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Kowabunga! Moving Notice & Repost: Got Ideas? Collaborators & YOUR creative brilliance sought for Kowabunga!

Kowabunga! will be moving to www.ridingthewave.net very soon!  As many subscribers were dropped by the previous subscription service, please resubscribe on the new site so you don't miss any posts!
In the meantime — we're still looking for your ideas for blog posts and interactivity, so here is a repost on our contest, below.  Win Langdon Morris' great new book, The Innovation Master Plan or your own special interview on Kowabunga!

Dear readers, Boys in leaves

I hope that you have been gleaning some value and reading pleasure from this blog, as well as enjoying some of our fabulous photos!  We're off to a good start exploring different facets of creative thinking and how to cultivate it in organizations, and I'm pleased to see that we have readers from around the world!

With your help, I’d like to "take it up a notch” soon and make Kowabunga! more a more interactive and creative forum.  The timing of my invitation is appropriate, as my next post will be on collaboration!

You can either respond on the blog site comment section, or write me directly at adams at ridingthewave dot net.

  1. Please send me your ideas for posts, contests, interactivity, podcasts, interviews, videos… Whatever you can dream of… 
  2. Let me know if you’d be interested in writing a guest post or collaborating with me on a post or related project.

Keep in mind that if you post your ideas in the comments section for everyone to see, those may inspire other people's ideas — That's the beauty of brainstorming, or "what iffing."   

PRIZES!  In return for those who provide the most and best ideas*, I'm offering some added incentive:

  • One winner will receive Langdon Morris' new book, hot off the press and signed by the author:  The Innovation Master Plan.  You'll be invited to share a review, if you like.
  • Another grand prize: We'll create a post or fun podcast featuring YOU and your creative and innovative work and/or related topic of your choice.

I would like to think that we've only just begun with what Kowabunga!  can become, and that your support and creativity may play a role!

I look forward to hearing from you.

Best wishes,

Veronica Adams
Riding the Wave Training & Development
adams at ridingthewave dot net

 

 * Disclaimer: The contest judges offer no objective criteria whatsoever for what will be deemed the "best" ideas.  Just ones we think that we all might enjoy!  😉

Screen shot 2011-09-15 at 10.50.04 PM

Enjoy this three-minute creative educational video by Explania on the many benefits of employee engagement and how organizations can cultivate it.  http://www.explania.com/en/animations/detail/how-to-use-employee-engagement-to-boost-your-business

As “illustrated” in this video, "engaged" employees means those who regularly go the “extra mile” because they carry energy and passion for the organizational vision and take great pride in their work and the contributions they make towards the mission and goals.  They take initiative and serve as examples to other staff. They tend to have stronger relationships with customers, building sales and boosting reputation, and they promote the organization to others.

Sadly, even among the organizations that take care of the basic employee satisfaction areas (fair pay, reasonable management, and reasonable working situations), according to the statistical research cited by Explania, engagement is as low as 20% in the average organization.  However, in innovative organizations, the number of engaged employees is eight times greater than those that are average.  The video attributes recognition, leadership, education and professional opportunities as drivers for engagement.

All good, and spot on!… The only lacking I see is that there is no mention of a) what makes organizations innovative or b) the role of employees’ contributions of ideas in any of the areas discussed on this blog: process improvements, marketing, services, or products.

What this clever little video does not mention is that employees need to know their ideas and opinion are valued in order to feel respected in order be willing to or have the option to fully engage all of their talents, and for the organization to be an innovative one.  –The authors probably meant that as well, but the oversight was probably a simple “slip of the pen.”  😉

Cheers!

Screen shot 2011-09-15 at 10.39.06 PM

Spider web The next post will look at collaboration, which, as has been previously stated, is lifeblood to creative problem-solving and innovation in organizations.  Fruitful collaboration can only be built on a foundation of trust, and that, only from authentic relationships.

To the latter point, I want to start by sharing some poetry and prose by two writers which speaks to the humanity that connects us in our day-to-day working relationships, and the need to affirm this.  For me, as for many, I believe that connection is related to spirit or spirituality, which I define as: that which is invisible to the eye, but which binds us to life, to our creative spirit, and to one another.

In Indian culture, "namaste" means, "I honor the divinity within you."

The Hindus greet one another by bowing with folded hand against the breastbone.  This miniceremony means: “I salute the divinity within you.”

No workplace can be truly alive until we see the divinity within one another, until we experience behind the breastbone the breath of life, until we insist that our work will not be the humdrum product of a sleeping spirit but a glorious monument to who we really are.                   

John Cowan
from The Common Table 

 

Threads

Sometimes you just connect,
like that,
no big thing maybe
but something beyond the usual business stuff.
It come and goes quickly
so you have to pay attention,
a change in the eyes
when you ask about the family,
a pain flickering behind the statistics
about a boy and a girl in school,
or about seeing them every other Sunday.
An older guy talks about his bride,
a little affectation after twenty-five years.
A hot-eyed achiever laughs before you want him to.
Someone tells about his wife’s job
or why she quit working to stay home.
An older joker needs another laugh on the way
to retirement.
A woman says she spends a lot of her salary
on an au pair
and a good one is hard to find
but worth it because there’s nothing more important
than the baby.
Listen.
In every office
you hear the threads of love and joy and fear and guilt,
the cries for celebration and reassurance,
and somehow you know that connecting those threads
is what you are supposed to do
and business takes care of itself.

Jame A. Autry
from Love & Profit

Giraffe licking squirrel

 

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