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mikebrownspeaks
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Ideas & lessons on improving innovation, creativity, strategy, and personal development - and having some fun doing all of it.
Recent Posts Tagged With 'tools'
The Sixth Day of Life-Changing Gifts - Live Out a Positive Life
My dad came back from Ed Foreman’s Successful Life Course in the mid 1980s with a new favorite word, “TERRIFIC!!!” as the all-the-time answer to the question, “How are you doing?”Back then, it was bothersome to me because it was clear he wa...
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 ...
Getting Ready for 2010: What Have You Been Saying?
A loyal reader pointed out recently that Brainzooming has become too unwieldy, making it tough to go back and find specific posts. One possibility is using the search function on each page to search for particular topics directly in Brainzooming arti...
Starting Over, Part 2
I'm a huge fan of NOT starting from scratch. If there's a remnant of a leftover idea, approach, or possibility sitting around, I always want to begin there and get that much of a head start toward a final goal by incorporating what I've done before.E...
A Whole Brain Network of Great People
I've extolled the benefits of surrounding yourself with both left brain and right brain people to complement what you lack in expertise and perspective. It's incredible to tap innovative people across the entire spectrum of points of view on strategi...
What Are We Trying to Say?
Many (okay, let's be real, nearly all) corporate visions, missions, values, BHAGs (you name it), sound alike. They either extol bland concepts (i.e., "our associates will be the best") or meaningless ideas (i.e., "our human intellectual capital will ...
Personal Branding When You\'re 25x 2.0
Thanks to a tweet from Richard Dedor, Chris Reaburn and I were last minute attendees at a Kansas City PRSA lunch session by Dan Schawbel based on his book Me 2.0 - Build a Personal Brand to Achieve Career Success.The talk was part of a career day for...
When DIY Doesn\'t Work
Steve Epley visited last week, and we talked about challenges in trying to do for yourself what you do professionally for others. This resonated because of recent work on the Brainzooming™ brand. It's much easier to figure out another's great brand...
How Many Years Experience Do You Have?
Several years ago, an HR professional passed along a piece of wisdom warranting consideration by anyone who works: Lots of people claim twenty years experience, when what they really have is one year of experience, twenty times over.Since that conver...
Creative Quickie - Flip Out
There are so many situations in everyday life that can be sources of current and future creative inspiration.How do you become better at actually capitalizing on their inspirational value?One way is to get an easy-to-use video camera and start captur...
Creating Memorable Experiences
We wrapped up the AMA Marketing Research Conference last week to very kind words from a number of participants about the different nature of the conference experience.The secret of great, meaningful brand events lies in a simple formula. Look for the...
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...
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...
Storytelling to Frame Research Reports - Guest Post by Sean Buvala
I'm chairing the American Marketing Association Marketing Research Conference October 4 - 7. It's going to be a great event, with three educational tracks all tied back to theme, "Making Business Sense of What's Next." Our main programming objective ...
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...
Be Lazy, Sort Of
Next time you get a new assignment, project, or question to answer, ask yourself: Who knows more about this than I do? Consider all the possible answers you can think of to the question:People you know personallyPeople you know onlinePeople networked...
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 - Secondary Research Techniques
Secondary research was the primary approach at Kansas City Infobank for completing projects. We informally defined secondary research as "finding what you're looking for among answers to questions that had already been asked and answered by others."S...
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...
Thinking at Unexpected Times
Sometimes, try as you might, it's impossible to focus on the task at hand. When you can't focus, one alternative is to accept the mental roadblock and actively look for another time (perhaps an unconventional one) where you can shift the activity and...
1 Step to Make Yourself More Invaluable
Want to be more critical to your business in one easy step? Here it is:Create recommendations instead of reporting problems.It's that simple. You can stand so far away from the crowd by simply not bothering your boss and co-workers with long descript...
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...
Give Your Workspace a Massive Creative Boost - Guest Post from Andrew Tilling
We have another international guest post this week. Andrew Tilling, from Surrey, UK, is a consultant specialising in creative thinking techniques, team dynamics and leadership. He heads Preseli Partnerships Ltd. which provides providing training, coa...
Creative Quickie - Wikiwaves
Riding the WavesOne night, based on my wife’s question about if and when George C. Scott had died, I followed Wikipedia links to Tony Randall, Jack Klugman, Brett Somers, Charles Nelson Reilly, Gene Rayburn, Bert Convy, Bobby Van, and Elaine Joyce ...
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'...
Want to be More Creative? Relive, Reinvent & Really Blow It - Guest Post from Andee Weinfurt
This week's guest post is from Andee Weinfurt, who has one of my favorite Twitter names - HotCupofCopy - reflecting her dual interests in writing and hot caffeine. Andee lives in Weston, MO and is a copywriter for GlynnDevins Advertising & Market...
4 Steps to Get Ready to Wing It Strategically
With so many things changing rapidly in business, being able to successfully react to unexpected developments is a tremendously valuable strategic thinking and innovation skill.How do you prepare when you may have to "wing it"? Having had to be ready...
It Will Be Just Like Starting Over
I'm a huge advocate of saving idea snippets for later refinement. Doing this has saved me so much creative time over the years.Sometimes, though, this strategy leads to a creative dead end.I have a nearly 100 page Word file of blog article starters a...
Breaking Creativity Blocks - Guest Post from Robert Alan Black, Ph.D.
The great perspectives from creative and innovative thinkers I've met on Twitter continues this week with this post on breaking creative blocks from Robert Alan Black, Ph.D. Known as "wanderingalan" on Twitter, he's the founder and president of Cre8n...
