If creating world peace starts with each of us*, then surely creating a culture of innovation starts...with each of us.
There is nothing more unique than each of us. We each have the most unique combination of talents, skills, strengths and motivations. That makes each of us, a walking one-man, one-woman, one-person, innovation that offer an unique window on the world and solves an unique challenge.
We also have our own unique combination of resources, mental or emotional or physical or spiritual, to create and sustain our own unique culture of innovation.
It makes each of us a walking niche-market that with no real competitors possible.
See, this is maybe the coolest part. Having no real competitors...then there's no need to fear others. Their talents, etc, are just as unique. And their one-person niche market is just as unique as ours.
Niche markets can rarely compete against each other (despite what we're taught in school and business). That means...wait for it....niche markets and their owners can...collaborate with each other and create an even bigger, better, b-b-b-badder niche market than they could create on their own.
But before we go there, we need to continue on our own personal journey.
That's the journey to create our culture of innovation includes both its greatest challenge and greatest solutions. It's these questions and their answers:
What do we want?
What are our dreams?
What would we like to create? (Mike Wagner, CEO of White Rabbit Group offered that as question for your interviewees. Before I met Mike, I offered a candidate the opportunity to create his...world, at the company. What can you create? Give me a budget and what you can create. He giggled nervously. Never answered. Guess he wanted a cubicle. )
What are our strengths? What makes us stand out? When do we feel invincible? What are we doing?
Dave Rendall of the Freak Factor blog encourages his readers to be freaks.
By freak he means find and pursue the strengths that make you stand out from our peers, our colleagues, our family.
By freak he means what is our unique combination of talents/skills/strengths/motivations and community...that showcases each of us as the most unique solution for our universe. Find those features and showcase them so the whole world, our future collaborators, can see what a truly awesome combination of talents, motivations, passions and strengths we offer.
Otherwise, we're like everybody else. We disrespect our abilities and our solutions become just drab copies of the person in the next cubicle. Here's Dave talking about the difference between making copies and making originals:
Be a freak.
Ok. But, strengths in seclusion create an odd little personality. It's only in community where we start to see the synergies (sorry for the buzzword) from collaborating with other freaks.
What to do?
Network, network, network.
Let’s find our community. Talk with them.
Our unique combinations find their fulfillment with our community. That’s the best people we attract when we honor our strengths. They are the people waving their own freak flag.
Work may not be the place you find your community.
Start your own social media campaign.
- Listen, first. Read blogs, read twitter, watch YouTube videos tagged with relevant words for you and your strengths.
- Search for our blogs. Use blogsearch.google.com or technorati. Comment on each other’s blogs. Promote each others blogs.
- Blog. Blogs are the foundation of your social media campaign. Start one. Write in it regularly. Each of us. Write what incites, inspires, outrages, gives us hope, makes us despair, makes us laugh.
- Twitter. You're not on Twitter? Why. Open an account today. Search Twitter in the same way you searched YouTube. Use terms relevant to your interest. Share your interests in tweets. Tweet a lot...of content meaningful to you, to your followers, to their interests.
- Follow each other on Twitter. Search for our names. Use Group Tweet to set up private groups. Then group together. (This is something new I found from Drew McLellan, Top Dog of McLellan Marketing Group.)
Find a mastermind group. Join a peer advisory board. Attend a conference about your interests.
Attend a workshop from Pam Slim.
Her workshops generate rave reviews from all her participants. I asked her why. She said...It’s the people. The people who come is what makes them great. I have no idea what magic fairy dust attracts the right people to the live events. The quality of interaction and amount of support and different kinds of creative business ideas is really special.
Unique begets unique. These are our fellow freaks. Let's find them. Bind with them. Let our freak flags fly in full glory.
Be Strategic. My friend and author, Erika Andersen, wrote Being Strategic. I love this book. I’ve said it many times. It’s a business fable, like Jack’s Notebook.
She coins a term I use in my interviews with guests on my radio show. The term is reasonable aspiration or hoped-for goal. Change for change sake is ...interesting. Change in the direction of reaching a reasonable aspiration or hoped-for goal is...very interesting. Meaningful. Useful. Read her book.
Be our own remarkable leader. We, each of us, are remarkable.Kevin Eikenberry helps his clients, his blog readers, his followers on Twitter become the remarkable leader they already are.
People say we’re remarkable when we can answer clearly those first questions in this post. Kevin offers a systematic plan and resources that brings out those answers from each of us, for each of us. Then to our community. Fly freak flag, fly. We’re remarkable.
Find resources to help us grow.
We are our own CEOs, unique, remarkable. We need more than wonder bread to help our strengths grow 12 ways. We need to surround ourselves, feed ourselves, with resources and wisdom that helps us continue to grow.
Mike Myatt offers a place, resources and wisdom, where CEOs come to grow.Read him. His blog is N2Growth. Follow his advice. Grow. As our own CEO, grow.Help someone be greater than ourselves
It’s not my idea. It’s Steve Farber’s. Steve’s an expert on extreme leadership. Yes. I used the word expert. Steve is that. He’s an expert on helping each of us be...well, extreme leaders. Leaders are those who stand out, above, at the front of...crowds. Steve helps us not only be leaders but be extreme leaders. Be WAY out in front.
That’s cool. It is.
And it becomes very meaningful, when we reach back and help someone else be...an extreme leader, even greater than our self. Steve offers resources and plans for each of us to reach back and help someone be greater than our self. It is his Greater Than Yourself project.
And leading by example, he shares his journey mentoring his project, Tommy Spaulding who is CEO of Up with People. He calls it Steve's GTY. Very inspiring.
Read his books, especially Greater than Ourself.
Update. (Sunday, Nov. 8)
I realized this as I edited some typos yesterday. This is just one approach, from one person: me.
There are many other options, resources, tools and fellow flag-wavers with unique, one-of-a-kind, all-world, one-person niche markets. Put together, we make a near infinite assortment of possible collaborations, each that creates its own unique, one-of-a-kind unbeatable solution. Or not. Maybe it would create an unique learning lesson with fruits borne later.
Bottomline. What's yours. Find yours. Share them with others.
Final thoughts
Innovation starts with us. It starts as we begin to first answer those questions for ourselves. But as we do, there are many resources to help us in our journey. A few are listed in this post. But the most important resource is you, me, each of us. And...and...how we support, encourage, even hold each other's freak flags when their strength waivers. We'll need their help sometime.
I’ve heard the world is as we are. We are our own filters. Develop our walking, talking, one-person innovation/innovation process, our one in the universe niche-product we offer to our community, that frees us from our cubicle in the office or in our mind...grab our freak flag and wave it for all to see and gather ‘round and we can be remarkable, grow remarkable and helps others grow...and we’ll have the culture of innovation we desire and have earned.
I rushed to write this over the past few days. It was my own internal innnovation process, one where a challenge presented itself: How does one begin to create a culture of innovation. This is my first run through with ideas and resources. I can see some edits would help. But, in the meantime, I’ve shared it with you. I hope it helps.
But the journey starts with each of us as answer those questions.
My links with these resources Here are links to my conversations with each of these experts. Mr. Myatt, we need to talk.
* Dave Rendall
* Pam Slim
* Gregg Fraley
* Erika Andersen
- Radio Interview
- Blog post with excerpted highlights (sheesh, I can't find it.)
* Kevin Eikenberry
* Mike Myatt
* Steve Farber
* Yes, world peace does begin with each of us.
Zane,
Wow...talk about a post packed with resources! I had your post open in one window and BN.com open in another!
Thanks for sharing all of this.
Drew
Posted by: Drew McLellan | November 07, 2009 at 10:56 AM