One of the things creativity books, experts, pundits, (and even I) say is to change your perspective (and therefore increase your creativity) by breaking your routines. This has been discussed in many ways.

Any of the approaches that we might try will have the desired effect of opening our minds and helping us see things in new ways.

John Tunney, in his blog calls them Experiments in the Day, and his post from Wednesday has some great creative examples.

So, instead of just reading a different magazine, eating in a new restaurant or driving to work a new way, expand your experiments, by reading his post.

Also posted in Creativity.

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This is a combination I can't resist.

A recommended book list. From Fortune Magazine.

Very cool.

The list is called The Fortune 75 - The Smartest Books We Know. It covers topics from negotiation to decision making to economics to leadership to much more. It has newer books and older ones (like Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations from 1776)

Like any list, there will be books you think are omitted, but that is half the fun. Read the list, and then pick a category you would like to learn more about and buy one of the books.

It would be a pretty good way to add to your reading list.

Also posted in Leadership and Training.

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I saw it on The Vision Thing blog.

It beats anything I've ever seen. If you are interested in teams or teamwork, and like the creative and innovative, stop reading and click on the ConferenceBike.

Also posted in Creativity and Teamwork.

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My Fact or Crap daily calendar today listed:

"Vincent van Gogh sold only one painting during his lifetime."

It is Fact.

Just one. Red Vineyard at Arles.

In ten years he produced approximately 800 paintings and a similar number of drawings (according to the back of the page).

The next time you doubt yourself, think of Vincent. He kept on painting, and kept on drawing, even though he sold only one. Of course, he didn't know that 108 years after his death (in 1998) that one of his paintings would sell for $71 million.

But maybe he did.

Have the faith of Vincent. Believe in yourself.

Also posted in Creativity and Training.

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I'm excited!

One year ago we started our blog experiment. We were in the process of renaming and rebranding my company - changing the name to The Kevin Eikenberry Group. As we developed the concept for our new website we thought we wanted to include a blog, but we decided I should try it first.

So we tried it. Starting on March 22, 2204.

365 days. 130 posts.

A few weeks ago I posed a question in email to my team. It read something like:

"The one year anniversary of the blog is coming up. Do you think we should celebrate in any way? If so, what are your thoughts?"

The ideas they had were fabulous... and as you read the rest of this post you will be the beneficiary of their ideas . . .

First Gift

When I started writing this blog I wanted to share something of value, and in reviewing these posts over the last couple of weeks I think I have acheived that. You can judge for yourself, because our first gift to you - for visiting to help us celebrate is our Best of Blogs Special Report. Since this is a PDF file, click to open it, or right click and save the file if you want to read it later,)

Holly Powers read through all of the posts, selecting one from each month to include in this collection. Thanks Holly for your help.

We hope you will benfit from this Special Report and will choose to share it with others too.


Second Gift

The first five blog readers (that is you) to call and talk to me today (and they have to tell me they were reading the blog - I'm not giving products away to the guy trying to get my phone business). You will be able to choose from one of the five products listed below:

Becoming a More Effective Team Member Learning System
Effectively Managing Projects Learning System
Being More Creative Learnng System
Understanding and Mastering Change Learning System
Effective Internal Consulting Skills Series (there isn't a link for this product yet on one of our websites, so I'll have to tell you about it if you are one of the first five callers.)

I appreciate you reading our blog and hope that you will continue to do so. I look forward to talking to some of you on the phone today. (You can reach me at 317.387.1424 or 888.LEARNER in the U.S.)

Pick up the phone!

Also posted in Creativity, Customer Service, Leadership, Teamwork and Training

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Even though I have been blogging for almost a year, I'll admit the word blog sometimes makes me smile.

I'm about used to it now, and now I find out blogs can have colors. A dark blog?

Apparently dark blogs is the phrase being used to blogs that exist on intranets behind corporate firewalls. This post from Corante.com is where I first read the phrase.

I have been thinking about this technology for use inside organizations lately and will be watching this trend, and perhaps even trying it in our small group.

I'll post updates here, but I would love to know your experiences with dark blogs too.

Let me know what you know!

Also posted in Creativity, Leadership, and Teamwork.

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Last night my son was inducted into the National Junior Honor Society . Aside from being extremely proud of him and the ceremony bringing back long forgotten memories from my induction into the National Honor Society more than 25 years ago, I was struck by the pillars that membership is based on:

Wisdom
Citizenship
Service
Leadership
Character

I my work as a consultant, trainer, and speaker I think about wisdom (scholarship and learning being two of the components they spoke of when describing this pillar) and leadership. Service to others is a part of my philosophy and how we try to grow this business. Character is something I often discuss or reflect on with senior leaders I coach, but well, citizenship isn't something I think a lot about.

Don't get me wrong. I am proud to be an American, a resident of the state of Indiana, and I regularly defend my part of Indianapolis as one of the best places to live. I vote and pay attention to the issues facing our city, state and nation. But I rarely think about citizenship and it's value.

I have been thinking though, not just about citizenship, but how all of these together make for more productive, happy, and successful adults. I'll be thinking about this for a long time.

Wisdom
Citizenship
Service
Leadership
Character

47 kids were inducted in the NJHS last night, and at least one adult gained a new insight and perspective.

A pretty great evening.

p.s. Congratulations Parker!

Also posted in Leadership and Training.

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One more week until this blog turns one year old. Come and read early on March 22, as there will be a very special announcement and a great way for you to benefit from our celebration (way better even than a piece of birthday cake!)

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Reading the March Training + Development Magazine, I saw a snippet on focus from Sam Horn's book, Tongue Fu. IT describes an acronym using the letters in the word FOCUS to provide five tips.

I loved the first one - the F.

"Five more rule. If you are in the middle of a task and want to give up, just do five more: Write five more paragraphs, read five more pages, work five more minutes. Working past the point of frustration helps build mental stamina, just as not giving up when your body gets tired helps build physical stamina."

Let me add a couple more "fives" to this great idea...

- Try five more times to help an employee who you are losing patience with.
- Find five more possible solutions with the brainstorming session is winding down.
- Count to five before responding to a Customer who has frustrated you in some way.

Add to your focus by adding your own fives in areas you most want to focus.

Also posted in Creativity, Customer Service, and Leadership.

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In January, I decided to institute weekly Learning and Idea Meetings with my team. When I wrote it initially I promised to keep you up to date with our progress. So here it goes.

Lessons Learned

While we haven't met every week, dues to scheduling challenges, we have met regularly. I've noticed that even in the weeks we haven't met, ideas seem to be shared a bit more frequently than before. More importantly though, while we have always had lots of ideas, we are doing a better job of determining value, placing a priority on them, and taking action on those we deem most worthy.

We have created new promotions, new twists on some of our plans and some new product ideas are taking shape - all because of the weekly idea meeting.

Another Perspective

If you are wondering what people other than me, the leader, is thinking about them, check out Holly's blog entry called Idea Meeting where she recently wrote about her experience.

All of the outcomes we have achieved are valuable enough for me to encourage you as a leader or member of a team to try this in your organization.

Note: These notes have focused mostly on the idea generation portion of our meeting. The other (which is often a precursor to the ideas, but not necessarily) is to discuss and debrief on what things we have been reading. I'll share more on these experiences in the future.


Also posted in Creativity, Leadership, Teamwork and Training

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I grew up on a farm in Michigan, and learned early about the cooperative business model. Coops have historically been popular in rural areas - and have been responsible for bringing services like electricity to these areas.

Basically, Cooperative businesses are different because they are owned by the consumers they serve and because they are guided by a set of seven principles that reflect the best interests of those consumers.

While I have been aware of this business model my entire life, it is in my more recent work that I have gained a new found appreciation of what this model can bring to a community.

This appreciation came in large part to my strategic planning with the Mid America Cooperative Council, itself a cooperative formed to foster, enhance and promotes the value of Cooperatives.

Far beyond farm supply, credit unions and electrical coops, there are many businesses, including some you would readily recognize like Ocean Spray, that operate in this way, and there are many new organizations springing up all over this country.

I share this because if you are like me you didn't learn about this business model in school, but it is one I would encourage you to learn about. I will continue to learn more because of my time spent with 12 people from 4 states who are passionate about this form of business and the value it can bring to communities and consumers.

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It will soon be one year that I have been blogging.

Pretty amazing.

We have some plans for celebrating and you as a reader will benefit. There will be more here later, but today I am off to facilitate Strategic Planing for the Mid American Cooperative Council.

Be watching for ways you will benefit from our celebration!

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Today Dr. Seuss would have been 101 years old.

Thanks to him all of us will be younger, longer.

Happy Birthday Theodor Geisel!

Click HERE to read a biography of the man.

Click HERE (and scroll down a little) to read my recent review of Oh, The Places You'll Go!

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While we didn't get much snow here, much of the Eastern U.S. is blanketed with the results of a late winter snowstorm. Which got me thinking about snow storms when I was a kid.

No school...
Playing all day...
and by late in the afternoon...

Mom wanting us to get out of the house!

While I'm sure part of the reason she wanted us outdoors is to give herself a break, she also knew that after having been "cooped up all day" we needed some fresh air and a way to run off some of our energy.

I'm guessing everyone reading this is nodding their heads...whether they grew up around snow or not. We all know that kids need to get up, get out of the house and run off some energy.

Guess what?

That same advice pertains to us as adults too. Some companies have game rooms for people to go during the day to "blow off a little steam" and get refocused. Other companies encourage people to do active things at lunch, providing volleyball or basketball courts, etc. (I even played in a croquet league at lunch years ago - it was great!)

All of this isn't frivolous. As adults, just like when we were kids, we need to divert our attention, blow off some steam and exercise a bit. Doing these things will make us more productive than sitting at our desk through EVERY lunch, plowing away at email or preparing for our next meeting.

Many of us don't do anything physical in our work like our grandparents (or parents) did. We work with our minds and so I believe that if we would get up from our desks more, get out of our routine and DO something, we will return to our work more refreshed, more creative and more able to be productive.

If you are a leader - do this yourself and make it "OK" for those you lead to do this sort of thing. (Nothing will stop it faster than you questioning what they are doing.)

If you are a part of a team, talk about ways the team can blow off steam, and/or set expectations that make these actions understood by everyone.

If you are a trainer, recognize that not all of your participants are used to sitting in your classroom all day, and so plan for more activity as a part of your learning process.

Also posted in Leadership, Teamwork and Training.

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I read a post in Steve Pavlina's Blog yesterday that is so true.

He references Martin Seligman's Optimism Ratio, first mentioned in his great book, Learned Optimism.

Seligman describes how our use of language in the present can be a fairly accurate predictor of our success in the future . The ratio works by dividing the number of positive words by the number of negative words in a given passage of text, speech, or conversation.

I did this for an article I wrote this morning (which will be next week's lead article in Unleashing Your Potential) and came up with: 53 positives and 46 negatives = 1.15. (Compare this with Steve's assessment from Yahoo News on Feb 23 of .4.)

Using more positive language can have all sorts of impacts on our lives and work. This struck me particularly today because I'm working on a couple keynotes and a teleseminar on leading and championing change.

I have always believed that our language as a change leader or change agent has an impact. The Optimism Ratio puts more credence to my belief.

My challenge to you today is to think about the changes you are facing in more positive ways, and just as importantly, talk about it in positive ways. According to Seligman's research it can be a positive predictor of successful future change.

Also posted in Leadership, Training and Teamwork.

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