Caution: Look both ways before making up your mind

The other day BrainBasedBusiness author Ellen Weber brought up a great topic in her post “Is Knowledge Power at Your Workplace”. “I am often surprised”, she said, “at how facts are used merely to support old ideas we held”.

No wonder most organizations have difficulty innovating! 

Innovation requires learning. Learning requires you to suspend your natural predisposition to judge. It demands that you consider all the angles before you take a position (which, by the way, may change as you continue to explore). 

We can debate the reasons why, but people tend to collect the facts that support their views.  We filter.  Often, we're not even aware that we’re doing it.

How do you stop doing something that you might not even realize you do in the first place?

Here are some ideas:

1. Assume you are guilty of filtering!
2. Surround yourself with people that have diverse perspectives.
3. Encourage them to share their views and LISTEN to them. Don’t just adopt their opinions, but honestly consider them!
4. Explore companies and industries outside of your own. What do they do that you could do? What would you need to change?
5. Suspend your disbelief. Approach a new idea by first discussing how it could succeed. Try to make it work. Run with “crazy” ideas a bit and see where they take you.
6. Develop your ability to empathize (sound familiar?)
7. Promote healthy debate – encourage conflict!
8. Reflect – take it all in and determine where you stand, why that’s your position, and what you’re going to do about it.

This is the perfect lead in to the next Concept Age sense, Symphony. Symphony is about bringing it all together.

We’ll talk more tomorrow!

Technorati tags: Business, Perspective, Diversity, Empathy

Comments

[Trée]

Excellent post Ann.

[Ann Michael]

Thanks Trée - always nice to have you stop by!

[Atul]

Nice post. In my MBA program, I took a whole class on Driving Innovation and we learned about a lot of the points you mentioned. As for facts being used to support ideas we already have, I that's what statistics and PowerPoint slides are used for, especially in marketing since it is somewhat subjective. It's kind of like how people watch shows and read magazines that support their own political beliefs.