Welcome to The Bright Side. Last week we talked about how data can drive creativity in an interview with Julie Screech. Data matters because more organizations are becoming data centric. After the interview, I felt there was a lot more to say about data particularly in terms of its increasing prominence at board level.

So I invited Julie to have a follow up conversation. This conversation focused on the rise of a Chief Data Officer and ways in which the role itself helps drive organizational creativity over the next few years.

Highlights of Today’s Show:

● How the role of data at board level has been changing

● How a Chief Data Officer is affecting business

● This role didn’t come about until 2006

● How the CDO position is on the rise

● How 90% of CDOs will be responsible for ethical use of enterprise data

● Creative and strategic decisions revolving around data and digital business initiatives

● How data starts with what you choose to collect

● How can organizations spot the obvious or the less obvious that represent existential threats

● Data has to be managed and how the river analogy applies

Welcome to episode 6 of The Bright Side. We are all about enabling creativity in business. Today we are talking about how creativity helps you to manage your business everyday, and how well you bring out the different skills in your people. We believe that creativity can be found anywhere in a business even in data.

Data is becoming ever more important in business and how creatively you use that data is a huge determinant in how successful your business becomes. Being able to translate the world of data into business skills is not easy to do. At Corporate Punk our Director of Data Services Julie Screech is very skilled at doing this. I admire her ability to bridge the gap between people from an analytic background and people who make general business decisions.

Highlights of Today’s Show

* How Julia’s career over the last 20 years has enabled her to bridge the gap between business and data

* Julia’s experiences have given her skills and techniques to solve problems and understand also what doesn’t work

* Ways that Julia’s career has evolved from marketing to digital marketing

* Some situations calls for data based decisions and some call for more structured and communication solutions

* The blurred line between data and business sense

* What is happening with the data is usually a reflection of what is going on with the people in the organization

* Julia is more of a conceptual thinker who lives her life in metaphors, so she processes data through a uniquely different lens

* The importance of interpreting performance results

* Insights that strike a cord on a gut level

Welcome to episode 5 of The Bright Side. We have been away for awhile, but we have three good reasons behind that. First off was the Christmas Holidays. We also want to take some time thinking about how we want to develop the podcast. Finally, I have been busy writing a book called Creativity is Power.

I have been concerned about the future of jobs and how automation will make any job that has logic at the heart disappear. Even traditional professional roles such as accounting, law, and marketing will be affected. Creativity and caring for people are probably the only two things that automation can’t take away. Today, we discuss how our capacity for creativity defines us as human beings.

Highlights of Today’s Show

* The best businesses available are creative ones

* Helping people be more creative will help businesses deploy employees in more creative roles

* Creativity is Power is a manifesto available in book and film format

* Why creativity matters now and tomorrow

* What creativity actually means

* The art of picking a strategic path through difficult circumstances

* Examples of creativity in business

* Robots, machine learning, and artificial intelligence will take over many jobs

* Questions of what happens when jobs are taken over by robots

Welcome to episode 4 of The Bright Side and thank-you for tuning in. In this episode we are going to do something a little bit different, and share with you a recording I gave about 10 days ago at a school called School 21. The core philosophy behind the school is to teach kids to have success in the 21st century. They focus on things like collaboration, creative thinking, and project management.

The difference between success and failure is how the teachers share knowledge, relate, collaborate, and inspire each other. I was invited to speak about some of the common barriers that get in the way of effective developmental culture in organizations. I also gave some pointers on how they can continue to do the fantastic work that they are doing by making School 21 a shining example of creativity in education for the 21st century.

Phil Lewis Teaches Teachers Live at School 21:

* Learn how Phil came about to do the work that he does

* Why do some organizations bring out the creative best in people and others bring out the worst?

* What can happen when creative people build environments that don’t suit them at all

* Corporate Punk is about rebellion against the mangling of creative ideas, creative product, creative people, and creative businesses.

* How to define culture - a collection of stories that an organization tells itself, when you change the story, you can change the culture

* What happens when we start to examine culture

* Learn about the zone of uncomfortable conversations

* The real process of examination

* Mirroring dysfunction of organizations that you work with

* There is nothing about culture that cannot be changed - it is an ongoing negotiation between you and everyone at your organization

3 Most Important Business Capabilities:

* Critical thinking

* Complex problem solving

* Creativity - ability to make and ship excellent things

The great thing about experiencing failure is that it teaches you. Two major myths that underpin culture in organizations:

* Myth of insufficient people

* Myth of insufficient ideas

Challenge to Think About:

* Are narratives really helpful?

Ways that culture manifests itself:

* Organizational politics

* Structure - how roles get organized is a function of culture

* Operational work - the ways in which systems and processes function to get jobs done

I spent the last couple of weeks talking about the dark side, which is when people and businesses don’t fulfill their creative potential. A lot of the clients that we work with at Corporate Punk are sort of in the dark side, and it is our jobs to help them have brighter futures. So, this is a good time to talk about what does a bright future look like. What happens when businesses breakthrough and fulfill that creative potential? What conditions are needed to bring this about?

There is a lot of euphemistic and misleading language out there about creativity and productivity at work. It has become really fashionable to talk about business happiness or employee engagement. Still, it seems these concepts are kind of loose and not particularly well defined. When talking about employee engagement it really is a vague sense that people enjoy coming to work. When we talk about creative potential being fulfilled, what do we really mean? Today we are going to get beyond the language of employee engagement and happiness at work to really define what creative potential actually looks like.

What we really mean by creative potential being fulfilled is that the business and the people that work for the business are performing in three ways.

● Purposeful - The reason why we get out of bed in the morning. Why does it matter? Purpose is about where our business and our people are passionate. Where the business adds value and how that value intersects with market opportunity.

● Pleasurable - The value that we are extracting. When you are doing something that you care about, you are going to enjoy the work that you do. This doesn’t mean that it isn’t work and their isn’t frustration, but there is also a real sense of value about what you do.

● Profitable - The engine that allows us to do more of this even bigger and better. Work in ways that are profitable. Reframe profit with how it combines with purpose and pleasure. In most businesses, profit is critical. Without profit a business can’t do what it has set out to do.

3 Diagnostic Questions:

● Is everybody in your business performing from where they are strongest?

● What is the return we are getting out of the work we are doing?

● What does this place feel like to work in?

This all points into the direction that creative thinking can’t happen without optimism. We can’t make a positive impact in the world, if we are not feeling good about the impact those ideas will have. Remove the barriers to optimism, and you are removing the barriers to creative thought.

Welcome to episode 2 of The Bright Side and thank-you for tuning in. We hope that you find what follows informative, useful and entertaining.

In last weeks podcast we told the beginnings of “The Dark Side”, and how it would feel to be a creative person in a business that doesn’t understand you. To build upon that, this week we are going to talk about what it might be like to be a business that is going through “The Dark Side”, as well. What does it mean to suffer from a lack of creative alignment at a business level? When a business isn’t performing well at a creative level it is a bit like having your spine out of alignment. You are not screaming in agony, but it just doesn’t feel right.

5 Habits of Creatively Dysfunctional Businesses:

* Foot dragging - Passive form of resistance where things get challenged below the surface.

* Meeting issues - Too long, unfocused, lack of clarity around agenda, unclear whether the mode is creative, decision making, or problem solving. Passive participation. People not adding value. Sometimes too loud. To look at a businesses creative potential and culture, look at how they run their meetings.

* How does time get used - Are people spending time worrying about narratives and how to tell a story. 80% of time should be spent thinking and looking at how to make new ideas. 20% should be spent on the story telling.

* Myopia or short sightedness - Spending a huge amount of time worrying about their business. Only focusing on self examination and what the competition is doing, isn’t a great way to bring fresh thinking into the business. Busy being busy, so they don’t lift their heads up. Not reading enough and keeping pace with latest thinking.

* Dysfunctional businesses can be self referential - Entire management team spent all of their time worrying about what the rest of the senior management team was doing. They weren’t paying attention to how their clients and staff were feeling. Key to turn around is a mindset shift. They are there to serve, not the other way around.

A good place to start is to just think about these concepts and what part they may be playing in your business. If you have spotted some of these behaviors, be optimistic and look at the bright side. Nothing gets better until you acknowledge things can be fixed. Get real about what the issues are. It is your job to serve others. Identify the reasons behind issues.

Look at the effectiveness of your meetings. Don’t cleave to gimmicky management methods when it comes to meetings. Have clarity of the purpose of the meeting, and the mode of the meeting. What is the feeling I want to create in this room? People respond well to feeling good. Think about the structure of your organization and how it supports your meetings and your agenda. What do you take for granted? Lift your head up and look at the world around you.