Personality Poker®

What if a great way to find better solutions is to look for terrible ideas? This is lens #20 from Invisible Solutions.

In this episode, I share several examples of how seemingly bad ideas become great ideas. For example, you will learn how firing all of the safety inspectors led to higher safety levels.

Also, I use the lenses to solve the problem: How can we provide 24/7 support globally to our customers without being available 24/7?

To address this problem, we use three lenses:

• #11: Resequence
• #12: Reassign
• #24: Variations

Download the lenses from Invisible Solutions

Submit any problems you want me to solve on the show

Learn more, play the game, and unlock your team’s full potential at PersonalityPoker.com

Brought to you by Stephen Shapiro—helping people and organizations create high-performing collaboration, innovation, and teams since 2001.

Everyone loves brainstorming. Right? Unfortunately, the way most teams run their sessions is ineffective and inefficient. 

But what if there is a better way? 

In today's episode, I explore the 5 problems associated with traditional brainstorming. For each, I give you a better way that will help improve every session. Doing this will move them stupid to stupendous.

The 5 problems with brainstorming:

• Poorly defined challenge
• Lack of diversity
• Group think
• Single threading
• Event-based

Download the lenses from Invisible Solutions

Learn more about Best Practices are Stupid

Learn more about Personality Poker

Submit any problems you want me to solve on the show

Learn more, play the game, and unlock your team’s full potential at PersonalityPoker.com

Brought to you by Stephen Shapiro—helping people and organizations create high-performing collaboration, innovation, and teams since 2001.

In Episode 9, I briefly talked about differentiation and why it is an important part of innovation.

In this episode we do an even deeper dive into the topic. And in particular I share my Innovation Targeting Matrix. The premise is that there are three levels of activities/opportunities - and they aren't all equal. When you better understand how to prioritize your innovation investments, you will get the biggest bang for your buck.

The three levels are: 

• Support - creates internal value
• Core - Table stakes/customer expectations
• Differentiating - The reason someone does business with you

By determining which level your challenges focus on, you can best determine your innovation strategy.

Although the Innovation Targeting Matrix was not in the Invisible Solutions book (it was in Best Practices are Stupid), I felt it was a useful tool to include here for listeners.

Download a copy of the Innovation Targeting Matrix

Download the lenses from Invisible Solutions

Learn more about Best Practices are Stupid

Submit any problems you want me to solve on the show

Learn more, play the game, and unlock your team’s full potential at PersonalityPoker.com

Brought to you by Stephen Shapiro—helping people and organizations create high-performing collaboration, innovation, and teams since 2001.

In today's episode we explore one of the lenses from Invisible Solutions: #19 PAIN VS GAIN.

We often hear the expression “Build it and they will come.” With innovation, a more accurate statement is “Eliminate a pain and they will come.” 

2020 was a year of crises and innovation. Challenges and opportunities. Last year we saw the rapid adoption of new virtual technologies during the pandemic. We saw a similar adoption of new technology during another crisis 40 years ago. This is the story of technological adoption, adaptation, and innovation.

To get the lenses from Invisible Solutions, go to www.GetTheLenses.com

Submit your questions, problems, or opportunities at www.InvisibleSolutionsPodcast.com

Happy New Year!

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Brought to you by Stephen Shapiro—helping people and organizations create high-performing collaboration, innovation, and teams since 2001.

Today we start by answering the question, "What if trying to innovate everywhere can negatively impact your innovation effort?" The key is to innovate where you differentiate. Not all opportunities are equal. Therefore you want to invest in the areas that help you stand out from the competition.

And then we tackle a "listener" submitted question: "How can Santa more effectively deliver all of his packages in one night?" Yes, the North Pole is a listener of the podcast. :)

Santa is getting older and his elves are worried about his health. They would like to find a more efficient way to deliver the gifts each year.

To reframe this problem, we use three of the lenses from Invisible Solutions:

#11: RESEQUENCE

#12: REASSIGN

#15: SUBSTITUTE

Hopefully the ideas in this episode can help any organization who has to deliver packages or services.

To get the lenses from Invisible Solutions, go to www.GetTheLenses.com

Submit your questions, problems, or opportunities at www.InvisibleSolutionsPodcast.com

Happy Holidays!

Learn more, play the game, and unlock your team’s full potential at PersonalityPoker.com

Brought to you by Stephen Shapiro—helping people and organizations create high-performing collaboration, innovation, and teams since 2001.

In this episode, I explore why some people are luckier than others - and how you can create luck.

Contrary to what some experts say, luck is not just about hard work. It requires something else.

I share a probabilistic model that explains why focusing on specific outcomes reduces the  likelihood of success.

I then share how you can increase your creativity and luck through a very simple technique that can be done immediately and does not take any extra time.

To get the lenses from Invisible Solutions, go to www.GetTheLenses.com

To learn more about Goal-Free Living, go to www.MeanderWithPurpose.com

Wishing you a happy, healthy, and lucky 2021.

Learn more, play the game, and unlock your team’s full potential at PersonalityPoker.com

Brought to you by Stephen Shapiro—helping people and organizations create high-performing collaboration, innovation, and teams since 2001.

What if loving your ideas can lead to failure? I first address this question and why confirmation bias and positive test strategy can destroy your innovation efforts.

Then I have on my first guest, Jack Elkins, the former Director of Innovation for the National Basketball Association's Orlando Magic. He and I discuss the question: How can we help organizations solve their own problems in a collaborative environment? 

We explore a number of key points for setting up the right environment:

• Generate laughter and listening through improv comedy
• Reduce anxiety
• Reinforce why they are there - and remind them they have permission
• Remove labels and hierarchies

We also discuss a great story on how observation led to a problem-reframe for a college football team, along with a few other helpful tips.

This one is an action packed 17 minutes!

To connect with Jack, go to www.SideKickInnovation.com

To download the lenses from Invisible Solutions, go to www.GetTheLenses.com

To submit a problem to be solved on a future episode, go to www.InvisibleSolutionsPodcast.com

Learn more, play the game, and unlock your team’s full potential at PersonalityPoker.com

Brought to you by Stephen Shapiro—helping people and organizations create high-performing collaboration, innovation, and teams since 2001.

In this episode we discuss the Performance Paradox (Lens #18 in Invisible Solutions) and Goal-Free Living.

The Performance Paradox is based on the perspective that the more you focus on a goal, the less likely you are to achieve that goal.

This lens is based on an earlier book of mine called, Goal-Free Living. It is not about living without goals, but rather changing your relationship to goals. It is the approach we use to tackle the problem: How can we move forward when the future is uncertain?"

The essence of Goal-Free Living is "meandering with purpose."

To learn more about Goal-Free Living, go to www.MeanderWithPurpose.com

To download the lenses from Invisible Solutions, go to www.GetTheLenses.com

If you are interested in more of the statistics from the book, go to https://stephenshapiro.com/interesting-new-years-resolution-statistics/

And finally, if you want to learn more about scientific research that is the basis of the Performance Paradox, read about the Yerkes–Dodson law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yerkes–Dodson_law

If you want to learn more about the study on the correlation between happiness and wealth, you can read it here: https://escholarship.org/content/qt1k08m32k/qt1k08m32k.pdf

Learn more, play the game, and unlock your team’s full potential at PersonalityPoker.com

Brought to you by Stephen Shapiro—helping people and organizations create high-performing collaboration, innovation, and teams since 2001.

Sometimes changing just one word in a problem statement can fundamentally change the range of solutions you see. We often don't give enough thought to the language we use when problem-solving.

Also, we will use the lenses to reframe a listener submitted problem: How can an association executive help transform a risk-averse board into one that embraces innovation? 

Although this the question is specifically about associations, the conversation applies to any organization.

We will use 4 lenses in today's episode.

7. RESULT
15. SUBSTITUTE
17 CONFLICT
19 PAIN VS GAIN

Although there are many other lenses that could apply, for this and future episodes, I will limit myself to 3 or 4 lenses. This will make it easier for everyone to follow along.

To get the lenses and learn more about the book, go to www.GetTheLenses.com

To submit a problem that you would like solved on the program, go to www.InvisibleSolutionsPodcast.com

Learn more, play the game, and unlock your team’s full potential at PersonalityPoker.com

Brought to you by Stephen Shapiro—helping people and organizations create high-performing collaboration, innovation, and teams since 2001.

In this episode, we start by exploring why expertise is the enemy of innovation. The more you know about a topic the harder it is to think differently. But not all is lost. You can leverage your expertise to generate breakthrough solutions.

We then put the question: "How can I increase podcast downloads?" through the 25 lenses. I think you'll find the reframes quite interesting as they can lead to a lot of different solutions.

To get the lenses, go to www.GetTheLenses.com

Learn more, play the game, and unlock your team’s full potential at PersonalityPoker.com

Brought to you by Stephen Shapiro—helping people and organizations create high-performing collaboration, innovation, and teams since 2001.