Empowerment is the result of wholehearted participation

If you learn the secret of positive fields or mindspace, you can improve your Happiness Quotient. You can also get the best out of others. Making members of your team wholehearted participants rather than indifferent spectators, is the key to organizational success.

Wholeheartedness is a state of full presence. This state involves complete enjoyment of a task. Participation, with full commitment of body and mind, is irresistible. I become wholehearted when I give all of myself to an interaction or task. These interactions create a field, which allows me to be wholeheartedly present in the moment, without defensiveness. The most fundamental characteristics of a positive field are that it quells anxiety and produces feelings of acceptance and a feeling of being affirmed. It is like walking into a room full of people who love and accept you, unconditionally. It is a feeling of being meaningful and safe – this frees up energy for connecting.

Enhancing Positive Emotions

Learning to enhance the positive field and reducing the effect of the negative field is an important part of creativity and innovation. Thinking out of the box is possible only in a positive field. The positive field is sustained by certain tools and behavior: verbal, tonal and non-verbal. It is a win-win field. Within such a field, all who operate together are enabled and nurtured.

“It is well known that the era of the rugged individual has been replaced by the era of the team player. But this is only the beginning. The quantum world has demolished the concept of the unconnected individual,” wrote Margaret J. Wheatley. When people in a team co-operate and collaborate, the emotional balance sheet of all participants is positive. Understanding is more important than being understood or being right. The positive field is created by a common prayer or “mantra,” by a mental process which draws a magic circle around all those who are participating. A common exercise, a common company song, common goals; all enhance the power of the positive field. Handshakes, a friendly look, an encouraging word, are key factors. The role of laughter and commonly shared jokes in creating a positive field cannot be over estimated.

The Importance of Maintaining a Positive Emotional Balance Sheet with others

The environment of creativity is a supportive and nurturing environment, where everyone feels free to play, to be intuitive and bold. It is the environment that encourages people to be creative, be silly even, to take risks, and to think outside the box. There is around every organization, a field, which is positive or negative. This field begins within the individual.

Each person has within him a field that is positive or negative. The development of an inner field, a mindspace that is positive, is key to creativity. Consciously developing and pouring in positive emotions creates a positive field within which, a person interacts with others who bring in their own fields. Those who operate in positive fields suffused with love, compassion, laughter, courage and wonder, are likely to be more creative while supporting others to be at their innovative best.

The MindsPower Way

Much of the MindsPower process focuses on stimulating fresh thinking in managers and leaders with the goal of bringing new power and perspectives to their organizations. In strategic planning assignments, the client’s own planning team works out the plan, knowing that the important thing about a strategic plan is not the paper it is printed on, but the process it creates within an organization.
The process facilitates culture change, whether the transformation is being driven by shifting paradigms in the market or by internal events like mergers or acquisitions. Many companies use the process to create profitable new products and processes, often drawing on MindsPower’s unique research process for tapping the creativity of customers. Product development assignments not only assist with the birth of new ideas, but stay with the company all the way to the market.

Companies use the process to create or revitalize quality improvement programs. Another important area of work is corporate transformation, by developing high-performing managers and teams and promoting cross functional teamwork. This often involves mounting an Innovative Teamwork Program, which enables people to invent better ways of working and performing together. MindsPower programs are often tailored to the specific needs of each company.

The first step in developing an environment that nurtures creativity is to separate idea generation from analysis. Most business sessions do not yield too many breakthrough ideas because managers are too busy shooting down each other’s ideas. Such meetings produce boring, safe and often useless suggestions.

Today is the age of knowledge. Innovation can take companies forward at the speed of thought.

The MindsPower Way

Much of the MindsPower process focuses on stimulating fresh thinking in managers and leaders with the goal of bringing new power and perspectives to their organizations. In strategic planning assignments, the client’s own planning team works out the plan, knowing that the important thing about a strategic plan is not the paper it is printed on, but the process it creates within an organization.
The process facilitates culture change, whether the transformation is being driven by shifting paradigms in the market or by internal events like mergers or acquisitions. Many companies use the process to create profitable new products and processes, often drawing on MindsPower’s unique research process for tapping the creativity of customers. Product development assignments not only assist with the birth of new ideas, but stay with the company all the way to the market.

Companies use the process to create or revitalize quality improvement programs. Another important area of work is corporate transformation, by developing high-performing managers and teams and promoting cross functional teamwork. This often involves mounting an Innovative Teamwork Program, which enables people to invent better ways of working and performing together. MindsPower programs are often tailored to the specific needs of each company.

The first step in developing an environment that nurtures creativity is to separate idea generation from analysis. Most business sessions do not yield too many breakthrough ideas because managers are too busy shooting down each other’s ideas. Such meetings produce boring, safe and often useless suggestions.

Today is the age of knowledge. Innovation can take companies forward at the speed of thought.

Implementation: The Final Stage of the Process

The ‘reality test’ should now be ruthlessly applied. Once implementation starts, every move costs money. This is the last step in the thinking process and all ideas should be carefully studied. Implementing creative ideas and turning them into innovations is a special challenge. It is a process that requires a clear road map and the organizational will to stick to the path. This is where many organizations fail.

An ounce of action is worth tonnes of e-mail, paper and speeches. Implementation is the key to innovation.

Analysis : the gateway to solutions

During the process of analysis, logical, statistical and mathematical solutions have to be carefully discussed and the optimum one chosen. Some prevalent parameters are:

a) Time
b) Budget
c) Convenience
d) Human resources
e) Goodwill and impact on staff motivation levels
f) Aesthetics
g) Saving lives
h) Political capital
During the process of analysis, apply left-brain thinking – logical, statistical and mathematical. Solutions have to be carefully discussed and the optimum one chosen. The solutions are analyzed against the parameters chosen by the problem owner.

Different parameters find different levels of priority depending on the situation at hand. Let us consider the example of the budget as a parameter and its priority level in different cases. For a company where liquidity is low, cash flow would be the most important concern. For a company facing a crisis, time may be of the essence and big budgets would be tolerated in view of the emergency situation.

While identifying solutions, ensure that there are a wide variety of options to choose from. There is then a greater possibility that the final option chosen ensures optimal results. This systematic process ensures that the option chosen produces the best results.

Analysis is the stage just prior to implementation. Therefore, detailed analysis forms the root to strong implementation.

Idea Generation

Idea generation is a powerful tool that can be leveraged to drive innovation. In order to be successful, the idea generation program must be clear and consistent, reaching down to all levels of the organization. However, not following through on an idea generation program dooms it to
failure, as can be seen in suggestion boxes that are never opened and exit interviews that are not analyzed. Successful idea generation programs are long-term and transparent. Good ideas are immediately and publicly rewarded. These programs have a greater chance of success when creativity tools are taught in advance.

Identifying and Creating a Problem Bank

Identifying and formulating the problem is the most difficult part of creative problem solving. Very often we state symptoms of the problems and end up wasting scarce resources chasing the illusionary “golden deer of the epics.” Management then becomes so emotionally committed to the wrong path that we can end up moving faster and faster along the wrong road. It is like a man who drills an oil well, in a bad spot. More and more money is spent with no resulting strike. But those involved, refuse to fill up the unproductive well and move on to a new location. They continue throwing good money after bad, because they do not want to admit that a mistake had been made initially.

6M Map for Problem Analysis
6M Plus, Minus, Interesting
Men
Materials
Machines
Methods
Markets
Money

It is important to involve everyone in identifying the real problem. What is a problem for the worker need not seem like a problem for the manager.

Identifying and Creating a Problem Bank

Identifying and formulating the problem is the most difficult part of creative problem solving. Very often we state symptoms of the problems and end up wasting scarce resources chasing the illusionary “golden deer of the epics.” Management then becomes so emotionally committed to the wrong path that we can end up moving faster and faster along the wrong road. It is like a man who drills an oil well, in a bad spot. More and more money is spent with no resulting strike. But those involved, refuse to fill up the unproductive well and move on to a new location. They continue throwing good money after bad, because they do not want to admit that a mistake had been made initially.

6M Map for Problem Analysis
6M Plus Minus Interesting
Men
Materials
Machines
Methods
Markets
Money

It is important to involve everyone in identifying the real problem. What is a problem for the worker need not seem like a problem for the manager.

Nurturing Creativity

The first step in developing an environment that nurtures creativity is to separate idea generation from analysis. Most business sessions do not yield too many breakthrough ideas because managers are too busy shooting down each other’s ideas. Such meetings produce boring, safe and often useless suggestions.
Today is the age of knowledge. Innovation can take companies forward at the speed of thought. The list below outlines the process:

• Identifying and Creating a Problem Bank
• Idea Generation
• Analysis : the gateway to solutions
• Implementation: The Final Stage of the Process

The MindsPower Way

MindsPower process focuses on stimulating fresh thinking in managers and leaders with the goal of bringing new power and perspectives to their organizations. In strategic planning assignments, the client’s own planning team works out the plan, knowing that the important thing about a strategic plan is not the paper it is printed on, but the process it creates within an organization.
The process facilitates culture change, whether the transformation is being driven by shifting paradigms in the market or by internal events like mergers or acquisitions. Many companies use the process to create profitable new products and processes, often drawing on MindsPower’s unique research process for tapping the creativity of customers. Product development assignments not only assist with the birth of new ideas, but stay with the company all the way to the market.
Companies use the process to create or revitalize quality improvement programs. Another important area of work is corporate transformation, by developing high-performing managers and teams and promoting cross functional teamwork. This often involves mounting an Innovative Teamwork Program, which enables people to invent better ways of working and performing together. MindsPower programs are often tailored to the specific needs of each company.

The MindsPower Group

The first step in a MindsPower group is to install the positive field. The field is consciously installed where members of the group feel safe to be open, inventive, and even silly. Playfulness and fun define the MindsPower field. The positive emotions of love, compassion, laughter, courage and wonder are consciously poured into the field.
This climate is critical to the emergence of creative ideas. If all the emerging ideas are the type one feels comfortable with, then the ideas are probably 200 years old. That is why they feel as comfortable as old slippers.

THE MINDSPOWER PROCESS

The greatest competitive advantage comes from out-innovating the competition. As Tom Peters put it, “Add 10 differentiations to every product or service every 60 days. Sounds impossible. Isn’t it tough? It is. But what are the options? Your competitors are not sitting still.”
Innovation is the ultimate human resource which can ensure the competitive advantage of companies. It is the use of creative thinking tools that can provide the competitive edge required to face the challenge of globalization. Creativity may become essential for survival in the Indian context, where there is such a major limitation of resources.