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Matt Ridings

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Are You Casting A Shadow?

Shadow
When Alexander the Great visited Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for the famed teacher, Diogenes replied: 
“Only stand out of my light.” Perhaps some day we shall know how to heighten creativity. Until then, one of the best things we can do for creative men and women is to stand out of their light. 
~ John W. Gardner

 

Birthing Creativity

I was having a conversation with Matt Homann the other evening on innovation and creativity.  Or to be more specific, how to build activities that birth and harness creativity for business purposes.   Matt is working on doing exactly that by developing what he calls a "Creativity Camp".  I would encourage you to ask him about it.  

The following day while consulting with a client I kept hearing a common refrain from the staff that "we WANT to be creative/innovative but don't feel empowered to do so!".

Empower Me! 
I confess that while this is certainly true in some cases, my typical gut response to this kind of statement is that it's an excuse.  Call it tough love, call it being a bit of a hardass if you like, but I've always felt that if you're going to wait around for someone to empower you then you have a long wait in front of you indeed.  

However, the combination of these two conversations got me to thinking.  Perhaps the real benefit of having management engage in creative workshops and learn to value the less definable aspects of business culture is not so that THEY can be more creative.  Instead, this new open appreciation for the value of creativity gives implicit license to those around them to be creative.  Those who previously felt they were stuck in the shadow of an unbelieving leadership might now feel empowered, or even better, encouraged.

Tell The Story You Want To Be
My comment to Matt Homann the other night was about how the best tool to change a business culture was in teaching leadership to find and tell the right stories.  Storytelling is a sorely lacking skill in business these days, and a session on learning the art of it in a business context would be invaluable.  These stories become the examples of what is valued in the organization, and in turn others adapt and adopt their message into their own activities and behaviors.  Thus, a culture shift is born.  

Having leadership engage in these types of creative workshops and openly bring their learnings back to the workplace is one way of telling a non-verbal story, a means of management moving aside and allowing light to flow where once they cast a shadow. 

Are you casting a shadow on those around you or are you empowering a culture that supports both your employees desires and your companies productivity?  Are you telling the right stories?  I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Cheers,

Matt Ridings - @techguerilla
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Is my idea worth money? #StLinnovate #StLinnovation

For those of you who attended my talk at the St. Louis Innovation Camp I promised I would provide access to the slides from my presentation. For the moment I've thrown together some brief notes for the slides to provide a bit of context, but I'll try and get around to recording an audio track for it so that the portion of the presentation that was more verbal (specifically, value proposition creation) is more easily understood.  The presentation itself was built as a 30 minute intro to the final 30 minute of real-world audience Q & A and unfortunately I cannot replicate the latter.

You can access the presentation here or through my LinkedIn profile here. You can find the slide notes on the tab below the presentation.  Since I threw that presentation together at the last minute and had never done a run through I'd appreciate any feedback from those who attended the talk.  You can either leave your comments here, at slideshare, or directly on twitter at @techguerilla .  If you need to ask me a question regarding the presentation content please do so here .

On a side note, I was honored and humbled to have received your votes to come back and discuss my presentation.  Unfortunately I was not aware that we were even being voted on, much less to come back the next day if we received the most votes and so had family commitments I could not change at the last minute.  Otherwise I would have most definitely been there.

I hope that some of you found some nugget of information in the discussion that helps you in your entrepreneurial endeavors.

Cheers,

Matt Ridings

@techguerilla

 

 

*Note that SlideShare garbled some of the slide imagery and put borders around some of the images but everything still seems readable.

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Do people seek risk only to minimize losses?

Do people seek risk only to minimize losses?

by Stephen Shapiro

Taking Risk to Avoid LossesBack in the 1980's, executives used to joke that you would never get fired for buying "Big Blue" (IBM) computers. It's not that IBM was the best, but you knew they would not screw up.

When I worked for Accenture (then Andersen Consulting), the Economist once called us "The McDonalds of the consulting industry. You know what you will get and it's not fillet mignon." People hired us not to get highly creative solutions, but rather to be assured of a successfully implemented solution.

There is a reason why consulting firms are so successful.

People choose safe, tried and true solutions over those which may be better yet have a risk of failure.

This is human nature. People take risks to minimize losses, yet play it safe when it comes to increasing gains.

But how much of a gain must be dangled in front of us before we will risk giving up the sure thing? I've been conducting a survey to find the answer.

Here's the first question posed to respondents:

Which would you choose?

  • Option 1: A guaranteed gain of $75K or

  • Option 2: An 80% chance of getting $100K and a 20% chance of getting nothing

    • Our survey found that 75% of the people go for the sure thing, option 1. People play it safe when it comes to increasing gains. But how safe?

    What if the upside is increased to an 80% chance of getting $150K? Now, 57% take option 2. Still, 43% play it safe, even though there is an 80% chance of doubling their money.

    What if the upside is increased to $225K? 76% choose option 2. This means that, 1 in 4 people still play it safe even when the potential upside is 3 times the original amount. When we increase the upside to $450K - 6 times the original amount - we still have 20% of the people who go for the sure thing.

    It appears that people believe the expression, "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." Interestingly, the original Old English expression was, "Better one byrde in hande than ten in the wood." That seems even more accurate.

    Ok, let's look at the loss side of things.

    Here's the first question posed to respondents:

    Which would you choose?

    • Option 3: A guaranteed loss of $75K or

  • Option 4: An 80% chance of losing $100K and a 20% chance of losing nothing

    • This time, when presented with a loss rather than a gain, 71% go for the riskier option 4. People take risks to minimize their losses. [As an aside, when I ask audiences this question, the percentage of risk takers is closer to 90%]

    Increase the potential loss to $125K and 44% still go for the riskier option 4. When the potential loss is increased to $250K, 22% of the respondents still opt for option 4.

    Risk versus RewardIf you plot these responses (risk-taking probabilities against expected gains), they make a nice 'S' curve as depicted in the graphic left.

    What does this graph tell us?

    It clearly supports the premise that people take risks to minimize losses, yet play it safe when it comes to increasing their gains. The loss of $1,000 hurts more than a gain of $1,000 feels good.

    This means that you can sell someone more easily when you focus on losses rather than the gains. This might explain why Al Gore has been so successful with his "Inconvenient Truth." Instead of focusing on the benefits of a cleaner environment, he focused on the 'meltdown' associated with the status quo. Can anyone say Nobel Prize?

    The shape of the curve also gives us a bit more insight. First, the gain of $2,000 does not feel twice as good as the gain of $1,000. Equally, the loss of $2,000 does not hurt twice as much as the loss of $1,000. There is a point where we become numb to the increased gain or loss.

    Another potentially useful take-away is what I call the "risk/reward tipping point." This is the point where the 'S' curve flattens out on both the loss and gain side. This occurs at the point when 80% of the people take the desired action. And based on my research, this ratio is a little under 3.

    What does this mean?

    The hoped for win (the upside) must be three times the guaranteed amount in order for most people to risk the sure thing.

    There is a reason why the status quo wins out in business, politics, and life. Rarely are we given options where the benefit is three times the sure thing/current situation.

    On a final note, there was some interesting research on this topic...but with a twist. Researchers at Duke University, in a paper entitled "Sleep Deprivation Elevates Expectations of Gains and Attenuates Response to Losses Following Risky Decision" (Venkatraman, Chuah, Huettel, Chee), wrote that this risk-taking profile changes when someone does not get enough sleep.

    When kept awake for 24 hours, the study (supported by brain scans) showed a double whammy: people became more optimistic about potential gains and they were also numbed to the negative feelings associated with losses. They would act riskier and have less regret (distinct from disappointment) about bad decisions. Their decisions were often bad decisions. If you go to Las Vegas, be sure to get plenty of sleep!

    Our ancestors lived in a world of scarcity. Therefore it is not surprising that we do everything in our power to horde what we have. Unfortunately, our desire to play it safe can cause us to miss out on big opportunities. Risk taking is fundamental to innovation. And innovation is critical to long-term success.

    If you want to see some of this stuff action, be sure to read my entry on 10 1/2 Ways to Improve Your Life - By Losing. This may give you some tools to enable you to take healthy risks to improve your life and business.


    Stephen ShapiroStephen Shapiro is the author of three books, a popular innovation speaker, and is the Chief Innovation Evangelist for Innocentive, the leader in Open Innovation.

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    via business-strategy-innovation.com

    Some great nuggets in here.

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