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Serve to Be Great

Better SEO – Self-Effectiveness Optimization

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A Different Type of SEO – Self-Effectiveness Optimization:  

How mindfulness training improves our personal effectiveness.

Optimization seems to be one of the most common buzzwords “buzzing” around these days.  I most often hear the word in the context of SEO, which is search engine optimization.
I wonder how many of us have a solid plan for optimizing our most important engines – our minds.  Let’s explore this most important aspect of another type of SEO – “self-effectiveness optimization.”

I feel pretty confident that everyone reading this has a solid understanding of how to optimize ourselves physically.  There is an abundance of information (perhaps too much) on how to eat well, sleep right, and exercise to ensure that we can optimize ourselves, physically.
But what do we do to optimize the most important tool we have – the mind?
Traditional schools of thought posit that we should get as much education as possible.  However, there is a lot of evidence that shows an inverse correlation between higher levels of education and personal effectiveness.  For instance, according the research of the Perth Leadership Institute, there is actually an inverse correlation between higher levels of education and profitable behaviors.  And, thanks to the well-known research of Daniel Goleman and others, we now know that emotional intelligence is twice as important as IQ for high levels of personal and professional performance.
Although knowledge is definitely helpful, it seems that even more important is how well-trained our minds are.  This is why so many top companies like Google, Intel, Raytheon, and General Mills are training their people in the practice of mindfulness.  They know that mindfulness is an incredibly powerful tool for training the mind to be most effective.  This is why I am also an advocate for incorporating mindfulness training into our personal development efforts.
Mindfulness practice can really be boiled down to two main elements: attention training and wisdom development.
The heart of the practice is training ourselves to become less distracted by thinking.  We train our attention to be aware of our own thoughts and emotions (self-awareness), as well as the rest of the present-moment reality.  This helps us remain more attentive to tasks we’re working on and, over time, actually makes the mind more efficient by reducing the amount of useless thinking that serves no purpose other than to sap our mental energy. (Although I’m sure that this doesn’t apply to anyone reading this.  We never get caught up in conversations in our heads that are completely useless right?)
As we develop our ability to remain free from distracting thinking, awareness becomes much more powerful, allowing us to see subtle aspects of our world that we don’t normally pay much attention to – like how everything is constantly changing.  We all know this intellectually, but most of us haven’t had deep personal insight into the universal truth of impermanence.  By developing this wisdom, we find that we are much more effective in life because we deal with change more effectively, things don’t bother us so much, and we become much less attached to our own ego, which makes us much more effective when dealing with other people.
The heightened self-awareness and insight into impermanence that result from mindfulness practice make it a very powerful tool for developing the emotional intelligence skills that, as mentioned above, are more important than IQ for improving our effectiveness.
If you’re already utilizing mindfulness as part of your SEO (self effectiveness optimization) plan, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.
If you’re new to mindfulness, please feel free to leave questions in the comment section.

Thanks for reading this post!  As a gift, I’d like to give you this excellent eBook for FREE!  

Just CLICK HERE, and I’ll send you this eBook, featuring chapters from John Spence, Jeff Klein, Charlie Kim, Michael Carroll, Ted Prince, David Marquet, and Ben Lichtenwalner.
Matt's Insights, Mindfulness, Personal Development

Working For Good as a Leader – An Interview with Jeff Klein

Powerful tools for achieving leadership excellence while making the world a better place.

Jeff Klein is an activator, producer, process facilitator, and the author of Working For Good and It’s Just Good Business.  He is one of the founders of Conscious Capitalism, Inc.(activator), (producer) of Conscious Capitalism events, including an annual Conscious Capitalism CEO Summit, and as a (process facilitator) he designs and leads workshops, meetings, Conscious Culture development programs and Stakeholder Engagement Marketing™ campaigns.

Below is a recent interview I had the pleasure of facilitating with Jeff, which I’m sure you’ll enjoy!

About thirty years ago, you felt a calling to leverage the power of business for the greater good and in the process to make your work a path to learning, growth, and development.  Ever since, you have been helping people see the connection between making a difference in the world, achieving better business outcomes, and enjoying the ride.  What are the three biggest competitive advantages you see for a leader who successfully aligns the achievement of positive business outcomes with serving the greater good?  
Perhaps the most significant benefit is the personal and collective energy and flow this fosters. When a person (e.g. a business leader) and a group of people (e.g. their team and their entire business stakeholder ecosystem) are focused on a higher purpose and act in alignment with that purpose, there is a tremendous sense of meaning, engagement, and connectedness, which leads to high motivation, an embodied commitment to responsible communications, and exceptional creativity and productivity.
A second, related benefit, is the trust, engagement, loyalty and sustainability in the relationships between the people (individually and as whole stakeholder groups – e.g. customers, employees, vendors, etc.), which lead to great resilience when challenges arise and sustainability over a long time horizon. Business is a social endeavor and relationships are the foundation of a healthy, flourishing social organism/organization.
A third significant competitive advantage is health, well-being, and flourishing – for the leader, her team and her business. At each level, health enhances performance and reduces direct and indirect or opportunity costs.
What would you say are the three most important things a leader can do to become less self-centered, and more focused on how they can serve, sustainably, the people they lead and the community around them?
As with all things, practice is the key to high performance and to cultivating new capacities. As Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” If you want to be less self-centered and to serve others, then serve others. There’s a great quote on humility that is relevant here, which goes “humility is not thinking less of yourself, but more of others.” So you don’t have to put yourself down, just see and celebrate the talents and humanity in others.
A key to cultivating the capacity to serve is to elicit and really listen to feedback from others. You may have an idea what it means to serve them, but their needs, perceptions and styles may be different from yours. Ask people what they need and how they can best receive it. And you can ask people if they are open to your observations – ask permission to point out areas where you notice they may benefit from your support and guidance. If they give you permission, they will be more open to receiving your support. And ask “how can I support you right now?”
Ironically, the third thing, which might be the first thing, is to take care of yourself. While that might seem self-centered, if you don’t genuinely take care of yourself, which is different from being self-centered, then you won’t have the knowledge, experience or capacity to truly care for others. By taking care of yourself, I mean physically (what you eat, exercise, sleep, recreation, etc.), emotionally, mentally and spiritually, whatever that means to you. 
How important is it to measure progress with this work of becoming a conscious leader?  Could you share some ideas for successfully measuring progress?
As human beings we are always measuring in one way or another. Receiving and processing feedback from our environment, which includes other people, is essential to our survival, learning, and flourishing. With respect to the previous question about service versus self-centeredness, we can measure our progress informally by observing the quality of our relationships and the attitude and engagement of the people we work with. We can do so more formally be measuring these things with one or more of the wide variety of assessment tools. Before and after (or ongoing) assessments can provide us with direct and indirect measures of “how we’re doing.” The net Promoter System tools for assessing Customer and Employee engagement are very good. Tilt365 has a good tool for assessing our relationships within our teams, and for shining light on our blind spots. And good, open, honest, periodic conversations with our key collaborators can provide great insight into how we are doing and where we may need or want to focus our attention on further development. This is truly an ongoing process. There is no end point, but a continual journey of discovery and development.
In the words of the late George Leonard, “We fail to realize that mastery is not about perfection. It’s about a process, a journey. The master is the one who stays on the path day after day, year after year. The master is the one who is willing to try, and fail, and try again, for as long as he or she lives.”


Thanks for reading this post!  As a gift, I’d like to give you this excellent eBook for FREE!  


Just CLICK HERE, and I’ll send you this eBook, featuring chapters from John Spence, Jeff Klein, Charlie Kim, Michael Carroll, Ted Prince, David Marquet, and Ben Lichtenwalner.
Great Cultures, Interviews, Personal Development, Servant Leadership

Capitalize The “We”

Great Leaders Focus on Capitalizing the We

i can’t believe that i never noticed this before.  Reading the other day, i wondered why the personal pro-noun “i” is always capitalized, but not “We”.  Great leaders focus on capitalizing the We.

Although we might just view this as a convention of language, to me it is quite striking that our language capitalizes the “i” but no other personal pronoun.  It is a reflection of our attachment to the importance of the individual over the importance of the greater good.

Perhaps this can help explain why we tend towards selfishness.  Language is a key element of our worldview.  If our language is set up to value ourselves over others, our minds are more inclined to do so as well.

As i reflected on this, it occurred to me that the more ideal language structure would be to only capitalize the personal pronoun, “We.”

Great leaders know that one of the keys to success is focusing on the We more than the i.

If we’re promoted into a leadership position, it’s probably because we’re really good at what we do.  One of the most difficult challenges most leaders face is to continuously be shifting away from the idea that “i have to do it,” and moving towards, “We do it together.”

As leaders our success is no longer measured by our personal accomplishments. Our success is measured by what our people accomplish as a team.  This requires a whole new skill set.  It requires us to always be thinking in terms of We.

When We think in terms of We more often, We naturally find ways to better serve our people.  When We serve our people, they better serve our customer or members.

This is the secret to success isn’t it.  The organization that best understands and meets the needs of the customer or the member is the one that wins in the long term.

Here’s an interesting experiment.  Try eliminating the word “i” from your vocabulary for a day and replace it with “We”.

What do you notice when you try this out?


Thanks for reading this post!  As a gift, I’d like to give you this excellent eBook for FREE!  


Just CLICK HERE, and I’ll send you this eBook, featuring chapters from John Spence, Jeff Klein, Charlie Kim, Michael Carroll, Ted Prince, David Marquet, and Ben Lichtenwalner.
Matt's Insights

How to Become A Level 5 Leader

How to Become What Jim Collins Calls A Level 5 Leader: An Interview With Mary Jo Asmus

A former executive in a Fortune 100 company, Mary Jo Asmus, PCC is the founder and president of Aspire Collaborative Services.  She is an executive coach, writer, and consultant who partners with great leaders to help them become even greater at developing, improving, and sustaining relationships with the people who are essential to their success.

I recently had the chance to interview her, and ask her to share some of the ways she helps great leaders get even better.  Below is the transcript:


A part of your executive coaching work that I find very interesting is that you actually create action plans for helping leaders become “Level 5 leaders,” which are leaders that Jim Collins found through extensive research to be most effective at taking an organization from “good to great.” Could you share your thoughts on why humility and high achievement drive for the greater good are such important qualities of Level 5 leaders?

First of all, I want to make it clear that I don’t create the action plans; the leaders I work with do, with my guidance, based on feedback they’ve received and behavioral goals they are passionate about working on. In a way, this speaks directly to humility (the feedback addresses their “opportunities for development”) and drive (their desire to work on goals that are important to them to help them become great leaders). So we start out with these characteristics of humility and drive from the very start as foundational to the work we do.

Humility is important because it keeps a leader in a learning mindset. The humble leader understands that they don’t know it all, and that they need to count on others to help them. This is important in our fast moving, competitive business world. If a leader doesn’t continually stay in touch with others in order to learn, the pace of change may get ahead of them, causing them to fall behind and ultimately fail.

Drive is important to achieve goals, pure and simple. Leadership is simple in concept, difficult in practice. Very few are actually “born leaders” in my opinion, and it takes significant effort for most to bust through the barriers to become a Level 5 leader. Although I completely understand Jim Collins’ definition of Level 5 leader who is focused on the “greater good” of the company, many of the barriers experienced by a leader in critical stages of their development are self-imposed, requiring a leader to have the energy and ambition to look at themselves with a critical eye and overcome them. This takes a lot of courage and requires an internal focus before a leader can be fully focused on goals for the organization.

Could you share the top three most important ideas you would offer for helping a leader become a Level 5 leader?

1. Get honest feedback often from your stakeholders in a way that they can’t B.S. you (confidential 360 instruments and interviews conducted by a third party are the best way to get this kind of feedback). Find out what behaviors are working and which ones aren’t, and get to work on yourself.

2. Know yourself well. The better you know how you think and react, the better you know what’s important to you, the better you’ll be in a calamity, and you will have at least one of those in your leadership journey.

3. Take care of yourself. Even though a level 5 leader may want to give away everything for the good of the company, if they give away their mental or physical health, they cannot lead well. This requires as much attention to one’s physical and spiritual energy as to their vision and passion for the organization.

Part of your work includes helping leaders move from “me” to “we.”  Could you elaborate on what you mean by this?

Most leaders can become better at relationships with those around them. This requires effort, because so many of them have been promoted because they are great at getting things done, but may lack some critical people skills. Getting things done as a lone wolf might work for a while, but at a critical juncture, they realize they can’t do it all themselves. Leadership isn’t a one-person show, and the few times that I’ve seen someone believe that is the case, they’ve burned out or just plain failed. The best leaders I know put people first, knowing that when they’ve developed great relationships and a system of support around them, they’ll be stronger and more successful than they would by themselves.

Why do you think this is so important? Are there specific, measurable business outcomes that you’ve found are more easily achieved by a leader who has moved from “me” to “we”? 

Of course! If our organizations were filled with individual contributors who hadn’t grasped the concepts of working with others in order to be stronger, they’d be tripping all over each other. It would be utter chaos, and I could imagine very little getting done. You only need to look at the studies to see that leaders who have worked at the soft skills get hard numbers from their employees.

How can a leader develop a more self-less, we-centered mentality?

Make developing relationships every bit as important as achieving your vision, mission, and strategy. I always thought it was strange that organizations put these huge, complex strategic plans in place but don’t address the soft skills that it takes to achieve them, like everything will get done by magic. You actually have to be as strategic about relationships as you do about everything else you’re doing by asking, “who do I need to reach out to?” and then begin your strategies with relationships first. The “doing” will find its own way after that.



Thanks for reading this post!  As a gift, I’d like to give you this excellent eBook for FREE!  

Just CLICK HERE, and I’ll send you this eBook, featuring chapters from John Spence, Jeff Klein, Charlie Kim, Michael Carroll, Ted Prince, David Marquet, and Ben Lichtenwalner.
Communication, Interviews, Personal Development, Servant Leadership

Surprising Links Between Cockroaches, Compassion, and Profits

A Guest Post that Appeared on The Huffington Post on the Surprising Links Between Cockroaches, Compassion, and Profits

On a recent Saturday morning, when walking into my guest bedroom, I noticed that a rather large palmetto bug (a.k.a. cockroach) had found its way into my home. This happens occasionally during warm months. Usually the bugs are on their backs, near death, or already dead. However, this one was spunky!
I practice catch and release with these critters (I’ll explain why in a moment), covering them with a cup, then sliding a thin piece of cardboard under the cup, carrying the critter outside, and quickly sliding the cup off of the cardboard. This sends the bug falling safely onto the earth, where they usually scurry off to hide from the light.
The little feller I released on this particular Saturday didn’t like the idea of falling safely to the earth and decided to fly: Not just to break his fall, he really started flying! In fact, he flew right back at me. I stepped to the side quickly to get out of the way and when I looked to see where he had landed, I couldn’t find him. There were only a couple places to hide on my small porch – under my running shoes, or on me.
To read the rest of this post, please click here to see it at the Huffington Post.

Thanks for reading this post!  As a gift, I’d like to give you this excellent eBook for FREE!  


Just CLICK HERE, and I’ll send you this eBook, featuring chapters from John Spence, Jeff Klein, Charlie Kim, Michael Carroll, Ted Prince, David Marquet, and Ben Lichtenwalner.
Great Cultures, Innovation, Matt's Insights, Servant Leadership

A Powerful Tool For Empowering Your People – Brian Burt, CEO of MaestroConference

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A Powerful Tool For Empowering Your People – an Interview with Brian Burt, CEO of MaestroConference

In this interview with MaestroConference CEO, Brian Burt, you’ll learn about some amazing tools for empowering your employees, creating ownership mentality, and having significantly better meetings.  This one tool completely transformed the culture at MaestroConference.

At Charles Schwab, Brian led many multi-million-dollar technology projects in the areas of telephone technology, marketing, and CRM systems. He has also led a very successful consulting firm specializing in large technology project leadership, and has co-hosted events with Deepak Chopra, Jack Canfield, Marianne Williamson, and many others. He is a skilled facilitator who also holds a Master’s degree in Mathematics / Mathematical Economics.  To learn more about MaestroConference or Brian, please visit: http://maestroconference.com/

To learn more about Holacracy, please visit: http://holacracy.org/





Thanks for reading this post!  As a gift, I’d like to give you this excellent eBook for FREE!  

Just CLICK HERE, and I’ll send you this eBook, featuring chapters from John Spence, Jeff Klein, Charlie Kim, Michael Carroll, Ted Prince, David Marquet, and Ben Lichtenwalner.
Communication, Great Cultures, Interviews, Servant Leadership

Michael Hyatt – Platform – A Guide to Building a Large Online Following

A Review of Platform, By Michael Hyatt

A great guide to building a large online following by integrating blogging and social media.

I just finished reading an excellent book by Michael Hyatt, called Platform: Get Noticed In a Noisy World.

I had a hard time putting this one down. It is a must read for anyone who would like to increase the size their online following.

Michael is clearly an expert on building a platform.  Over 330,000 people are subscribed to his blog, MichaelHyatt.com, and he has over 190,000 twitter followers.
Why is this important?

  1. If you run a business or a non-profit, having a large platform is a more effective tool for marketing than traditional advertising unless you have a lot of money to spend on large campaigns.  A platform allows you to generate lots of word-of-mouth exposure that people trust a lot more than they do paid advertising.
  2. If you’d like to publish a nonfiction book, the first thing publishers look at is the size of your platform.  Case in point, I actually have a tentative book deal with one of the largest publishers in the world.  They learned about my book idea, which they love, as a result of a personal introduction from one of their authors.  But I won’t actually have a contract with them until I grow my platform a bit more.
  3. If you’d like to share your ideas as a speaker, having a large platform means that instead of having to spend a lot of time and money on marketing, people will contact you. 

Platform is a well-written book that is easy to read.  I finished it in a few hours.  In the book, Michael offers a complete, step-by-step guide to building your platform.  You’ll find at least an introduction to every aspect of growing an online following in this book, as well as lots of great resources for going deeper into the more complex elements of building an online following that are beyond the scope of the book.
What could having a large online following do for you?


Thanks for reading this post!  As a gift, I’d like to give you this excellent eBook for FREE!  


Just CLICK HERE, and I’ll send you this eBook, featuring chapters from John Spence, Jeff Klein, Charlie Kim, Michael Carroll, Ted Prince, David Marquet, and Ben Lichtenwalner.
Book Reviews

How to Create a Highly Innovative Culture (Part 2)

Last week, in Part 1 of this post, we clarified what innovation is, and discussed how we can predict whether or not someone will be innovative based on the strength of a cognitive bias called the status quo bias.  Here in Part 2, we’ll discuss how to apply this knowledge toward creating a highly innovative culture.
Because of the skill required to work with highly innovative people, organizations that are fortunate enough to have such people on their team often find it quite difficult to keep them on the team.
This is especially true for large organizations.  Nothing will drive away highly innovative people more quickly than high levels of bureaucracy.  Most large organizations become increasingly bureaucratic as they grow.  As a result, they drive away innovators and gradually become less innovative as an organization.
 
There are, of course, exceptions to this general trend.  It is possible, even in large companies, to create a culture that attracts and retains highly innovative people and, perhaps more important, helps people who are not naturally very innovative (the vast majority of people) to be more innovative as well.  The key ingredient for creating and sustaining such a culture is being committed to serving and caring for our employees. 
Two excellent examples are Google and the software giant, SAS, which are among the most innovative companies in the world.  Every year, these two companies are also both highly ranked among the best companies to work for.  On the 2013 list of the Fortune Magazine Best Companies to Work For, they were listed as number one and two, respectively.
The examples of how Google works to care for employees are almost legendary.  They include free, on-site haircuts; gyms; pools; break rooms with video games, ping pong, billiards and foosball; on-site medical staff for easy doctor appointments; and the option to bring one’s dog in to work. 
But Google didn’t invent this type of incredible workplace culture.  They actually emulated the culture at SAS, a company that has produced absolutely phenomenal business outcomes.  SAS has posted record earnings for 37 consecutive years, including $2.8 billion in 2012.  CEO Jim Goodnight often says that the secret to their success is taking care of their employees.
One reason serving and caring for our people is so effective for building and sustaining a highly innovative culture is that when we truly care about our people and are committed to helping them grow, we don’t stifle innovation by worrying about our own position.  Instead of thinking that we have to come up with all the good ideas to look good as leader, we are happy when our team has great ideas.  Leaders who are more focused their own performance, instead of on leading their people well, tend to micromanage, which erodes trust and crushes innovation. 
When we truly care about our people and are committed to helping them grow, we are also much more likely to trust them and give them high levels of autonomy.  Providing high levels of autonomy is one the most important elements of attracting and retaining those rare, highly innovative people who abhor bureaucracy but can add so much value to our organization. 
Perhaps more important, serving and caring for our people can help employees who are not naturally innovative to become more innovative.  Most people have a fairly high status quo bias.  As we discussed in Part 1 of this post, this means that they are very unlikely to suggest and act on ideas that are contrary to the status quo – i.e. ideas that are innovative – because of their fears of rejection and not fitting in and, in the case of the business world, fear of being fired.
When we are focused on serving our people and consistently caring for them, these fears are alleviated.  With consistent care and trust, our people trust us more, and they know that we will not fire them for taking appropriate risks and making mistakes.  The more secure people feel, the more likely they are to suggest and act on innovative ideas.   We are essentially removing the status quo bias by removing the status quo.
Jim Goodnight of SAS offers a great example of just how powerful this can be.  In the fall of 2008, the Great Recession was imminent.  SAS faced the same issues that every other company in the analytics software industry faced.  Sales plunged due to the budget cuts almost every business was making in preparation for what seemed like a long downturn.  Other companies in the industry started laying off large numbers of employees. 
But Goodnight’s response to the recession was dramatically different, as Mark C. Crowley, author of Lead From The Heart: Transformational Leadership For The 21st Century, describes in an article he wrote for FastCompany:

“In early January 2009, Goodnight held a global webcast and announced that none of its 13,000 worldwide employees would lose their job. He simply asked them all to be vigilant with spending and to help the firm endure the storm.  ‘By making it very clear that no one was going to be laid off,’ Goodnight told me, ‘suddenly we cut out huge amounts of chatter, concern, and worry – and people got back to work.’ What likely will be astonishing to many is that SAS had record profits in 2009 even though Goodnight was perfectly willing to let his then-33-year track record of increased profit come to an end.

“At 70 years old, Goodnight holds the conviction that ‘what makes his organization work are the new ideas that come out of his employee’s brains.’ He therefore holds his employees in the highest esteem. So while he fully anticipated that the recession would constrain the firm’s short-term revenues, he instinctively knew that his team would produce breakthrough products while his competitors were cutting costs.  And even four years later, his commitment to his people has paid off handsomely. Said Goodnight, ‘new stuff we’re rolling out this year is going to take the market by storm.’”


Thanks for reading this post!  As a gift, I’d like to give you this excellent eBook for FREE!  


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Great Cultures, Innovation, Matt's Insights, Servant Leadership

How to Create a Highly Innovative Culture (Part 1)

In the business world today, “innovation” is quite the buzzword.  We’ve all likely heard things like “innovation has to be a top priority in our organization,” “we must be continuously innovating,” “innovation this,” and, “innovate that.”  Although the word is used often, there seems to be a lack of clarity on what innovation actually is.  In Part 1 of this blog post, we’ll discuss some fascinating research on profitability from the prestigious Perth Leadership Institute that clarifies the issue, and will lay the foundation for how we can create a highly innovative culture in our organization, which we’ll discuss in Part 2 of the post.
Dr. Prince, the founder and CEO of the Perth Leadership Institute, conducted groundbreaking research that links the personality traits of managers directly to impacts on gross margin and expenses.  Each personality trait is the result of what is known in Psychology as cognitive biases.  Although Dr. Prince found 10 cognitive biases that have significant, direct impacts on gross margin and expenses, there are two biases that, according to his research, have the greatest impact on the bottom line. 
One of them, the status quo bias, is also an excellent predictor of whether or not a person will be innovative.  The research of the Perth Leadership Institute shows very clearly that innovation has a tremendous impact on gross margin.  In fact, we can predict quite accurately how a manager will affect gross margin simply by measuring how innovative that manager is.
Even intuitively, I believe this makes perfect sense.  There is a direct correlation between how unique a product or service is and the price someone is willing to pay for it.  Thus, the more innovative someone is, the more likely she is to create products and services that add value for the consumer, which also increases the profit margin for the organization offering the product or service. 
The status quo bias results in a strong preference for maintaining things the way they have been.  It is based on our need to fit in.  As you might guess, most people have at least a moderately strong status quo bias.  The need for belonging is one of the most powerful human needs, and doing things that buck the status quo can certainly be associated with taking the risk of not being accepted by others.  Unfortunately, the stronger this bias is in a person, the less likely he is to come up with innovative solutions to problems that add value to his organization or for customers.
A person with little or no status quo bias is a person who will consistently innovate.  This is the type of person who has no problem suggesting and acting on ideas that are completely outside of the proverbial box, even if that idea is rejected as silly by numerous people over long periods of time.  In others words, someone with little or no status quo bias typically doesn’t care what other people think about them or their ideas.  A good example is the late Steve Jobs, who was known for being one the most innovative people of our time, and also for being a bit of jerk.
One thing you might have noticed in the description above is that creativity was not mentioned.  Perhaps the most common misperception about innovation is that it is synonymous with creativity.  Although creativity can assist in innovating, it is certainly not necessary.  In fact, there is research showing that people who are “too creative” are actually very unlikely to innovate.
This is because innovation has a lot more to do with execution than it does with creativity.  Someone who has too many creative ideas often never sticks with one of the ideas long enough to create the disruption in the field, marketplace, etc., that we refer to as an innovation.  The most important element of being innovative is the ability to stay with an idea long enough, even in the face of significant opposition, to actually make the idea a reality and have it adopted by at least a small group of people.
A perfect example of this is Bill Gates, another one of the most innovative people of our time.  Gates did not create DOS, which was the foundation on which Microsoft was built.  He bought DOS from people that were likely much more creative than him.  But those people weren’t innovators.  They didn’t have the vision and the guts to stick with their idea for years, despite having no real market for it, until the market emerged around their idea.  But Bill Gates did.  He is an innovator.

In Part 2 of this post, which will appear next week, we’ll discuss the ironic and surprising essence of applying this knowledge toward building a more innovative culture in your organization.  

Thanks for reading this post!  As a gift, I’d like to give you this excellent eBook for FREE!  


Just CLICK HERE, and I’ll send you this eBook, featuring chapters from John Spence, Jeff Klein, Charlie Kim, Michael Carroll, Ted Prince, David Marquet, and Ben Lichtenwalner.
Great Cultures, Innovation, Matt's Insights

How To Be a Better Remote Leader – Raul Lopez, President of Phoenix Multicultural

It is rare to find great examples of humble leaders who truly serve and care for their employees.  It is even more rare to find a leader who is doing this effectively despite having to lead a remote team.  I recently had the honor of interviewing Raul Lopez, who does just that.

Mr. Lopez is the president of Phoenix Marketing International, Multicultural Division, but spends most of his time working from the home office or traveling.  In this interview, you’ll find some valuable insights into being a better servant leader, whether you see your people every day or you lead a remote team.

To learn more about the Phoenix Marketing International, Multicultural Division, click here.

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Interviews, Servant Leadership