Creativity Technique: Twitter Brainstorming

In one of my previous posts, I reviewed the book The Tao of Twitter.  Inside the book, there was a brief description of a virtual brainstorming session that was quite clever.

The author has a "virtual" company.  He is a consultant with no employees.  He needed to fulfill a request for a client for some ideas, and he knew that to get the best ideas he needed to get some outside the box thinking, i.e. ideas from people other than him. 

As the author of a book on Tweeting, he has a pretty fleshed out Twitter Tribe, so he issued an invitation on Twitter to a web-meeting later that day.  He had several people who attended.  He outlined the problem.  He let the creative juices flow.

In less than 24 hours, he had a list of ideas to turn over to his client without spending a dollar on an agency.  Another advantage, he helped establish some personal relationships with people who prior to were just Twitter followers.

Social media allows you to reach out to a multitude of divergent thinkers with little cost and quick turnaround.  

How can you leverage your social media to stimulate innovation and creativity in your business?

Quote of the Day: Biz Stone

"Timing, perseverance and ten years of trying will eventually make you look like an overnight success."  Biz Stone, Co-Founder, Twitter

Book Review: Tao of Twitter

I have a few confessions to make before I review this book. 

1. I struggle with Social Media.  I am excellent at posting pictures of my little boy on Facebook so that his adoring family can ooohh and aaaahhh over his cuteness, but I am much less disciplined on updating my LinkedIn, or posting to Instagram, or Tweeting.  Upon reading this book, I had maybe Tweeted 15 Tweets, ever.

2. I didn't understand the business purpose behind Twitter before I started and after reading the book, I still struggle.

3. I didn't love Mark Schaefer's other book - Born To Blog, but gave Tao of Twitter a chance anyway.

Full disclosure.  But here is the Creative Space rating:

Readability:  A
Creates Consistent Interest:  C
Applicability:  B
Design:  C
Differentiation:  A

Creative Space Takeaways:

1. My first takeaway was more a reflection after the fact, but I, like you, get piles of business cards after a conference.  It occurred to me that by adding these folks to my Twitter feed, it allows these relationships to essentially "run in the background" so if later there is a need for a more personal contact, the groundwork has been laid and in general, there is some grasp of what is going on with them in the "in between times."

2. Most of the Tao of Twitter was based on the three elements that could potentially drive tangible business and personal benefits:  1. Targeted Connections 2. Meaningful Content and 3. Authentic Helpfulness.  The author provides a few examples of how Twitter interactions helped drive business results for his company through these elements, but as I am not a consultant, the tangible benefits are a little harder to understand.

3. Twitter users are content creators for sure.  Tao of Twitter provided some stats from an ExactTarget survey that stated that more than 70 percent of Twitter users publish blog posts at least monthly, 70 percent comment on blogs, and 61 percent write at least one product review monthly.  Further, daily Twitter users are six times more likely to publish articles, five times more likely to post blogs, etc. etc.  My biggest concern here is if Twitter is just being used by content creators how far is the reach for people who just consume.  Is Twitter just a little incestuous tribe of people who like to opine?

4. "If you have fewer than 200 people who are connecting with you, Twitter will be boring."  This is me.  I have fewer than 200 people.  I am both lame and bored.  Later in the book, it says that if you have just 20 minutes a day to devote to social media, spend it building a Twitter Tribe of 200.  Then your social media will start to grow more organically.

5. To get Twitter followers, "do a basic search."  I tried this, I searched #innovation, #creativity, #wellbeing and so on and so forth to look for people who were Tweeting on these topics.  The process was still like pulling teeth, but in all honesty, I put in about ten minutes.  Will do better next time.  I promise.

6. Tweet three times a day, at different times a day.  I have never achieved this, not even a single day.  Totally makes sense though- it keeps you in the feeds of people who only check once a day.  Provides enough touchpoints to provide the personal touch tweets plus meaningful, business, building content.  Maybe I will set this as a goal for a week, see if I fall in love with Twitter.  Because there are people who are in love with Twitter.  (Which I suspect is similar in nature to those who are in love with going to the gym.)

7. Twitter acronyms.  I don't know jack about Twitter acronyms, but the Tao of Twitter did provide a glossary so now I am hip to RT (Retweet) and MT (Modified Tweet).  I have no idea how I would have figured this out without reading the book.  Seriously.

8. Hashtags for me are a source of contention.  As an avid Facebook user, it annoys me that so many people hashtag when Facebook doesn't search based on Hashtags.  But they are super useful in Twitter for searching and curating content.  Feel free to hashtag #findcreativespace :)

9. Because most people have multiple social media platforms to manage, the author provides some options, such as Hootsuite, to keep it all together. The huge advantage is that you can schedule your three tweets a day, at different times a day, without actually tweeting that often.  #hugetimesaver

10. To learn Twitter, you have to do Twitter.   This was the most important.  I think this book would have been much more important and usable for me if I was already at least a basic user of Twitter.  Usually I donate my books as soon as I am done, but I think I am going to try what I have learned a little bit and then revisit The Tao of Twitter in order to get the best value/information from it.

Quote of the Day: T.S. Eliot

The endless cycle of idea and action, 

Endless invention, endless experiment, 

Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness; 
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence; 
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word...
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

Divergent

In the June 2015 Harvard Business Review, in the Idea Watch, the author encouraged audiences to find analogous fields and recruit members to help with novel ideas.  The example in the article was hiring skaters to help redesign safety equipment for roofers.  A popular example I have seen pop up in others places is studying hummingbirds to improve aerodynamics, and so on and so forth.

I took an innovation training recently, and it explained two of the basics of ideation for innovation- divergent and convergent thinking.

In Divergent thinking, you create as many ideas as possible.  You don't judge any of the ideas, you don't consider the reality of bringing them to fruition.  You just throw them out into the world.

In Convergent thinking, you are taking all those ideas and combining them, assessing them, and discarding them until you have a couple of good, tight ideas that you can work from.

Divergent thinking is the primary reason that most people hold innovation retreats, go to companies like Ideo, and create incubators within their companies.  Driving divergent thinking is the primary reason the authors of the IdeaWatch are encouraging readers to look to analogous fields.  (Totally a Harvard Business Review word, by the way, a normal person might just say "different."

If you don't have access to some skateboarding champions, here are some other ways you can drum up some divergent thoughts:

1. Read two magazines a week.  On different topics, cars, plants, homebuilding, art, etc.  Don't just read Fast Company.  Get outside your own box and you will get some great ideas.

2. I bet you have a bunch of friends on your social media that do things other than you do- put a challenge out there and see what comes up!

3. Write down your ideas and random thoughts as you get them.  As your thoughts start to accumulate, you can read back through your notebook and see if anything gets your brain cells firing again.

4. Think back to other jobs that you have had.  Maybe an experience you had while cleaning dishes at the Olive Garden will help you with a current management conundrum.

5. Look on Pinterest.  Put in a super vague search criteria.  So, for example, if you are trying to create new packaging for product, search "boxes" on Pinterest. You would be amazed at what you can find.

Get your creative juices flowing!  Don't just think outside the box, think outside your profession!

Quote of the Day: will.i.am

"I'm good at thinking outside the box, so much that you realise it isn't a box to begin with."

Creativity Technique: Give and Get

While reading the recent Harvard Business Review article, Leadership Summits that Work, the authors introduced a technique to drive collaboration that 1. I hadn't heard of before and 2. Was actually pretty clever.

To read the complete article, click here:

https://hbr.org/2015/03/leadership-summits-that-work

Here's the process:

1. Use "Give and Get" as part of a breakout session, ideally with 30 to 60 people.

2. Label to charts, one "Give" and one "Get".  Hang them on opposite walls.

3. On each chart, each participant is assigned a column with her or her photo, name, function, business unit, and location at the top.

4.  In the "Get" column, each participant posts a card that completes this sentence:  "If I could get help in one area that would make me and my team more successful in the coming year, it would be...".    Examples of potential "Gets" include help developing a new product feature, reconfiguring a plant layout, or adjusting a customer contract."

5.  In the "Give" column, the participant completes the sentence "If I could name one area in which my team and I have developed expertise that may be useful to others in the company, it would be...."

6. After all the Give and Get cards have been posted, participants are given Post-it notes and asked to circulate around the room.  If a participant sees a get that she or someone she knows could address, she leaves a Post-it with a message about how she might be able to assist.  If she sees a Give that could be helpful, she places a posted with a message under the card.

7. After the meeting, all the Gives and Gets are recorded and distributed for follow-up.

In a variation presented in HBR, you can also trade rooms with another breakout to generate more connections.  I think if I was a participant, that would become both tedious and overwhelming, but might be worth a try.

One of the most important pieces of this process, however, is the followup.  If you don't distribute in a timely manner, or if contact information for the benefactors/recipients isn't clear, the whole process falls apart.

Worth a try!