- Ideas are the currency of success.
Never underestimate, never undervalue the potential
of a seemingly small, simple idea
to make a profound difference in your organization.
A felt marker.
A simple felt marker has ended up saving lives
of patients all over the world.
Dr. Rob Hackett, you see, an anesthetist from Great Britain,
showed up at the operating room one day
with his surgical cap on.
Probably a good practice to do that.
But, there was something a little different about Rob today.
He had written with a felt marker, a simple felt marker,
not exactly an expensive or high tech solution.
He had written his name and his job title on the cap.
So it said Rob, anesthetist.
Now the first few times
he showed up for operations with this,
his colleagues, let's face it, they laughed at him.
They mocked him a little, ridiculed him,
until the idea caught on.
And until they realized, we are saving lives here.
You see, seconds, in an operation,
can be the difference between life and death.
And it was cutting down on miscommunication,
misidentifying roles and names.
Name recall went up from 42% to 85%.
People doing the checklist,
medical staff doing the proper checklist
with role and names, went up through the roof.
Patients loved it because they found it more reassuring
to see everybody's names on the surgical caps.
And it was more environmentally friendly
because medical staff started reusing
their own surgical caps.
It ended up saving thousands of dollars.
And then, they issued a challenge that went around the world
for all medical staff to take up this very simple idea.
It went viral under the #theatercapchallenge.
Talk about a simple, low cost, low-tech idea,
making a huge, profound difference, maybe even saving lives.
When we talk about ideas being the currency of success,
let's keep the perspective that we're not just talking
about those huge, massive, breakthrough,
paradigm-shifting, transformative, game-changing,
world-changing, disruptive ideas
that are going to shake up your entire industry.
More often than not,
we're talking about just those simple, small ideas
that make a difference.
We're talking about those ideas
based on that continuous-improvement mindset.
So those 1% ideas to improve your culture,
those 1% ideas to grow your business,
those 1% ideas to cut your costs.
And remember, the power of small ideas.
It may seem like a small cost saving, this idea,
but when you multiply it across all of your offices
and if you're international, around the world,
those small ideas can transform into tens of thousands,
hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars.
It happens all the time.
Or conversely, a simple idea
that makes you a little bit more money,
that earns you a little bit more revenue
when applied across your entire organization,
can add up to enormous, enormous dollars.
We're talking about those small, one-inch ideas,
going the extra inch ideas with your customer service.
We're talking about ideas to streamline processes
and improve bureaucracy in just simple, small ways.
So do not, as I said,
underestimate the value and the importance
of small, simple ideas inspiring workplace cultures.
Remember that ideas are the currency of success
and you need, as a culture leader, to create an environment
on your team, in your organization,
that is an incubator for ideas of all shapes and sizes.
So here are six reasons why you, as a culture leader,
why your organization needs to be intentional
about building an environment
that is conducive to creativity,
that promotes innovative in your organization.
Number one, I'm going to say it again.
Ideas are the currency of success.
You need them to survive.
You simply cannot grow your business
or manage the day-to-day challenges and problems
that you confront, unless you have a steady stream of ideas.
We all need ideas at an individual level,
at a team level, at an organization level.
They are the currency of success.
And another reason not to discount the importance
of small ideas is, keep this perspective in mind,
it's easier for one of your main competitors
to copy those big breakthrough ideas
that you may take on in your business.
They can just adapt that idea, steal that idea outright,
and in implement it in their culture, in their business.
But it's a lot harder
to replicate a whole whack of small ideas
that are making a difference in your customer service,
small ideas that are giving you that competitive edge.
Number three, creativity
is becoming a more and more sought-after skill,
a sought-after characteristic of employees
when organizations are looking to hire or promote employees.
So you should develop, at an individual level,
and your team should develop their creativity skills.
And by the way, all the research shows
that you aren't just born creative.
You don't just have it or not have it.
You can learn to be more creative.
You can grow that muscle of creativity,
which is why it's important
to provide training on creativity to your team,
to your employees, to your entire organization.
But organizations are looking like never before
to hire with creativity in mind.
In fact, a massive survey of 1,500 CEOs
from 60 different countries and 33 different industries
found that the top trait CEOs said they wanted
in their employees was creativity.
It outranked management skills, discipline,
and even integrity.
They wanted creativity above anything else
from their employees.
Number four, explicitly giving your employees permission
to be creative and asking your employees for ideas
and asking them to be creative
drives curiosity about your business.
And you wanna drive curiosity about your organization
because employees develop a sense of ownership,
a sense of accountability,
if they become more curious about your business.
And there's a chicken and egg relationship here.
When they become more curious about your organization,
chances are, they will start to ask more questions
and they will see and come up with more ideas.
And conversely, the more you ask them to be creative,
the more curious they will become.
So they feed off each other, curiosity and creativity.
Number five, it's highly motivating to be creative.
There's been experiments done where people get paid
to be more creative on all sorts of different projects.
And some of the experiments show
that that will sometimes backfire.
That there is such an intrinsic motivator
an internal motivator in most people
that drives our desire to be creative,
that putting an external motivator on it,
like money or pressure, will backfire sometimes.
It's just that powerful a motivational influence.
And surveys suggests that some people will choose less pay
if they are allowed more creative freedom in another job.
So it really, really is motivating
to create a creative environment.
Because again, it gives employees a sense of ownership.
It gives them a connection in their jobs.
It makes them part of the conversation.
And there's a chicken and egg relationship here yet again,
because we know that employees
who work in a positive work environment
tend to be more creative.
All the research shows that.
But as well, when people are more creative at their jobs,
that helps contribute to that more positive, open,
work environment that drives success.
And the sixth and final reason to take this topic seriously
is because it is fun.
I'm gonna talk about the relationship
between humor and creativity, how ha + ha = aha.
But we have to remember the reverse is also true.
As Dr. Joel Goodman once said, "Humor and creativity
are like kissing cousins of each other".
So if you wanna have more fun at work,
we have to remember that ha, ha also = ha + ha.
The reverse equation is also true.
And here, by the way, is why you need to be,
as a culture leader,
intentional about ideas in your workplace.
I've surveyed audiences all over the world for 20 years,
I've done online surveys.
And all the surveys I've read,
that ask this question,
tend to come up with the same results.
And the question is just simply this, where are you,
what are you doing, when you come up
with those light bulb moments?
The top five answers in all of my surveys
tend to be these five.
Driving,
exercising,
in the shower,
in bed, either asleep or just lying in bed,
and in the washroom.
Now you may have noticed
something rather important missing from the list.
What never seems to show up on the list is work.
Evidently work is where ideas go to die.
So you, as a culture leader,
need to be intentional about this
if you want to create a culture that is conducive to ideas,
a culture that allows ideas to grow and thrive,
and be part of your culture.
So in this module coming up, in the videos coming up,
we're going to look at some of the things that block,
that get in the way of creativity at work.
Then we're gonna talk about the importance
of creating a culture of questioning,
how questions drive the creative process.
Then we're gonna look at some things that you can do,
best practices to get more ideas
and better ideas from your employees.
How to create a psychologically safe space for ideas
because that is absolutely critical.
And then we're gonna talk about some ways
to turn those ideas into action.