the innovative LEDGER
An e-Newsletter from The Innovative Edge™ Inc.

  Vol. 5, No. 6, June 2005
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Sleeping on the Job
By Jeff Govendo

Ray Kurzweil sleeps on the job.

The inventor of one of the first digital synthesizers, the print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, and other technological breakthroughs in entertainment and education, told a Boston Globe reporter that each night he gives himself a problem to solve with the intent of literally dreaming up an answer.

“We…have professional taboos,” notes Kurzweil, “such as ‘You can’t solve this single processing problem that way’ or ‘Those techniques shouldn’t be used in linguistics.’” At night, he says, “the censors in the mind are relaxed – we’re able to think about things we suppress during the day….since those censors are relaxed, your mind can make those connections.”

We’re all familiar with the “can’ts” and “shouldn’ts” that keep people from exercising their most creative thinking against problems or opportunities at work (and elsewhere). “We’ve never done it like that,” or “It’ll never work” are two favorites, along with the ever-popular rolling of the eyes and shaking of the head which communicate “can’t” and “shouldn’t” without words. After awhile, we don’t need to see or hear those censors on the outside; we’ve encountered them so often we internalize them. The impact over time on an organization’s ability to innovate is twofold: 1) potential breakthrough ideas never see the light of day, and 2) potentially creative people stop trying to come up with ideas. Both are significant losses.

Get Paid for Sleeping?
I suppose we could entertain a plan in which company employees go home and, taking Kurzweil’s cue, assign themselves business-related problems to solve in their sleep. But unless there’s overtime or “sleep bonuses” involved, I have some doubts about the popularity of this approach.

Another way is for executives and managers to recognize the importance of allowing – no, encouraging – their people to come up with ideas that may be unusual, untested, or just plain “off the wall.” Knowing the value of this, they can actively encourage their people by modeling such behavior themselves, and by providing a setting in which people can regularly exercise their creativity without fear of “getting it wrong.” For two quick reads with tips on how to do this, see my articles "Five ways to help people tap their own creativity" and "Group Creativity."

While we can never duplicate in our waking lives the completely “uncensored” dream state of a sleeping person, there's a lot we can do to stimulate creativity on the job and in other settings. It’s all about being open-minded to new thinking, and also knowing what to do with new ideas once they’ve been put forth. If your company is one that values the impact of innovation on the bottom line – as most do – it’s worth thinking about.

I suggest you sleep on it.

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Accessing the Creativity of Your Sales Force
By Bob Feldman

Sales professionals are the most creative and resourceful group in your operation. They have to be, in order to survive. Managers who do not leverage the innate creativity of their sales teams are missing a lucrative opportunity.

Your sales professionals are closest to the customer and prospect, constantly testing which benefits resonate and which are just wishful thinking. The successful sales team is nimble, adapting quickly to changes in the market and staying connected. In effect, they conduct small-scale “guerilla market research” every day.

For about 25 years, I’ve been listening to sales people talk to each other. The conversation is mostly about how hard it is to find and close business, and how poorly the process is understood by non-sales professionals. But listen closely, and you’ll find within this therapeutic venting insights no one else can give you: the most effective approaches to the prospect, whether the prospect’s view of your product matches its positioning, likely objections, and much more.

Sadly, the vast majority of executives and managers ignore the opportunity to mine sales creativity at the source. Instead, they hear mainly the “complaints” in these conversations and never get to the valuable part.

With this in mind, here are some tips for accessing the insights and creativity of your salespeople:

- Make it a point to get your sales team together on a regular basis, perhaps around dinner or drinks.
- Be prepared to listen “offensively”; i.e. proactively, for the golden content that comes only from direct contact with prospects, customers and competitors – rather than “defensively” to their frustrations.
- Guide the conversation to leverage their valuable insights.
- Listen for the gap between the home office theory and the reality of the gritty real world.

Make this a regular part of your sales management activity, and they will give you more and more of the value you can’t get anyplace else.

Bob Feldman has been helping businesses improve their sales and marketing results for over 25 years. He works as a consultant and coach to sales and marketing teams and executives in major and smaller companies in the U.S. and Europe. Bob can be contacted at (978) 456-8191,www.virtual-vp.com, bob@virtual-vp.com

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Names We Like

We're always on the lookout for creative product or business names.

• Stained Relations (stained glass artisans) - a colorful name for a very colorful group!
• Chip Shots (computerized golf simulator) - wonder if it has a button to click to virtually smash your clubs!
• Long Haul Shorts (hiking shorts) - a catchy name in which opposites attract!
• Rent-a-Wreck (cheap car rental) - O.K., it's not too clever and not very pretty, but it certainly does suggest you won't pay a lot for your car!
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  Innovation Quotation