I have always liked these funny eye tweaking images in which you can see two different images depending on how you focus on the picture.   

Trying to solve a problem is quite the same; depending on how you look at the problem your outcome may vary. When looking at the image, your brain is doing the trick on its own, but how can you do that with a problem? Most of the time we look at the problem from one single angle: the one we are familiar with. Whether this “way of thinking” comes from our education or is built on our experience doesn’t count, what matters is its uniqueness and the difficulty we have to change our point of view. Corporate thinking in organizations tends to polish peoples’ creativity thereby limiting dissension.

Methods like Lateral thinking and tools like S.C.A.M.P.E.R. or TRIZ are available to help creativity and can be applied to problem solving but they require some training and self- discipline. Very often, getting an “outside view” is simple, fast and efficient to help in finding novel approaches. 

At NineSigma, every day we practice this “outside view” for our clients looking for innovative solutions or business approaches. Even better, we perform a “double outside view” that I have seen at work very efficiently dozens of times since I have joined the team. The first “outside view” pass, occurs with our Program Managers who unscramble, decompose and formulate the problem. They methodically review every possible approach in order to open as many paths as possible for potential solution providers. The second pass is done by the solution providers who offer their own knowledge and approach to the problem. Of course, the first pass drives some expected results in, but almost on every project we do receive unexpected or unobvious solutions. The famous quote from Albert Einstein: “Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them” has never been so true.  

This post is by guest blogger Bruna Martinuzzi. This post originally appeared on AMEX Open Forum blog; reposted here with permission. 

I once worked for a technology company that encouraged employees to practice what they called “Intelligent Disobedience.” The concept originates from seeing-eye dogs: while dogs must learn to obey the commands of a blind person, they must also know when they need to disobey commands that can put the owner in harm’s way, such as when a car is approaching.

Intelligent disobedience is not about setting out to be disagreeable or arbitrarily disobeying rules for its own sake. Rather, it is about using your judgment to decide when, for example, an established rule actually hinders your organization, rather than helps it. The antonym of intelligent disobedience is blind conformity.  Conformity smooths our day’s journey at work.  Conformity, however, can have its downsides. It saps creativity for one, and it is, in John F. Kennedy’s parlance, “the enemy of growth.”

Here are some ideas to inspire you and others in your team to establish a culture that values intelligent disobedience:

1. Consider the benefits of decentralizing some of the decision-making in your unit.If you are used to making all the decisions, allow those closest to the customer the flexibility to make appropriate decisions on the spot. This places the value where it should be—on customer satisfaction rather than on lockstep adherence to the process—but it also places value on team members by giving them the authority to bend the rules when necessary.

2. Don’t surround yourself with yes-men.Ponder the words of Barry Rand of Xerox, quoted in Colin Powell’s A Leadership Primer: “…if you have a yes-man working for you, one of you is redundant.”

3. Beware of naysayers. Consider the source of those who vigorously advise you against a change initiative. Sharpen your social and organizational awareness skills by carefully analyzing what their self-interest might be. In this regard, take a page from Guy Kawasaki’s Rules for Revolutionaries: The Capitalist Manifesto for Creating and Marketing New Products and Services: “The status quo will always try to shoot down a good idea, especially if it threatens their position.”

4. Don’t take expert opinion as the final word. If your own experience or knowledge tells you otherwise, don’t automatically silence your inner voice because it is drowned by the din of the expert crowd. Above all, spend the time to glean the experts from the quasi-experts in your field.

5. Catch yourself if you habitually insist on “going by the book.” Ask yourself: Is this necessary for every issue? Might you enhance your team’s productivity if you paid more attention to the restraining effect that this could have on the people involved? What would happen if you built some elasticity in your rules, if you allowed others to apply standard procedures more flexibly?

6. Become aware of your mental scripts.In Everyday Survival: Why Smart People do Stupid Things, Laurence Gonzales talks about the dumb mistakes we make when we work from a mental script that does not match the requirements of the real-world situation. Mental scripts are our conditioned responses to various situations. Mental scripts push us, for example, to stubbornly cling to the notion that “this is how we have always done it” and to refuse to accept the realities of a new situation.  So we find ourselves mistakenly generalizing into the future whatever worked in the past—this is a slippery path.

7. Help your people distinguish between fact and conjecture. Conjecture can be influenced by mental scripts which don’t have a bearing on current reality. Be the voice in the room that calls attention to this possibility and help everyone pause so that they can analyze inferences and conjectures that may or may not be valid.

8. Examine your reaction when confronted with new ideas. Seth Godin compiled a list of responses to actual good ideas.  If any of these describe some of your habitual responses, consider how you might practice being more receptive to others’ notions. Defending the status quo is a sure-fire way to extinguish the spark of new ideas in your group.

9. Establish a culture that values common sense over bureaucracy. Encourage everyone on your team to cast a critical eye on all procedures, practices and policies in their area. Which ones are no longer relevant? Which ones impede or delay the flow of critical information? Which ones cause make-shift work? Which ones are plain dumb? Which traditions have petrified?

10. Get comfortable saying no. Intelligent disobedience also involves having the ability to say no. If you struggle with this, read The Power of a Positive No: Save the Deal, Save the Relationship and Still Say No.  In the book, William Ury, outlines how to master the art of delivering what he calls “a positive No.”  This is a powerful three-step process of marrying a No with a Yes:

a) Yes! (Becoming conscious of the positive foundation for your No—for example, core interests or values)

b) No. (Respectfully explaining your No, linking it to your positive foundation)

c) Yes? (Having a plan B—that is, another positive outcome for the other party)

11. Make it safe for people to push back.This provides a platform from which people can rise and develop, and is also the mark of a confident leader who has the maturity to know that he or she cannot possibly have all the right answers. Allow others to connect the dots their own way.

12. Be aware of mind traps that lead to blind conformity. Mind traps act as mental straight-jackets, preventing you from thinking creatively and rationally.  These include, for example, the “herd instinct”, i.e. relying on the fact that “everybody else is doing it.” Here is a compiled list of the ten most common thinking traps.

13. Question the blind assumptions that can hurt your business. In

Rules to Break and Laws to Follow: How Your Business Can Beat the Crisis of Short-Termism (Microsoft Executive Leadership Series), the authors expose three false assumptions about how a business creates value—these are, among the rules to consider breaking:

a) The best measure of success for your business is current sales and profit

b) With the right sales and marketing effort, you can always get more customers

c) Company value is created by offering differentiated products and services

14. Reconsider your need for harmony at the expense of progress. We are often reticent to challenge the process for fear of disquieting others who resist change. A component of emotional intelligence is the ability to be a change catalyst: to build the courage to champion change despite opposition.

15. Become aware of your three most rigidly-held beliefs. Write them down. Explore what cognitive shifts you can make to soften your position on these. Think of the emotions that drive these beliefs. Could some of them be motivated by fear? What might these unbendable beliefs prevent you from achieving?

The well-beaten path may be comfortable because it allows us to move along, without having to exert much effort, but it is the path that ultimately leads to mediocrity.  As Emerson said, long ago, “Do not follow where the path may lead.  Go, instead, where there is no path and leave a trail.”  If you are a leader in charge of others, allow space for them to leave their own footprints.

a) Yes! (Becoming conscious of the positive foundation for your No—for example, core interests or values)

b) No. (Respectfully explaining your No, linking it to your positive foundation)

c) Yes? (Having a plan B—that is, another positive outcome for the other party)

Bruna Martinuzzi is the President of Clarion Enterprises Ltd., Clarion Enterprises Ltd. a firm that specializes in emotional intelligence, leadership and presentation skills training. Her latest book, The Leader as a Mensch, explains how you can become the kind of person others want to follow.

Open Innovation (OI), a well proven strategy for CTOs, marketing and R&D, is now gaining advocates amongst the CIOs, strategic business planning teams and CFO level financial management inside Global 500 companies.

Changing culture and the way organizations have always done things is a leader’s greatest challenge and I’m anxious to assess how well corporations can adopt OI across the customer facing operations side of the business.

I believe that the opportunity to quickly acquire new knowledge for services, business process, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and new business models can exceed the value or competitive market share gain from OI for a new product.  Costco can adopt a Bank’s branch office customer service ideas or automobile manufacturers can adopt a new business process model from Starbucks for the automobile dealerships service department.  And the software to support the processes and assess business metrics for the CFO can be acquired as well and implemented by the CIO.

In some cases a business offering services is competing against a business providing products.  John Deere and other equipment manufacturers could begin losing lawn care product sales as the lawn care service provider sells lifestyle choices and long term cash flow as a reason to not buy the new mower.  John Deere needs to look outside the manufacturing industry for the next innovation to win market share from the lifestyle choices available to their customers.  And, what industry would John Deere look to for managing the financial risk issues in the transition process?  Perhaps the automobile manufacturing industry that adopted Starbucks business process model for auto services.

Here at NineSigma, the epicenter of techno-geekness, we never tire of sharing with each other the coolest new technology, the craziest proposal, and the hottest fashion trend (well, maybe not that last one).  Even the MBAs can't help but get caught up in the excitement (or at least respond by groaning and rolling their eyes at the scientists and engineers).  So with the dawn of a new decade (and in celebration of NineSigma's 10th year in operation), it seems appropriate to highlight some of the best innovations of the decade (aside from the launch of the Open Innovation movement, of course).  I tried to keep it to my top 5, but couldn't resist adding a 6th.  So, in no particular order... 

Sensors and digital imaging:  While the 1990's saw widespread use of digital cameras, and micro sensors hit prime time in automotive airbag accelerometers, it was in the last decade that digital imaging and micro sensors (or MEMS, my technical specialty from a previous life) became ubiquitous in products and consumer electronic devices.  These offered huge leaps in new functionality from digital cameras with motion sensing and fuzzy logic for image stabilization (and then uploading the pictures to Facebook), to accelerometers in iPhones and Wii gaming offering new functionality, to instant digital imaging of x-rays and mammograms, to backup cameras on minivans.  These "enabling technologies" will continue to impact more facets of our lives.  

Interactive and On-Demand Media: In the last month, I have done all of the following: watched video on an iPod, read the New York Times online (and on an e-book and on my cell phone), watched a blu-ray DVD movie, viewed a video-on-demand, used DVR and Tivo to time-shift programs (pause, rewind to see the replay, etc.), downloaded a show via iTunes onto an iPod and watched through the TV, looked at crazy YouTube videos, watched a show on Hulu, listened to a Podcast in my car...  (Does anyone simply watch live TV anymore?).  Suddenly PowerPoint animation seems boring. 

Social Network Enabled [political campaigning, microlending, fundraising, product development, t-shirt designing, whatever]:  Read about how the ThinkGeek Tauntaun Sleeping Bag was developed, and you'll believe anything is possible.  

High Tech Materials: Whether it was carbon fiber in bicycles, polymer shock absorbers for next generation football helmets, nanomaterials used for antimicrobial coatings, or self-adhering bandages, new high tech fibers and materials continue to "weave" their way into existing and new products.  The coolest example in the last decade? Fabric enhancements to the swimming racing suit to reduce resistance and allow greater speed under water. 

Wi-Fi – here, there, and (almost) everywhere...  Checking stocks from the living room?  Check.  Reading the news online at a conference when there's a boring speaker?  Check.  Video Skype Mom on her birthday from the kitchen?  Check.  Doing work on my laptop in a coffee shop while my son downloads new games for his iTouch?  Check, and check.  It’s not everywhere (or free) all the time yet, but even Wi-Fi in the car is just around the corner.     

And finally...the curved shower curtain rod.  Seriously.  I don't remember any innovation so simple that improved the business travel and hotel experience by changing the dynamics of space.  And it seemed that these were retrofitted to every US hotel overnight.  My taller colleages swear how it has been a god-send to give them more room to shower - for me, eliminating the headache of trying to get clean when a shower curtain is stuck to my body is brilliant enough.

What other innovations do you think I left off?  Wikipedia, mapping of the human genome, cloud computing, superconductors, GPS, mass production hybrid cars, "convenience" packaging for food products (like the resealing Oreo package),...?  Add your thoughts in the comments section below.