The Brainzooming Group

• Presentation Zen
• istockphoto.com – when I bought Presentation Zen, there’s a code in the back for an initial discount on your first istockphoto credit purchase.
• Leslie Adams – her blog and cool pictures!
• Flickr.com – photo sharing and more (I think…remember, I still need to learn more about it!)
• Creativecommons.org – helping creative people protect and share their work.
• Veer.com – a fun creative and photo / image site. Its design approach really drove the early design work on “Creative Instigation.” (And as I write this, it strikes me there’s no reason the style I used there couldn’t surface here to provide some more creative variety!)

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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I’m a heavy-handed editor – ask anyone who works with me. At least I go through many rounds of editing my own stuff also (Exhibit A is at the right). Writing so much for the blog, however, has forced a more structured approach with specific editing rounds. Here are steps I’ve learned that may help you be a faster writer:

• Keep something around to capture ideas – don’t let even remotely good possibilities evaporate.
• Mine, combine, dissect, twist, and edit ideas into a first draft. Get a complete version down irrespective of whether the sentences are complete.
• People want shorter material so start with a word limit. Five hundred words used to be my maximum. Based on reader preferences, I cut it to 300, with many under 200.
• Edit to tighten the prose on the next pass. Also consider rearranging elements to make it work better. Surprising how often an article’s conclusion becomes its new intro following this editing round.
• Run a spelling / grammar check to check the word count and help catch typos. Print it, read it aloud, read it backwards – anything to see it with fresher eyes since you’ve been through it several times.
• Shorten it even more – reduce the word count by 10 to 20% on the final edit. It may seem challenging, but the result is invariably stronger.

Now you’re set to start your own blog and crank out 60,000 words by next year!

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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Today’s the first anniversary of my initial blogging foray. Thanks for being a loyal audience and offering suggestions throughout for improving it!

The blog started after a presentation on corporate blogging by Jessica Myers of Garmin Industries. She said that anybody could start a free blog in 10 minutes. Several weekends later, I started with the expectation of writing twice weekly. It was intended to create something instructional beyond presentations, provide more permanent life to strategy and innovation ideas, and maybe form the basis for a book.

After posting the first article, I emailed my creative instigation partner Jan Harness, suggesting she start a creativity blog. She responded that current commitments made that unrealistic; that was Saturday.

Next thing I knew, I received an email about Jan’s first Creative Instigation blog post. By Tuesday, she’d written two articles. By Wednesday, it was clear she’d be posting daily. It took me several weeks, but out of competitiveness, I started writing daily too. It was a great example of the creative instigation approach we practice.

Looking at the initial objectives, the blog has:

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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Muhammad Ali was famous for the “rope-a-dope,” a technique he used to beat defeat George Foreman and regain the heavyweight boxing title. What Ali did was stand on the ropes and let Foreman pound away for more than seven rounds. Foreman eventually wore down, and Ali went on the attack, knocking Foreman out in the eighth round. The strategy was effective because of his patience and ability to absorb as many punches as it required for Foreman to tire.

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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There are at least two distinct ways to start a communications assignment. You can begin by asking, “What do I want to say?” or “What is the audience looking for and ready to hear?”

During a recent joint writing project, there were groups wanting to start with each question. It quickly became clear that the end result differed based on which question was the beginning point.

So which is the right way? It’s to answer both questions before you start writing.

It’s important to first know the communication objective (ask, “What are we trying to accomplish?”) and then swing around and sit in the audience’s seats. Process what you want to say with their eyes, ears, and minds as best you can to determine how what you want to communicate needs to be shared so they receive the intended message.

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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I’ve written before about “Real Simple” as a great magazine to use for ideation. There’s a column called “The Motivator” by Gail Blanke that unfortunately ended in the September 2008 issue.

From the ones I’ve seen, she does a great job of highlighting approaches to deal with a whole variety of personal and business challenges. Her final column addresses both how to give and how to take criticism – equally challenging issues for many people. Check it out along with another pertinent strategy and innovation topic – how to think on your feet.

And if you know any winning political candidates from yesterday, forward this post to them. They’d certainly benefit from reading up on these two topics as well!

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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People ask me frequently during speeches and presentation about which employees should be thinking strategically in business. My perspective is the best organizations cultivate some strategic thinking skills in all employees. While that idea’s frequently received skeptically, especially by senior executives,  it comes from the view that strategic thinking is about “addressing things that matter with insight and innovation.”

The definition suggests strategic thinking is about applying knowledge, good judgment, and a creative perspective within one’s job functions and scope. It clearly doesn’t mean strategic thinking is only limited to senior executives setting a company’s overall direction.

So while not everyone’s involved in corporate strategy, a broad group of employees should be tapped into innovative strategic thinking. In that way, they can evaluate their tactical activities against “what matters” when the typical business rules aren’t working.

That requires information sharing with employees and education on what’s important to the business strategically, how they contribute to that, and the parameters for them to exercise strategic judgment in assessing what matters. It’s certainly not easy, but it should contribute to better performance and customer experiences for any organization. – Mike Brown

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 brainzooming@gmail.com or call 816-509-5320 to learn how we can get your Brainzooming!

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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