Recent Posts
Recent Posts Tagged With 'collaboration'
10 Years Ago Today
Ten years ago today, December 31, 1999, I met Jan Harness, my (then future) creative instigation partner, via phone call.When I've shared the specifics of first talking with Jan, people have commented how sweet it is I remember the event in such deta...
The Eleventh Day of Life-Changing Gifts - Maintaining the Higher Moral Ground
Bob Nugent was a year behind me in grade school. We didn't really have much contact until college where we were both involved in student government and wound up spending lots of time together as part of an interesting (at least to us), somewhat nerdy...
The Ninth Day of Life-Changing Gifts - Reserve Judgments
F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" begins with its narrator, Nick Carraway, recounting his father's admonition that not everyone in the world is provided the same advantages. The comment led to Nick's inclination to "reserve all judgments," a "...
The Eighth Day of Life-Changing Gifts - Protecting People from Themselves
When Cyndi signed me up to work out with a trainer in 2006, the first meeting included a diet inventory. This entailed listing everything typically eaten throughout the day along with other food and cooking preferences.As the trainer reviewed the res...
The Seventh Day of Life-Changing Gifts - Focus on Other People
Early in college, I'd hit a major rut, dissatisfied with myself and an inability to effectively interact with people who were unfamiliar or encountered during casual situations. It was the first time the challenges many introverts face became overwhe...
The Fifth Day of Life-Changing Gifts - Creating Ridiculous Growth Opportunities
At a company-first sales conference, we'd scheduled Tommy Lasorda as a surprise second-day speaker. My boss (a very different boss than in yesterday's post) was set to emcee the whole conference, yet at the end of day one, he said, “I have to spend...
The Fourth Day of Life-Changing Gifts - You Can Learn From Anybody
Early in my career, I was struggling with delivering a project in a way that moved our efforts along adequately, even though I had been doing good work. In reviewing a draft with my boss, she asked in frustration, “Do you understand what the functi...
12 Steps to Grow Diversity in Your Personal Network
Look at your network now compared to last year. Have you dramatically expanded the number of people you can call or email and be reasonably sure you'll get a response from them?And that doesn't mean from loading up on contacts inside your company usi...
Getting Ready for 2010: 3 Real Life Planning Successes
I'm a proponent of spreading strategic thinking broadly in a company and not readily handing off strategy development to outside parties exclusively. Yet I've been a part of many examples where an outside perspective helped move strategy development ...
The Frost & Sullivan Marketing World Event - Joe Batista
I participated in the Frost & Sullivan Marketing World 2009 event November 2 in Chicago, leading a round table on getting around innovation roadblocks. The next several days will highlight some of the many intriguing ideas shared during the day f...
Taking Note in a New Way
Want to meet cool new people? Next time you're at a public presentation, "live tweet" it. Live tweeting implies using Twitter to report:What the speaker is communicatingOffering your own commentaryRetweeting what others are tweeting about itI live tw...
Musings on Creativity + Innovation in Business - Guest Post by Meghan M. Biro
Today's guest blogger, Meghan Biro, Founder of TalentCulture, calls me the most patient person on Twitter. One day earlier in 2009 when back home with my parents, I saw Meghan tweeting with someone in my network, checked out her intriguing profile, a...
Strategic Thinking Snippets - Implementation
Here are a few strategic thinking snippets on implementation. Yes, thinking does need to turn into actions and results:On things that don't really matter, it's okay to conserve your effort & take the easy way out.On something that DOES matter, do...
Getting Ready for This!
Today includes a lunch presentation at the Fort Hays State University Business and Leadership Symposium. The presentation title is "Getting Ready for This," and it focuses on six vital success competencies for graduates coming into the workplace amid...
Spicing Up a Long-Term Relationship
We're all likely involved in relationships tied to coaching, mentoring, or just plain supporting one another. They're tremendously helpful in personal and business growth, yet at times, these relationships can become stale.What can you do if you find...
5 Get Ahead Ideas
Be friendly to people who may not seem to "count." Chances are they do count, and you simply don't realize it yet.Ask questions, or at least listen more than you talk. You'll appear smarter, in part, because of all the things you'll learn.Say "please...
What You Can't See - A Mini Rant
Say you have a conference call scheduled with geographically dispersed parties. You decide to email the multiple documents needed for the meeting 2 minutes before it begins.Don't assume:I'm in my office.I have a clue why this meeting with no agenda i...
Musical Chairs
Not sure where I learned this originally, but it's a great, simple tactic for meetings where you're voicing a position contrary to someone else's: never sit across from them. Try sitting next to, or at least on the same side of the table as, whoever ...
Lessons from Kansas City Infobank - Negotiating Deadlines
Unreasonable time expectations or well-intentioned but unachievable deadlines are a fact of business life. As a two-person operation at Kansas City Infobank, we constantly battled the swings between trying to sell projects and then having too many to...
Lessons from Kansas City Infobank - Get on the Phone
I’ve done several posts on strategic mentors who've fundamentally shaped my thinking and approach. In an early one, I mentioned multiple posts could be filled with lessons learned from Bill McDonald when I worked for him at Kansas City Infobank. Th...
Tapping the Gold Mine of Creativity & Individuality in Your Organization - Guest Post by Marissa Levin
This week's guest post is by Marissa Levin, an award-winning and well-recognized entrepreneur, and founder and CEO of Information Experts. The company creates technology-based integrated communications solutions, human capital strategies, and learnin...
It's Okay Not To
Face it: there are a bunch of expectations placed on each of us that, quite frankly, are completely arbitrary.Oh sure, someone (maybe even someone very important) thinks they're absolutes. Yet relative to what's really important (i.e., strategic), th...
Go Ahead. Prove Me Wrong.
Don't underestimate the tremendous motivational force of challenging someone to produce facts to try and prove you wrong. Most people like to be right and will expend at least some effort to support their point.If you can get someone to do this, you'...
Don't Let the Door Hit You on the Way In
Someone told me about his new company where they do entrance interviews. In contrast to an exit interview, the objective is to get a download of potentially innovative ideas when someone starts a job, before there's time to develop a point of view bi...
Off-Blog Brainzooming
Beyond sharing creativity, innovation, and strategic thinking ideas here on the Brainzooming blog, I've had several opportunities recently to be involved with other channels to get ideas out. These are free and available for all of you to download!"F...
Who is Your Producer?
Listening to The Beatles Abbey Road show provides a sense of the incredible talent they brought to the recording studio. The impact of George Martin, their producer, is also clear in how he shaped the group's artistic sensibilities and vision, crafti...
You're Just Talking Nonsense
Though The Beatles "Abbey Road" album was recorded 40 years ago, I recently heard a program called "Pop Go the Beatles" about its creation. Told through stories and alternative takes of the album's classic songs, it was so inspiring it spawned posts ...
Can You Handle the Truth?
During a presentation, I was highlighting the blog post on finding a strategic PITA (pain in the ass), describing how it was originally inspired by a senior person at our ad agency who never fails to dissect our ideas in painful, yet tremendously val...
"Chicago, Chicago, That Bloggin' Town" - Guest Post from Amy Lillard
Producing social media content for the BMA conference in Chicago came together quickly and was an incredible learning experience. It was also incredibly rewarding to work with a diverse group of writers & video people to create content for the co...
The Creative unConference - Guest Post from Stephanie Sharp
In early May, a TweetDeck search on "creative" tweets showed several referencing a Creative unConference in New York. I tweeted to attendees asking for a guest blogger to write about their experience presenting at an event where there's not really a ...
