Fredrik Härén's Blog, page 9
May 22, 2024
Focus on how many “days of…” you have. (Episode 212)
On Friday, the sun was shining, and the sea was calm, so I decided to paddle from Stockholm to my island.
It was a day of paddling.
While paddling, I was reflecting on the number one advantage of running my own company: the fact that I am in control of how I spend my days.
If I want to paddle on a Friday, I will paddle on a Friday.
It also means that if I want to work on a Saturday, I work on a Saturday.
I never reflect on having “days off”; instead, I think of having “days of …”.
One day can be a day of selling. One day (yesterday, as a matter of fact) is a day of doing admin.
This doesn’t mean that the whole day has to be about just one thing. It means that I make sure to focus on one thing every day.
It also means that I will wake up and say, “What is this day about?” and if it is about paddling, then I will paddle.
Freedom, having the power to act, speak, or think as one wants, is the most valuable of freedoms.
And to make sure one has freedom at work should be the number one priority of anyone chosing to do a job.
Because the opposite of freedom is (literally) slavery.
Have you created a job that gives you freedom?
If not, make sure you do.
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The post Focus on how many “days of…” you have. (Episode 212) first appeared on The Creativity Explorer.
May 21, 2024
Find your Unwork Activity. (Episode 136)
Interview with Oddbjørn Skauge, CIO at StrongPoint.
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Here is a message that many professionals need to hear: Think less about work!
If you have a job where you cannot stop thinking about your work even after you have left for the day, you know the feeling of “always on”. The work consumes you. You keep thinking about your problems and challenges all the time, from when you wake up to when you go to sleep – sometimes even while you sleep.
It, of course, can be inspiring and energising to have a job that you are passionate about, but even passionate people need a break.
To rest, and recharge. To get perspective and to relax. To pause the thoughts for a while.
But thoughts are tricky things, they tend to sneak up on you, bug you and pester you and come back to haunt you.
That is why you need an activity that I have chosen to call: an Unwork Activity. An Unwork Activity, or an “UA”, is an activity that stops you from thinking about your work for a while.
I learned about UA from Oddbjørn Skauge. Oddbjørn is the CIO at StrongPoint, a retail technology company that provides solutions and services to make shops smarter, shopping experiences better and online grocery shopping more efficient.
Oddbjørn told me that in his job as CIO he is constantly thinking about how new technologies can affect Strongpoint. Then there are to-do-lists, problems and challenges and backlogs…
Oddbjørn: “My work brain is always on. Non-stop thinking of challenges and opportunities that new technology is presenting to us. That’s why my Unwork Activities are so important. They keep me sane. It’s about unplugging the work brain.”
Descartes famously said: “I think, therefore I am”. But to stay sane and creative perhaps we more often have to remind ourselves of this message: “I am not thinking of work, therefore I am.”
For Oddbjørn, his Unwork Activities are cooking, fishing, hunting and brewing beer.
An Unwork Activity is not a hobby. It CAN be a hobby, but the most important aspect of an UA is that it’s an activity that makes it virtually impossible for you to think about work.
So it’s important that your Unwork Activity does not remind you about work.
Earlier in his career Oddbjørn worked in a fishing shop and then going fishing was not a relaxing way to forget about work, it was too related to his job in the fish store. So then playing computer games became his UA. But now that he works with computers sitting in front of a computer playing computer games is too closely related to his work. Playing computer games is no longer an Unwork Activity, but going fishing is. When picking an Unwork Activity it’s important that it blocks your work brain from being activated.
Oddbjørn explained how going hunting and sitting in the forest waiting for an elk works as the perfect Unwork Activity for him. Waiting for an elk that might or might not come sees his mind wander to relaxing places and back to the forest – but, because hunting is so different from his CIO job, very RARELY does his mind think about work when he hunts.
What is your Unwork Activity – a thing you do in order to not be able to think about work. And how much time do you spend doing Unwork Activities? Is it enough?
The post Find your Unwork Activity. (Episode 136) first appeared on The Creativity Explorer.
May 20, 2024
Exceptional Creativity. (Episode 211)
The post Exceptional Creativity. (Episode 211) first appeared on The Creativity Explorer.
May 14, 2024
Innovation Motivation (Episode 135)
Interview with Lars Bratthall, CIO at Multiconsult.
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Innovation Motivation is a systematic way of thinking about how to build an organization full of people motivated to innovate.
All companies want innovation, but few companies actually think about what would make people want to innovate.
Perhaps the most important aspect for getting people to innovate is that they have “Innovation Motivation”.
I was inspired to think about Innovation Motivation during a conversation with Lars Bratthall . Lars has a long career in innovation, from ABB Corporate Research, DNV Research and Innovation etc and now as CIO at Multiconsult. (Multiconsult is one of the leading firms of architects, consulting engineers, and designers in Norway, with roots dating back to 1908.)
He has worked for organizations with very innovative people and companies where innovation hardly happened. His insight is that the companies where innovation thrived understood the concept of “Innovation Motivation.”
One such place was ABB Corporate Research. Lars: “At ABB (at the time) they understood that you need to support creativity for it to happen.”
The concept of Innovation Motivation is simple:
1) People will not innovate if they are not motivated to be creative.
2) Different people are motivated by different things.
3) The leaders who figure out what specific things motivate their people will get more innovation.
4) Unfortunately, most leaders are not spending enough time to think about Innovation Motivation.
If you have a leadership which is focused on understanding what structures, incentives, activities and processes that will motivate people to innovate in their unique culture and environment, then your innovation will thrive.
And the key to Innovation Motivation is to understand that different people are motivated by different things.
If you want the organization to be motivated to innovate, it’s not enough to figure out what motivates the people in the organization. Generally, you need to look at each unique individual and figure out what could motivate them.
Is it fame and recognition? Is it money? Is it the thrill of creating new things in a group? Is it revenge?
Few things are more powerful than a motivated person.
So figure out which “buttons” to press for people to be motivated to innovate and the rest will, almost, take care of itself.
What motivates your people to innovate? What could make them more motivated to innovate?
The post Innovation Motivation (Episode 135) first appeared on The Creativity Explorer.
May 10, 2024
Make great ideas greater. (Episode 210)
I spent this week making improvements to Ideas Island – my other island in Stockholm.
(I live on one island and the other island I never stay on myself; I just let other people stay on it.
Either for creatives by applying at IdeasIsland.com to stay for free (if you give to charity) or for anyone to rent at booking.com and airbnb.
The island is magical in itself, but even great things need to become even greater.
So this week I rowed over some new furniture – including a 7-seater sofa that was NOT easy to row… (!)
I also rowed over a new refrigerator, a dishwasher and some other things to make the island more civilised.
And we added some things to be able to offer some more island activities – including a frisbee-golf cage (the perfect island activity).
The result is an island upgrade in many aspects.
Making great ideas even better is such a rewarding activity.
Too many people focus on finding “The Idea”, but creativity is as much as about making good ideas constantly better.
Writers edit
Painters paint over
Entrepreneurs pivot
etc.
What good idea do you need to make even better?
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The post Make great ideas greater. (Episode 210) first appeared on The Creativity Explorer.
May 8, 2024
Bursting the corporate filter bubble. (Episode 134)
Interview with Johan Maresch, Chief Digital Officer at Perstorp.
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Let’s talk about how we can burst “the corporate filter bubble.”
No matter where we work, there will be a sense of “we know how to do this”.
Experience, previous success and tradition tend to create a sense of “we know this” inside a company.
This is universal, to be expected – and, honestly, a shame.
One company is fighting this trend in an interesting way. The company is Perstorp, a specialty chemicals company founded 140 years ago.
Johan Maresch, Chief Digital Officer at Perstorp, is in charge of this program that has been given the name “Change Makers.”
Johan, with a vast experience from many innovation roles at different companies, understands how important it is to get new and fresh perspectives into any organization.
The “Change Makers” is a set of trainees that are recruited because they possess a different competency and background than the people that Perstorp would normally hire.
If you go to a department and ask: “Would you appreciate another headcount who could help?” everyone will say “Yes, please!”. But if you ask them what kind of skillset they want this person to have, most departments will describe the same skillsets that are already in the department.
People tend to hire people who are like themselves.
But Johan instead gives the departments trainees with a totally different skillset.
It could be a UX designer that gets recruited into a chemistry lab. Or an engineer with an extreme interest in data recruited to work with chemists.
Their role is, in the words of Johan, “To identify where we need to work differently.”
These trainees are paid, but not from the department’s budgets. That means that a person who comes into a sales department is not seen as a cost (he’s not) or a threat to sales, and that makes it easier for the trainee to come in and challenge the department’s way of working. They have a freer role to play.
Johan: “These people are young and they like to question things. They have a totally different expertise and they are open to new ways of doing things. The departments they are assigned to might not immediately see the value in these hires, but I tell them: ‘These are the competences that we did not know that we needed’.”
Let’s call these people “A Positive Trojan Headcount”. People recruited to come in and change things from within.
These Change Makers have developed radically new development processes for chemical products, and developed new proof of concepts.
They have also helped to bring “sleeping ideas” to life. Johan: “Many of the things that the Change Makers bring to life are things that the departments have wanted to try out, but just did not have time for. Other things have more unexpected solutions that the departments hadn’t even considered before. Either way it’s a win.”
The trainees help make change happen by infusing new perspectives, ideas and curiosity into a department due to their unusual and different competences, and they do that at no additional cost to the department. Johan: “The current trainees just solved a “thought to be almost unsolvable problem” that has been there for years, in two weeks. Amazing”.
But the Change Makers do more than that. They spend about 50% of their time working in a group as a scrum-team to address larger opportunities on a company level.
What are the competences you did not know that you needed, and how can you get them into your organization in a way that is flexible, productive, and effective?
Perhaps Perstorp’s strategy of using trainees with the “wrong” competences can inspire something similar in your organization.
The post Bursting the corporate filter bubble. (Episode 134) first appeared on The Creativity Explorer.
May 4, 2024
Live your life. (The Creativity Explorer. Episode 209)
Many years ago, I had a 90+ old neighbour who, after a life working as a hairdresser, still had clients.
I asked her: “I love this, so you are never going to retire?!”
She replied: “I haven’t taken on new clients in decades, and my old clients keep dying off, so I have fewer and fewer clients each year. When my last client dies, I will stop.”
At that time, she had just two living clients left…
But she kept her at-home-salon open for those two old clients.
She told me that having one leg left in her professional life made her feel more useful and energized. And she loved cutting people’s hair.
This story is a reminder to me (and you) not to accept how people or society expect you to live your life. (In this case: “You work, then you retire!”).
Live your life.
(I wish I had a photo of her, but I do not, so I asked ChatGPT to make one for me. The photo is AI generated, but the story is real.)
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The post Live your life. (The Creativity Explorer. Episode 209) first appeared on The Creativity Explorer.
April 29, 2024
In praise of the small ideas. (Episode 207)
At the breakfast at Hindsgavl Slot castle yesterday, they had homemade honey from their own bees, salami from animals on the farm, apple juice from their own apples and marmalade from their own strawberries.
The castle is impressive, the height of the auditorium is stunning, the tech of the hotel is perfect, but it was these small details of homemade food at the breakfast that I sent pictures of to my wife, and that I will remember.
In my speech for the Danish meeting industry (Danske Konferencecentre) I pushed for how meeting venues should invest more time in these small, but powerful ideas instead of chasing the “big innovations”.
(I also loved how the castle had saved a place where you could see the 12 (!) layers of paint and 5 layers of wallpaper that the walls at the castle are made up of.)
As I ended my speech: “Small ideas can make a big difference.”
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Agree?
What other small, but powerful idea have you seen at a hotel recently?
The post In praise of the small ideas. (Episode 207) first appeared on The Creativity Explorer.
The forgotten art of being able to scepticize. (Episode 133)
Interview with Frank Ferro, Director Insights at PostNL.
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In 1924 Miguel de Unamuno wrote: “Sceptic does not mean him who doubts, but him who investigates or researches as opposed to him who asserts and thinks that he has found.”
One hundred years later this message is more important than ever.
The root of the word “sceptic” comes from the word “spek- meaning “to observe”.
To be a sceptic originally did not mean to be negative, it only meant to have an open mind and a broad view on a topic and to look closely at it.
And to “scepticize” is the act of being sceptical. It’s an actual word from the 1600s that, sadly, never caught on. We should bring it back. Because scepticizing has never been more important than now.
With stronger and stronger tools, such as AI and algorithms, what we humans can create is becoming more and more powerful, but with all new technologies there are also numerous potentially dangerous, negative or unwanted side effects.
Whenever we invent something new we need to be able to also identify these unwanted and unintended consequences, as well as the great ones.
To do this is a skill. A very important skill.
We often talk about the need to be able to say “What if…?” in order to be able to find new potential.
But we also need the ability to say “Yes, but what if…?” – in other words have the ability to see the less positive scenarios.
Doing this is not to be “negative”; it’s to be creative enough to see multiple scenarios.
It’s extra important when it comes to new technologies since the ethical aspects of them have not been discussed before.
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This text was inspired by a conversation with Frank Ferro, Director Insights at PostNL, the postal company of the Netherlands. At his department, they develop powerful algorithms that affect millions. He told me about one time when the fraud detection team had developed an algorithm to identify customers who were underreporting the number of letters they were sending in order to pay less in postage. The solution was a great way to identify unethical customers. But Frank scepticized the solution and asked: “If the algorithm can detect companies that are underreporting the number of letters they send, can it also identify companies that are over-reporting the number of letters they send?”
The others in the team looked at him with confused faces. “We have never thought of this.”
Frank explained that wrongly overcharging customers was unethical, and if the algorithm could help them stop that it would be the right thing to do.
The trick to scepticizing, according to Frank Ferro, is to have the ability to withhold judgement. To take the time to reflect on as many alternative scenarios as possible in order to observe what you are working on from as many different ways as possible.
Scepticizing is a highly creative act.
One we should encourage more people to engage in.
The post The forgotten art of being able to scepticize. (Episode 133) first appeared on The Creativity Explorer.
April 28, 2024
Do not take calculated risk – take calibrated risk. (Episode 132)
Interview with Nils Kjetil Vestmoen Nilsen, Digital Innovation Manager at Schlumberger.
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People like to talk about the need to take ‘calculated risks’ in business.
But calculated risks are an illusion. The meaning of the word “calculated” is “done with full awareness of the likely consequences.”
Raise your hand if you think it’s possible to have “full awareness of the likely consequences of where your business is going right now? (and if you think it is possible, then what is the risk?)
No, instead of chasing the mirage that is “calculated risk”, we should aim to take “calibrated risk”.
The meaning of the word “calibrated” is “carefully assessed, set, or adjusted.”
Now that sounds a much more relevant approach to taking risk, to constantly and carefully assess, set and adjust your actions towards the perceived risks out there.
I learned about “calibrated risk” from Nils Kjetil Vestmoen Nilsen, Digital Innovation Manager at Schlumberger, an energy company. They work with technologies to support exploration, drilling, and production of oil and gas, as well as with renewable energy.
Nils job is about helping to digitalise the oil and gas industry. While the industry was very early in using big data and AI there is always new frontiers to aim for. Right now a moonshot project they are working on is “the self drilling oil rig” as well as projects to return CO2 back to the ground. At the same time they are introducing smaller changes to their clients.
Talking to me about “calibrated risk” Nils told me: “Calibrated risk is about balancing the different kinds of risk you are taking. Some big, hairy goals and some moonshot ideas, but also some low hanging fruits and low risk projects.”
Taking calibrated risk is not about going “all in” on one “big idea”. Instead, it’s about going “all kinds of in” on a mix ideas with different levels of risk.
Nils told me: “(When you drill for oil) you are always in uncharted territory. No-one has been where you are going, so there is no way of having full awareness of all the likely consequences. Instead, we have to constantly adjust. That means we also have to have an arsenal of innovation projects with different levels of risk, as well as different potential reward.”
Take no risk and you play it safe but you might be over run by the competitors.
Take too much risk and you might hit the jackpot, but you might also totally miss the mark.
So take calibrated risk where you create a platter of innovation initiatives of various risk, some low risk, some high risk – and always calibrate them by assessing and adjusting them to what’s happening.
The post Do not take calculated risk – take calibrated risk. (Episode 132) first appeared on The Creativity Explorer.
