Christensen, Gregersen & Dyer’s The Innovator’s DNA

Clayton Christensen, Jeff Dyer, & Hal Gregersen wrote The Innovator’s DNA—I loved it

My family used to play a game we called “What is it?”. A family member would hold up on object and ask “What is it?”. Everyone would then call out their answers. The answers varied because the rules prohibited saying what the obvious answer seemed to be. Little did we know that the game developed our innovator’s DNA.

Our family buzzed as we read The Innovator’s DNA. We reminisced, laughed, and appreciated our parents for developing our innovative skills and abilities. I heard Jeff Dyer speak about the research and read the book. I highly recommend you get it and read it.

5 Traits of the Innovator’s DNA

The authors reviewed research on twins that indicated innovative tendencies are not genetic. So, the title of the book does not reflect gene pool DNA. Instead the Innovator’s DNA refers to five character traits and skills common to all innovators. Innovators:

• Associate: Innovators combine seemingly diverse items into something new. The authors share an example how thinking of both a washing machine and a microwave generated a dishwasher that fit in a kitchen sink
• Question: Innovators frequently question the status quo. They ask “What if…?”, “What is…?”, and questions that contain explosive innovation.
• Observe: Innovators observe issues closely. The authors described how what Steve Jobs observed during a visit to Xerox’s PARC generated ideas for both the mouse and graphic based OS10 (which later changed software and inspired MS Windows)
• Network: Innovators network with others to gather more information, observe more, and learn more. They seek out people from different backgrounds or ways of thinking to gain additional insights and changes.
• Experiment: Innovators experiment to try different approaches, different products, or different ideas. Experimentation expands their understanding. Innovators do not fear failure, but use it to increase their learning.

Our family made games to develop these skills. We thought everyone did. The authors highlight that people can learn each of these skills to innovate.

Monday we will begin analyzing a new report highlighting the growing salary gap in America

Increase Your Visibility to the Right People at Work

We share this tip to help you earn the biggest raises and the best promotions

Increasing your visibility at work enhances your consideration for better promotions and higher raises. Managers promote people they know, like, and trust to provide solid return on investments. In other words, they must know you to promote you. Increasing visibility lets more people know you.

Do a Good Job

Increase your visibility at work by doing a good job—and more.

• Find ways to help others and your boss
• Continually improve your skills.
• Share your abilities with others
• Seek out assignments and projects that allow you to contribute to improving the organization
• Network with others in the organization to learn more
• Ask questions to learn more and explore ways to improve
• Observe what others do on the job and imitate their best practices
• Communicate the results of your efforts to your supervisor and others with home run statements. Home Run Statements contain four parts related to a baseball field:
• 1st Base: State the company or division you benefited
• 2nd Base: Briefly explain what action you took to solve the problem
• 3rd Base: Outline the results and benefits of your actions
• Home Plate: Verify that your results met the desired outcome

Seek to Improve the Organization

Avoid self-serving motives to improve your visibility. Self-serving motives taint the good you do. People will label you as a brownnoser, kiss-up, or worse.

Truly seek the improvement of the organization in your efforts. Sincerely seek to make your boss look good and to increase the productivity, effectiveness, efficiency, and quality of the organization. That means you must change your focus from yourself to the organization.

Friday we will review what Clayton Christensen and Jeff Dyer call The Innovator’s DNA

Give Thanks for Your Career, Your Friends, Your Family, & Your Faith

This weekend take time to give thanks for all that you have received.

We thank you for sharing your time with us over the last several months.

Finding Funding for College: Add Social Media Evidence

This adds more information on how to find funding to pay for college

A while ago I shared a series on how to find funding for college. I shared how to find funding, how to prepare reusable materials (including master applications, reusable essays, letters of recommendation and more). Today we shall add some ideas on how to use social media—especially Facebook—to help convince scholarship committees.

Identify Your Themes and Home Run Statements

Scholarship committees seek to reward people for personal qualities, accomplishments, and contributions to the community. You establish themes in life by the activities and interests you repeatedly perform. Most people establish 3-4 themes in their lives. You probably have also.

You need to add breadth and depth to prove that you are not narrow or shallow. You show breadth by sub-dividing each theme into three categories

Possible themes (with categories in parenthesis) include:

• Leadership (in the community, in school, in church)
• Services (to school,  to your church, to your community)
• Academics (top 3 subjects: English, Math, Science)
• Athletics (football, basketball, track)
• Creative Talent (vocal music, instrumental music, dance)
• Civic Activist (environmental, civil rights, battered women and children)
• Ethnic Identity (raised in one culture, schooled in a different culture, blending both)
• Survivor (child of alcoholic parents, abused childhood, coping with both)
• Entrepreneurship (1st business, 2nd business, 3rd business)

You then prepare 3 home run statements for each category.

Add Pictures and Information to Social Media

Scholarship committees began reviewing applicant’s Facebook pages and other social media channels. You can use your social media to reinforce your themes to the scholarship committees:

• Create a photo gallery for each of your themes
• Add pictures of your activities with captions explaining what you did
  • Service: “Gina, Barbara, and I really had fun preparing hygiene kits for survivors of the 2011 tsunami in Japan”
  • Leadership: “I chaired the committee of these high school students that raised $12,000 to provide sub-for-Santa to 255 disadvantaged families”
  • Athletics: “Here I blocked the goal that gave our soccer team the state championships”

Wednesday we will discuss how to increase your visibility at work for more promotions

Covey’s Speed of Trust 24: Examples of 13 Behaviors

This continues examples of Stephen M. R. Covey’s Behaviors that rebuild relationship trust

Stephen M. R. Covey states “The second wave—Relationship Trust—is all about behavior…consistent behavior.” He outlines 13 Behaviors that instill relationship trust or rebuild it. I share another example demonstrating how the behaviors improved trust, increased speed, and decreased costs. I refer to the same conference that I described two posts ago.

Behaviors That Lost Relationship Trust

I attended a conference where attendees had lost trust in their executive management. Three years of uncertainty, mixed messages, and rumors of closing operations drained the trust. The week before the conference the corporation spun the international operations into a different group and stuck the domestic operations into a competing division.

During the conference the attendees would not engage in presentations. They responded to case studies, questions, and discussions with prolonged silence. Repeated requests to respond still met with silence. In addition, the headquarters staff tended to tell rather than listen to the staff.

Benefits of Using the 13 Behaviors

Half way through the second day, one of the corporate managers recognized the lack of trust. He stopped in the middle of his presentation and indicated a willingness to stop, listen, and talk.

He openly discussed the challenges facing the division. He indicated the uncertainty and mixed messages of the previous three years. He openly acknowledged that details of the merger and its consequence to the operations were still evolving. He listened to concerns, questions, and worries of field staff. He explained why they followed the themes of the previous director.

To use Covey’s terms, he talked straight (behavior 1), demonstrated respect (behavior 2), created transparency (behavior 3), righted wrongs (behavior 4), showed loyalty (behavior 5), confronted reality (behavior 8), and listened first (behavior 11).

One participant expressed the feelings of her colleagues when she thanked him for the transparency, trust, and respect that he demonstrated.

The trust in the room increased and the rest of the conference proceeded much faster.

Monday we will describe examples of improving the reputation to improve market trust

Covey’s Speed of Trust 23: Personal Self-Trust Issues

This continues our series exploring The Speed of Trust issues in real life

Stephen M. R. Covey outlined how a loss of credibility lowers self-trust. Credibility depends on your character and competence. Character grows from trust in your integrity and intent. People judge your competence based on your capabilities and results.

Misconstrued Intent Lowers Trust

Covey defines integrity based on congruence, humility, and courage. When our actions are congruent with our principles our integrity increases

Intent also influences how much people trust you. People judge your intent based on your motive, your agenda, and your behavior. Once again, when people doubt or misunderstand any of these three their trust in you goes down.

Let me share a personal example..People frequently misunderstand my motives, my agenda, and, consequently, my behavior. For instance, I tend to ask questions other people have not considered. I consider myself pretty slow to grasp issues. My intent is to find answers to clarify my understanding or to probe future consequences of directives, policies, and procedures.

Unfortunately, I failed to communicate my intent or my motives. My tone of voice also indicated a defensiveness or resistance which were not part of my intent. As a result of both the tone of voice and my failure to communicate my intent, people considered me to be cantankerous and resistant to direction. One person stated they “cringed every time I said something in webinars.”

Clarifying Intent Increases Trust

The lack of trust in my intent and motivation, led to doubt about my character. The lack of trust in my character completely nullified trust in my capabilities or results. My competence counted for nothing because of my flawed character.

Reading Stephen M. R. Covey’s book The Speed of Trust highlighted my problems. I implemented several of Covey’s suggestions at a recent conference with my colleagues. I began sentences by defining my intent. I thought about my questions before I asked them. I found that people listened to me. My self-trust increased. Covey’s tips work. You can rebuild trust.

Friday we will analyze real world applications of problems with relationship trust

Covey’s Speed of Trust 22: Low Trust=Low Speed

This continues personal examples related to Stephen M. R. Covey’s book The Speed of Trust

Stephen M. R. Covey asserts that when trust is high, speed increases and costs decrease. He also asserts when trust goes down, then speed decreases and costs increase. I concur with Covey. Let me share an example I recently witnessed.

Decreasing Trust

Recently, I attended a conference involving employees of one division of the same corporation. The division director requested the field employees read Stephen M. R. Covey’s book The Speed of Trust.  The conference theme dealt with rebuilding trust in the division’s brand.

The corporation spent three years prior to the conference in a strategic transition study.  Executives frequently implied major changes for this division, including rumors they would close all the operations for this division. Employees who retired or left were not replaced.

Five months before the conference the rumors ceased. A new director reassured employees the division survived. He worked to rebuild the brand and restore confidence of the employees. He wanted the conference to restore trust and set a long-term direction. That’s why he asked them to read The Speed of Trust.

The week before the conference, corporate executives spun the international operations off to a completely different group. They merged the US and Canadian operations under a competing division in the company. The director went with the international operations.

Not a Lot of Trust in this Room

The remaining division headquarters staff continued with the conference, including the themes of the previous director. Half the domestic division heard the presentations before the split and half had not. They didn’t want the division to receive different messages. They also could not forecast changes the merger would create.

As the headquarters staff tried to present, the field staff did not engage. They answered questions, case studies, and discussions with stony silence. It was painful. During a break, one of the field employees commented “There’s not a lot of trust in that room.”

The lack of trust slowed the communications to a standstill.

Wednesday we share an example how misunderstood intent lowers trust

Covey’s Speed of Trust 21: Restore Trust When it is Lost

This concludes our review of  Stephen M. R. Covey’s book The Speed of Trust

The author writes “The nature of life is such that all of us will undoubtedly have to deal with broken trust at some time—maybe a number of times—during our lives. Sometimes we do something stupid. We make a mistake in a personal or professional relationship, and we’re brought up short by a severely depleted or even overdrawn Trust Account. Suddenly suspicious replaces synergy.”

When You Break Trust

The author counsels “If you’ve broken trust with someone else, it’s an opportunity to get your own act together, to improve your character and competence, to behave in ways that inspire trust. Hopefully this will influence the behavior in ways that inspire trust and will influence the offended party to restore trust in you. But even if it doesn’t your effort may well affect others in positive ways, and it will definitely enable you to create more high-trust relationships in the future.”

“Keep in mind that when you talk about restoring trust, you’re talking about changing someone else’s feeling about you and confidence in you. And that’s not something you can control. You can’t force people to trust you. You can’t make them have confidence in you. They may be dealing with other issues in their own lives that make the challenge more difficult for them.”

“By strengthening your Cores and making habits of the Behaviors, you will increase your ability to establish or restore trust in other situations and relationships throughout your life.”

When Someone Breaks Trust with You

He continues “If someone has broken trust with you, it’s an opportunity for you to grow in your ability to forgive, to learn how to extend Smart Trust, and to maximize whatever dividends are possible in the relationship.”

“For you to restore trust to someone who has broken it is a choice only you can make. I suggest you consider two guidelines:”

• “Don’t be too quick to judge”
• “Do be quick to forgive”

Monday I will share personal stories that I now realize were trust taxes or dividends

Covey’s Speed of Trust 20: Wave 5—Societal Trust

This continues our review of Stephen M. R. Covey’s book The Speed of Trust. I confess that this chapter may have moved me more than the others—and they really touched me. Once again, please buy The Speed of Trust and put it into action.

Covey shares a quote from a Financial Times editorial “Executives tempted to take shortcuts should remember the dictum of Confucius that good government needs weapons, food, and trust. If the ruler cannot hold onto all three, he should give up weapons first and food next. Trust should be guarded to the end, because ‘without trust, we cannot stand.”

An Example from McDonald’s

Covey shares a story from the riots that followed the Rodney King trial. He pointed out that in all the neighborhoods destroyed by fire, looting, and riot; “Amazingly all the McDonald’s restaurants with in the devastated area were untouched. They stood as unscathed beacons in the midst of the blackened ruins.”

“Obviously the question arose: Why should the McDonald’s buildings be left standing when nearly everything around them was destroyed? The responses of local residents carried a common thread: ‘McDonald’s  cares about our community. They support literacy efforts and sports programs. Young people know they can always get a job at ‘Mickey D’s.’ No one would want  to destroy something that doe so much good for us all.”

“McDonald’s sense of social responsibility created societal trust, and that trust produced clearly observable and measurable results.”

The Principle of Contribution

Covey writes “The overriding principles of societal trust is contribution. It’s the intent to create value instead of destroy it, to give back instead of take. And more and more, people are realizing how important contribution—and the causes it inspires—are to a healthy society.”

Covey talks of personal, global contributions. “We see that trust at the Fifth Wave is a direct result of trustworthiness that begins in the First Wave and flows outward in our relationships, in our organizations, and in the marketplace to fill society as a whole”

“Friday we conclude our review of the book with how to rebuild trust when it’s lost

Covey’s Speed of Trust 19: Wave 4—Market Trust

This continues our series reviewing Stephen M. R. Covey’s book The Speed of Trust

Covey says “Market Trust is all about brand or reputation. It’s about the feeling you have that makes you want to buy products or services or invest your money or time—and/or recommend such actions to others. This is the level where most people clearly see the relationship between trust, speed, and cost.” He highlights using trademarks (like the ones at the left) and our reaction and feelings about certain organizations when we see their trademarks. Look at the trademarks and ask how you feel about them. What do you perceive as their reputation or brand?

Branding and Reputations at All Levels

Covey highlights that reputations and brands apply to a variety of entities in various markets:

• “Obviously corporate brand is important to companies with products and services to sell”
• “Cities have reputations which are reflected in published lists of best places to visit or best places to live…which translate into tax dollars, tourist dollars, businesses attracted, and home value appreciation.”
• “On a more micro level, the reputations of a particular team or division within an organization has significant impact on factors such as resource allocation and budget planning”
• “On the most micro level, every individual has his or her own brand or reputation, and that reputation affects trust, speed, and cost…Your personal brand also determines whether or not you are given the benefit of the doubt.”

How to Build Your Brand

Covey continues “So how do you build your brand? And how do you avoid destroying it? By now, I’m sure you won’t be surprised by my answer: ‘The 4 Cores and the 13 Behaviors,’ applied at the organizational levels.”

“But you may be surprised by this: I strongly contend that if your organization (however you define it) strengthens its 4 Cores and demonstrates the 13 Behaviors with its stakeholders, you will be able to measurably increase the value of your organizations brand:”

Read the book to know more. Study the examples he gives about various corporations.

Wednesday we review how contribution affects Wave 5—Societal Trust

Covey’s Speed of Trust 18: Wave 3—Organizational Trust

This continues our review of Stephen M. R. Covey’s book The Speed of Trust. I seriously urge you to buy it and practice these guidelines for trust.

Covey describes helping companies analyze trust in their organization. He writes “The biggest ‘Aha!’ comes when they realize that it’s happening as a result of violating principles—not only individually, but also organizationally. It’s not just violating the 4 Cores and 13 Behaviors; it’s also violating the principles of organizational design that create alignment with the cores and behaviors.”

The 7 Low-Trust Organizational Taxes

Low organizational trust slows the speed of the organization and increases the cost. Covey calls this a trust tax. He identifies seven taxes generated within low-trust organizations. I have personally witnessed all seven taxes in organizations:

• “Redundancy tax is paid in excessive organizational hierarchy, layers of management and overlapping structures all designed to ensure control”
• “Bureaucracy tax is reflected in excessive paper-work, red tape, controls, multiple approval layers, and government regulations. Rather than focusing on continuous improvement and getting better, bureaucracy merely adds complexity and inefficiency—and costs—to the status quo.”
• “Politics in the office generates behaviors such as withholding information, infighting, trying to ‘read the tea leaves,’ operating with hidden agendas, interdepartmental  rivalries, backbiting, and meetings after meetings.”
• “Disengagement is what happens when people continue to work at a company, but have effectively quit (commonly referred to as ‘quit and stay’…One of the biggest reasons for this is they don’t feel trusted”
• “Turnover represents a huge cost for organizations, and in low-trust cultures, turnover is in excess of the industry or market standard.”
• “Churn is the turnover of stakeholders other than employees. When trust inside an organization is low, it gets perpetuated in interaction in the marketplace, causing greater turnover among customers, suppliers, distributors, and investors.”
• “Fraud is flat-out dishonesty, sabotage, obstruction, deception, and disruption—and the cost is enormous. In fact, most of the first six organizational taxes are actually a result of management’s response to this ‘fraud tax’—particularly the taxes of redundancy and bureaucracy.”

Monday we review the high-trust organizational dividends of the 3rd Wave of Trust