually check in with them and ask about the project. And, with a light touch, explain why this situation is different than it seems. Help them take a different approach and avoid the big mistake. Praise them for their good work. Praise them for their professionalism. And tell them they’re ready for the next level.
4. Let them do it, and help only when they ask.
Take off the training wheels and let them run the project on their own. Work on something else, and don’t keep track of their work. And when they ask for help, drop what you are doing and run to help them. Don’t walk. Run. Help them like they’re your family. Praise them for doing the work on their own. Praise them for asking for help. And tell them they’re ready for the next level.
5. Do the new work for them, then repeat.
Repeat the whole recipe for the next level of new work you’ll help them master.
Image credit: misterinnovation.com
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Surprising customers with something they weren’t expecting doesn’t have to be expensive. In many cases, it can be very inexpensive or even free.
For example, surprising a couple with a cake and candle when they are celebrating at a restaurant costs a tiny fraction of the meal but greatly impacts the evening.
For years, I’ve shared the story of a cab driver who surprised his customers with a newspaper, a bottle of water and a side trip to see a famous local landmark. That side trip cost the driver nothing but a few minutes of time. And the newspaper and water cost him far less than the extra tip he received for adding these surprises to the experience.
Even though I have covered this concept before, it’s worth resurrecting. What inspired me to do so was an article by Chip Bell, my friend and fellow customer service expert, who recently wrote a Forbes article titled The Magic of Serving with Radical Generosity. His main example of this happened at the Marriott Long Wharf Hotel in Boston. He checked in late for a one-night stay. The front desk clerk upgraded him to one of the grandest rooms in the hotel.
The front desk clerk recognized Chip as a loyal Marriott Bonvoy member and knew the surprise of upgrading him to the nicer room wouldn’t cost the hotel any more than the regular room he was booked in. The result was a deepened sense of loyalty and sharing the story with others—in this case, thousands of readers of Chip’s Forbes article. The goodwill and word-of-mouth marketing the hotel received was far more than the upgrade cost, which was virtually nothing.
But the surprise is nothing if there isn’t a supporting cast, as in the employees who make what Chip calls Radical Generosity come to life. The cast member’s role is to do more than just surprise the customer—it is to create a positive experience that transcends the surprise.
In my restaurant example, if all the server did was set a slice of cake in front of the guests and begrudgingly say, “Happy anniversary,” the experience would be tainted by the lack of enthusiasm for the moment. The guest might say, “That was nice, but …” It takes more than one positive moment to make the experience.
If you like the idea of surprising a customer, share these examples at your next team meeting. Then, kick off a discussion that starts with this question: What’s our version of a hotel’s room upgrade or a surprise slice of cake?
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Our team at FROM has worked with dozens of global brands helping advise their leaders about digital transformation. Across all that experience we’ve seen the things that cause companies to struggle to achieve successful transformation and those who set themselves up for success.
We recently assembled our most experienced consultants to distill down the ten key factors that influence a company’s achievement at driving successful digital transformation. You don’t necessarily have to be a perfect 10 in every one of these to be successful, but the more of them you score highly on, the greater your odds. The fewer, the greater the risk.
As we are wrapping up 2024, we are considering where each of our clients score in these areas and what steps we can help them take to move towards optimizing them further.
So, drum roll please; these are the ten factors that are indicators of likely success at digital transformation:
1. Leadership Prioritization: If an organization does not feel that its leader is truly behind digital transformation, getting teams aligned will be a challenge. Transformation often requires risk, and the organization needs to know that its leaders support exploring game-changing ideas.
2. Digital Vision: Success does not happen by accident. Although a vision can evolve over time, companies that succeed in major transformations always start with a clear picture of where they want to go.
3. Iterative Development Process: Many studies have shown that iterative development processes based on Agile frameworks are the methodology used by almost every single successful digital enterprise. Agile approaches get short-term releases into production so that teams can learn from customer feedback and real-world usage and then iterate the product vision based on those learnings.
This process of rapid iteration between design/development and customer usage is the cornerstone of all successful digital products.
4. Flexible Platforms: You can have the best vision and business model, but if you can’t build solutions rapidly and bring them to market, you cannot compete in a fast-changing world. Companies who are trying to innovate and be “digital” but who’s transactional and delivery/service capabilities are tied to inflexible legacy systems are innovating with a 300-pound anchor around their neck.
5. APIs and Ecosystem: Crowdsourcing, open innovation, and extended partner ecosystems are the foundation of most digital business models. Digital businesses that allow others to build on top of their platforms grow much faster than those that don’t. Salesforce, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Major League Baseball all expose massive amounts of data and functionality through publicly available APIs and have large numbers of companies and individual entrepreneurs extending and adding additional value to their offerings.
6. Customer Insight & Metrics: Success comes from driving desired customer behaviors – sales, loyalty, self-service, referrals, etc. Teams that are successful at conceiving products or marketing programs that drive desired behaviors do so because they have insight into their customers: their desires, their fears, and their unmet needs.
7. Culture of Innovation: The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas. Companies with a consistent track record of innovation don’t do it by having a few geniuses who have all the ideas. Everyone in your organization has a different perspective on the customer, your supply chain and your business process and everyone has different life experiences that may serve as points of inspiration for the next big idea. Companies that succeed at digital transformation engage the entire enterprise to generate and evaluate ideas, resulting in higher quality ideas as well as increased ownership across the organization.
8. Experimentation: The world is changing fast. What worked yesterday may not work tomorrow. Companies that are successful don’t get there by always being right; they do it by trying a lot of things, measuring results and seeing what works. Ideas more often fail than succeed, but that’s fine as long as you have a process for identifying the winners. By contrast, many companies that struggle with innovation and transformation reward success and punish failure. Teams who are driven to avoid failure are by definition is driven to avoid experimentation. No experimentation, no success.
9. Customer Data and Personalization: We live in the age of “big data.” Many of the best opportunities in the digital space come as a result of gathering detailed data about each customer and personalizing their experience based on that data. Customers who do this have decreased cost of sales and increased loyalty.
10. Readiness to Invent New Business Models around Digital: Digital isn’t just about new ways of doing things, in most cases, it up-ends existing business models and cost structures. Netflix delivers unlimited videos for $20 a month. Skype lets you talk to anyone in the world for one cent per minute or less. Companies who are overly concerned about sticking to their existing business model tend to miss the biggest opportunities they have to serve their customers in ways that compete in the digital world.
How did you score? We’d love to know and let us know if we can be of help in your efforts at successful digital transformation.
This article originally appeared on the Howard Tiersky blog
Image Credits: Unsplash
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You were born creative. As an infant, you had to figure many things out—how to get fed or changed, get help or attention, and make a onesie covered in spit-up still look adorable. As you grew older, your creativity grew, too. You drew pictures, wrote stories, played dress-up, and acted out imaginary stories.
Then you went to school, and it was time to be serious. Suddenly, creativity had a time and place. It became an elective or a hobby. Something you did just enough of to be “well-rounded” but not so much that you would be judged irresponsible or impractical.
When you entered the “real world,” your job determined whether you were creative. Advertising, design, marketing, innovation? Creative. Business, medicine, law, engineering? Not creative.
As if Job-title-a-determinant-of-creativity wasn’t silly enough, in 2022, a paper was published in the Journal of Applied Psychology that declared that, based on a meta-analysis of 259 studies (n=79,915), there is a “male advantage in creative performance.”
Somewhere, Don Draper, Pablo Picasso, and Norman Mailer high-fived.
But, as every good researcher (and innovator) knows, the headline is rarely the truth. The truth is that it’s contextual and complicated, and everything from how the original studies collected data to how “creativity” was defined matters.
But that’s not what got reported. It’s also not what people remember when they reference this study (and I have heard more than a few people invoke these findings in the three years since publication).
That is why I was happy to see Fortune report on a new study just published in the Journal of Applied Psychology. The study cites findings from a meta-analysis of 753 studies (n=265,762 individuals) that show men and women are equally creative. When “usefulness (of an idea) is explicitly incorporated in creativity assessment,” women’s creativity is “stronger.”
Both studies defined creativity as “the generation of novel and useful ideas.”
However, while the first study focused on how context drives creativity, the second study looked deeper, focusing on two essential elements of creativity: risk-taking and empathy. The authors argued that risk-taking is critical to generating novel ideas, while empathy is essential to developing useful ideas.
Does gender influence creativity?
It can. But even when it does, it doesn’t make one gender more or less creative than the other.
Given “contextual moderators” like country-level culture, industry gender composition, and role status, men tend to follow an “agentic pathway” (creativity via risk-taking), so they are more likely to generate novel ideas.
However, given the same contextual moderators, women follow a “communal pathway” (creativity via empathy), so they are more likely to generate useful ideas.
How you can use this to maximize creativity
Innovation and creativity go hand in hand. Both focus on creating something new (novel) and valuable (useful). So, to maximize innovation within your team or organization, maximize creativity by:
Explicitly incorporate novelty and usefulness in assessment criteria. If you focus only on usefulness, you’ll end up with extremely safe and incremental improvements. If you focus only on novelty, you’ll end up with impractical and useless ideas.
Recruit for risk-taking and empathy. While the manifestation of these two skills tends to fall along gender lines, don’t be sexist and assume that’s always the case. When seeking people to join your team or your brainstorming session, find people who have demonstrated strong risk-taking or empathy-focused behaviors and invite them in.
Always consider the context. Just as “contextual moderators” impact people’s creative pathways, so too does the environment you create. If you want people to take risks, be vulnerable, and exhibit empathy, you must establish a psychologically safe environment first. And that starts with making sure there aren’t any “tokens” (one of a “type”) in the group.
Which brings us back to the beginning.
You ARE creative.
How will you be creative today?
Image credit: Unsplash
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When politicians and pundits talk about the economy, they usually do so in terms of numbers. Unemployment is too high or GDP is too low. Inflation should be at this level or at that. You get the feeling that somebody somewhere is turning knobs and flicking levers in order to get the machine humming at just the right speed.
Yet the economy is really about our well being. It is, at its core, our capacity to produce goods and services that we want and need, such as the food that sustains us, the homes that shelter us and the medicines that cure us, not to mention all of the little niceties and guilty pleasures that we love to enjoy.
Our capacity to generate these things is determined by our productive capacity. Despite all the hype about digital technology creating a “new economy,” productivity growth for the past 50 years has been tremendously sluggish. If we are going to revive it and improve our lives we need to renew our commitment to scientific capital, human capital and free markets.
Restoring Scientific Capital
In 1945, Vannevar Bush, delivered a report, Science, The Endless Frontier, that argued that the US government needed to invest in “scientific capital” and through basic research and scientific education. It would set in motion a number of programs that would set the stage for America’s technological dominance during the second half of the century.
Bush’s report led to the development of America’s scientific infrastructure, including agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institutes of Health (NIH) and DARPA. Others, such as the National Labs and science programs at the Department of Agriculture, also contribute significantly to our scientific capital.
The results speak for themselves and returns on public research investment have been shown to surpass those in private industry. To take just one example, it has been estimated that the $3.8 billion invested in the Human Genome Project resulted in nearly $800 billion in economic impact and created over 300,000 jobs in just the first decade.
Unfortunately, we forgot those lessons. Government investment in research as a percentage of GDP has been declining for decades, limiting our ability to produce the kinds of breakthrough discoveries that lead to exciting new industries. What passes for innovation these days displaces workers, but does not lead to significant productivity gains.
So the first step to solving the productivity puzzle would be to renew our commitment to investing in the type of scientific knowledge that, as Bush put it, can “turn the wheels of private and public enterprise.” There was a bill before congress to do exactly that, but unfortunately it got bogged down in the Senate due to infighting.
Investing In Human Capital
Innovation, at its core, is something that people do, which is why education was every bit as important to Bush’s vision as investment was. “If ability, and not the circumstance of family fortune, is made to determine who shall receive higher education in science, then we shall be assured of constantly improving quality at every level of scientific activity,” he wrote.
Programs like the GI Bill delivered on that promise. We made what is perhaps the biggest investment ever in human capital, sending millions to college and creating a new middle class. American universities, considered far behind their European counterparts earlier in the century, especially in the sciences, came to be seen as the best in the world by far.
Today, however, things have gone horribly wrong. A recent study found that about half of all college students struggle with food insecurity, which is probably why only 60% of students at 4-year institutions and even less at community colleges ever earn a degree. The ones that do graduate are saddled with decades of debt
So the bright young people who we don’t starve we are condemning to decades of what is essentially indentured servitude. That’s no way to run an entrepreneurial economy. In fact, a study done by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia found that student debt has a measurable negative impact on new business creation.
Recommitting Ourselves To Free and Competitive Markets
There is no principle more basic to capitalism than that of free markets, which provide the “invisible hand” to efficiently allocate resources. When market signals get corrupted, we get less of what we need and more of what we don’t. Without vigorous competition, firms feel less of a need to invest and innovate, and become less productive.
There is abundant evidence that is exactly what has happened. Since the late 1970s antitrust enforcement has become lax, ushering in a new gilded age. While digital technology was hyped as a democratizing force, over 75% of industries have seen a rise in concentration levels since the late 1990s, which has led to a decline in business dynamism.
The problem isn’t just monopoly power dominating consumers, either, but also monopsony, or domination of suppliers by buyers, especially in labor markets. There is increasing evidence of collusion among employers designed to keep wages low, while an astonishing abuse of non-compete agreements that have affected more than a third of the workforce.
In a sense, this is nothing new. Adam Smith himself observed in The Wealth of Nations that “Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.”
Getting Back On Track
In the final analysis, solving the productivity puzzle shouldn’t be that complicated. It seems that everything we need to do we’ve done before. We built a scientific architecture that remains unparalleled even today. We led the world in educating our people. American markets were the most competitive on the planet.
Yet somewhere we lost our way. Beginning in the early 1970s, we started reducing our investment in scientific research and public education. In the early 1980s, the Chicago school of competition law started to gain traction and antitrust enforcement began to wane. Since 2000, competitive markets in the United States have been in serious decline.
None of this was inevitable. We made choices and those choices had consequences. We can make other ones. We can choose to invest in discovering new knowledge, educate our children without impoverishing them, to demand our industries compete and hold our institutions to account. We’ve done these things before and can do so again.
All that’s left is the will and the understanding that the economy doesn’t exist in the financial press, on the floor of the stock markets or in the boardrooms of large corporations, but in our own welfare as well as in our ability to actualize our potential and realize our dreams. Our economy should be there to serve our needs, not the other way around.
You may think you’re a good listener—maybe someone even told you were a good listener. Or maybe not. As a leader, this is a very important question. So much of your ability to solve the problems your team is bringing to you depends upon your ability to understand them. And in order to help your team feel heard and listened to when their pitching possible solutions depends on being a good listener.
No matter what you answered to the opening question, there’s good news for all. Listening well is a skill—the skill of active listening. And while that skill is crucial for communication, collaboration, and problem-solving, it’s also learnable.
In this article, we will explore the skill of active listening and how it can benefit both leaders and their teams. To do that, we will delve into the four specific skills involved in active listening using an acronym first developed by communication expert Julian Treasure: RASA—Receive, Appreciate, Summarize, and Ask.
1. Receive
The first skill of active listening is to receive. Truly paying attention and receiving the information being shared is the first step in active listening. It involves listening without interrupting or formulating a response, making eye contact, and paying attention to non-verbal cues. By actively receiving information, leaders demonstrate their commitment to understanding and valuing the speaker’s perspective.
When leaders listen without interrupting, they create a safe space for open communication and encourage the speaker to express themselves fully. Making eye contact and paying attention to non-verbal cues, such as body language and facial expressions, helps leaders gain a deeper understanding of the speaker’s emotions and intentions. Taking notes, if necessary, ensures accurate reception of information and allows leaders to refer back to important points during discussions or when making decisions.
2. Appreciate
The second skill of active listening is to appreciate. Appreciation involves showing non-verbal signs of appreciation, such as nodding or making eye contact, to let the speaker know that their words are being heard and valued. By expressing appreciation through gestures, nods, and verbal cues, leaders create a positive and supportive environment that encourages open communication.
When leaders make the speaker feel valued and heard, it fosters trust and respect within the team. Genuine interest and active engagement in the conversation encourage the speaker to share more, leading to a deeper understanding of their thoughts and feelings. By appreciating the speaker’s perspective, leaders create a space where diverse ideas and opinions are welcomed and respected.
3. Summarize
The third skill of active listening is to summarize. Summarizing what the other person has said demonstrates understanding and allows leaders to check for accuracy. By reiterating the main points of what the speaker has shared, leaders show that they have been actively listening and processing the information.
Confirming understanding and giving the speaker an opportunity to clarify or correct any misunderstandings is crucial in effective communication. Leaders can use phrases like “What I heard you say is…” or “It sounds like you’re saying…” to summarize the speaker’s points and seek confirmation. This not only ensures that leaders have accurately understood the message but also makes the speaker feel heard and respected.
4. Ask
The final skill of active listening is to ask. Asking questions after a teammate has finished sharing allows leaders to delve deeper into the speaker’s thoughts and feelings, encouraging further discussion and exploration. By asking open-ended questions, leaders prompt the speaker to provide more details or insights, leading to a more comprehensive understanding of the topic at hand.
It is important for leaders to avoid jumping to advice-giving and instead focus on understanding the speaker’s perspective. By asking thoughtful questions, leaders show genuine interest and create an environment where individuals feel comfortable sharing their ideas and concerns. This fosters better collaboration and problem-solving within teams.
Practicing and improving these four skills will improve your active listening. But more importantly, it will improve listening and communication on the whole team. Leaders set the example for their team members to follow. And as team members emulate the example and improve their own skills, that fosters an environment of trust and respect during discussions. And a team demonstrating trust and respect is a team that helps everyone do their best work ever.
Image credit: Pixabay
Originally published on DavidBurkus.com on September 4, 2023
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The stop, start, continue method (SSC) is a simple, yet powerful, way to plan your day, week and year. And though it’s simple, it’s not simplistic. And though it looks straightforward, it’s onion-like in its layers.
Stop, start, continue (SSC) is interesting in that it’s forward-looking, present-looking, and rearward-looking at the same time. And its power comes from the requirement that the three time perspectives must be reconciled with each other. Stopping is easy, but what will start? Starting is easy, unless nothing is stopped. Continuing is easy, but it’s not the right thing if the rules have changed. And starting can’t start if everything continues.
Stop. With SSC, stopping is the most important part. That’s why it’s first in the sequence. When everyone’s plates are full and every meeting is an all-you-can-eat buffet, without stopping, all the new action items slathered on top simply slip off the plate and fall to the floor. And this is double trouble because while it’s clear new action items are assigned, there’s no admission that the carpet is soiled with all those recently added action items.
Here’s a rule: If you don’t stop, you can’t start. And here’s another: Pros stop, and rookies start.
With continuous improvement, you should stop what didn’t work. But with innovation, you should stop what was successful. Let others fan the flames of success while you invent the new thing that will start a bigger blaze.
Start. With SSC, starting is the easy part, but it shouldn’t be. Resources are finite, but we conveniently ignore this reality so we can start starting. The trouble with starting is that no one wants to let go of continuing. Do everything you did last year and start three new initiatives. Continue with your current role, but start doing the new job so you can get the promotion in three years.
Here’s a rule: Starting must come at the expense of continuing. And here’s another: Pros do stop, start, continue, and rookies do start, start, start.
Continue. With SSC, continue is underrated. If you’re always starting, it’s because you have nothing good to continue. And if you’ve got a lot of continuing to do, it’s because you’ve got a lot of good things going on. And continuing is efficient because you’re not doing something for the first time. And everyone knows how to do the work and it goes smoothly.
But there’s a dark side to continue – it’s called the status quo. The status quo is a powerful, one-trick pony that only knows how to continue. It hates stopping and blocks all starting. Continuing is the mortal enemy of innovation.
Here’s a rule: Continuing must stop, or starting can’t start. And here’s another: Pros continue and stop before they start, and rookies start.
SSC is like juggling three balls at once. Just as it’s not juggling unless it’s three balls at the same time, it’s not SSC unless it’s stop, start, continue all done at the same time. And just as juggling two balls at once isn’t juggling, it’s not SSC if it’s just two out of the three. And just as dropping two of the three balls on the floor isn’t juggling, it’s not SSC if it’s starting, starting, starting.
Image credit: Pexels
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Drum roll please…
