The Brainzooming Group

Most of the time the Brainzooming blog shares strategy, innovation, and creativity ideas while consciously trying not to tout what we do at The Brainzooming Group. Our hope is by sharing intriguing and insightful content on strategy, innovation, and creativity, you will want to explore more deeply how The Brainzooming Group can improve your organization’s performance. Suffice it to say, we do not toot our own horn too much. (Did you like the way I got both “tout” and “toot” into the same paragraph? That will make the SEO grading apps crazy.)

Why Change Is Hard and 3 Ideas for Making Change Easy

Recently I was reading (okay, listening) to, Switch (affiliate link), the book on change by Chip and Dan Heath. I was struck by how The Brainzooming Group successfully addresses what Chip and Dan Heath identify as three of the main points from Switch addressing why change is hard:

Why Change Is Hard #1: Organizations resist planning for change because it is too complex or too hard

Our Approach for Making Change Easy: At The Brainzooming Group, we refer to this challenge of planning for change as the “can’t get over the hump” problem. We see it repeatedly. Smart organizations with solid people get only so far with developing implementing strategy, but cannot get any further.  Sometimes the answer is strategic thinking tools; sometimes it is resources; sometimes it is strategic focus.

In the Brainzooming process, we analyze what the sticking point is and apply the correct “lubricant” to move the process forward. When you have built up the arsenal of strategic thinking tools and successful creativity approaches we have over the years, finding the answer to move a strategy toward implementation is quick.

Why Change Is Hard #2: People have a fear of failure, so they won’t even try to think about what should be changed, much less make the effort to change it

Our Approach for Making Change Easy: We account for the probability of failure as we design our strategy thinking process. As a result, we inoculate you against being afraid of change. The Brainzooming Group helps you generate a significant number of ideas and concepts as we temper the natural inclination to censor or needlessly debate whether ideas or concepts are good during the early stages of strategic thinking.

We don’t leave you with a pile of uncategorized and unusable ideas, though. We have tested strategic thinking tools to help organize, categorize, and evaluate the new you generate. Knowing the chaff is going to be thrown away helps people not be afraid to generate the kernels of wheat (or nuggets of gold) that lead to successful change.

Why Change Is Hard #3: There is too little attention paid to building upon success and too much attention placed on solving problems

Our Approach for Making Change Easy: The Brainzooming process helps you solve problems. Just as important though, we also help organizations better recognize what they are doing right and provide them the structure and options for building upon that success.

Would You Like to Make Change Easy? At Least Easier than It Has Been?

Thank for indulging this exploration on how the Brainzooming process accomplishes relative to making change easy. We’d love to talk with you about the opportunities and issues in your organization where you are finding change is hard. We’ll return tomorrow to our usual focus on less self-referential issues of strategy, innovation and creativity. Today though, I wanted to point out specific ways we help smart organization make successful change easy. – Barrett Sydnor

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The Brainzooming Group helps make smart organizations more successful by rapidly expanding their strategic options and creating innovative plans they can efficiently implement. Email us at info@brainzooming.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can help you enhance your strategy and implementation efforts.

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Barrett Sydnor

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In the U.S. nearly twenty cents out of every dollar we spend goes to healthcare. It’s the biggest driver of future budget deficits, the source of most personal bankruptcies, and attempts to reform the system have driven much of the political dialogue—and theater—over the past four years.

Healthcare should be an area ripe for innovation, creativity, and new ways of approaching problems. This past week ten groups presented their best hacks for healthcare innovation at the Hackovate Health Innovation Competition presented by Think Big Partners, sponsored by H&R Block, and hosted by Kansas City’s own Ramsey Moshen. Presenters were vying for a $15,000 grand prize as well as the attention of H&R Block as the company contemplates how it might play in the healthcare arena.

Held in the historic and creatively inspiring Union Station in Kansas City, the finale included presenters from Boston, Los Angeles, Miami, Seattle, Ireland, and Pakistan as well as from the Kansas City area.

Five Ways to Hack the Affordable Care Act

Below, are quick slice synopsis of the five presentations I found most compelling, including what I saw as the most interesting healthcare innovation by each and what I think could come between them and success.

OkCopay, Inc.

What it does: Makes health care pricing more readily available to uninsured and underinsured.

Interesting innovation: Makes health care pricing in the elective areas—dental, vision, cosmetic—truly transparent to people that have little experience or comfort in that arena, particularly the uninsured.

What could go wrong: The revenue comes from provider promotions. That is a labor intensive sell and also might raise credibility issues with users.

Naya Jeevan Rejuvenate

What it does: Provides low-cost health care insurance and care management to traditionally uninsured consumers.

Interesting innovation: Model was developed in Pakistan, now being applied to U.S. market with coming of ACA and health insurance exchanges. Gets companies with big stake in their supply/distribution chain viability, e.g. P&G, to provide subsidies. Uses holistic approach including Nike Fuel band-like device and ePharmacy benefit.

What could go wrong: May not work in the much higher cost U.S. system. Companies may not be as willing to provide subsidies here are they are in developing markets.

SHHADE – Supplying Home Healthcare Alternatives and Dedicated Education

What it does: Takes advantage of the ground-breaking work done by Dr. Jeffrey Brenner in identifying healthcare cost “hotspots.” Brenner’s work in New Jersey found that not only did 20% of patients produce 80% of the costs, but that there was also a geographic component.

Interesting innovation: Uses an intense managed care approach to working with hotspot patients, including mobile primary care service, remote patient monitoring, health coaching, and care coordination. Their geopod approach seems extremely scalable.

What could go wrong: Only get paid if they can reduce cost to insurance companies of the hotspot patients. What if savings aren’t as great as business model predicts?

Aavya Health

What it does: Makes biometric data—which drives more than 70% of healthcare decisions—more useful and understandable for the layman.

Interesting innovation: Can use data ranging from simple height and weight to complex lab results. Translates them into meaningful results, e.g. “Your heart age is X,” and then provides ideas and solutions for making health better.

What could go wrong: Could be hard to get people to input the data. Who provides the revenue stream is somewhat uncertain.

GetHealth

What it does: Provides users both a mobile and web platform to keep track of their healthy and unhealthy activities and compare themselves to friends and family

Interesting innovation: Simple, well-designed and branded approach to making being healthy a friendly, collaborative competition with yourself and those important to you.

What could go wrong: Does it end up being just another seldom used app among the dozens on everyone’s smartphone.

Healthcare Innovation – Is your organization involved?

Major themes of the other presentations revolved around helping people understand and navigate through their insurance options—including the coming health care insurance exchanges—and different ways the health care market can be made more efficient and transparent..

One other important takeaway: there is a striking diversity of organizations working at healthcare innovation. They range from the usual suspects, such as medical groups and healthcare IT suppliers, to the less expected, ranging from experts in customer experience to young college grads from Ireland who decided they and others can use smartphones to be healthier.

And that raises the question: should your organization be part of healthcare innovation, even if you don’t currently think of yourself as being in that space? – Barrett Sydnor

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming blog email updates.

The Brainzooming Group helps make smart organizations more successful by rapidly expanding their strategic options and creating innovative plans they can efficiently implement. Email us at info@brainzooming.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can help you enhance your strategy and implementation efforts.

Barrett Sydnor

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Kansas City was blessed with two significant architectural design innovation breakthrough project in the last third of the 20th century, with both coming from the same architectural tree—the firm of Kivett and Myers.

One design innovation will be on display Tuesday night, when the MLB All-Star game returns to Kansas City for the first time since 1973. Kauffman Stadium (nee Royals Stadium) and its fraternal twin at the Truman Sports Complex, Arrowhead Stadium, set the standard for modern sports design. The Kansas City firms attached to Kauffman Stadium and Arrowhead Stadium made Kansas City ground zero for architectural design innovation in sports stadiums, ballparks, and arenas. Hardly a major sports stadium or arena gets built globally without a Kansas City architecture firm being involved or being the benchmark against which other firms are judged.

Source: Kansas City Aviation Department

The other architectural design innovation breakthrough was Kansas City International Airport (KCI). After it opened (also in the early ‘70s), it became the model for airports from Dallas to Germany to France to South America. Kansas City International Airport was designed on a “drive to your gate” concept that allowed departing local passengers to have as little as a 75 foot walk from the vehicle depositing them on the terminal curb to the entrance to the airport jet way.

As a result, if you live in Kansas City, you love Kansas City International Airport. If, on the other hand, you have connected through Kansas City, you probably hate it. With the advent of enhanced security, what was once an architectural design innovation is now a struggle if you have to change planes—much less, airlines–or to find any amenities if you have to layover.

When Innovation Outlives Itself

In the case of the sports stadiums, when they began to show their age and fell behind the amenities offered at newer sports stadiums, the voters and the Kansas City sports teams decided to invest more than $500 million and update. But they stayed true to the original design innovation breakthrough concept.

Kansas City International Airport, however, faces a more difficult decision. Many Kansas City locals still love it, but it has too many buildings (and too many gates), an increasingly outmoded security system for passengers and baggage, significant environmental issues, and a challenge to offer the conveniences out-of-town flyers expect.

What KCI does have is the visionaries who built it in the first place being willing to call for another architectural design innovation, saying, “Do something different.”

At a recent roundtable discussion on KCI, Past, Present and Future, Bob Berkeble lead designer for KCI, and Hanan Kivett, nephew of Clarence Kivett and a former architect with Kivett and Myers during the construction of KCI, both said it was time for the city to move on.

Berkebile challenged the architects of the city to come up with something even better, even more innovative, “It’s a new opportunity to celebrate Kansas City.”

Looking Ahead for Another Innovation Breakthrough

That is likely the mark of a true innovator, someone who does not live in the past, but recognizes when it is necessary to search for the next defining innovation. – Barrett Sydnor

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming blog email updates.

The Brainzooming Group helps make smart organizations more successful by rapidly expanding their strategic options and creating innovative plans they can efficiently implement. Email us at info@brainzooming.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can help you enhance your customer service in a smart way without seeming as if you’re micro-managing the customer experience.

Barrett Sydnor

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Google Fiber recently held an event at the Kansas City Public Library exploring the state of Internet access in Kansas City, a.k.a. the digital divide. When I was signing in, a Google rep at the registration desk noticed that I was from The Brainzooming Group and said, “Brainzooming. We use that Gigabit City report you produced all the time.” She was referring to the “Building the Gigabit City” report that we produced with the Social Media Club of Kansas City after an intensive brainstorming session at the very same library last fall, which involved more than 90 community leaders and interested citizens from around the Kansas City metro.

That was a reminder how ideas build upon one another and that answers often must percolate a while—and be addressed from different perspectives—before they move forward toward implementation.

The Digital Divide in the Gigabit City

One focus of the “Building the Gigabit City” report was the urban core in Kansas City. Many of the participants in the urban core brainstorming session group were concerned about the digital divide. The question of whether urban core residents, particularly those who are older and with fewer economic resources, might be left even further behind once ultra-high speed Internet came to town was a particular focus in the brainstorming session. The digital divide has also been a recurrent theme in the work of the Mayors’ Bi-State Innovation Team and is reflected in its playbook.

The Google digital divide event provided additional data points, including an excellent take from John Horrigan of TechNet on why we should be concerned about the digital divide even if we are on the other side of it. In his talk, John Horrigan highlighted multiple impacts of the digital divide:

• Increased costs to society of the digital divide
• Greater challenges for people to gain access to jobs
• Negative educational outcomes resulting from the digital divide
• Limits on our ability to deal with the increasing cost of healthcare in the US.

Horrigan also made the point that while mobile access to the Internet via smartphones does bridge part of the digital divide gap, it falls short in both quality of experience (because of the limiting nature of the small screen) and in depth of experience (because of increasingly onerous data caps and throttle).

At the Google digital divide event, Google unveiled some excellent research that not only quantified the the size and the geography of the digital divide, but also drew some conclusions about why it exists, and offered insights into how the digital divide might be bridged.

Addressing the Digital Divide

The reality of the digital divide is a reminder that truly profound innovation and creativity carries not only the burden of producing breakthrough ideas, but also of producing the path by which people can use those ideas in a broad and sustainable manner.  –Barrett Sydnor

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How can ultra high-speed Internet speeds drive innovation? “Building the Gigabit City: Brainzooming a Google Fiber Roadmap,” a free 120-page report, shares 60 business opportunities for driving innovation and hundreds of ideas for education, healthcare, jobs, community activities, the digital divide, and more.  Download this exclusive Google Fiber report sponsored by Social Media Club of Kansas City and The Brainzooming Group addressing how ultra high-speed Internet can spur economic development, growth, and improved lifestyles globally. 

Barrett Sydnor

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Most marketers would agree that having and demonstrating they know the customer well is a key to great customer service. Nevertheless, it is possible to go overboard when trying to know the customer well. The signs I found in a Western Kansas Days Inn demonstrate  that knowledge can also be a little disconcerting when it’s less about providing great customer service and appears to be more about micro-managing the customer experience.

Don’t Clean

For instance, not sure I wanted to know—via this sign on the table by the television—that the customer experience of the previous occupants of my room had possibly involved cleaning game or boarding hunting dogs where I was walking around barefoot.

Do Clean

On the other hand, I found it interesting that those same bird-shooting, dog-keeping occupants were significant consumers of beauty aids that must be removed with a special cloth.

Did You Clean Enough?

Finally though, I did appreciate that while the hotel management was going to charge me if I stole any of the linens, that they were going to check daily to make sure that I was following good hygiene practices.

How do you want to see a brand managing your customer experience?

How do you react when it feels as if a brand is micro-managing the customer experience? Do you appreciate the deep knowledge they have about you and does it translate into great customer service? Or would you prefer the brand simply back off and give you some room? – Barrett Sydnor

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming blog email updates.

The Brainzooming Group helps make smart organizations more successful by rapidly expanding their strategic options and creating innovative plans they can efficiently implement. Email us at info@brainzooming.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can help you enhance your customer service in a smart way without seeming as if you’re micro-managing the customer experience.

Barrett Sydnor

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Are you making sure the strategic questions you use are “open, neutral, and lean”?

There is a lot on the Brainzooming blog about the value of collecting and asking great strategic questions. Complementing those articles, a recent piece from the Pointer Review Project Blog by Jason Fry on the ESPN website highlighted a recommended strategic question formula. The recommendation comes via John Sawatsky, a well-known Canadian investigative reporter.

Sawatsky uses a method he developed systematically over the last thirty years that centers on open, neutral, and lean questions. The breakthrough to his strategic question formula occurred working with students to conduct research for a book on Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. Each week during the project, he gave all his students the same questions to ask potential interviewees. He expected some students to be good interviewers and some not so good, but nearly without fail, the type of question determined success more than an individual interviewer’s skills.

Sawatsky found that “open, neutral, and lean” questions were consistently more successful at getting interview sources to open up with answers that yielded useful information and insight.

What are Open, Lean, and Neutral Questions?

Here are the three characteristics and how they play into the strategic question formula:

• Open questions – These can’t be answered with a “yes” or “no.” Open questions probe on what, how, and why.
• Neutral questions – The queries avoid adding value statements and judgments, which distract and bias the respondent.
• Lean questions – As the name suggests, these are brief and conceptually simple. Lean questions keep the respondent on point and don’t allow them to pick and choose what they want to answer.

This strategic question formula is an intriguing guide in not only developing new questions, but checking those already in use to make sure they’re as productive as possible.

What ways do you hone strategic questions you use? How might the open, neutral, and lean question formula influence your approach? – Barrett Sydnor

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The Brainzooming Group helps make smart organizations more successful by rapidly expanding their strategic options and creating innovative plans they can efficiently implement. Email us at info@brainzooming.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can help you enhance your strategy and implementation efforts.

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A significant barrier to being consistently and effectively innovative is the wall that says you are not succeeding unless you (or your team, or your company) is creating “The Next Big Thing.” But our lives, business and personal, are full of hundreds of small things. The people and companies that make those small things easier to use, more convenient, or less costly are doing yeoman’s work in both incremental innovation and creativity, even if they never create the big thing.

Here are three such small examples of incremental innovation that I’ve come across—two come from recent travels and the third is due to our hot, wet Kansas City spring.

1. Travel soap that doesn’t melt as easily.

The soap holder in nearly every hotel/motel shower I have ever used is a magnet for water. Ergo, the soap you put there is soon a molten mess. If you put bumps on the bottom of the soap bar, however, it stays out of the water, lasts longer and is more pleasant to use.

2. More counter space with no increase in room size.

Staying in that same incremental innovation space—literally. It isn’t often that a hotel/motel bathroom has anywhere close to enough counter space for one, much less two people’s health and beauty products. At this Red Lion in Denver, they did not make the bathroom bigger, but they did increase the counter space by making the toilet tank lid flat with a small lip around the edge.

3. Making yard work fun slightly more tolerable.

It’s been hot early in Kansas City this year and that has resulted in significantly more grass mowing. If you have a mower that uses a gas/oil blend, you know how hard it is to get that mix right. The number of ounces of oil you can buy seldom matches the size of your gas container. Ace Hardware is solving that problem. With its container for two-cycle oil you squeeze the bottom section until you have the desired amount in the upper section. Then you can easily pour that amount—and only that amount—into the gas can. You get the right mix and you pay less for the oil, because you can buy more at a time and you have no waste.

Yes, each of these may represent an incremental innovation, but I was thankful for them. And I remember who was responsible and it has upped the chances of me returning to that hotel chain and that hardware store.  – Barrett Sydnor

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming blog email updates.

The Brainzooming Group helps make smart organizations more successful by rapidly expanding their strategic options and creating innovative plans they can efficiently implement. Email us at info@brainzooming.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can help you enhance your strategy and implementation efforts.

Barrett Sydnor

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