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Here are three recent branding strategy situations I’ve come upon. Have you experienced any of these three branding situations? If so, how did you react? Or if not, what’s your reaction to them here?

FedEx Office and an Ingredient Branding Strategy

As a Kinko’s customer since grad school and watching FedEx grow its brand portfolio from the a competitor’s vantage point, it was understandable, but sad, when FedEx rolled over the beloved Kinko’s brand, turning it into FedEx Office after its acquisition. FedEx was notorious for a strong master brand strategy (i.e., all its transportation and logistics offerings were FedEx something or other), and the Kinko’s brand fell to its tightly implemented approach. WhileFedEx CHANGED the brand name, its master brand strategy wasn’t successful in getting customers to QUIT SAYING Kinko’s or some hybrid version of the old and new names.

Just this past week, I noticed FedEx Office has addressed the naming issue in the classic Intel way, going the ingredient branding strategy route. An ingredient branding strategy highlights a brand that lives inside another one even though it might not be visible to customers. In this instance, FedEx Office is once again acknowledging the Kinko’s brand as an ingredient of the overall brand experience by recognizing it is “Kinko’s Copying Inside.” It may be a late move (it’s not completely clear when the change first took place or if it’s happened uniformly), but it shows the importance of the willingness to change a brand strategy that’s not working as expected.

Southwest Airlines and Off Brand Advertising

I’m an unabashed Southwest Airlines fan and have written (and tweeted) about the brand several times on Brainzooming, including profiling the Southwest Airlines social media strategy. During the NCAA tournament this weekend, I saw the new Southwest Airlines brand advertising campaign.

In short, I guess you would describe it as an identity campaign trying to help us see how Southwest Airlines understands us or knows what its passengers are going through in their lives. You can watch the ad here and see what you make of it.

I tweeted immediately after seeing the new Southwest Airlines brand advertising campaign that it is off brand. The advertising isn’t fun, personal, or representative of any reasons I choose to fly Southwest Airlines. Perhaps as the brand has had to walk away from its peanut-loving, low-cost airline position it’s still looking for something else.

Interestingly, this was the first time Southwest Airlines has EVER responded to one of my tweets, as shown here.

@brainzooming Sorry it disappoints, Mike!  I’ll still spin plates and juggle fire for you, if you so desire! ^BT

— Southwest Airlines (@SouthwestAir) March 23, 2013

My reply was it wasn’t really an issue of whether I was disappointed in the ad.

The point is this new Southwest Airlines brand advertising could have come from any other airline. When you look back at previous Southwest Airlines advertising, I cannot remember even once when that was the case. And that, my friends, is not the sign of a brand moving forward.

Making a Big Promise with Your Brand

Finally, how willing is your brand to feature a big brand promise right on your building (You’re Gonna Love This Place!) or in your name (Stellar Books)?

I’m not saying don’t put a big brand promise front and center to continually remind your customers you’re reaching for their highest expectations. But if you’re going to do it, you had better be ready to deliver on your big brand promise no matter what!

How Is Your Branding Strategy Doing?

If you’re new to the idea of branding or struggling to strengthen your brand, contact The Brainzooming Group. We can help you identify and take advantage of your best branding opportunities in new ways! - Mike Brown

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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.

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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What to blog about and how to do it is a frequent search bringing people to the Brainzooming blog. This demand for ideas relative to blogging has prompted a considerable amount of blog-oriented content the past 18 months.

That much content on a particular topic always prompts requests for a post that pulls together and organizes the content in one place.

Since I’m conducting a blogging workshop on creating fantastic content for a business blog, we’re meeting two needs in one in this post with a compilation of blogging content that also serves as a primer for participants in the content class.

There are nearly forty articles organized, but if you feel as if you’re still struggling with how blogging can support your business strategy and where to get started, email (info@brainzooming.com) or call us (816-509-5320). We’ll get your business-producing social media effort going in a smart, successful direction.

Deciding to Have a Blog and Objective Setting

• Top 10 Reasons Your Organization Doesn’t Need a Blog . . . Today – It’s a trick headline. Your business does need a blog, starting now.
• “The 6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track” – Before starting your blog, download this free Brainzooming overview on how you should think about metrics and the impact a blog can have on your business.
• Blogging – 10 Permissions for Freelance and Small Business People – Trust us. If you’ve been hesitating on starting a blog for your small business for a bunch of lame reasons you’ve blown out of proportion, read this right now.

Developing Your Content Marketing and Brand Personality

• Creating Intriguing Social Media Content – 3 Fundamental Steps  - It’s not hard to create compelling content.
• A Strategic Creative Brief – 4 Benefits for Your Communications Efforts – You’ll have a stronger more sustainable blog if you begin with a strong idea of where you’re headed and who you’re targeting with your blog.
• Outside-In Blogging Strategy – Creating Robust Social Media Topics – Look outside your organization for what to blog about and identifying regular content becomes much easier.
• Social Media Content Personality Audit – Is Your Brand Personality There? – Simply because you are blogging for business doesn’t mean your personality needn’t show through in your content. No personality translates to no reason for readers to seek out your content.

Creating a Regular Blogging Schedule and Editorial Calendar

• Deciding Whether to Ditch Your Blogging Schedule – What Do You Want to Achieve? – How often you blog comes down to your business objectives, not whether you are inspired to write.
• Our Daily Blog Strategy – 5 Reasons The Brainzooming Blog Won’t Ditch It – Here’s why a high-frequency blog has made sense for us targeting a B2B market. And there are even more reasons since this post originally appeared.
• An Editorial Calendar: An Age-Old Collaborative Work – Creating an editorial calendar helps you stay better on track and publishing your blog regularly.
• Content Marketing – Space It Out Over Time – Manage your content, your time, and the expectations you place on your audience.

What to Blog About

• Social Media Content Ideation: Think – Know – Do – A tremendously efficient way to generate hundreds of content marketing  ideas.
• What to Blog About? 187 Ideas and Topics for Blogs, All in One Place – Our biggest list of links to specific blog topic ideas for business-oriented blogging.
• What to Blog About – 10 Ideas for Blogging through the New Year – There are specific topics you can blog about near the end of year when many blogs halt content creation and take advantage of readers looking for end of year information.
• Social Networking, Personal Relationships & 7 Content Strategy Questions – For business owners considering social media, there can be concerns about how much they reveal about themselves. This post contains advice and help to work through those concerns.

Structuring Your Blog Posts

• In Praise of Short Blog Posts – Blog posts don’t have to be 1,500 words. Write shorter to save time and trouble – for you and your readers.
• List Posts – 2 Tips for Creating More Popular Blog Posts – List posts work, plain and simple. Some list posts are long; some list posts are short. This gives you a rationale for when you should use which.

Blogging for B2B and Larger Companies

• A Collaborative Business Blog: Handling Senior Management Concerns – When the idea of blogging has to be sold to others, you may have some challenges. Here are some ways to counter typical concerns.
• Blog Topic Ideas – Social Media Content Strategy for a Large B2B Company – While these content marketing ideas apply to any business, larger B2B companies have tremendous content creation opportunities, if they take advantage of them.
• Social Media Policy – Whats and Whens Behind Your Guidelines – Questions to help you think through issues to consider in customizing your social media policy.
• Social Media Mistakes You Shouldn’t Be Making in Business-to-Business - Based on real-life examples, these are easy to correct social media mistakes business-to-business companies may be making.

Making the Most of Your Blogging and Social Media Time

• Social Media Productivity – 13 Tips to Maximize Your Time – Make all your content work as hard for you as possible in multiple venues.
• 15 Ideas to Make Your DIY Social Media More Successful – If you have few people and a lot to do on social media, these ideas will help maximize your effort.
• 20 Strategies for Making Your Solo Social Media Effort More Successful – 20 more ideas to get the greatest impact from an efficient implementation.
• Search Engine Optimization Strategy – Getting Smart on the Essentials – An available resource to get started on understanding search engine optimization to improve your blog traffic.

Getting Your Blog Content Seen

• Social Media – 5 Tips to Sharing an Evergreen Blog Post – Once a blog post is written, take advantage of every opportunity to use the content repeatedly in appropriate situations.
• SEO and Keyword Research Tool Use – 3 Blog Traffic Growth Ideas – Tools to help you become a better search engine optimization writer while you write.
• Content Curation – 5 Strategies from Celebrity Entertainment News Shows – Look to cheesy entertainment news shows for ideas you can incorporate into your social media sharing strategy.

Blogging Tips and Tricks

• What to Blog About and How – 25 Blogging Lessons from 5 Years and Social Media Content – Lessons in Creating Fantastic Content – Recaps of lessons learned from years of daily blogging.
• Blogging Success – 18 Blogging Ideas You Haven’t Read on Brainzooming – Ideas we haven’t pursued for the Brainzooming blog gleaned from a prominent blogger’s webinar on social media strategy.
• Reduce, Reuse, Recycle – 9 Ways to Green Your Blog – 9 tips to get more mileage from your social media effort.
• What to Blog About – 3 Ways Blogging Generates More Blog Posts – Once you get started blogging, it gets easier . . . most of the time!
• Social Media Content – 7 Ways to Repurpose What You’ve Written – More ideas on using what you’ve created over and over and over again. Then repeating.

Getting Help for Your Social Media Effort

• 3 Must-Haves for Driving Social Media – Just being young and having a Facebook page doesn’t mean someone is adept at social media. Look for these three characteristics in your social media team.
• Need a “Repair Your Blog” Tip? – 9 Ideas from Restaurant Impossible – When your blog needs a fix, here are nine ideas to consider when putting together your repair plan.

• Resuscitating a Near-Death Blog - Five steps to getting a floundering blogging effort back on its feet.

• Social Media Expertise – Why Wouldn’t You Demand It? – If someone is trying to sell you social media services, but they don’t seem to engage in social media for their own business, you need to ask some hard questions.
• Who Is Creating Social Media Content in Your Organization? – Depending on what you want from your content marketing, you may have to settle or enlist various people within your organization to participate.

Mike Brown

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If you’re struggling with determining ROI and evaluating its impacts, download “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track” today!  This article provides a concise, strategic view of the numbers and stories that matter in shaping, implementing, and evaluating your strategy. You’ll learn lessons about when to address measurement strategy, identifying overlooked ROI opportunities, and creating a 6-metric dashboard. Download Your Free Copy of “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track!”

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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Suppose you used to be a blogger with a healthy blog, but because of some unforeseen accident, your site has suffered a blog heart attack. Your content production has collapsed and there are only faint indications your blog is still alive.  If that sounds familiar, here are five steps you can take as part of your blogging strategy to administer CPR and try resuscitating a near-death blog.

If it’s a personal blog, start at Step 1. If you’re evaluating what to do with a business blog, start at Step 2 – you simply need to get it going again!

Step 1. Evaluate whether you REALLY want to resuscitate your blog

There must be some reasons – good or not – why your blog needs resuscitating. As a result, it makes sense to see if your blog might not be dead already. Maybe the topic or format has run its course, and whether you realize it or not, there are “do not resuscitate” orders you should heed. Check your Google Analytics. Is the blog is still getting traffic? Is anyone asking what happened to the blog? If not, maybe it’s simply time to move on to another project.

Step 2. Move into action and re-establish some pattern of content flow

If you’re moving ahead to save your blog, start with some type of regular content, even if it’s once a month. It’s imperative to demonstrate – more to yourself than to anyone else – you can sustain a regular pace. One way to do this is to go with very short content, even if that’s a break with your past practices. At this point, consistency with whatever schedule you decide upon is an important step to re-establish life in your blog.

Step 3. Go light on the explanations at first

Rather than making a big production about your absence, simply restart publishing. Unless there’s been a significant brand promise you’ve breached with your audience by letting your blog flounder, just get started publishing again as if nothing happened. After you see some signs of life and decent vital signs, then perhaps go back and catch readers up on what was going on during the blog’s absence.

Step 4. Reinvigorate your content distribution channels

Unless your blog is deeply introspective and doesn’t depend on anyone ever seeing your content, you need to get your old audience back in the game. Get the word out on your typical social media channels (assuming you haven’t let those flounder too) and start the work of re-building your readership. Perhaps tweak the blog to ensure more than ever it’s easy to subscribe via email and simple to share your content on appropriate social media networks.

Step 5. Once you stabilize the blog, consider a re-launch as part of your blogging strategy

If you’ve kept up with your blogging lite schedule and starting to see reader interest once again, think about re-launching your blog. Is there a new design that better fits where you’re going now? Are there new types of content that fit better with your interests and schedule? Do opportunities exist to add new channels to your social media sharing that will help dramatically grow what you’re doing with the blog? If so, go ahead and dive in with a big splash and a dramatically different approach to what you’ve done before.

Do you have experience resuscitating a near-death blog?

If you have been successful at resuscitating a near-death blog, what worked for you? And I you’re thinking about the need to get a blog of your own going again, what’s been standing in your way? - Mike Brown

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

If you’re struggling with determining ROI and evaluating its impacts, download “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track” today!  This article provides a concise, strategic view of the numbers and stories that matter in shaping, implementing, and evaluating your strategy. You’ll learn lessons about when to address measurement strategy, identifying overlooked ROI opportunities, and creating a 6-metric dashboard. Download Your Free Copy of “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track!”

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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Following up our post on tools and exercises for enhancing strategic thinking skills, I started jotting down a list of clues indicating  you’re not dealing with a strategic thinker.

The reason?

These clues should suggest someone who would most benefit from taking time (if you could get them to do it) and working on the strategic thinking skills to improve business performance.

29 Clues You’re Not Dealing with a Strategic Thinker

As typical, I didn’t begin with a target number of clues for the list. Here are the twenty-nine clues that came to mind.

Photo by: ad Rian | Source: photocase.com

It’s a clue you’re not dealing with a strategic thinker when an individual:

1. Wants to limit strategic conversations to senior management
2. Shuns thinking and perspectives from others
3. Doesn’t respect other business functions in the organization
4. Has a reputation for poor strategic relationships in the organization
5. Feels strategy is complex (or has to be complex to be good)
6. Disconnects strategy from day-to-day organizational activities
7. Doesn’t understand his/her own personal limitations and thus doesn’t compensate for the limitations with a strong, complementary team
8. Becomes easily focused on a personal view of ” reality” and can’t entertain alternative possibilities
9. Is uncomfortable considering multiple ideas and possibilities for addressing a situation
10. Won’t break or even bend an arbitrary rule that doesn’t make sense
11. Is unwilling to question the status quo
12. Is put off by questions from people considered subordinates
13. Is quick to cut off exploration of multiple alternatives in the interest of not over thinking things
14. Struggles to shift between taking time to explore new ideas and then moving to prioritize ideas and make decisions
15. Automatically equates “strategic” with long- term and “tactical” with short-term
16. Struggles with the idea of serving those seen as subordinates
17. Is reluctant to do homework to help prepare others to make solid decisions and implement them successfully
18. Struggles to make challenging decisions
19. Spends too much time on easy, solvable issues that don’t produce value for the organization or its customers
20. Spends more time talking than asking questions to better understand situations
21. Shuts down when faced with dramatic changes to a personal view of reality and/or what’s necessary to sustain that reality
22. Doesn’t function well when there are significant unknowns in a situation
23. Automatically views doing something new / different as better than doing the smartest thing
24. Automatically views doing the same thing as better than doing something different because of lesser perceived risk
25. Loses track of agreed to priorities – for whatever reason
26. Spends too time on things that don’t matter for the organization
27. Struggles to generalize situations so they are more understandable to non- experts
28. Is quicker to argue than finding ways to agree
29. Tends to dominate conversations

Does this list describe anyone familiar to you?

Do you see co-workers’ behaviors in this list? If so, how many of the strategic thinking skills behind this list do the lack? No one is going to have all the strategic thinking skills one could have, but I’m not sure yet how many “Yes” answers signal you will have challenges getting an individual involved in strategic thinking. Based on running some people I’ve worked with previously through the questions, I’m guess a score of 10 or more means someone is a weak, or at least problematic, strategic thinker.

What strategic thinking skill gaps would you add, subtract, or modify on this list?

It would be great to have you shape this list of clues you’re not dealing with someone that has strong strategic thinking skills. You can share your ideas in the comments or check out tomorrow’s post to learn about a more dynamic way to create and have a group participate in collaborating and shaping lists. It’s an idea I’ll be investigating, without a doubt!  - Mike Brown

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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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When the Brainzooming blog started, its focus was to be on strategy, creativity, and innovation. In fact, the first five Brainzooming posts in 2007 framed our views on strategic thinking and its importance as widely distributed function within organizations. A number of years later, the compilation of those five posts (our “Strategic Thinking Manifesto”) still receives strong readership and social media sharing.

Since these first posts, there have been well over six hundred posts on Brainzooming categorized under “Strategic Thinking.” Given all that strategic thinking content, it’s a good time to update our framework. In conjunction with updating our “Creating a Strategic Perspective” workshop, we’re sharing both the structure and links to a subset of the relevant Brainzooming content underpinning the workshop today.

Strategic Thinking as an Ongoing Approach

The “Cultivating a Strategic Perspective” workshop is organized in two sections:

• 4 Characteristics of Solid Strategic Thinking
• Applying Strategic Thinking Daily – Tools and Techniques to Foster Successful Strategic Thinking & Implementation

4 Characteristics of Solid Strategic Thinking

1. Strategic Thinkers Seek Perspectives from Multiple Sources

• Three Important Perspectives – Strategic Thinking Success – 3 Critical Thinking Perspectives
• Strategy Can Be Simple - A Simple Strategy Check
• Benefits of a Whole Brain Perspective – Right Brain, Left Brain, Whole Brain?
• Involving a Team of Great Thinkers – Strategy Challenges? Share Them with a Great Strategy Team

2. Strategic Thinking Goes Beyond Today’s Reality

• Finding Multiple Paths to Innovation – Innovation – Can Successful Innovation Only Happen in a Certain Way?
• Suspending Conventional Wisdom to Imagine New Ideas – Unwrap New Insights!
• Brainstorming to Deal with an Uncertain Future – A Career-Changing Business Quote – 10 Years Later
• Altering Your Familiar Perspective – A Poor Question for Valentine’s Day: “Can You Change Your Look?”
• Imagining Possibilities – Saturday Special – More Benjamin Zander from TED

3. Strategic Thinkers Question Both the Familiar and the New

• Cultivating a Strategic Perspective through Questions – BrainzoomingTM – First Questions and Strategic Thinking Questions to Identify What Matters for a Brand
• Developing Strong Strategic Questions – Great Strategic Questions – A 3-Step Strategic Question Formula  
• Protecting New Thinking – How Creative Thinking Gets Killed by Team Members – 8 Fatal Blows

4. Strategic Thinkers Display Both Patience and Impatience

• Balancing Patience and Action – Patience – Strategic Advantage or Disadvantage?
• What It Takes to Make Strategic Patience Work – The Waiting Game Strategy and “Wait” by Frank Partnoy – Making It Work
• How Brainstorming Can Provide Value for Your Organization – The Value of Brainstorming Techniques for Business Ideas
• Time Doesn’t Determine What Is Strategic – If Not Time, Then What Else Matters?
• Playing a Subtle Strategic Leadership Role – Tactically Influencing Strategic Situations
• Determining What Type of Change Strategy Is Right – Creating Change and Change Management – 4 Strategy Options

Applying Strategic Thinking Daily

Using Rich Strategic Questions

• Collections of Strategic Planning Questions – 20 Innovative Strategic Planning Questions to Prepare for Next Year and 15 Innovative Strategic Planning Questions to Get Ready for Next Year
• Questions to Prompt Extreme Creativity – 9 Extreme Creativity Questions from Peter’s Laws
• Questions to Prompt Innovation and Disruption – 11 Strategic Questions for Disruptive Innovation in Markets

Anticipating Future Issues

• Anticipating the Future in Your Industry – A Strategy for Predicting the Future More Accurately
• Imagining Unexpected Events  - Strategic Thinking Exercise – Black Swan Events in Your Plan

Finding Ideas with Intriguing Connections

• Looking for Analogous Situations – New, Innovative Ideas – Strategy Planning with What’s It Like
• Reaching for Tough to Find Comparisons – Creative Thinking Skills – Comparing Apples and Oranges 7 Ways
• How Would Someone Else Do It? –  Need New Creative Ideas? Change Your Character

Generating Many Ideas Quickly

• Transforming the Current Situation for Many Ideas – 1 Great Way to Be More Creative Each Day

Innovating Amid Constraints

• Limiting the Possibility of Performance Issues – Constraining the Possibility of Poor Results
• Limiting Your Resources and Still Succeeding – The Simplicity of Next to Nothing
• Developing New Ideas when Constrained by Too Many Similar Alternatives – 24 Ideas for Dilbert (and You) When a Great New Idea Is Lacking
• Limiting the Need for Too Much Performance – Convergent Thinking Week – A BDTP Perspective

New Thinking with Old Ideas

• Helping Your Organization Be More Innovative – New Business Ideas and a Creative Block in Your Organization
• Exploiting Ideas Leftover Ideas – Creating from Creative Residue – Brainstorming for Later Use
• Making Old Ideas Extraordinary – A Friday Shrimp Special
• Reusing and Recycling Ideas –  New Year’s Resolutions – Be More Derivative, Creative, Fun and  Strategy in Action – Suzy and Jack Welch & Fast Company Links
• Changing Familiar Ideas in New Ways – Diet Coke Can Redesign – Branding and Creativity Lessons
• Being Better at Borrowing Ideas – Reinterpreting Creative Inspiration – 7 Lessons to Borrow Creative Ideas

Addressing Unknowns

• Dealing with Knowledge Gaps – Strategic Thinking Tip – Keep Going!
• When Rapid Timelines Create More Unknowns – Twenty-One Project Management Implications of Wanting Things FAST
• Forcing Faster Decisions when Information Is Missing – Making a Decision – 7 Situations Begging for Quick Decisions  

Efficiency and Results

• Targeting Your Best Successes – Ted Williams and Focusing on Your “Happy Zone”
• Prioritizing by Value with Stoplight – Reinvent Yourself Week – Look and Ask Around
• Where Brainstorming Provides Value – Innovation and the Value of Brainstorming
• Knowing When to Stop Brainstorming – Brainstorming Ideas – 10 Signs You’re Done Brainstorming

Envisioning Possibilities

• Simple Ideas for Visual Thinking – Visual Thinking Skills – Getting Them in Shape with Letters and Shapes
• Using Graphs More Effectively – Graphs for Visual Thinking – Problem Solving with 2 Lines
• Using a Matrix More Effectively – Visual Thinking Tools – A Matrix Is a Hard Working Tool
• Visual Thinking Overview Presentation – by Liz Burrow, Burlix Studio http://ow.ly/i9vVj (Slideshare)
• The Marketer’s Visual Tool Kit by Terry Richey  (Affiliate Link)
• The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures by Dan Roam  (Affiliate Link)

Telling a Strategic Story

• The One-Page Recommendation Format – Improve the Success of Your Letters to Santa – Guaranteed!
• Making Strategic Messages: Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, Story-filled – Made to Stick – Chip and Dan Heath (Affiliate Link)

Working Across and Up an Organization

• How an Idea Evangelist Works – Innovation Strategy with a New Audience  
• Things to Listen for in a Potentially Adversarial Conversation – Find Agreement in an Adversarial Conversation – 10 Things to Listen For
• 5-Level Decision Making –Level 5 Decisions – Decision Making without Your Influence
• Sharing Interim Thinking – Dirty Ideas? Let Others Clean Up Your Creative Thinking
• Seek Out Emerging Experts – You Find Experts Everywhere You Look
• Making New Team Members Successful – New Employee Success – 5 Ways to Create Success for New Ideas
• The “Dinner Table” Analogy for Team Interaction – Project Management – Dinner Table Analogy for Project Team Members

Managing Challenging People

• Diagnosing the Difficult Personalities around You – The Periodic Table of Corporate Behavior
• Five Ways to Keep the Boss from Dominating Strategy Planning – The Process of Strategy Planning: 5 Ways to Keep the Boss from Dominating
• When Someone Doesn’t Want Your Help – Assistance Unwanted – 5 Management Style Signs Helping Is Futile
• Taking Advantage of Critical Thinkers – Creative Thinking Skills – 5 People Vital to Critical Thinking, Literally
• Sharing the Credit for New Ideas and Success – Creative Quickie – Share the Credit!

Would Your Organization Benefit from Stronger Strategic Thinking?

If your organization would benefit from stronger strategic thinking, we’d love to share our expertise and tools through workshop training. Delivered in-person or online, all at once or spread over multiple sessions, The Brainzooming Group approach can help your people improve their skills in identifying new, strategic opportunities and turning them into market realities. Call (816-509-5320)or email us (info@brainzooming.com) to get started! - Mike Brown

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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 Blogapalooza guest post is from Jessica James. Jessica has been working for one of the world’s larget casual dining restaurant chains since 2006. She is currently working on completing her master’s degree in journalism from The University of Kansas. We’re excited to share Jessica’s seven lessons for creative success – lessons that are a valuable guide to creating no matter the industry in which you work!

Creative Success – A 7 Lesson Guide to Creating by Jessica James

For 15 years, I have been in the business of creating new products and ideas. The first eight years were formative; learning my craft, sharpening my skills, networking, and building a reputation – finding my way in an all-consuming industry.  The last seven years have been innovative – a culmination of what I have learned, whom I’ve had the opportunity to know, and the creative success challenge that comes with maintaining relevance everyday.

From these innovative years, I have identified seven lessons for creative success that are my guide to creating.

1. Take Notes…and Use Them!

I use the Notes app on my iPhone everyday.  Perhaps I’m a bit OCD, but I have lists for everything.  Ideas for my house.  Ideas for upcoming projects.  Wines I need to try.  Places I need to go.  Anything that might be useful for inspiring creativity down the road gets logged into notes.

I read the notes a few times a week, usually at night when unwinding.  I use this time to focus on something that may have grabbed my attention earlier and think about how it might apply to things I’m working on now. This process is very helpful in balancing my decisiveness and impulsiveness with my desire to present researched and thought out ideas.

2. Read All the Time

This ties to the first creative success tip.  If you’re taking notes all the time and generating lists, chances are, you’re reading things that are interesting and relevant to your personal and professional life.

I try to read a mix of things– parenting magazines, fashion magazines, cooking magazines, trade journals, blogs, websites, social media outlets, news magazines, Twitter, and the occasional ‘trash magazine.’ A mix of information will keep your ideas fresh and give you a perspective and creative success you would not otherwise have.

3. Focus on the Fix

When creating things, it is inevitable people will challenge your products or ideas, valid or not.  Don’t minimize your creative critics.  Pay close attention to your critics and what they are saying.  Be discreet about it and you will stay ahead of them.

Think about how things might go wrong and focus on how you would fix them.  Do this all the time – not just when something is near completion.  Have the voice of your creative critics in your head and use it to fine-tune your work.

4. Stay Organized

I read once somewhere (affiliate link) that creative people tend to achieve their best creative success in environments described as organized chaos.  To the contrary, analytical left-brained people work best when things are tidy, organized and maintained.  I relate to this.  My desk at work has piles of things that haven’t moved in a month or so, but I could tell you the contents of every pile. It’s a mess, but it’s organized.

Keeping your ideas and projects in organized and accessible piles or files will help you prioritize and shift gears quickly from one project to the next if needed – something critical in today’s world of news updates by the minute.

5. Do Things You Hate to Do

This is nothing new.  You should do things that make you uncomfortable.  It helps to vary your perspective on your life and work.  It makes you stronger.  Most importantly, doing things you hate to do builds character and makes you more interesting.

I recently joined my undergraduate university’s alumni association.  I was not involved on campus at all when I was there.  I was a non-traditional student who lived off campus and attended classes a few nights a week for three years.  I joined the alumni association to feel more connected to the hundreds of dollars per month I am about to start paying back as a result of student loans that funded my private, Jesuit-school education.

I don’t really enjoy my time spent with the association.  The monthly commitment is always preceded by me trying to think of how I can get out of it. The people are nice; they are just nothing like me. They are Catholic, very connected to the university, know one another, and are all adverse to taking risks or creating conflict.  They are homogenous and tend to surround themselves with people just like them. Needless to say, this experience has given me a better understanding of how to interact with people comfortable with status quo.

6. Consult a Consulate

It didn’t take me long to realize my creative success was tied directly to the success of others and their willingness to aid me when I needed it.  The half a dozen or so people I rely on most are a motley crew of experts, inside and outside of my industry.

Being nimble and being able to rally others to help you make things happen is critical to the creative process.  I’m connected with lawyers, artists, tech-guys, photographers, producers, entrepreneurs, writers, police & firemen, and educators.  You never know who will spark an idea or make a connection to redirect your path to success.

7. Fail

Being creative comes with a lot of failure.  I generate over five hundred ideas every year; half of those might be shared with other people and only a dozen or so might come to fruition.

A lot of creative success comes with a lot of failure.  Don’t be afraid to fail; fear will only hold you back. Each time you fail, you should learn something.  Each failure should change your perspective.  Creative success is built on a foundation of failure.

And what does creative success look like?

What’s the theme that ties together this seven lesson guide to creating? Always remember that creative success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm!  - Jessica James

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“Diversity and Ideas in the Porous Community” will be my talk at the first-ever TEDxWyandotte on April 2, 2013 at Kansas City Kansas Community College (KCKCC).

TEDxWyandotte – Core Impact: Exploring Ideas that Enrich a Community

The theme chosen by TEDxWyandotte curator Shari Wilson, Jay Matlack, Organizing Committee Chair, and the rest of the organizing committee is “Core Impact: Exploring Ideas that Enrich a Community.”

Among the other presenters announced so far are Adam Arredondo, CEO and co-founder of Local Ruckus, and Afro Cuban band, Making Movies. There are a number of other fantastic speakers representing compelling community efforts, but I’m sworn to secrecy until they are officially announced!

This will be my first TEDx talk after attending a variety of TEDxKC events the past several years – both in person and on video. While the TED talks and the now familiar format seems straight forward in its expectations and constraints, it’s a speaking style quite different than I use for my presentations. The TED talks style is so one-way (all eyes on the speaker on the stage in a darkened venue); it flies in the face of creating the diverse interaction we so fundamentally espouse with the Brainzooming methodology. As a result, from a format standpoint, I’m trying to craft a TED talk that looks like a TED talk but is still interactive; it’s a challenge, without a doubt.

My TEDx Talk: Diversity and Ideas in the Porous Community

The topic for my TEDxWyandotte talk is about how the most impactful, strategic change springs from large-scale, diverse, even contradictory, perspectives brought together to forge new ideas. Creating a porous community that readily cultivates diverse thinking is vital to a truly enriched community, i.e. a community were the benefits of great ideas are available to all participants.

And that idea holds intriguing implications for communities and change.

Look up typical definitions of community and you see words and phrases such as:

• Unified
• Common interests and location
• Living in a specific area
• Common history or interests

Not a lot of diversity there – and that’s a problem. Yet we find such excitement in forces pushing diversity and disruption through:

• Crowdsourcing – whether solicited or not
• Large organizations looking outside themselves for answers (and perhaps survival)
• Information available anywhere in the cloud that challenges the idea of place

Wrapping all my thinking together on this topic in a succinct fashion while also drawing some lines through the other presentations will be an exciting opportunity.

And to carry out the theme and raise the stakes just a bit, audience members will be able to select the stories they want to hear during the presentation. That means there are nine different variations of the presentation that are possible. We won’t know which one it will be until the audience makes their decisions throughout the presentation. It’s what I’ve started to call, “Live Blogging.” Just as with hyperlinks in a blog post, the audience community is able to direct the content deeper or move on based on its preferences.

If You’re Near Kansas City, Join Us for TEDxWyandotte

Once again, TEDxWyandotte will be Tuesday, April 2, at 5:30 pm at Kansas City Kansas Community College. If you’re in or around Kansas City, it would be great to have you join us and sell out this first time TEDx event. You can reserve tickets right now! You can also keep up to date on speaker announcements and other news about TEDxWyandotte on Facebook.

And if you have any ideas on the topic, I’m interested in hearing what you think! - Mike Brown

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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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