THINKing

More Brain Exercises

In our past two posts we talked about pumping up your brain and we offered a couple of brain exercises. Here are a couple more for your little gray cells.

Group Think
Brainstorming in a group often does not work because people are afraid of speaking their ideas out loud. This is a way around that fear. Assemble a group. Write down three ideas on a piece of paper and pass it to the person on your right. That person reads the ideas and adds three more ideas triggered by the previous ideas. This continues until it gets back to the beginning.

Random Input
A random piece of information often can take your problem-solving process into hyperdrive. Once you have your question or problem clearly stated, open up a dictionary or a thesaurus to any page and select a word. Now, think about how this random item applies to your problem. There is some connection and your job is to find it.

OK, now you have some new tools to pump up your brain. Do some heavy lifting.

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Brain Exercises

We talked recently about pumping up your brain with exercises for the little gray cells. Today, here are two more to try:

Ignore The Rules
Now, I’m not suggesting that you should break laws. Rather, I am saying you need to look for approaches that fall outside the norm. Ancient prophecy said that whoever could untie the Gordian Knot would be king of Asia. Everyone, including Alexander the Great, failed when they tried to unravel it. Frustrated, Alexander took out his sword and sliced the knot in half. Mission accomplished.

Reframing The Problem
You can look at problems from different perspectives using what is called the Reframing Matrix. Take a piece of paper and write down your question in the middle of the paper. Draw a grid around it. In one grid you might ask, “how would a doctor approach this problem?” In another, “how would an engineer solve this?” In yet another, “how would a farmer look at this?”

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Pump Up Your Brain

According to Nobel prize-winning chemist Linus Pauling, the best way to get a good idea is to get a lot of ideas. Unfortunately, school teaches us to find the right answer, when actually there is usually more than one right answer for a problem.

When an adult is challenged to come up ideas, he or she typically generates three to six possible solutions. The average child generates 60. We need to be more child-like in our approach to ideas. In the next few posts, we’ll discuss some exercises to help us generate ideas or to look at things from a different – and perhaps, childlike – perspective.

Change The Question

Sometimes just by changing a word or two in a question, you can come up with radically different ideas.

Centuries ago a plague spread across Europe which was almost always fatal. In one town, a person thought to be dead was buried alive. Townspeople wanted to make sure this didn’t happen again. One group proposed putting food and water in every casket and an air hole up to the surface. Their question: “what if we bury someone alive?” Another group suggested placing a 12-inch spike in the coffin lid and aligning it with the victim’s heart. Their question: “how do we make sure everyone we bury is dead?”

Do you have a current problem in which changing the question might help?

Part 2 – Brain Exercises

Part 3 – More Brain Exercises

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5 Best Posts – January 2010

We had some very popular posts in January – some old and some new. I thought I’d share them with you.

1. 8 Ways To Use Twitter Lists
2. Twittering Journalists
3. Be Relevant
4. When Billboards Go Bad
5. 7 Ways To Kickstart Your 2010 Marketing 

What’s your favorite?

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My New Business Secret Formula

We’ve talked here often about the fact that there is no marketing magic bullet. But there is a new business magic bullet, and I’m going to tell you the secret formula. Only a handful of those who read this will successfully implement within their business because it is not shiny and new.

Like most businesses, you are probably spending up to 80% of your marketing budget on bringing in new business because that’s exciting. It’s not as much fun implementing my new business secret: do great work for current customers.

But Harry, you are saying, I’d rather go out and bring home the new business buffalo than focus on my current customers. Where’s the benefit?

Let me disabuse you of the notion that there is no benefit in this hyperfocus on current customers.  Doing great work for current clients spawns so many good things for your business.

Even if you have the best salesforce in the world and they can sell anyone anything once, if your company doesn’t wow them with your service they aren’t going to buy from those superb sales folk again. Some estimates show that if you cut customer churn by just 5%, you can increase profits by at least 25%.

If that’s not reason enough, then consider these stats relating to customer retention:

• 91% of dissatisfied customers won’t return
• 96% of dissatisfied customers won’t tell you the real reason why they won’t be back
• it costs 10 times more to replace a customer than it does to keep him
• repeat customers spend 33% more than new customers

But how is doing great work for current customers the secret to my new business program, Harry?

I’m glad you asked. Here’s the key statistic that you need to internalize: referrals from repeat customers are 107% higher than from non-customers. Loyal customers talk you up to others who are like themselves. In other words, they are targeting the right customers for you and you don’t have to spend a dime.

Are you doing great work for your customers? Maybe it is time to reevaluate.

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Creativity 2010 – Week #4

Here are our creativity links for Week 4 of 2010:

Don’t Take The First Right Answer – The first answer is rarely the best answer. A better approach is to take a little time to generate a long list.

Ten Steps For Boosting Your Creativity -  Some good information from Jeffrey Baumgartner to joggle the little gray cells.

The Best Of 2009 In The Design Industry -  Some good redesigns from the year past.

Seven Steps To Empowering Your Creativity -  To honor your gift of creativity, follow these seven steps.

20 Tips To Spark Your Creativity – Some tips from top designers to get your creative muse moving.

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Time For The Spin Cycle

It’s always interesting to see how the media and the politicians try to spin a story. Let’s take a look today at the Massachusetts victory of Republican Scott Brown over Martha Coakley in the bluest of blue states. Here’s what they are saying about it:

Boston Globe

Boston Herald

USA Today

New York Times

Fox News

Washington Times

What do you think about the coverage of this race’s aftermath?

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#1 With A Bullet

Old radio guys like me remember the phrase “#1 With A Bullet.” This was what you said about a hit record (wow, does anyone else remember records?) that was #1 on the chart and continuing to sell well.

Well, I want to know what marketing tactic is #1 with a bullet on your 2010 list.  eMarketer seems to think that email may be at the top of many marketers’ lists, followed by social media, search and advertising.

The real news out of eMarketer is this,

Combining social media and e-mail marketing is a growing trend. More than four in 10 business executives said integrating the two tactics was one of their most important e-mail marketing initiatives for 2010, just after improving performance and targeting and growing opt-in lists.

Now, integrating email and social media is not just including links in your emails to your social media profiles. It could include cross-promoting newsletter content on your blog or even polling your followers on Twitter and using the results in your blog and enewsletter.

Are you integrating your email and social media programs? What else tops your list? Tell us about it, won’t you?

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Creativity 2010 – Week #3

Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.” – Albert Einstein

Here’s our creativity update for Week 3 – 2010

The Eyes Have It. New research indicates that horizontal eye exercises may improve creativity.

Colors Affect Mental Performance.  Paint the walls blue to boost your creativity. That’s the message from an intriguing study that shows the contrasting effects of blue and red on mental performance.

The World’s 25 Most Inventive Companies.  What’s the most inventive company on the planet? If you judge by sheer volume, it’s IBM (IBM), which has received more patents from the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office than any other company for 17 years in a row.

Creative Block #2 – Fear Of Getting It Wrong.  The fear of making a mistake and getting something ‘wrong’ can be paralysing for a creator. Paradoxically, this block can get worse the more successful you are.

Visual Thinking Bookmarks.  A collection of visual thinking links found on the web in the past few days by our editors & vizthink community contributers.

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Do You Have Issues? Part 2

We talked in Part 1 about the objectives of issues management.

Tactically, there are a number of weapons available for managing organizational issues. First, is a strong, credible image. A proactive program to maintain this image could include:

* an issues audit

* media monitoring to detect existing or emerging issues of importance

* aggressive media relations on issues of prime importance

* reprints of favorable media coverage for distribution

* a letter to the editor program that involves employees and allies

* development of alliances with natural partners

* writing of editorial/opinion pieces for submission to major media

* development of position papers on key issues and distribution to employees and allies as well as to media

* legislative briefings for state and local officials on key issues

* identification of “neutral” experts who agree with our positions

* identification of other organizations to whom we can “hand-off” some issues

* public opinion research on issues of importance

* speakers bureau

* identification of opponents and initiation of dialogue with them

Got any ideas on how we can use social media for issues management?

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