“Will we still be relevant one year from today? Will I still be relevant one year from today?”
That’s it.
Right there.
That’s the secret, unvoiced fear that I’m sensing from a lot of leaders.
And, if not one year, certainly two.
It’s the relevance question.
Here’s what it looks like:
You feel like your last ...
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Photo by James Trenda on Unsplash
So there was this time when Julia Child cooked breakfast for me—and I turned it down.
I’d become friends with Graham Kerr, who rose to fame as The Galloping Gourmet, one of TV’s original celebrity chefs.
By the mid-’90s, Graham and his wife Treena had moved to Seattle and were producing a new cooking show in the same studio where I produced my ...
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After Season 5, I really wanted them to cancel the show.
I mean, it wasn’t working. We had a new host, and the fit wasn’t great. We weren’t attracting any (or many, at least) “name” guests. We were losing in the ratings to—of all things—a public affairs talk show on the ABC affiliate.
And I didn’t know how to fix it.
The big problem was the interview segments. The caliber of the guests ...
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How long would it take you to write twenty monolog jokes for The Tonight Show?
For some of you the answer might be, “Maybe a day.” For others, it might be, “A million years.”
I used to be able to do it in roughly 30 minutes.
And these are real jokes, for the real Tonight Show.
It was back in the Jay Leno days, when I was producing my own comedy TV show in Seattle. Jay was a friend of the show, and he ...
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Here is what you want your competitors to be thinking right now:
“Boy, things are really uncertain. The economy is topsy-turvy, flights are being canceled right and left, and the country is reeling. We should probably hold off on any ‘frivolous’ expenses—like innovation—until things settle down.”
That’s what you want your competitors to be thinking right now.
Because right now is exactly when you should be doubling down on innovation.
In uncertain times, the innovative companies win. In fact, it’s often a double win, ...
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Here’s a great time-saver for all of you leaders who are looking for innovative ideas from your team. Don’t bother listening to:
· the quiet people
· people who are new to the organization
· lower-paid team members
· lower-ranked team members
· interns
· introverts
These people never have good ideas. At least, that’s what you might conclude if you were a fly on the wall in a typical corporate team meeting.
If you were that fly, you’d be forgiven for concluding that the only ideas that matter ...
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Innovation: It’s not just for innovators anymore.
When I worked in a large TV station, we had a department that was called “Creative Services.” I always thought that was a bit strange. This was television, after all—aren’t ALL of us in “creative services”?
But so many people (and so many companies) go through life believing that “creativity” and “innovation” should be relegated to the “wacky few.” So many leaders seem to have an attitude of, “Don’t talk to me about innovation; that’s ...
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What do you do when you want to be innovative, but you have what you perceive to be an inadequate budget? You shift your mindset, and see this challenge as an opportunity.
If you're a video person, I lay it all out in the video below. If reading is more your thing, skip the video and hop straight to the transcript below!
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You've come up with a great, innovative idea! Hooray! But your team's not buying in to it. Boo hiss. So let's answer the question once and for all: "How do I get BUY-IN from my team?"
If you're a video person, I lay it all out in the video below. If reading is more your thing, skip the video and hop straight to ...
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As I work with organizations to help them become more innovative, I see two primary types of innovation: reactive and proactive. The process for each is similar, but the mindset is completely different.
If you're a video person, I lay it all out in the video below. If reading is more your thing, skip the video and hop straight to the transcript below!