Connect-Inspire-Transform Well Lived

BIF’s motto is Connect-Inspire-Transform.  That’s exactly what happens at the magical BIF conferences.  We hearChristine Costello, Eli Stefanski, Katherine Hypolite, Chris Flanagan, Tori Drew incredible stories, have profound conversations, eat and drink (even al fresco!), and have Wi-Fi.  What more could we need?

Connect-Inspire-Transform is also what it takes to make the magic happen.  Oh, along with some collaboration and leadership, which define the smiling faces of BIF team: Tori Drew, Chris Flanagan, Katherine Hypolite, Eli Stefanski, Christine Costello, Jeff Drury, James Hamar, Sam Kowalczyk, and Saul Kaplan.  At BIF-7, these folks are so welcoming, smiling and make it all seem so simple.  And perhaps at some level it is simple, but it’s definitely not easy. 

The BIF team is authentic.  They truly live and breathe their mission – it’s not just a saying or a goal, it’s a way of life; it’s how they work.  There are many moments of more perspiration than inspiration, of last second changes.  BIF’s core values remain constant throughout.  That’s part of the paradox of innovation – the need for the stability of core values and beliefs to transform our world for the better.  Having been privileged to sit in for a brief moment of rest and nourishment with Olga’s fabulous tarts (and #innopies) before BIF-7, the passionate kaleidoscope of laughter, frustration, triple checking, sighs, and smiles was palpable, and powerful.

One example stands out.  BIF was live streaming.  My friend and client, Matt Hlavin of Thogus was at BIF (along with a bunch of “Clevelanders” who were nagged into going to BIF, gratefully).  During Angela Blanchard’s story, Matt’s right-hand, Lisa Lehman, watching it live in Avon Lake, OH, texted Matt that Angela didn’t have the ‘clicker’ in her hand seconds before Angela looked for the clicker!  Someone watching in real time, 650 miles Tori's "Magic" Shoesaway, was so engaged that she noticed such a detail!  And the next book for the Thogus leadership team’s “group” read is John Hagel’s Power of Pull along with Alex Osterwalder’s Business Model Generation.  That is the power of BIF – connecting people all over the world and inspiring them so they transform their worlds, miles and time zones away.  Next year, when you’re at BIF, remember that – and thank one of those BIF team smiling faces.

Providential #RCUS at BIF-7

Last week was BIF-7, Business Innovation Factory’s 7^th annual innovation conference, rightly billed as one of the top conferences to attend.  It is hard to describe the power of a BIF conference; it needs to be experienced.  It’s not just the storytellers sharing the amazing things they’ve done to impact and change systems, companies, communities and individual lives.  It’s also the attendees doing amazing things to impact our world.  Last year’s conference was summed up in a great quote by Carmen Medina in her story, “Optimism is the greatest form of rebellion.”  At BIF-7, Angela Blanchard’s, “You can’t build on broken” took optimism the next step.

You can’t build on broken.  But we sure do try!  We look at what’s wrong first, we analyze and try to fix it and sometimes we do.  We start with a negative mindset: what went “wrong” with this project? What expectations didn’t you meet? What (who?) caused this failure? Perhaps it’s in our nature. Perhaps it’s the path of least resistance. Yet, maybe that’s why many of the ways we try to fix big systemic problems in our society (education, healthcare) don’t work.  Face it, it’s hard to motivate and impassion from the negative.

What if we build on what’s right? What’s working? That’s how Angela created Neighborhood Centers, Inc.  When we start with what is working, what is going right, we focus on the positive, on opportunities, on how things have been solved, creating energy and passion to really make a difference.  Chip and Dan Heath refer to these as “Bright Spots” in Switch.  The positive mindset expands, not limits, opportunities:  what went well, what expectations were met or even exceeded?  If we adopt this type of mindset, think of how we can impassion and motivate each other to design system solutions to wicked problems!  Think of what this would do to motivate our spouses, our children, and our colleagues? And yet it’s so rare.  Some call this Appreciative Inquiry.  I call it the way we should think, period! Because when you look at what’s right, it’s liberating, freeing. This seems obvious, doesn’t it? 

Angela’s had another wonderful line, “We are the only species in the world that creates the future out of our own imagination.”  This summed up many of the day’s other storytellers (and Day 2’s too!). Storytellers shared how they just went for it, how they didn’t stand by and wait to be told or asked, but saw an opportunity and decided to act.  And that’s the point – see what’s working right and go make more ‘rights’.  Connect with those who can help you, Inspire people to share your dream, and go Transform…by making a RCUS!

P.S.

Here are the other stories from Day 1 – about people transforming education, healthcare, churches, communities, art and even mountain climbing:

John Werner, Chief Mobilization Officer & Managing Director, Citizen Schools – getting plain old people, not teachers, involved in educating our youth

Graham Milner, EVP Global Innovation at WD-40, a company none of us can live without!

Eva Koleva Timothy, amazing photographer who know it’s not the camera, it’s the photographer’s personal lens

Jim Mellado, President of the Willow Creek Association, a Christian organization mobilizing volunteers across the world to respond to those in need

Alex Jadad, Physician, Teacher, Innovator at the Centre for Global eHealth Innovation asked us to teach our tongues to say “I don’t know.” (and who has an infectious smile)

Rebecca Onie, Co-Founder & CEO of Health Leads looking at at common, obvious solutions to change a formidable healthcare system for the poor.

John Hagel, Author, Co-Chair Deloitte Center for the Edge, drew an important distinction between a story (finite, contained) and narrative (open-ended, participatory, evolving)

Dale Stephens, Founder of UnCollege & Thiel Fellow, shared how he hacked his own education and took it as his responsibility vs. ‘educators’

Fred Mandell, Author and Artist, called creativity a quest that not only changes the world around us, but us as well

Matthew Moniz, 13 year old Alpinist, who used his passion for mountain climbing to understand his friend’s pulmonary hyper-tension and raise funds to help find a cure.

Power in Innovation Networks

A few weeks ago, I was driving by an abandoned Ford plant in Lorain, OH.   The plant, a key regional employer closed in 2005.  What

struck me were the parking lots.  Some of them were fields!  You couldn’t even see any concrete.  Others were still in the process of re-fielding.  In 6 years, the force of nature was powerful enough to break through concrete and asphalt, not just in cracks made from wear and tear but also in solid concrete.  Do you know how much power and strength that takes?  So I thought I’d find out. Two of my ‘learnings’ really hit me:

1. The Network: since plants need light and water (remember osmosis and photosynthesis?), all it takes is 1 plant sprouting up between a crack to ‘distribute’ the energy and nutrients of light and water throughout its underground root system causing others to grow and push through.
2. The Chemistry: the cellulose, starch and lignin in the plant cells creates electrical charges when wet – like water (2H are +, 1O is -).  The water permeates these natural polymers creating a chemical bond (hydrogen bonding) that makes the cell contents and wall swell exponentially, which creates tremendous pressure - pressure strong enough to break through concrete and asphalt.

The Network.  Nature has an incredible under-on-over-ground network that I believe is indestructible – not that we can’t damage it a lot.  Man has a lot of hubris to think we are powerful enough to fully destroy what existed long before us.  We have a lot to learn from nature’s powerful networks. Networks increase strength, resilience, diversity, and adaptation, which facilitate growth and innovation.  We can use networks to create these same traits in society, in communities and even our companies: to solve wicked problems facing our world; to tell, share and create stories that transform; even to just have fun. We need to get over our hubris of our individual power and knowledge, just like our hubris with the planet, and realize its “The Network, Stupid”.   We – as companies, organizations, people - need to stop fearing the network (e.g., twitter, Facebook, etc.) and embracing it – it is a key to survival.

The Chemistry. Have you ever met someone and you just clicked? The same strength of physical chemical bonds between atoms happens between people.  These can’t be commanded or coerced, they happen (or don’t) naturally.  It’s the power of these bonds between people that create, sustain and grow networks.  That’s why networks, which are collaborative are great at innovation – whether in sustainability or other areas.  When atoms collide, they create energy and new structures.  When people collide, they create energy and new ideas, solutions.

So, look at the parking lot again.  What can you learn from the power of nature, from its underlying extending network and adaptive evolving chemistry?  How can this apply to your company, project, initiatives and people? You don’t have to start at some grand scale.  All it takes is one small stalk sticking up through a crack in the seemingly impermeable concrete (your culture?) to spread.