In my email signature I have a quote that rung true to me, and it also strikes a chord with many people. The quote is :
“Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people”
– Admiral Hyman G. Rickover
People feel compelled to add to it, and I thought I’d pass on their additions. The best so far?
Burt Rutan added : “Mindless people discuss the weather”
David Rajan added : “The mindless watch TV”
Haven’t heard of him? Taleb is applied statistician and derivatives trader-turned-philosopher. No, it didn’t mean much to me either, until I started reading an article he wrote in Forbes. He’s in Forbes because his book called “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable” is selling like hotcakes.
After reading his article his book is now on my reading list. Why? Because it talks about the importance of accidental discovery on the fringes among other things :
The technologies that run the world today (like the Internet, the computer and the laser) are not used in the way intended by those who invented them. Even academics are starting to realize that a considerable component of medical discovery comes from the fringes, where people find what they are not exactly looking for.
[…]
Only a disproportionately minute number of discoveries traditionally came from directed academic research.
There’s also some podcasts around that feature him, here and here.
Most of the work I perform with clients usually involves some form of workshop. My preferred – and proven – format usually is for a multiday event. Inevitably there is some degree of pushback when I recommend that we go for two, or even three days.
In most organisations people are used to half day sessions where they can quickly get back to the “important stuff, ” such as checking email and answering phone calls. If they do have an “off-site” event that goes for more than one day, it’s common for this to have a significant ‘team-building’ component that usually translates to mean ‘we’ll get some time playing golf’.
However there’s many reasons why you should hold multiday events. Not least of which is that after a good sleep you are better equuipped to resolve problems. Evidence of this is cited in a few places, such as New Scientist and the BBC.
Firstly, here’s the New Scientist take:
Ever wondered why sleeping on a problem works? It seems that as well as strengthening our memories, sleep also helps us to extract themes and rules from the masses of information we soak up during the day.
Bob Stickgold from Harvard Medical School and his colleagues found that people were better able to recall lists of related words after a night’s sleep than after the same time spent awake during the day. They also found it easier to recollect themes that the words had in common – forgetting around 25 per cent more themes after a waking rest. “We’re not just stabilising memories during sleep,” says Stickgold. “We’re extracting the meaning.”
And, more recently, the BBC
Sleeping on a problem really can help solve it, say scientists who found a dreamy nap boosts creative powers. They tested whether “incubating” a problem allowed a flash of insight, and found it did, especially when people entered a phase of sleep known as REM.
Volunteers who had entered REM or rapid eye movement sleep – when most dreams occur – were then better able to solve a new problem with lateral thinking.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has published the US work.
“We propose that REM sleep is important for assimilating new information into past experience to create a richer network of associations for future use”
While this is useful information to reinforce the need for multiday events – especially around innovation and strategy – it’s also got some unexpected benefits for office workers stuck in the tedium of a corporate job that bores them to tears.
Armed with the above findings, they can safely snooze at their desks, armed with the retort: “I was problem solving.”
Just back from London where I did the usual trick of trying to see as many friends/contacts/colleagues as possible in the shortest space of time. Over a coffee Dave Nicholson – one of the founders of zopa – mentioned about a banking blog that he reads called BankerVision.
It’s written by James Gardner, Head of Innovation at Lloyds. He has written a range of thoughtful postings about the financial services industry. However most interesting to me is the fact that he’s doing this from the viewpoint of a UK bank which I’ve always viewed as being ultra-conservative.
Watch with interest..
This morning I stopped past a supermarket on the way to work. I found a clear aisle and decided there was something I needed to do.
Trolley boarding.
(OK, so I just made this term up. So now it needs an explanation.
it’s when you put one foot on the back bar, and use the other one to push it along and trying to keep it going in a straight line. As a recreational activity it will never make it to the Olympics. Let’s face it, it would never even make it as some cult underground sport, unlike extreme ironing.)
I got some funny looks. Disapproving looks from people who were being far too serious. It reminded me of the relevance of experimentation in innovation.
Play is an important part of creativity.
Creativity is a vital part of innovation.
Which leads me to this quote (source unknown) :
We do not stop playing because we age.
We age because we stop playing.
Next time you’re in the supermarket, put one foot on the back bar of your trolley…
