Coaching 4 Innovation Performance Programme

These are the highlights in this 2-day programme:


Coaching for Innovation Performance

Organisations may use a number of interventions to improve the performance of individuals. These may include teaching, training, facilitation, mentoring, and counselling. Coaching is one of such interventions but its principles, approaches and techniques are distinctively more self-directed. People are meaning making machines and tend to be derailed in their performance, In this module, participants will uncover the key elements of coaching to differentiate it from the more traditional forms of performance interventions. The importance of coaching for innovation is also shared here.


Neurology of Coaching for Innovation Performance

The principles, approaches and techniques of coaching for innovation performance are built around the workings of the brain; how it is attracted to ideas and how it creates insights and learning. In this module, participants learn how the brain makes sense of its surrounding and uses these inputs for insight and knowledge creation. Participants will also learn about the drivers (‘SCARF’ Model) behind this creation process.

Coaching for Innovation Performance Principles

There are 6 key principles in coaching for innovation performance. These principles guide the innovation coach towards creating a self-directed awareness and power for action into one’s own innovation performance. In this segment of the programme, participants will learn about these 6 principles. A series of exercises and activities will be introduced to help the participants gain a greater competency over these principles.

Language of Coaching for Innovation Performance

Like any other interventions used for improving innovation performance, coaching comes with its own unique of lingo and jargons. In this module, participants will learn the art of making coaching self-directed and empowering. They will learn about the levels (‘Choosing Your Focus’ Model) of the coaching conversation, language of coaching, and the importance of clarity of distance, listening for potential and speaking with intent.


Processes of Coaching for Innovation Performance

Coaching is a structured process and this process provides the coach the framework to guide his innovators and innovation teams from awareness to reflection and from this to insights and actions (‘Four Faces of Insight’ Model). In this final segment of the programme, participants will learn three simple processes that help their coachee or coaching teams mine for their goals and actions, generate dialogues for insights and learning, and create conversations for innovative breakthroughs.

This article was written by Anthony Mok on 14 Oct 2010.
Copyright 2010. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

Goal Setting – Charting Your Future for Successful Breakthroughs

There are two worlds that we need to effectively manage in our lives in order that we remain successful. One of these worlds is the present and the other is our future. Both of these worlds are interrelated. Our future can only be created from the present but rarely are we able to create our future when the present is messed up by our past.

This programme is designed to help you deal with your present by unhooking the things that happened in the past, which are holding and preventing you from move ahead in life. When you life is free of the shadows of the past, you could then begin to chart and building your future with the present as your starting point.

Course Objectives

At the end of the course, you are able to:

• Manage your present with what you already have
• Charting and build your future from the present

Course Outline

Part 1: Managing the Present with What You Already Have

We have everything at our disposal to make it in life. Didn’t we survive our last birthday? Aren’t we doing alright at the moment? However, ‘alright’ is not always better. It is always good to uncover the things that are holding us back so that we could do even better in life. Our lives could be built from learning and self-discoveries, and this is the true nature of life.

Something is Not Working – Using ‘Tension’ as an Early Warning Devise

There are occasions in our lives when everything seems to fall apart. Most of us confront them by adopting strategies that may alleviate the discomforts these occasions brought on to us. Others just run away believing that they would go away at some point of time. Seldom do we recognize that the stress we experience comes about because situations have changed and our major life strategies no longer work.

In this module, we will play a game called the ‘The Journey to Kinderland’. In the game we will learn to use our body to inform us of things that are not working properly.

Where is it Not Working – Identifying the Source of the Tension

When we know something is not working, we usually put in more effort, time and money to turn it around, only to be disappointed because things get from bad to worse. So, what is wrong here? Actually, nothing is wrong. We are just blinded to the source that creates these tensions.

In this segment, we will learn the source of our problem by uncovering the drivers that derail us from our happiness. We will complete the Personal Derailment Profile, which may point us to the specific drivers that are causing the stress in our lives.

Looking for the Gaps – Things that You Could Do

No future could be built at any other time but today. Therefore, understanding the concept of time is very important and the question we must ask is what we should do to move ahead in life.

In this module, we will learn the true nature of time and its impact on your future. We will also complete the Linking Skills Profile to discover the skill sets we need to make the future more precise.

Part 2: Working Your Future from the Present

Once we become aware of what is in the past that is ruining our present, we can now look at what we could do now to create our future.

Envisioning Your Future – Getting the Fog Out of the Way

We cannot talk about our future until we could see how it looks like. Once we have an image of the future, we get to be inspired by it, motivated by it, and our aspirations could propel us to great heights.

In this segment, we will spend time creating our own vision board. Through the board, we attempt to make as clear as possible our true desires and we represent these with pictures to enhance the clarity and impulse for them.

Translating Talk into Tangibles – Setting My Plans

We cannot talk about our future. It carries no value. We have to build our future from today, that is, it has to be now. This means that we need to have a plan. The plan calls on us to work towards a goal and it tells us if we are ahead or behind in our pace today into our future.

In this module, we will use a multitude of templates to work out a set of plans that we could implement immediately. If fact, we can begin to call on resources and support using the programme to kick-start our plan, inching a step towards fulfilling a breakthrough life. In order words, we are innovating our lives.

Breaking Out of the Box - Barriers to Your Innovated Life

'Think outside the box' is one of those management jargons that has been wildly circulated and widely used in many learning communities in the world.

But what does it really mean? What is the 'box' mentioned in the phrase? We have included an 'outside' in the maxim, how does the inside looks like? Since we know we need to 'think' to get out, then what kind of thinking should we use to do that?

In this module, we will learn the types of barriers we may be pre-disposed to and we will rely on the Opportunity-Obstacle Quotient Profile to gain this insight.

If you are keen to find out more about this programme, please contact Anthony Mok at spaceman@pacific.net.sg.

This article was 1st written on 17 April 2009 and updated on 22 Jun 2009.
Copyright 2009. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

Teambuilding Behind the Wheels

Team Building and Innovation

The success of any innovative endeavour depends on the level of development and growth in the team. Besides having the right talent in the team, it needs the right combination of skills resided in the team to keep it intact and resilience for the challenges of bringing ideas, in the form of breakthroughs and innovations, to market. Teams, which members are in loggerheads with each other, are more likely to focus their efforts and energies to avoid letting their positional power and influence reconfigured during the in-fighting, and least bother with getting the breakthroughs for the organisation. The very purpose of the team is largely forgotten as team members either fight or flight to survive.

To keep these negative aspects of group dynamics from affecting the performance of the team and the eventual outcomes their efforts have produced, team building and imbuing the team with the awareness and competencies for working in team becomes even more crucial.

There is no one official description of ‘Team Building’ but team building professionals have defined the term as:

‘a purpose-driven process, developed along to a systematic plan, to create, maintain and enrich the development of a group of people into a cohesive unit that delivers.’

There is much confusion over the distinction between team building and team bonding. Team bonding occurs when people forms close and personal relationships through frequent interactions in the team. Bonding is a pre-requisite for team building. The team will only mature and grow when members trust each other. However, team bonding is less formal and structured, since the key objective of bonding activities, like having meals together, engaging in a game after work, and other social events, is to mingle and socialise at a personal level, there are little behavioural changes arising from these interactions.

On the other hand, team building takes a progressive approach in developing the competencies of individuals and dynamics of a group of people in order to increase their propensity to perform more efficiently and deliver outcomes more effectively as a team. Team building activities help people understand that they are better synergistically as a collective than as individuals. It helps people see the benefits of collaboration to leverage on the talent, expertise and resource networks of another. It is essentially bringing people to a place where authentic appreciation of each other’s assumptions, beliefs, and values could take place so that new win-win social arrangements could be created for all parties involved. Therefore, team building is never a one-off event. It should occur as a series of activities to continuously shape and unify the team through competency building and practicing these in the form of habits.

Unlike most team building workshops, I advocate a competency component that is designed around The Team Building SpiralTM to enable learning among members on how to develop and growth their own team.

The spiral provides a structured process that helps participants acquire their aspirations, awareness, competencies, and drive necessary in the development and growth of their own team as members. In this 1-day workshop, participants are able to:

• Get inspired by others to aspire for greater things for their own team
• Uncover the current health status of their team
• Learn where they could draw their energies from to grow their team
• Acquire the 7 competencies for growing highly successful teams
• Transfer these competencies as practices into their workplace

Four learning technologies will be employed to enable participants’ learning at the workshop. These are:

Uncovering Your Personal Propensity to Develop and Grow an Effective Team

Assigning the wrong person to a job has costly consequences. A personality profile provides information on an individual’s preferred behavioural tendencies and patterns. It shows the level of personal propensity of each individual member in developing and growing their team effectively. The information from the profile helps team members improve the way they contribute to the team’s capability and capacity for performance and outcomes.

There are 3 different profiles to choose from for this workshop and here is some advice on which profile is most suitable for your team:

Participants will also uncover the state of the team’s current constitution. By knowing the status of the team’s growth and development, the members in the team are able to explain the difficulties faced while working with the team. You can try one of this profile by visiting this URL or if you have a Facebook account you could click here as well.

Using Exercises and Activities to Create Experiential Based Learning

Research reveals that participants recall better when they enjoyed themselves during the workshop. The National Training Laboratory (USA) concludes that learning by doing (experiential learning) is more effective than the traditional classroom learning.


Ellen J. Langer, in her book 'The Power of Mindful Learning', suggests that people seek novelty in experiential learning and learn by figuring out how to win. This need to win and overcome challenges is a strong motivational factor for learning. Also, when engaged in activities, people are in a more relaxed mode and less conscious of their past experiences that may create resistance to their own learning.

As this is a competency based programme, a selection of exercises and activities will be introduced to help participants acquire the competencies of being members in effective teams. A total of 7 competencies will be introduced and activated at the workshop so that participants are able to practice them as habits back in the office.

Conducive Endurance 35 Learning Environment

Co-authors for the ‘World Class Training’, Kaye Thorne and David Mackey, state that the ‘most memorable learning experiences through experiential learning usually take place in a special environment’. The correct choice of location and layout are vital to encourage experiential learning.

Part of this workshop will take place on board the Endurance 35, a sailing boat located at Changi, Singapore.

This will provide an ideal out-of-the-norm setting, away from the rigidities of work stations, power politics of the boardrooms, and inflexible classrooms layouts, for learning. This unique environment setting would prove to be a refreshing and certainly more interesting change for people wanting to find ways to strengthen their teams by learning the 7 competencies. During teambuilding, this informal atmosphere also sets the stage for people to subconsciously reveal traits otherwise concealed during formal settings.

Using Focused Discussion for Debriefs

Focused Discussion, which is a trademarked interaction technology from the Institute of Cultural Affairs, Canada, will form the basis for conducting debriefs at the end of each exercise. The technology provides a structure that:

• Allows the entire group to participate
• Creates meaningful conversations, dialogues, and discourses
• Broadens perspectives
• Produces clear ideas and conclusions

This discussion method uses a series of questions that:
Follows a specific sequence

• Are adaptable to any situations and groups
• Are ordered carefully so that they progress in accordance to the awareness level of the participants. It takes the participants through four stages of awareness – being objective, reflective, interpretive and decisive
• Allow people to become conscious of how their thinking can becomes actions
• Produces group reflections and decision based on all the available information
• Directs the thinking of the group toward an actionable decision

Copyright 2008 & 2009. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

Balanced Dynamics Innovation

Balanced Dynamics InnovationTM

This is an innovative approach that helps organisations increase their chances of getting innovative breakthroughs from their innovation teams.

The approach addresses the need of putting together a team that has all the capabilities and capacities to create and deliver innovative breakthroughs. It also overcomes the difficulties of getting a team, with very diverse backgrounds, to stay together long enough to bring their innovative breakthroughs to the market.

It is not natural that the teams will succeed. They need to be set up for success. Balanced Dynamics InnovationTM brings together two sets of technology to do just this. Here is a brief description of each of these technologies:

Setting the Team Up for Success

The typical reasons for teams which are unable to bring innovation to market include their failure to recruit entrepreneurial individuals to the job, leaders who ignore important tasks in the innovation process, and members failing to resolve conflicts.

The Opportunities-Obstacles, Team Management (visit this link or if you have a Facebook account, do click on this link to sample the Facebook edition of the 'Work Preference Profile') and Linking Skills (visit this link to sample the Facebook edition of the 'Linking Skills Profile')Profiles provide individuals with valuable insights and information into the way they prefer to work, their preferred roles within an innovative team, and propensity their teams are likely to deliver breakthroughs to the market.

This feedback will help improve the team members' relationship, and its capability to create and deliver, which in turn increases the organisation’s propensity to innovation.

Cycle of InnovationTM

This is a proven methodology that alleviates the adverse effects of the forming and storming phases of the team’s development. It takes the team from the creation of an idea to turning it into actual working prototypes within a short span of 3 days, thereby strengthening the team’s capacity to deliver what they have created.

The members of the team will also address issues pertaining to marketing the solution, dealing with sceptics, managing resources, and negotiating between different interest groups. It is fast-paced and is used for designing, refining, and introducing new products, services and processes. The roots of Cycle of InnovationTM can be trace to iDive, a process that has been used by the MINDEF Innovation and Transformation Office since 2004.

There are several recommended approaches to introduce Balanced Dynamics InnovationTM into your organisation. You could use one or several in combination, depending on how you like these technologies to be encased in the culture of your organisation:

• Starter - Organisation adopts the left hand side of the Balanced Dynamics InnovationTM. This consists of a set of profiling exercises and a half to one-day worth of Post-profiling Developmental Session. The knowledge gained could be dovetailed into the organisation's existing team development or management systems.
  
  

  

• Pilot - Organisation runs the Balanced Dynamics InnovationTM Workshop. The outcomes of the three-day workshop is the creation of an effective innovation team, which will deliver the prototype of the innovative breakthrough and the business plan for its introduction into the market. Recently, MICA has successfully incorporated this process in its 2008's Innovation Jam.

Testimonies from participants had attended the programme:

• I have learnt to use different tools to solve different types of problems.


• I found the tool useful both at work and at home.


• I have discovered a way to analyse problems in a systematic and comprehensive manner, hence I am able to tackle the problem with the most appropriate set of tools.

• Scaled - Organisation is imbued with the technologies. This approach is more involved as the organisation learns to use these technologies and conducts their own post-profiling developmental session and Balanced Dynamics InnovationTM workshop.

Please contact me (spaceman@pacific.net.sg) if you want to learn more about Balanced Dynamics InnovationTM or if you want to explore the approaches for bringing the technology into your organisation.

This article was 1st written on 20th August 2007 and subsequently updated on 7 & 23 Oct 2008, 11 Mar 09 & 15 Jan 2010.

Copyright 2007 & 2008. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

GIST Planning Board and Strategic Thinking Cards

There are many reasons why innovation fails to take off after much of the fanfare introduced at its launch. One key reason is that the owners of the innovation do not think through their longer term strategies, and when conditions change, they either lack the disposition or resources to allow them to sustain the diffusion of the innovation to reach its critical tipping point, where the change could take place without further interference from the owners.

Thinking strategically involves looking not just at the past and present, but also at the future. Only after the successful completion of this phase could we strategically plan for the future. In short, regardless of the innovation introduced strategic thinking helps you anticipate changes in the environment, and plan for them so you are prepared and not go under.


The GISTTM Strategic Thinking Cards and Planning Board is a methodology that comes with a set of cards and board that take you through a series of steps where you think critically, strategically and creatively about your strategies and action plans to introduce innovative solutions into your organisation and marketplace.

The methodology presents four phases and these are:

Grounding the Problem. In this phase, a set of questions are presented to help you identify your users' requirements. You may like to view the slide-share below by clicking on the board.

GIST Planning Board - Panel 1

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: planning creativity)

Ideation and Refinements. Here, the board guides you in generating and refining innovative solutions.

Strategy Development and Leveraging. The planning board now asks you about your strategies of sustaining the change.

Putting Them Together. Finally, you are led into putting together a plan that introduces the innovative solution into your organisation or market.

There are several ways the methodology could be brought into your organisation. These are some of the suggested approaches:

Since 2008, the GISTTM Strategic Thinking Cards and Planning Board has been introduced to the trainers at the National Community Leadership Institute, innovation activists from the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts Innovation Teams and Land Transport Authority of Singapore.

This article was updated on 14 Sept 2008, 12 Feb 2009 & 31 Mar 2009.
Copyright 2007, 08 & 09. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

Journey to Kinderland - Setting the Creative and Innovative Mindset

There were challenges running the MINDEF Innovation Game between 2002 to 2006. One of these was the organisation of workshops for large groups (more than 50 participants). With the configuration of 2 facilitators to every 5 players, I had to muster 10 facilitators to run an event for 50 players in the early days when the game was introduced into the organisation.

Subsequently, one of the players was made to helm the role of the 2nd facilitator but this arrangement affected that player's learning cycle. In the later years, I had the players trained in the mechanisms of the game so that they run the game with me and in their sub-units but there were reservations about their effectiveness in debriefing their participants.

Having facilitators at the table continued to be problematic (The mechanisms of the game could have been changed since I left MINDEF in Feb 2007 and these historical legacies may no longer impact it.)

From the lessons learnt from those few years of helming the game for more than 1,000 participants from MINDEF and many other public sector organisations, like MOE and MinLaw, it dawn on me that creating another game with simlar characteristics may not be viable for the private sector. I found another approach, in June 2007, that gets me out of this constraint of balancing learning effectiveness and organising efficiency.

Takeaways from Journey to KinderlandTM

Journey to KinderlandTM is a game, which consists of a series of 9 activities (to be expanded to 20 in the future), that provides players a new way of exploring their own personal and interpersonal barriers, in an experiential way, to creativity and innovation . The activities open a window into their subconscious mind and see how it operates. The game provides a language that helps them distinct and catches the triggers that control their thinking and behaviours that have prevented them from fully realising their personal potentials.

I had used 4 of the 9 activities with LTA (2007 & 2008), NACLI (2007) and recently with MICA (2008). The outcomes have been very encouraging. The mechanisms of these activities have proven to work. Besides their abilities to consistantly evoke the same behaviours sets, deem necessary as opportunities for the debrief after the game, they also generate the same category of deep learning amongst the players. Because each activity is self contained, players enjoyed the activity without the intervention from the facilitator until during the debrief period. As learning is modularised, the introduction and acquisition of the language is specific and faster although the debriefs have to be conducted by a skilled and experience faciltiator. Still. this is a breakthrough from the confines of the original innovation game.

The Happy Family Game

One of these activities is the Happy Family Game, which is a card-based exercise where participants learn about how we deal with the known and unknown.

2 x 2 Grid of Knowns and Unknowns

Throught the card-based exercise, participants learn that:

We Pretend We Know It All But Really We Don't

We often see the Future seen as a continuation from the Past. From this perspective, many of us attempt to deal with the future by strategising and planning as if we already know how the Future will unfold.

However, all known futures are actually hindsights. Those futures that we know before their occurrence are just predictions. Honestly, we are clueless most of the time. The reality is that all events in the world could be grouped into 4 different categories and the future is unknown to us. It requires a set of strategies and behaviors, which is different from those we are using now, to deal with it effectively.

Understanding these can give us the freedom to create the breakthroughs in our ideas and actions……

Another exercise conducted at the workshop is the Old Macdonald Sing-along. Participants learn that there is:

Meaning Making Machines

More than a Conversation in a Conversation

Unaware to us, as we speak to someone, we are in more than a conversation. In fact, there are five other conversations taking place at the same time. Conversations that we are not even consciously aware of.

What we are present to in any conversation are those things we can hear and see. However, there is also this conversation that only we can hear. Sometimes, we even verbalise and act out some part of it. This is the world of the internal conversation. This is the conversation of 'yes' or 'no', 'should' or 'shouldn't,', 'right' or 'wrong', 'whys', 'cannot be?!' and many more. This is a conversation of evaluation and decision making. This is the conversation where meaning are being made. This conversation is capable of stoping us from doing something.

The scary part of this conversation is that it is the loudest.

This acticle was 1st written on 6 Nov 2007 and updated on 14 May & 23 Oct 2008.

Copyright 2008. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

The Facilitation Star & Facilitation Competency Wheel

Towards the middle of 2005, I decided that we need a vibrant community of facilitators to sustain the culture of innovation in my previous organisation.

The timing for its formation was good as there was a urge in the organisation to move away from the efficient way of reaching agreements to that of the effective way of consensus building. Also, there was a growing recognition that the wisdom in the organisation is in the crowd and the efficient way of doing things has gotten in the way.

We attracted only 14 people at the 1st MINDEF Facilitators' Forum (MFF) on 16 September 2005. As the concept of facilitation was very new at that time, it became apparent to me that to grow the community I need to invest in the education, training and development of facilitators. Subsequently, this led to the introduction of the MFF Developmental Framework at the 30th of November 2005's MFF Gathering.

The years I spent leading the movement has provided me invaluable insights into how the art and science of facilitation could be imparted. The 5 points of The Facilitation StarTM represents the body of knowledge I have accumulated from MINDEF on developing facilitators.



The star is a structured process that could helps current and aspiring facilitators gain mastery over their trade. The star helps them to:

• Understand the characteristics of a facilitator and the nature of facilitation, and to differentiate this role from those of teachers, trainers, coaches, advisors, and consultants.
  
• Uncover the needs of the client who initiated the facilitated session and the needs of those participating in the session.
  
• Apply the above information to design effective group processes that could effectively to Manage the dynamics of goup in conversation, Facilitate the conversations, and Guide the group towards consensus.
  
• Use the skills of facilitation to create a sustainable environment for participation during the conversation.
  
• Deliver the design of the session to the group to enable its participants to create the intended outcome. Please click on this icon for the sample of the design template and the click on this icon for the Programme Run-sheet.

After two years of effort (and literally, of sweat), the membership of the community grew from a mere 14 to 200, and I have hosted 70 participants at some of the gatherings.

I am also very happy that some large departments have adopted the framework as their own, which shows the recognition of facilitators as champions of innovation in organisations.

The Facilitation Competency WheelTM

To begin cultivating and growing our facilitation capability and capacity, it is always good to know our current competency in facilitation.

The Facilitation Competency WheelTM is a self-assessment tool where facilitators and potential facilitators score 14 different statements against a 4-point scale onto the wheel below to determine his/her facilitation competency.

Understanding the Wheel

Facilitation is divided into the science and art of facilitation. In the science of facilitation, the focus is in the processes, methodologies and tools used in facilitating engagements. For the art of facilitation, the key concern is keeping the negative aspects of group dynamics out from the conversations at the engagements.

The wheel provides three important sets of information on the competency level of the facilitator:

Balance - It shows whether the facilitator is strong in the art or in the science of facilitation, and therefore suggests the broad areas he/she should next develop.

Focus – It provides information on the specific strengths to leverage on and weaknesses to avoid, which allows the facilitator to accurately pin-point his/her training needs and identify the most appropriate training programmes that could address these needs.

Competence – Finally, the Wheel also informs of the facilitator’s competency level. The lower the current competency is the greater the opportunity for growth in that area for the facilitator.

Both the Star and Wheel has been used in several organisations since 2007. These include Ministry of Education's Teacher Network and Ong Teng Cheong Institute of Labour Studies.

This article was first written in June 2007 and subsequently updated in April, September & December 2008.

Copyright 2007 and 2008. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

The Big Splash – Diving into the Realms of Entrepreneurship

There have been calls for me to develop an approach to help organisation produce entrepreneurs. I decided to create The Big SplashTM. It has five components that touches, moves and inspires individuals to:

• Adopt positive mindsets for being creative, innovative and enterprising
• Acquire the competency and capacity to do well as an entrepreneur
• Apply their knowledge and skills around creative ideas and innovations
• Accept the responsibility of the entrepreneur by bringing the benefits of the innovation to the public

The Big SplashTM is designed to allow participants:

• Learn the skills by doing their projects
• Gain the competency for creating other innovations
• Acquire the capacity to deal with the unexpected

The process of The Big SplashTM is described in the following ways:

While I did not have the opportunity to introduce Big SplashTM in my previous organisation, but I was lucky to bring some expects of the process into the organisation. These include ThinkInnovate, Entrepeneur Dive, and Innovation Jam between 2004 to 2006.

Copyright 2007. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

Enhanced Open Space (eOS)

I was introduced to the Open Space Technology (OST) in 2003 when the newly formed Facilitators Network Singapore (FNS) brought this to the country as part of their effort to introduce facilitation to the nation. Subsequently, I attended a three-day workshop, where I was ‘certified’ to conduct OST both as an organiser and facilitator.

Embedded in the OST process, are its capabilities of inviting, self-organising, and hosting large audience participation. However, it has limitations. Three are identified:

+ The breakout team lacks a group based process that could effectively ‘pull’ the wisdom out of the participants, organise the wisdom and record the knowledge systematically, and democratically reach a conclusion in the conversation.

+ The participants in the team do not possess the tools necessary to identify their wisdom, critically challenge them, and using the insights to generate new knowledge.

+ The Law of Two Feet, while empowers the participants with the freedom to join and exit the breakout groups, also weakens the groups’ capacity to unstuck and move the conversation forward, and thereby, reaching breakthroughs.

Understanding these weaknesses, I had the opportunity to create the Enhanced Open Space (eOSTM), which brought together three technologies.

These are:

Traditional Open Space Technology (OST)

Open Space Technology is a way to invite and convene different stakeholders to a large scale gathering where participants generate their own agendas, allocate their own time and duration, enthuse participation in the breakouts, and encourage group level conversations. Usually, the gathering is facilitated, and there are principles and rules that participants have to comply with to encourage the democracy in participation, commitment, and contribution at the event.

Rules of OST:

• Whoever comes are the right people
• Whatever happens is the only thing that could have
• Whenever it starts is the right time
• When it's over, it's over
• Where the Law of Two Feet should apply, will apply

Innovation ThinkTM

Innovation ThinkTM was first conceptualised in 2003, developed, tested and implemented in the Ministry of Defence by me from 2004 as a way to help teams focus their creative capacity, use their wisdom, combine knowledge, and generate ideas. Its birth came from my awareness and understanding in the limitations of traditional brainstorming methods where difficulties are in contextualising, screening, and organising large amount of ideas arising from the using these methods.

Innovation ThinkTM (aka iThink) has four steps:

• Brainstorming - drawing what are already forgotten
• BrainConnectingTM - combining and recombine existing knowledge
• IdeaSmashingTM - breakthroughing old frames and heuristics
• AngleOfAttackTM - determining the key thrusts for the idea-solutioning

Tricks of InnovationTM

The Tricks of InnovationTM is a box of tools that challenges assumptions, articulates challenge statements, develops broad ideation approaches, and creates and refines new ideas. The tools enable the users to breakout from their usual framing contexts and thinking heuristics so that they could think freely without hindrance of the past.

Tools in Tricks of InnovationTM include:

+ The Eager Attack – Locating the centre of gravity
+ CSx – Clarifying and articulating the challenge of a problem
+ Reversal X – Finding answers by opposing what’s known
+ SD Cards – Finding answers by examining their attributes
+ Split – Finding answers by divide and conquer
+ iBox – Finding answers by looking at their parameters
+ aSCAMPERTM – Advance SCAMPER for re-finding the answers

When I was told that the Defence Management Group (DMG, Ministry of Defence, Singapore) wanted to enrich her culture with creativity and innovation, I jumped on the opportunity by proposing to Mr Lim Hup Seng (the Deputy Secretary for Administration at that time) the conduct of a large scale event called the DMG Innovation Jam (iJam) on 8 Oct 2003.

This was where I tested eOSTM, and the successful implementation of the process and the positive outcomes at iJam helped the MINDEF Innovation and Transformation Office (MITO) secured her nominated for the DMG Community Award (Team) for Kickstarting her culture for Innovation that year.

The key takeaways reported by the 200 plus participants who attended the whole day event were that participants:

• were introduced to an alternative but highly innovative and democratic approach that engages large audience in creativity and innovation.

• were able to experience an unique group based process that that truly generated new knowledge and breakthrough ideas that was very different from the traditional brainstorming methods.

• were using simple but powerful ideation tools that forced them to think laterally than linearly.


Copyright 2007. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

Segmentation of Problems - There Is No One Methodology for All Kinds of Problem

Organisations always have problems.

Taking a simplistic view, we can segment most problems along the lines of urgency and scarcity, which leaves us with a 2 x 2 matrix. The problems in each section of the matrix will require a unique approach in obtaining solutions for these problems.

So, no one methodology fit all kinds of problem.

Time based problems are a category of problems that are time sensitive but the teams have the funds to create and implement the solutions. Cycle of InnovationTM is a methodology best suited for identifying solutions for this type of problems because it taps on the diversity in the work group and concentrates the focus of the team on the problem to increase its propensity perform creatively and innovatively.

The roots of Cycle of InnovationTM can be trace to iDive, a process that has been used by the MINDEF Innovation and Transformation Office since 2004.

Cycle of InnovationTM is a 5-step process that that shortens the adverse effects of the forming and storming phases of the team’s development. It takes the team from the creation of an idea to turning it into actual working prototypes within a short span of 3 days, thereby strengthening the team’s capacity to deliver what they have created.

The members of the team will also address issues pertaining to marketing the solution, dealing with sceptics, managing resources, and negotiating between different interest groups. It is fast-paced and is used for refining existing products, and designing and introducing new ones.

These 5 steps are:
There are a number of tools used in the methodology. An example of a tool used in Cycle of InnovationTM is the Innovation Box.

Innovation Box - Combining Parameters into New Ideas

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: creativity innovation)

Please contact me (spaceman@pacific.net.sg) if you want to learn more about Cycle of InnovationTM or if you want to explore the approaches and investments for bringing the technology into your organisation.

Copyright 2007 & 2008. Anthony Mok. All rights reserved.

The Innovation Game - @ Verge of Disaster

A few years ago, I met Richard Mak, the inventor of a board game on entrepreneurship called Zeros to Heros, at an conference. He was exhibiting the game at the event when we chatted.

'How have things been since we met last year?' he asked me.

I replied: 'Busy. I see that you have successfully launched your game.'

'Yes. We were at the schools recently, and the acceptance of the game there was tremendous.' he updated me excitedly. He added: 'How about your game?'

'You mean the MINDEF Innovation Game? Yes. I introduced the game at the Civil Service College's Bluesky Festival on 10 July 2004. Over 200 officers from various ministries played it and the feedback has been great. We have started to receive calls asking us to run the game for their senior executives.' I said. (See side note below for coverage of the game on line)

'This is good. Like to collaborate?' he asked.

'Sorry. I can't do it with this innovation game because of IP issues, even though I develop it. Once I created another, I will reach you again.' I said, and we went on to talk about other things.
It has been some years since I made that promise. Nothing happened because I didn't have the time and energy to follow through. Now, I am please to say that I can finally keep my word. I am introducing the new Innovation Game called '@ Verge of Disaster'.

The game delivers three outcomes to the player. It:

• Creates for the player an access to his/her source of creativity.
  
• Provides the player the technology to overcome his/her barriers to innovate.
  
• Gives the player insights into his/her contributions to these barriers on others.

Side Note:

The MINDEF Innovation Game is a board game designed to help people understand what innovation is all about. The game is conducted as a workshop, in which participants will go through a journey of self-discovery, gaining insights into their own preconceived barriers to innovation, as well as realising the power of innovative, breakthrough thinking.

Anthony Mok facilitating the MINDEF Innovation Game

The MINDEF Innovation Game was created and developed by me, and it has attracted plenty of attention since its introduction in 2003. Here is a list of write-ups on the game:

• Corporate entrepreneurship: exploiting technologies for innovation discovery and breakthrough


• CAPAM - List of Submissions


• Challenge - Innovation takes pride of place in MINDEF


• Civil Service College - Course Details


• ::August Highlights:: - MINDEF Innovation Game Facilitator Workshop & MINDEF Innovation Game Workshop


• MINDEF Innovation & Transformation Office - Introducing the MINDEF Innovation Game to the civil service


• Challenge - 3rd Innovation Circle


• Riding on the crest - NDU's voyage towards organisational and operational excellence

Some feedback from participants:

“The MINDEF Innovation Game had very good learning lessons…I learnt that limits are often self imposed.”

“The MINDEF Innovation Game is not only fun but also very effective in imparting the importance of certain values and practices.”

“The MINDEF Innovation Game is more than an innovative tool. It also teaches some fundamental values (communication, leadership and etc). It can also be used to analyse individual’s behaviors, team dynamics…”

“The MINDEF Innovation Game was interesting helps people understand the concepts of risk taking.”

Copyright 2007, Anthony Mok. All rights reserved.

Measuring the Organisation's Propensity to Innovate

Recently, I was invited to one of the government ministries in Singapore to share what I could do for innovation for them. The host was interested in knowing how an organisation could be measured in terms of her innovativeness.

There are three challenges to her 'how to......?' question.

1st, we need to know what are the characteristics of innovative organisations to which her ministry could be benchmarked.

2nd, we need to know what the ministry has done in reaching and surpassing the benchmark.

3rd, we also need to know what is the impact of all these activities has on the staff in the ministry.

In fact, I have conceptualised, designed, created, developed, implemented and refined a technology in 2003 that addresses these challanges at my previous organisation. The technology is still in use after these past 4 years.

In line with this technology, I have create a newer and updated instrument called the Innovation Circumplex that:

• Uncovers what the people in the organisation have to say about the innovativeness of their organisation.
• Determines the effectiveness of the leadership's strategies for building an innovative organisation.
• Reveals how far the organisation is away from the benchmark of world class innovative organisations.

The knowledge gained from the instrument provides valuable inputs for deciding the kinds of risks to take, the levels of intervention to inject, and the types of resources to deploy in the organisation to bring her propensity to innovate higher.

Without the knowledge, management will be operating in the blind, and this endangers everyone.

Copyright 2007, Anthony Mok. All rights reserved.

Evaluating a Project for Innovation Funding in the Public Sector

It is important to determine whether an idea is worth the effort of projectisation. Ideas is the source of projects that ensures that the pipeline of solutions never dries up. Solutions that bring us the promised breakthroughs are innovative. The end result is the creation of new value that replaces or supplements the old. On the other hand, failures, while create opportunities for learning and growth, break the company.

Therefore, deciding whether an idea is worth working on, provided for, and protected against, is serious a business and cannot be taken lightly.

However, ideas are not innovations. In idea, the phases of trials and pilots have not been established and implemented. In fact, there is no known prototypes of the idea yet. Therefore, we cannot determine if there is a market for the adoption and diffusion of the innovation. So, the typical means of measuring projects using KPIs and ROIs cannot be applied. They kill ideas.

So, how do we determine if an idea is worth the risks, resources, and preferences of everyone?

Well, there are 3 determinants. These are:

• Degree of Innovativeness
  
• Depth of Creativity
  
• Propensity to Build

Let me define all these three and expand them progressively.

Degree of Innovativeness

Organisations are no longer finding it important to engage in protracted discourses on whether a concept is innovative or otherwise. They are now more interested to uncover if a design concept has the potential of upsetting the traditional structures that hold the market together. Therefore, they are looking for the market disruptions that the concept could potentially bring. The more future-oriented the concept is, the likelihood the concept will deviate from its evolutionary roots, and this is the source of new value for the organisations and their customers.
Currently, there is a debate on whether Apple’s iPhone is an industry disrupter.

According to Christensen, disruptive innovation is the mechanism by which industries get transformed and prior market leaders are toppled. Christensen described disruptive innovation as:

A disruptive innovation is a new product or service or a new business model that doesn't attack the core market by bringing a better product to established users in direct competition with the leaders in an industry, but rather it comes into the low end of the market, either through a business model that can compete at much lower costs, can compete profitably at lower costs, or it brings to the market a product or service that is so much more convenient and simple to use and affordable, that a whole new population of people who previously couldn't afford or didn't have the skill to own and use a product can now own one.

iPhone is a combination of four things: function, possession, emotion, and access. These are value dimensions that were not properly addressed together. Apple has created a value delivery model that so far no one else has successfully duplicated. This combination brings a totally different experiencing to the users and we should watch for its disruptive potential over time.

To determine if an idea could become a new-market disrupter, try this litmus test:

• Is there a large population of people who historically have not had the money, equipment or skills to do this thing for themselves, and as a result have gone without it altogether or have needed to pay someone with more expertise to do it for them?
• To use the product or service, do the customers need to go to an inconvenient, centralised location?

Here are some questions to help you decide whether an idea has the potential for a low-end disruption:

• Are there customers at the low end of the market who would be happy to purchase a product or service with less, but good enough, performance if they could get it at a lower price?
• Can we create a business model that enables us to earn attractive profit at the discounted prices required to win the business of these over-served customers at the low end?
• Is the innovation disruptive to all of the significant incumbent firms in the industry? If it appears to be sustaining to one or more significant players in the industry, then the odd will be stacked on these players, and the new entrant introducing the new product or service is unlikely to win.

(Christensen, C. M. & Raynor, M. E. (2003) The Innovator’s Solution, Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth, HBS Press, Boston, Mass. pp 49-50)

Depth of Creativity

In the long run, all competitive firms will only acquire normal profits. This means a firm will enjoy a short period of substantial profits and growth up to the point its competitors enter the market. Therefore, the duration for supernormal profit is determined by how long the firm could defend its market. So, we should not measure the uniqueness of the design concept but how that uniqueness helps the firm sustain its market position. The higher the defensive potential the concept could offer, the greater it is differentiated from the rest and longer the time the firm draws supernormal profits.

In 1985, Time magazine declared Post-it Notes as one of the best products of the previous twenty-five years. But what would have happened if Post-it Notes had been introduced in, say, 1940, or even 1960? They probably would have still been a hit, but they wouldn’t have been so indispensable, so perfectly timed, so culturally apt. “The digital age generates so many documents, and they all look the same,” said Art Fry. “How do you organize all that material?”

Indeed, as workers tried to keep pace with all the new technologies invading offices in the early 1980s, the quickest to master them is to menace their colleagues with a punishing blizzard of reports, memos, spreadsheets, newsletters, proposals, presentations, and white papers. Functionally, Post-it Notes were a useful tool to manage such information overload. Not only could you highlight the material that was most important, you could also document, via a quick little note to yourself, why you thought it was worth highlighting.

Nearly two decades later, in 2004, the product is still earning raves and remains highly profitable for 3M. New York’s Museum of Modern Art featured it alongside the white T-shirt, the incandescent light bulb, and 121 other icons of beautiful everyday design in its “Humble Masterpieces” exhibit.

When looking for indication of defensive power, we may want to use the following questions to guide us:

• Are there similar products or services similar to yours currently in the market?
• Are there companies, which are serving in other markets, capable of adapting or extending their products or services into your market?
• Are there companies, which have the capabilities and capacities to create a similar product or service offering like yours?
• Is the concept easily copied and manufactured at a cost lower than yours?
• How early is the first competitor going to enter your market?
• How long you think the rate of production will exceed the rate of demand?
• Do you have an improved version ready for launch in the next 6 months?

Propensity to Build

Most innovative solutions have no known precedents. This means there is little hindsight and past experience to inform on the success of the solution in the market. Investment in this kind of innovation is fully based on faith. Not blind faith though. We can measure the conversion power of an idea and prototype into a workable innovative solution that generates true value to the stakeholders by looking at the quality of the team and the resources available to it. The more quality they reveal, the higher is its conversion power, and its propensity for good returns in the investment.

When looking for indication of conversion power, we may want to use the following questions to guide us:

• How complete is the plan to prototype the idea and test it?
• What is the experience of each team member in translating ideas into commercially viable innovations?
• Does the collective capability of the team provide it the wisdom to see the project through?
• Is the team in an environment of space capacity?
• Is the team widely connected to networks of resources and what is the quality of these networks?
• Does the team have a mentor or coach and what is the quality of this mentor or coach?

News Network (CNN) was the world's first twenty-four-hour cable television news channel when it was established in 1980. CNN was founded by Georgia businessman Ted Turner. In the 1970s Turner took advantage of the increasing availability of communications satellites to begin broadcasting his independent UHF station, Atlanta’s Channel 17, which he had acquired in 1970.

From its home in Atlanta, CNN has extended its reach around the world, becoming a dominant force in national and international journalism. Along with its subsidiary channels and the competitors it helped inspire, the network has changed the way information flows throughout an increasingly connected world.

However, the idea almost did not take off. When Ted Turner started talking about establishing a network that only ran news, a channel which he believed would become a democratising force around the world, people thought he was mad. Everyone from the network union ridiculed CNN and they used to just call it ‘Chicken noodle news’.

Because Ted Turner was unorthodox and visionary, he attracted investors and partners who believed in him and helped him bring CNN to the market.

This article was 1st written on 30 April 2007, and subsequently updated on 22 Sep 2008 and 14 Jan 2009.

Copyright 2007, 2008 & 2009. Anthony Mok. All rights reserved.