Quote of the Day: Carolin Ghosn

"The different between skill and talent: A skill is something you learn. Talent is what you can't help doing."  Carolin Ghosn, CEO and Founder, Levo

Wellness and Creativity

This summer, since I was taking a sabbatical from work, I decided to take two online classes.  One was on Leadership and Emotional Intelligence, offered through Coursera, and the other one was Thrive, an Oprah O Course.

These were, of course, two totally different classes, but had one common theme- to a certain degree, as a leader and a person, you need to be mentally well in order to have successful relationships- either at work or at home.

Corporate wellness is a huge topic right now.  Companies are sponsoring fun runs, buying Fitbits, taking blood pressure and cholesterol levels in the cafeteria, and charging you more for health insurance if you smoke.  The US Department of Labor released a study stating that 92 percent of companies with 200 employees or more have wellness programs.  Further, it is estimated that companies are spending between 3 and 8 billion dollars per year on wellness programs.

All is not sunshine and roses, however.  As part of the DoL report, it is revealed that only about 20 percent of the people who have access to wellness programs actually use them.  Further, Andre Spicer, of the Cass Business School in London, conducted a study that stated that the wellness programs not only provide a poor return, but they also make many employees less healthy and more anxious about their jobs.

Interestingly, he also suggests in his research that while most companies now embrace all forms of diversity, at least on paper, wellness programs are creating a situation where there is a less-healthy underclass, that is assumed to perform less well at their actual jobs.

But, some forms of wellness not only reduce health care costs for your company, but also increases your creativity, ability to innovate, and emotional intelligence.

Ariana Huffington, in her book Thrive, talks about how she got the idea for the Huffington Post while taking a walk.  She also has a daily meditation routine to help her mentally reset during stressful days so that she isn't letting the stress of the day accumulate on her overstimulated brain.  Al Sharpton starts every day with a morning run and recitation of two poems to put him in the right mindset for his day.

Last year Marily Oppezzo and Daniel Schwartz of Stanford released one of the first studies on creativity and walking.  On average students who were walking came up with 4-6 more creative ideas for uses of a common object and 95 percent were able to create equivalent metaphors after walking compared to 50 percent who never stood up. 

And now corporations are investing in treadmill desks as part of their wellness programs. (Although the research is still out on whether this works, there are marked differences in creativity based on where you are walking- i.e. green space vs. city vs. indoors).

As with most things, we will struggle to find the balance in corporate wellness programs at the institutional level.  No one likes Big Brother telling them they have to have 10,451 steps in a day to achieve a full paycheck/incentives.  But, at the end of the day, getting up and moving, achieving a healthy weight, and stopping smoking is good for you and it is good for your brain.

Quote of the Day: Yancey Strickler

"I don't have any social media on my phone.  The more time you spend in the stream of other people's thoughts, the more impossible it is for you to have your own. You need space for yourself."

Creativity Technique: Visual Explorer

Way, way back in the day, when I was a young research assistant, I helped set up focus groups.  I have mailed out hundreds of socks to focus group respondents, catagorized "day in the life" pictures, and helped get our moderator ready to do the Visual Explorer exercise.

A decade later, it is still one of my favorites.

Here are the basics:

The Visual Explorer card set is offered from the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, NC.  A typical set has about 200 images that are intended to leave themselves open to some degree of interpretation depending on the prompt that that facilitator gives.  Some of my favorites are an adult hand holding a baby hand, some particularly creepy doll faces, and some puzzle pieces.

The moderator/facilitator spreads out the pictures, or hangs them up depending on preference.  I like to hang them up because it is easier for a large group to see.  The participants are then given a prompt and asked to choose a picture that reflects their feelings/experiences.

The group then debriefs on their selections.   If you are doing several groups, you are then able to compare pictures/experiences across a larger sample size, although the primary usefulness of this exercise is to get qualitative feedback.

We did a series of groups in a company that I worked at formerly on innovation. Using the visual explorer deck of cards, we asked employees to choose a picture that showed what it was like to innovate at the company.  Here were some responses:

Picture of a Roadblock: "It is like a traffic jam.  You know you need to get somewhere, but there are so many things that get in your way."

Picture of Men in Suits with Boxes Over Heads:  "It's like we have so many meetings, and things to do that we are stumbling around blind with no direction."

The deck from CCL is highly affordable and there are a ton of different ways it can be used.  Here are some ideas:

1. Choose a picture that represents how Brand X makes you feel.

2. Choose three pictures that represent the problem Product X needs to solve.

3. Choose a picture that shows what it feels like to complete Service Experience X.

4. Choose a picture that represents the one problem we need to solve to achieve our company goals.

5.  Choose a picture that represents what it should feel like to work for Company X in five years.

The possibilities are endless.  For more info on Visual Explorer, visit the CCL website:

http://solutions.ccl.org/Visual_Explorer_Facilitator's_Letter-size_Set 

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.