About

In this episode: Don’t be like so many ‘I have an idea’ moments that never make it anywhere. This week is all about rolling up your sleeves and bravely choosing the solutions that others might not, protecting and nurturing them so you’ll feel confident walking them out the door. We’ll focus on a few more innovation secrets experts use to create winning solutions.

I talk about and cover how to: Select the right ideas Nurture, protect and build in feasibility into that ‘crazy’ ideas

If you love this and want to know more go to: https://www.hihellosura.com/unleashyourcreativity

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Transcript

*This Transcript is Autogenerated

Hey that. Welcome to the HiHelloSura Show I'm your host, Sura Al-Naimi. I am so excited to be here and I'm so excited that you're here. And I know that I say that every time, but I really need it. Welcome, welcome today. And as always, I just want to say thank you so much for showing up.

Thank you so much for supporting thank you for all of your comments and all of your contributions for sharing the stories of how you have been applying everything. And every time we shot, I learned something new. So I am just getting richer and richer for it from your knowledge and from your experience.

So I'm indebted and super, super great. So today is the day. Today is the day where I really wanted to focus on this is like the building phase. I w you know, this is the bit that sometimes people are not quite as excited about within the innovation process, right?

This is where things get a little bit real, but if we are in the business of making a difference and getting the things that we really care about out into the wild, this is so important. And I say this about every single phase that it's really important, but it is every single phase is really important because without one of them everything falls apart.

So today I really wanted to focus on confidently getting those winning ideas out the door. And this is what I go into a lot of detail about in only sh your creativity masterclasses like week six six of six this is week six of the master class, and this is really important. So if we have solutions in our organizations, when we have solutions in our organizations, and quite often, it's really tough to choose which idea should be dedicated our energy.

Which are the ones that we should be dedicating our energy to actually nurturing and getting out into market. And you've invested so much energy so much time has happened up until this point. And it's really difficult for, in my conversations over the last 20 years, people have shared with me that it's really tough to sometimes make those decisions and for them to be strategic, versus who is the loudest person in the room or who is paid the most in the room, whether that's a zoom room or an actual room.

So in this episode, I really wanted to focus on like, how do we make the decisions for certain ideas to move forward. And then what are some top tips so that we can nurture those ideas? Because if you've really been brave and push the thinking, some of the ideas that you've come up with are not going to be immediately like your business model might not support it.

Your business might not be attuned to actually creating what it is. That you've imagined it might be quite a digression. And so how do we nurture those ideas and actually get them out into market. And I wanted to spend a little bit of time and give you some top tips of how to do that in this episode, because if you've listened to the previous shows and if you haven't, I invite you to we've gone through this journey of your originally finding out what your CRE creativity superhero strength is.

And what I mean by that is that we all have a propensity to approach it, creativity and innovation from a certain lens. We have a preference, right? It's really important for us to know our preference and our strengths so that we can be conscious of how we can contribute. We can be conscious of how we're getting stuck.

We can be conscious of other people's contributions so that we can collaborate with them best is having conflict. So you have done that already after that, you'll understand, the building blocks of creativity and innovation and how really it's like going to the gym. It's a habit that you invest in on a daily basis to do things in new and different ways for a positive outcome.

After that you got into aligning your forces for good. So that's where we really focused on, what is the challenge that we want to solve for thus as the one that we were given. And does everybody agree? And is it inspired. After that we went into your cousin is not your audience. So in that, tongue in cheek, but it's like really want to make something for our end audience.

So in order to do that, we actually have to understand our audience versus make assumptions about our audience. After that we got into making winning ideas. And what we really mean by that is that we want to push beyond the low hanging fruit. We really want to get into a new spectrum of thinking. We want to push the thinking into places that we've never gone before.

That might seem really scary and make a bunch of people really nervous. And we give ourselves Liberty to do that in that phase. But today is really about like, how do we make those decisions and how do we move forward? So that's what I'd love to contribute today. And often we have all of these ideas, but we don't want them just to wilt into these like wonderful decks.

We actually wants to make some decisions around them. So top tip number one, as hubs of making decisions is to really go back to what does success look like? Remember when you define success and if you did it. Define success for the project. What are the five tenants of success or the three tenants of success in order for your project to be successful.

And obviously profitability is going to be one of them. So we would actually don't even need to have that, but often, some of the tenants of success, baked in a consumer truth is it, is it something that's going to really be appealing to a consumer? Another one that is pretty, pretty standard.

Is in alignment with the brand, is it, does it convey the brand? And then there were other more specifics depending on your project. So if we can get really clear on what your success criteria is, then when you look at each idea, you can immediately tally them. According to that success criteria, drum roll.

And all of a sudden you're having a pretty objective conversation because it's not so much like this as the passion project, or I love this, or I love pink, or it should go out of, this port versus that port suddenly you're having a very educated conversation because you can say, this idea is a, out of a total performance there's five success criteria.

I can see that it is performing really well. With four out of five, there's this other idea which is being like the passion sort of idea so far, this one's only performing two out of the five success criteria. And what I look at this idea. I'm not really seeing a lot of opportunity to nurture it, to have it perform really well to go beyond the two out of five, whereas the one that's performing a four out of five, I'm seeing ways that I can nurture this idea.

So although this was perhaps the underdog this was maybe the idea that we didn't really think about or consider. Maybe we should actually give this another look. Top tip number one, go back to your success criteria and then see how each idea is performing. According to success criteria, top tip number two is see where the passion is in the room.

What are people most excited about and make that a blind vote? So often we have a voting system and we see somebody's boat for an idea. And then, there's a lot of group thing that happens. Like I'm swayed. Like I'm like, Ooh. Yeah, like maybe I like the idea too or equally maybe an idea gets no love.

And I feel really guilty about that. Who knows what kind of trauma or therapy I need to undergo, but I do, I feel really guilty about it. And so I suddenly launch in to try and make that idea reality. So by doing a blind task for your passion tasks, that can be really helpful. In order to get a read of the room genuinely versus, going beyond group think so top tip number one, go back to the success criteria and then see how ideas are performing top tip number two, see where the passion is in the room, in the zoom room in the global room.

But do it anonymously. Okay. So there's the first top tips for making decisions. Okay. So going forward, how do you nurture those ideas? How do you nurture them? Okay because the idea is new, it's going to need a bit of nurturing. So again, going back to the success criteria and looking at an idea, you can see how it's performing, maybe it's performing really well in terms of working for consumer truth, but maybe it's like lagging a little bit on the old aligned with the brand, for example.

And so that gives you an indicator of where you get to nurture the idea, that gives you an indicator of where to have your expansive thinking of let's think about ways in which we can address this. So that's one approach to naturing. The other approach is to and this is something that I've done a lot especially when I've got.

A really diverse team of individuals who've come together. Maybe they've actually come together just to see the solutions. They haven't actually been a pump process, which is not ideal, but it does happen. And so for example, in that instance, I would give them the ideas. And I would in the nurturing process, I was, that this happens for example, when you've got representatives from different states and they're like, like my state is very different to this state or different countries.

My country is very unique. This product won't work so often in this moment, I will actually give them the idea. And I say please. I'd love for you to look at this idea and share with me a couple of really major showstoppers, right? What could really stop this idea from being successful.

And then I'll just right next to that, I would love some solutions to help solve for that. So what have we done that immediately? We've got somebody who could be a potential resistor. We've also got somebody who has a very unique perspective because granted they are from a different state or a different country, and we are getting them to use that expertise for the force of good.

So they get to look at the. And they get to have a look at it and they get to poke a poke at it. But they have to poke at it with responsibility because right after they've done that, they need to provide some sort of solution for how to solve for it. So all of a sudden you're getting that expertise on your side.

Okay. So that is top tip number four. Okay. And then top tip number five, which might sound really obvious, but you can think about your solution and you can think about the different people, the different stakeholders that are really important to that idea succeeding. So you could have your stakeholder, like your original stakeholder, but then you might have your consumer you might have different departments of your organization.

Like you might have technology, our research and development, finance, et cetera. And step into their shoes and say, okay, so if they were looking at this idea, what could some potential challenges be that they would perceive in this idea? So it's a little bit like role-playing, if you can't actually get ahold of that individual, and once you've done that, you say, okay this is, these are some potential pitfalls that we're anticipating.

And and this is how we might actually alleviate for some of those. These are some solutions that we could actually bake him. So I getting ahead of some of the potential challenges and bolstering and nourishing, you getting your idea into a much stronger position to be able to survive.

The other thing that I would say is that with all ideas until we actually experience them, it's really tough for us to get excited, jazzed and onboard. What are the behaviors that would say is really been very important is to make something very experiential for the idea. So whether you're going as far as drawing pictures, whether you're going as far as actually setting a room.

So for example, I did a project once and it was focused around sports and it was around the festivities of sports and what happens. So we actually decorated the whole room and that kind of festive environment, as we were sharing the environment, the ideas, so that people got into that mindset, equally I've done projects that were focused on teen teen girls.

And so we, we actually decorated the room yet again. So that when people dropped in, they felt like they were a part of that actual world and it was very easy for them to receive for them to receive the solutions. If you're doing this digitally, what are some of the ways that you can make this as real, as possible to convey the mood, is there specific music is there something that you can invite your audience to perhaps eat while they're listening to your idea?

Maybe there's certain foods that create like a sense of nostalgia, for example are there specific smells that maybe you could post to them or get them to gather as ingredients that you could invite them to sniff as you're presenting a sentence solution. So if you're thinking about like a 360 experiential moment where you can make as real, as exciting the idea make it as vivid as possible.

One of the old examples that we always draw upon is the idea of. Joe Rody when he suggested the animal kingdom concept when it was a concept before it actually became a park and people had such a resistance, they said, we don't need yet another zoo. An animals are actually very exciting.

And so what did he do in order to make it real yet? She took a saber tooth tiger with him to the meeting. And all of a sudden people were very excited, slash very scared by the tiger. And for some reason he got funding for the project and now, animal kingdom exists Walt Disney world in Florida, by the way.

So any way that you can make ideas as vivid and as real as possible to go beyond the words. So people that actually have an experience is going to really get you a lot more into the buy-in from your stakeholders and your funding. And, even if you are the founder of an organization, thinking about, anything that you're bringing into the world is probably going to be something pretty new.

And if there are any bridges that you can create with your audience where you can say, it's like this, so there was a point where we had the horse and carriage, for example, and then before the call came to be, there was this thing called the horseless carriage.

And the whole Silas carriage look very much like the horse and carriage. But it didn't have a horse and it was our first iteration of a car, so we didn't go straight from the whole carrot. So the whole thing carried to car. We went to the horse's carriage. So what is your version of the horse's carriage?

So you can make that bridge so that you can create that understanding with your audience and get that buy-in get that excitement from. So those are my top tips to you for confidently getting those ideas out the door. So just as a recap, the first one is go back to your success criteria and assess the ideas that you have, the solutions that you have according to the success criteria.

The second one is see where the passion is in the room by voting on the ideas, but doing a blind vote so that people aren't swayed. The third one is look at the idea, according to how it's performing on the success criteria, and then be very expansive and nourishing in the areas where it looks a little bit depleted.

Then next one is get the get stakeholders to identify potential roadblocks and the idea, and then are to provide solutions. The next one is to think about the idea from the perspective of different stakeholders and then to identify roadblocks and provides. And then finally make it as vivid and experiential as possible so that people immediately understand and create a bridge to this new concept that you're sharing with them.

So those are my top tips for getting a confidently, getting those ideas out the door. And as I mentioned, I go through this in so much more detail in Alisha creativity, monster class. So in unleash your creativity masterclass, we, we roll up our sleeves, we get sweaty and really get involved. So you bring your challenge and then you actually get to take your challenge through using these activities.

And we'd like guidance and through, worksheets and templates and community. You'll get the help to confidently get your ideas out the door, which is really exciting. So if you're interested in doing that and learning more, go to hi. Hello, sarah.com forward slash only show creativity.

And that's where you'll see in week six, that's where we come focus on confidently, get those ideas out the door and that's where you can join, which would be very exciting. It's already really exciting. We've got some amazing smart people go through it right now. They're having a blast and they're making a really big difference to that organization in the process and would love love, love for you to join as well.

Because as I mentioned before with all of your stories and all of your experiences and all of our communal brain coming to gather, which is really what is happening in these moments, I am learning so much we are all learning so much and we're growing stronger as a consequence. And that, if you can't tell by my voice and if you can see my facial expressions, I am really jazzed and so excited about all of this.

Yes, I can't emphasize enough how exciting it would be for you to join, because I just love all of this and I've seen it make a difference over the last 20 years. And I'd be so excited if we could do it together, cause it's always, for me, it's always more fun if we can do it together. This is the episode today and I'm thrilled that you could join and I am, I'm always so happy to see how you are actually applying these into your world, how you're applying these into your real life scenarios.

People use them for business. People have used them with their family life. People have used them to navigate challenges within their partnerships. So I'm always so excited to hear back from you because we're learning together as always. So today thank you for joining can not wait for you to join next time.

And I love hearing from you when you share with me what it is that you want to hear about what are the challenges that you're facing, what is happening for you? I really do want to know because then I can then I can answer your questions. I can provide information and these shows, these shows are for you.

Then we can we can grow together and we can have the content be for you and continue to grow with you. That's it for now. And looking forward to you joining next time.