Seven keys to innovative thinking

HR Magazine, June, 1994 by John R. Graham

Instead of taking pride in developing a unique identity, many businesses are content to be copycats. They lift ideas without considering that the business they happen to be taking from probably stole the idea from another company.

What's even worse, such practices prevent most companies from achieving greater success. What they need are ideas that make a company's products or services different from those of the competition.

There are seven keys for stimulating new ideas in a business.

1. Keep pushing the envelope. As long as employees play it safe, nothing significant or different will occur. New ideas must be valued. Everything must be open to challenge. Weak, insipid "guarantees" reveal a company's lack of confidence. It takes guts, and putting your money where your claim is, to get attention today.

2. Think about the unthinkable. The recent recession wiped out thousands of sales-driven companies, those that spent every day pushing a product. When the economy took a dive, they were out of business. They refused to think about the unthinkable--who will be our customers if the economy changes or the competition heats up? How will new technology affect us?

3. Be a confirmed contrarian. The contrarian takes the opposite of the popular view. Chrysler was clearly contrarian a decade ago with its incredibly popular Minivan that drove and rode like a car. Ford and GM used truck platforms for their vehicles, but the public didn't want vans that drove like trucks. Chrysler defied the leaders and won.

4. Become a creative doubter. There's little innovative thinking without doubt. As an example, we looked carefully at selling and concluded that salespeople are often forced into spending an inordinate amount of time prospecting, which they do poorly. This led us to the view that prospecting should be a management responsibility, but closing sales is a sales task, and the two should be kept separate. Only by doubting a nearly universal practice were we able to develop a new concept.

5. Be daring. Sure, boldness can be dangerous, but dramatic changes in business indicate that there's now far more room to be independent and speak your mind. How many times have we heard the president of a company say, "No one reads a letter that's more than one page." No one reads even a one-paragraph letter if it's poorly written! The quality of the message has more to do with getting a letter read than its length. Instead of bowing to such prejudices, progress will be made only by confronting the issues.

6. Ignore the detractors. Most good ideas die a quiet, uneventful death; they are simply put to sleep by their detractors, the ones who feel threatened by change. It takes an extremely self-confident person to ignore those who call for the politically correct approach in business. To move beyond the glitz and to get underneath all the exaggerated claims to find the innovative solutions requires considerable inner strength.

7. Speak up. There are practical reasons for questioning candor when messengers of bad news are known to lose their heads--and their jobs. Personal integrity aside, speaking up is simply good business. It's essential for personal survival and that of the company, because both jobs and businesses depend on the expression of new, contrary or different views. Without this, nothing happens and past problems will be repeated.

Staying ahead of the competition isn't easy and it's only going to get tougher. Studies show that most companies grow at the rate of inflation, a sure sign of stagnation and a lack of innovative thinking. From now on, getting ahead means thinking smarter than the rest.

John R. Graham is president of Graham Communications, a marketing services and sales consulting firm in Quincy, Mass.