Business Owners: use the KnowBrainerŽ to leave your competition in the dust.
June 9, 2009 Okay, as we continue... ...that latter group, that minority of learners, also pores over lecture notes in greater amounts of time thtn the majority, and finds pure text (the message, rather than content) troubling. Again, they are fully literate, can even be "A" students, and be productive in their careers.
Most of our educational system is based on words (oral and written), mathematical formulas, plus multiple choice exams. For the majority, these work, yet for the minority, there is too little material in a style to suit their needs.
So, members of one group, the majority, are known as "left-brain learners", or just "left-brained". The minority learning style is called "right-brained". Left-brainers learn best from lectures, thw written word, logic, and achieve their learning through a logical, formal structure and process.
Meanwhile, the right-brained, while fully literate and undoubtedly intelligent, need visuals, pictures, charts, and graphics. In physical skills, learning by doing is much more important and successful for them-this also applies to learning certain non-physical skills. When it comes to problem solving (mainly non-mathematical), they throw themselves into the process of logic, get stuck, impatient, and frustrated, then...AHA! On comes the light bulb, just as their thoughts become an unidentified casserole of you-name-it. Left-brainers are often amazed by this, believing that the entire logical thought process MUST take place before figuring out the answer (math or non-math). Right-brainers may be slower time-wise, yet are capable of arrivng at the answer at an earlier point on the process line.
What does this all mean for the products I offer on this site? While the physical form (KnowBrainer) is helpful for right-brainers, its use of words in the questions and statements is key for the left-brainers. You right-brainers will really catch on by registering for the Accelerated Innovation Training, after using the KnowBrainer-these trainings are physically active, held in a visually enlivening setting, and you really learn by doing!
Therefore, both of you learning types need to take advantage of both of these formats. Yes, "lefties", these trainings are structured for you, yet presented in one fo the important ways to engage "righties"!
May 14, 2009
A solid majority of students and employees are accustomed to learning from textbooks and training manuals...and from lectures. This is accepted as perfectly normal to them...and even to another group: those who need extra effort to learn this way. These latter ones come to passively accept that "this is the way it is" and therefore spend a longer time deciphering their notes, and reading assignments.
Yet this group is perfectly literate, intelligent, and able. They suffer from no developmental or learning disabilities. Their accomplishments may look haphazard, as well as their thinking "process". Let it be known that they can still be "A" students, as well as excellent performers in their companies.
One group will find the KnowBrainerŽ Innovation Tool more helpful, while the other my benefit more from Accelerated Innovation Training.
So who are the members of this group of learners? How and why are they different? What can that "solid majority" of learners pick up from them?
Next installment explores this more deeply.
April 23, 2009 How About the "Following"-Driven Company?
A following-driven trend among a company's customers usually shows up in brand loyalty. My father for example, was a Buick man from the early '50s into the '80s-right to the end. Other examples would be a favorite food following, whether restaurant or grocery (Oreo Cookies).
Many of the following driven companies exist in a somewhat under-the-radar (but fully legal) realm: the world of direct marketing. This addresses the customers' brand loyalty. NuSkin, NutriSystem, Quixtar (Amway), Avon, Shaklee, etc. Now how can that same loyalty be formed within? Among those making their living from those companies?
What about traditional companies? How do you create such a cultutre when almost everyone collects a steady salary? They must have more to follow than the weekly or twice-monthly countdown to the moment when they receive their paychecks.
Make clear the reason this company makes the product(s) or offer the services it does-how it first saw the need in the marketplace and why its customers are so loyal. Then, without calling it a "mission statement", make clear how everyone's responsibilities are inarguably connected to the quality of the firm's products. These should be communicated within the "internally consistent" and "mutually supportive" framework to increase employees' productivity and loyalty (no need to get academic about it!). Another key: help your company decide what community or charitable function it can support-the more it is related to its main line of business, the more employees can be involved (even adding their own donations to the corporate)-this can then make the company's marketplace mission more concrete to them.
One more installment coming next week...
April 14, 2009
Welcome...I'm so happy to be back! I know I was supposed to return two or three weeks ago...and learned a hard lesson about recovery time. Please accept my apologies for appearing to lead you down a road that must have felt like it ended as soon as it began. The way I ran myself into the ground is...unforgivable (by me!). The longer I'm down the longer I should allow for recovery. I'm 90% back and hope 90% of you are back.
To the subject: this intro will be brief. I certainly had time to slowly realize that my series on "drivers" was incomplete. There is one more type. Many successful companies have it, yet they are out of the mainstream (though above the radar!). Yes, they are very much left alone by the mainstream business media. Their followings, however, are immense, both among customers...and their employees. Such companies can be a useful model for workplaces with broken cultures, or start-ups, or those looking to break from the crowd employing the majority of the "84-percenters" who, reagrdless of the state of the economy or the company's current condition, and even their specific job duties, are unhappy in their jobs.
Watch for more...
Personality/charisma-driven? System-? Idea-? Product-? Cause-?
Hello again, and I'm happy to be back. My apologies for keeping you waiting for so long. I'm better and more alert now. Therefore, picking up where I left off... ...when I mentioned the social or societal role a company should play, I was referring to more than which charities it supports with its profits. Here we return to the theme of drivers, and relating driver(s) to this role.
A system by itself is a difficult route to accomplish this. Profit motive alone is much the same. Yet no one driver alone can achieve this-determining your company's wider role beyond the marketplace. Carefully consider the individual drivers that would hinder defining your wider role, versus sole drivers that fall short. Somewhere in here comes the right "team" of drivers...that precise combination (right number, right type) that not only builds your firm's business, it also expands its overall role.
This role further positions your company in the mind of the public. It also more directly relates your societal role to your product or service. If you manufacture kitchenware, and support music education for local children, that is beautiful, yet how related are the two? If, however, you publish personal development materials (print and audio), with the idea behind it of "Encouraging the ongoing best in each and every one of us", and then contribute a portion of your profits to rebuilding the self-esteem of abused children and teenagers, there is a unified triple crown of purpose.
Now you can understand the most effecitve driver-no, the most effective combination of drivers-to build your company into a pattern of steady growth, market prominence, and a wider role in the world that grows naturally out of your main line of business.
In other words, clarify a mission and vision for your company, develop your key product or product line (or service) that would best achieve that, then decide upon your societal legacy. To summarize, you combine an idea driver, a product driver, and a cause driver...to become idea-driven, product-driven, and finally, cause- or mission-driven.
The KnowBrainerŽ Innovation Tool will empower you to discover, define, and put into practice the proper drivers for your small, medium, or large business. Just as powerful for the abstract as well as the concrete, this product's features make this easier and enjoyable. Now is the time to order yours.
February 24, 2009
Most companies first idea-the one that gives them their birth-is one for a product (or service). One product, then a related line of products, enhance and expand a company's standing in the marketplace. This certainly shouldn't be static at first-one by one it should pass established companies and then reach solid standing when highly enough positioned in consumer's minds (greatly aided by advantageous positioning on store shelves!).
So, while that idea should stay, there should be, no later than attaining a constant and high enough positioning in the marketplace, a more "abstract" idea, one that states why the company expects to serve its customers for a long time to come, and encourage loyalty from its employees. This is more than just extended ad campaigns.
This new idea needs to state the social or societal role this company will have, in relation to its product or service. It goes beyond just earning profits from making and selling products and services. This will soon succeed by involving customers and employees on more than just a functional/utility level with your products.
Go ahead...if you need to start treating ideas like this seriously-and successfully-for the business you own or manage, order your KnowBrainerŽ today to key up your ability to think, plan, and create successfully on this matter.
More to follow...
Is Your Company/Business Product-Driven? If so, this is either a start-up or an established firm with a steady record of growth and dependability with multiple, yet related, products. Of course, the latter can grow from the former. The late, great Diamond Destinies International, founded by wunderkinds Dan and Paul Monaghan, started out with their showcase product-the World of Wealth program. This program combined audio tapes, a book, and a video to teach buyers the principles of success. From this, they developed or attained marketing rights to motivational speakers' tape albums and related products-all of which tied into an overall theme.
Same with TPN (The Peoples' Network, parent company of the Success Channel-how I miss that!) which began as a private satellite network channel. They expanded into similar materials like DDI above did, complete with a shopping catalog. TPN even made a deeper foray into health products (we all should pursue success there, too).
Of course, any product or line must be related to its market-or being product-driven will be a scattershot undertaking...and the company, if not correcting itself, will be undertaken...or overtaken-by competiton, or by being merged if the suitor has a superior marketing/product development plan and sees potential in its acquired products or lines.
The KnowBrainerŽ Innovation Tool is your best friend when it comes to decisions like these-we're not all about money. Our main purpose is to help you become a more creative, innovative, and...successful(!) thinker and planner. Whether it's product development, office renovation, or a new organization chart, the KnowBrainerŽ powers up your gifted brain to a new level that you will learn is possible again and again.
Very simple-even though SolutionPeople mainly emphasizes ROI (Return on Ideas-or Investment, as well), their innovation products, all of which are sold through this site, can improve your performance in carrying out non-monetary projects.
If you are going to change your company culture by changing its "driver", our tools make the process easier and faster. The "hows" and the "whats" will come to you more rapidly and clearly than without these aids.
A key factor in this: in both Step 1 and Step 4, the KnowBrainerŽ asks you what other people must BE, KNOW, FEEL, HAVE, DO, and THINK. This proves that this enjoyable little tool is just as great in the abstract as in more concrete matters. There are other cards that help in other ways for more abstract projects, such as in encouraging you to bring your sensory faculties to life for more certain success.
So, you can achieve a financial ROI, an abstract ROI, and of course, SolutionPeople's guarantee-Return On Ideas.
Order the KnowBrainerŽ today for success in any or all of these areas.
THE SUPER BOWL AND INNOVATION
What a game! Even the losers kept the winners on edge to the very end-like last year. Yet the main point of this Super Bowl reference is...innovation! Not in the game, but during. It used to be that the "game" highlights were the commercials-the brand new ones that companies paid some $100,000 a second for this year...just to guarantee themselves the opening night stage with the largest audience.
So where does the innovation come in? In the commercials! Daring, action-packed, humorous, and best of all, memorable (though some miss these marks). Some have almost a cartoon-like plethora of possibilities (in cartoons, anything goes!). Brand-new ads show off innovation. And so do ones, while not entirely original, appealingly build on the same theme (the Budweiser Clydesdales-they beat the frogs in my book any day). Note how Bud keeps the basics-these marvelous, muscular, awe-inspiring beasts known as the "gentle giants" of the horse world, and seems to stay four steps ahead of the creativity curve (the Clydesdale leaping the canyon, etc.)with ads fondly remembered.
Note that the night before, on the "Greatest Super Bowl Commercials", viewers chose...after seven years of voting for the Mean Joe Greene/Coke ad, chose the "Team Clydesdale" ad from last year (the Clydesdale reejcted trying out for the team, then accepting an offer from the Dalmation to train him)as the all time greatest Super Bowl commercial.
So while innovation counts on the field in a winning strategy and play-calling on the field, the most memorable innovation comes in those superb commercials!
Raise your Innovation Level Now!
(Back to "Drivers" next time)
- SYSTEM-DRIVEN:
These are easy to figure out: government agencies or, as we like to call them...bureaucracies! Plodding, impersonal, unresponsive, slower than a tortoise on its deathbed...so religiously tied to procedure you'd never want them as your commanding officers on the battlefront (the "B-rats" are far off the front lines)-otherwise we'd lose every war as soon as it began.
Yet, take heart: "system-driven" is a real-world form of praise for many of the most successful private-sector entities. How can this be? Private sector bureaucra-no, no, no...here it is: think of any chain restaurants you regularly visit-the one, or ones, you go back to because you enjoy the food, service, atmosphere, and so on. Do you visit different locations frequently? If so, and you can honestly say, "Never had a bad one," tht's because these companies have a system in place so that no matter which location you visit, the setting is the only difference.
Being "system-driven" is what ensures that the same, tenderness, seasonings, temperature, and flavor are consistent throughout the company. After all, an unsatisfying experience in one is a reflection on both that location and the whole company.
So the "system driver" has its merits-certainly in the private sector as a way of assuring consistent quality standards and customer loyalty...yet never should the system driver take over service or responses to customer complaints!
- PERSONALITY-DRIVEN:
In the first type, a firm may have "monarchical" leadership...and the same kind of transition! Well okay, that second part is only true in family businesses. I once worked for a family business in which the managers of my department, in succession, were second, third, and...third and-a-half (halfth?)generation (it was a brother to the third gen manager). A family owned this business, yet..this was a different family than the one that ran my department.
When succession becomes automatic-as it often does in such businesses-a new manager can ascend to the throne, yet lack the charisma, drawing power, leadership, or firm decision-making ability of its ancestors. Many a family business resembles a royal family in that ownership or the company president position is a birthright.
A better arrangement is to pinpoint someone within the company yet outside the family who has their own magnetic, bold leadership attributes. In more difficult circumstances, hire-from-without may be the solution, yet the desired strong leader may be too valuable to his current business to be lured away. If the hoped-for "personality type" is unavailable and decision time is near, such a company will need to find a new "driver", the determine what kind of CEO would be best in that light.
More to come...
1. Be thankful for it-yeah, that's right-be thankful! You're never given a problem too big for you. Remember there are some of these in which you need help from others-forgetting this is why some people think certain problems are just too big for them.
2. After discovering the problem and getting your first ideas-even if they're nowhere near the whole solution-remind yourself: "I'm closer to the answer than I was an hour ago/yesterday," etc.
Or: "I'm doing better than yesterday/last night",
And: "So, I'm more relaxed...because the ideas keep coming!"