I was talking with a strategic mentorabout a situation in his current job. A couple of new people not in his organization are involved in several efforts he’s leading. The challenge is that neither of them, although very junior to him, has entered this new business relationship with a learning mindset – either through trust-related issues or no self-recognition of their development needs.

The net of it, as he explained it, is that at this point in his career, he doesn’t feel compelled to go out of his way to include them in certain aspects of the project that would help develop them since they aren’t willing students.

I reminded him that if he were being true to his convictions, he would embrace the opportunity to cross organizational boundaries and grow two people who it sounded like could clearly benefit from his wisdom – as I had earlier in my career.

He was driving during our conversation, with his wife hearing his comments on why these two people didn’t deserve the opportunity. After getting off the phone with me, she asked him to explain the situation and told him the same thing – if he were true to what he “preached,” he had no choice but to include and help both of them!

Remember when you enter into a strategic mentorship relationship, that it’s very much a two-way street. Just as a strategic mentor should challenge and help shape your point of view, there are times when you have to turn the tables and challenge them also.

I’ve been blogging a year, with websites on strategy & innovation, life purpose, and even sketchy ties to a corporate humor blog.

Among business acquaintances, I now get frequent blogging questions. There’s no shortage of web articles on it, but here are lessons learned directly from writing one:

Know why you’re going to blog – Before starting, determine your reasons for blogging. Knowing it is for the discipline of writing a book sustains me while slowly building an online audience.

Establish rules for yourself – Guiding principles will simplify decisions and your effort. I knew early on I’d cover general work-related topics without mentioning my employer specifically. Additional guides include the number of words (generally under 300), how often to publish (daily except holidays), and topic categories (limiting content to 20 topic areas).

Write for a month before publishing – After deciding how often to publish, write a month’s worth of posts before putting something online. This provides three advantages:

1. You’ll discover how much effort blogging will take and can adjust your frequency to ensure you’ll sustain it.
2. It will help refine your writing skills.
3. You’ll have a backlog of material for when your creative juices run dry.

Create an editorial calendar – Get a big desk calendar, some small post-it notes, and plan out a few months worth of topics. Knowing where you’re headed is helpful and the flexibility of modifying where you’re headed (by moving the post-its around) is essential. Another hint – after 6 months, throw out any still-unwritten topics to freshen future content.

Capture ideas all the time – Always have something to write down blogging ideas. Never lose a potentially viable idea. Ask yourself daily what happened that might have blog potential. It’s a great relief later to thumb through a notebook of starter idea fragments.

Keep a hidden blog – After setting up your main blog, establish a hidden one where you can experiment with graphics, pre-publish posts to see how they’ll look, and work out bugs as you experiment with blogging.

For more ideas, check out my Brainzooming blog this week for other lessons on writing, graphics, and interaction that have emerged from blogging.

Want to improve your team’s performance?

Here’s an idea – make sure you’re a fan of everybody working with you.

What does that mean?

Same as being a fan of a performer, musician, or athlete. It means establishing a connection with each person and identifying something (or many things) you celebrate and would like to emulate about them. Just as performers and athletes can rise to the occasion when their fans are cheering them on, you also need to cheer on the members of your team on their star performances.

This also implies that when team members aren’t successful, you still stick with and encourage them.

Trust me – I understand this isn’t always easy or even possible. I’ve had a few people on my teams who are like reluctant star athletes that no matter what the fans do, they make it clear they don’t care about fans, appreciation, or rising to any occasion. That’s okay. Sometimes you have to change your allegiances and not be a fan anymore.

But the overwhelming number of people you work with will appreciate you being a vocal and visible fan, rewarding the team with stronger performance each day!

Watching the World Series brought back a favorite baseball story. It’s been so long since I heard it, who knows if it’s true, but it’s so rich with great strategy lessons, it almost doesn’t matter!

The Story

I spoke last week at the IIR The Market Research Event in Los Angeles.

One session discussed “creative consumers.” They were nearly reverently described as “consumers” serving as paid ideation session participants; this, after passing personality tests (both oral and written) and receiving creativity technique training. They were lauded for being able to write dead-on concept statements. According to Marla Commons, co-presenter from Research International, the firm has a panel of at least 250 “creative consumers” with varied backgrounds available to corporations. In reviewing some profiles, one “consumer” has been doing this for 17 years!

Kraft Foods (the other presenter) applied the technique to design service concepts. “Creative consumers” were included at a one-to-one rate with corporate executives (or “drones,” although the term was never actually used) to inject creativity. The first day-long session produced 154 ideas from five custom exercises; these were narrowed eventually to 15 for further development in a second day-long session.

A couple of observations (recognizing that I do ideation primarily in a B2B environment):

*  The best ideation sessions don’t require 50% creatives. At 20% of participants, they can really drive creative instigation while remaining participants contribute to other business aspects being explored. Going higher saps the diversity critical for innovative ideas.

*  Lack of diversity can hamper the evaluation phase. Interestingly, two later rejected concepts shared to show the group’s creativity both fell apart based on density requirements. Not enough volume in a certain time period usually signals major problems.  Density isn’t necessarily a concept driving CPG, but it’s a challenge readily apparent to service marketers since time is a perishable resource that can’t be inventoried.  Here's where a little more diversity in a group could have been beneficial.

*  One hundred fifty-four ideas isn’t that remarkable a number. We’ve seen 500 or 600 ideas from a more diverse participant group. The number of raw ideas is highly dependent on what your session objectives are and using the right tools to help realize your goals.

*  It’s ridiculous to call these participants “consumers.” While companies want to feel they’re involving real consumers in the ideation process, that’s suspect. They may have familiarity and experience in the topic. But with the testing, training, and pay involved ($500-$1500 daily), they’re really “part-time, informal creative staff members.” Seventeen years in, somebody doesn’t enter a session with a completely fresh “consumer” perspective. 

This is a great concept, but appears to be misrepresented and oversold. The funniest moment was during Q&A when someone asked apprehensively if the creative consumers could travel. I turned to the guy next to me and asked, “I wonder what they eat?”

Probably special pellets to generate creative sparks!