How was your summer?
I hope that it lived up to your expectations. Mine certainly did. True to my word, I took the summer off to regroup, reconnect and re-energize. Mission accomplished and now I’m back – ready to rock and roll!
One of the highlights of my summer was spending time with my children watching the Olympics in Beijing. And although the games and the amazing stories that came with them already seem to be fading into the past, this morning’s Montreal Gazette front page photo of Canadian wheelchair racer Chantal Petitclerc, her face framed in victory as she pushed across the finish line for her 5th gold medal, reminded me that many amazing athletes are still in China competing in the 2008 Paralympics.
Chantal Petitclerc – Michael Phelps – Usain Bolt -the Chinese women’s gymnastics team
What do all of these accomplished performers have in common? They were the best – over and over and over again. And in the process, they turned dreams into realities, goals into accomplishments and the impossible into the expected.
Innovation Insight #47
Here are three tips for establishing and maintaining your organization’s Innovation Advantage™ with Olympic style .
1. Play to your strengths: By focusing on their strengths, Paralympic athletes render their physical challenges irrelevant. What are your organization’s core strengths? Do your innovation initiatives play to your strengths or focus on your challenges? If you want to take the exercise one step further, ask yourself what would happen if one of your core strengths suddenly disappeared? What other strengths could you develop? Keep in mind that many Paralympic athletes didn’t even discover their greatest gift until after accident or disease took something else away.
2. Play to your Passions: At the heart of any Olympic success is the passion that drives exceptional performance. You can take advantage of the passion in your organization by holding an open idea generation session where the first step is to identify which aspects of your organization team members are most passionate about. Then – and only then -generate ideas that build on those passions. You can also ask your customers what part of their business or organization they are most passionate about and then create innovative solutions that support and promote those passions.
3. Play a lot: Michael Phelps participated in 8 events and won them all. Chantal Petitclerc raced 5 times for 5 gold medals. Innovation is a numbers game. The more ideas the better because as long as you stay focused, the more opportunities you create to get into the game the more opportunities you have to cross the finish line first.
Play to your strengths. Play to your passions. Play a lot.
Imagine the Possibilities!
-Toni Newman
PS Good news, no so good news
The good news is that my business is booming. The not so good news is that between my commitments to my wonderful children and to my growing business, it’s getting harder and harder to meet the commitment of getting a really good newsletter out to you once a week. So, I’ve decided that Innovation Insights will come out once every 15 days or so. Consider it my Surprising (you never know which day it will show up); Strategic (still frequent enough to keep innovation top of mind); Seductive (real value for you and your organization when you least expect it) and now even more Sustainable (I won’t be so stressed about getting it out and you might even read it more often!) contribution to your Innovation Advantage™. Imagine the Possibilities!
Quote of the Week
Michael Phelps
What world would you like to change?
T!
Inspiration of the Week
As I did the research for this article, I came across this video footage of Kerri Strug’s 1996 gold medal performance. Talk about making challenges irrelevant. Check this out!
Turning Ideas into Results!
Please feel free to contact me at toni@toninewman.com
with any stories about how Innovation Insights has helped you to turn ideas into results.
