There’s a lot of people talking about innovation these days, myself included.

The good news is that business leaders seem to be sitting up and taking notice of this important subject. The bad news is that once a topic becomes popular in the media, people have a tendency to see it as the next “management flavor of the month.” In other words, they perceive it as a quick fix solution rather than a long-term change in the way they do business.

Remember a few decades ago when everyone jumped on the continuous improvement bandwagon? Very quickly, companies of all shapes and sizes began implementing six sigma, lean manufacturing, and other types of process improvement programs. Many had no clue what they were doing or worked hard without a link to overall strategy and success. And most had very unrealistic timelines and expectations for the results they hoped to achieve.

Not surprisingly, the continuous improvement movement failed to produce any overnight successes. Companies that approached continuous improvement as a quick fix soon discovered the error of their ways, usually ending up worse off than before they started. Those that invested the time and effort in making continuous improvement a way of life are still reaping the dividends.

The same thing needs to happen with innovation. To succeed, it needs to become an integral part of how you do business. Innovation requires ways of thinking that must underlie all the process, systems, and management behaviors in an organization. Creating ongoing innovation in an organization needs to be thought of as a long-term process, especially if you are used to reacting to change rather than creating it. Most of all, innovation requires an organizational culture that nourishes and supports it as a way of life rather than as a short-term band-aid for current business problems.

To create a culture that encourages rather than inhibits innovation:

Create a Powerful Context

The strategic planning process starts with defining what winning looks like for your organization. Creating a culture that supports innovation begins the same way. Start by explaining why innovation is important and how it will help your organization win. Paint a picture of what your organization will look like when innovation becomes a way of life and how it will benefit all your key stakeholders. Always address the “why” before moving on to the “what” and the “how.”

Help People Learn to Think Differently

Most of us don’t really know how to pause to challenge our own assumptions, change perspectives, or even how to consider different angles. We are not used to slowing down just a little to consider options, balance the big picture with the details, or seek new data. As adult humans, we are not naturally prone to constantly test and update our mental models about our world, our customers, our peers, and our organization. Most of us need tools and support to learn these critical new skills and abilities. Make sure you set your organization up for success by providing the necessary support in the form of learning sessions, tools, and techniques to help people think differently.

Link Individual Effort to the Big Picture

Not only do employees need to understand why innovation is critical to the organization, they must also understand how the work they do fits into the overall effort. After giving employees the big picture, tell them how and where they fit in. Ask for their input on how to improve products, processes and workflow, and let them know they will have some degree of autonomy in how they perform their jobs. In addition, stress the importance of open communication up and down the management chain as well as across teams, departments, and work units.

Build and Encourage Diversity

One of the quickest ways to kill innovation is to surround yourself with people who think the same way, make decisions the same way, and tend to avoid conflict. Ask yourself questions like: Do we develop teams with diverse skills and analytical styles? Do we accommodate all styles in meetings and conversation, or do we favor one style over the others? As an organization, do we value contention, debate, and tension or do we constantly rush to consensus? Conversely, do we get stuck in analysis paralysis and avoid making decisions for fear of failure?

Use Supportive Language and Behaviors

Many organizations have built-in language patterns and behaviors that do not support innovation. Seemingly innocuous phrases like “Don’t bother, we’ve already tried that” or, “Nice idea, but management will never go for it” can instantly shoot down any good ideas that may arise. Instead, use language that encourages employees to contribute ideas and stay open to new possibilities. Do not tolerate gossiping, politicking or ridiculing new ideas, no matter how far-fetched. If employees don’t feel safe voicing their ideas and opinions, innovation will never happen.

Acknowledge and Reward Innovation

It’s one of the oldest axioms of human nature – people repeat behaviors they get rewarded for. Does leadership in your organization give employees continual feedback on the results of their efforts? Do you privately acknowledge the efforts of individuals? Do you recognize them publicly? Do you continually communicate your commitment to innovation at all levels of the organization? Most important, do you demonstrate that commitment by your actions and behaviors as well as the words you say?

Talking about innovation is good. Putting it to work in your organization is even better. For best results, link innovation to your strategy and think of creating ongoing innovation as a long-term process rather than a short-term goal. And make sure your culture provides the necessary context for it to thrive.

If you follow the tech industry you probably noticed Google’s decision to shut down their much-ballyhooed Google Wave after only one year of operation. You might also have noticed the “wave” of criticism from technology bloggers and industry writers that immediately followed.

For those not familiar with it, Google Wave is a real-time collaboration tool that combines various forms of online communication. Some industry experts predicted that it would dramatically change the way we communicate and collaborate online. But it never developed the user base that Google anticipated, so they decided to pull the plug on the product.

According to their blog, Google will continue to maintain the site through the end of the year, and will extend the technology into other Google projects. But they will cease all development of Google Wave as a standalone product.

Many industry writers took Google to task for this decision. Why did they shut it down after such a short time? How could they misjudge the market so badly? And with all their talent, creativity and resources, how could they make such a costly blunder?

I disagree. I say good for Google for recognizing a mistake and knowing when to cut their losses and move on!

Far too often, companies stay the course when the evidence overwhelmingly indicates that a sharp turn is required. Even experienced business leaders will frequently bury their heads in the sand and plow ahead with a product or service that the market clearly doesn’t value. In this case, to their credit, Google saw the writing on the wall and made the tough decision to terminate the Wave.

I also say good for Google for having the courage to fail.

Failure is an integral part of innovation, especially the kind that disrupts markets. If you’re not willing to take risks and experience failure, it greatly reduces your chances of coming up with real breakthrough products or services.

Why do most companies have a hard time admitting failure? The easy answer is that people don’t want to look bad. Or they fear losing their jobs. Or they keep thinking that if they stick with it, success is just around the corner. But there’s more to it than that.

Admitting failure requires us to challenge some of our most basic assumptions about ourselves and our notions of success. It requires that we examine the way we think and make decisions, an often uncomfortable and unsettling process.

For example, a common theme in many product failures is overconfidence in (or inaccurate assessment of) our own abilities. The underlying assumption is that we’ve thought through everything about the product, so there must be something wrong with the market, the customer, the economy, the timing, etc. In other words, it’s not our fault.

Another common assumption, and one that is deeply embedded in our culture, says that hard work and persistence will eventually win out. This often goes hand-in-hand with the assumption that we’ve invested so much time and money in the product that we can’t afford to quit. Month after month the market indicates that it doesn’t value the product. Yet we keep thinking that we just need a little more time to make it work.

Perhaps the most difficult assumption to overcome is the idea that behind every product failure lies a simple answer. In our increasingly complex world, we crave simple answers. So we seek to blame failures on one thing going wrong versus a combination of factors. More often than not, however, careful examination uncovers a host of reasons for the failure, not the least of which are our own misguided assumptions about our customers and our markets.

I also give Google credit for how they’re handling the situation. I don’t see any heads rolling or fingers being pointed. I don’t see any public hand wringing or browbeating.

And I don’t see any signs of “We’ll never do that again!” Instead, Google has simply made a decision to cut their losses, learn from the mistakes, and move on.

This no-nonsense attitude sends a powerful message to employees and the general public that Google values innovation and considers it an integral part of how they do business. More important, it shows they are willing to take risks and accept the consequences when they don’t pan out.

Others may chastise Google for pulling the plug too soon and missing the mark so badly with Google Wave. But I applaud their good business judgment and their willingness to fail – two leadership skills we could all use more of!

Seeing as how summer is supposed to include some rest and relaxation, I took advantage of a rare day off last week and went to Sea World (one of the many perks of living in San Diego).

I especially enjoyed the Shamu “House of Douse” show, in which several large killer whales do their best to soak everyone in the audience by deliberately splashing with their tails and by leaping high into the air and creating walls of flying water as they come crashing back down.

Many people (like me) scurry for the high seats in order to avoid getting soaked. Others, especially the youngsters, purposefully sit as close to the large tank as possible in order to get thoroughly drenched by the end of the show. Either way, a great time is had by all, including the orcas, who seem to relish the opportunity to douse visitors to their aquatic home.

Driving home (slightly wet rather than doused) it occurred to me that “douse” is a word you don’t hear too often. To most, it means to drench with a liquid, typically water. But douse can also mean “to put out, quench, smother, snuff, or extinguish.”

I then thought about (since I am constantly thinking about innovation) all the different things we do in organizations that have the effect of quenching, smothering, or even outright extinguishing innovation.

These common, but usually unintended, innovation “dousers” include:

• Single thought. Relying on a single idea or plan to see your project through.
• Getting really worried. Anxiety tends to limit the possibilities your mind ponders and focuses the mind too much on what will go wrong.
• Getting easily frustrated. The harder you work at being frustrated the better you’ll get at it and the more you will find to be frustrated with.
• Exaggerated importance. Making your challenge so important that you allow it to take on proportions well beyond what is reasonable.
• Running it through a committee. Nothing destroys individual initiative like a well-intentioned committee. Having too many meetings to “discuss things” can waste time and usually doubles the cost.
• Setting inappropriate deadlines. Make them too short and the task becomes impossible. Too long, and you lose interest in the project.
• Not having fun. When you stop having fun the task becomes burdensome.
• Knowing the right answers. When you become convinced that you have all the answers, you stop entertaining alternatives, which is a keystone to successful innovation.

What inspires (rather than douses) innovation? Try these:

• Necessity. Nothing sharpens the attention better than demands that really make a difference to your success.
• Fun. Having a great time helps the juices flow.
• Boldness. Jumping right into a situation with both feet can help you overcome initial barriers or fears stopping you from addressing an opportunity.
• Speed. Doing it fast as you can often stops you from too much judgment or thought on why it won’t work.
• Shooting from the hip. Starting without a plan and applying ideas as they come to you can keep you constantly exploring versus getting locked in to one right way.
• Pride. Taking pleasure in success and accomplishment is a strong driver to leverage.
• Time pressure. The rush of the (appropriate) deadline gets you going and making progress.
• Mental sparks. Feeling bold, standing out in the crowd, and getting noticed can be just the right thing to help you do it differently.
• Trust in last-minute inspiration. Having faith in your ability to pull the project together opens your mind to more possibilities on how you will do it versus what will stop you.
• Relaxing. Loosening up the grip of life’s worries gives your brain the space it needs to wander.
• Reflection. Having a private time and space to contemplate your navel gives you time to ponder and explore ideas.

Most of all, take a risk! Not just a toe in the water, a no big deal if doesn’t work out kind of risk. Take a real risk, without a safety net. Feel the crisp bite of fear and go ahead with it anyway. The threat of failure lights a fire like no other. And the thrill of success is that much sweeter when you pull it off.

What are you doing to inspire (rather than douse) innovation in your company?

Not only is our world moving faster and faster these days, it is also becoming more connected than ever. And it looks like the corporate world has finally gotten the message.

For the past few years, I have been talking to clients and keynote audiences about the importance of embracing social media as an additional communications channel; ideal for marketing, collaborating, and engaging with stakeholders internally and externally. While some companies have eagerly jumped on the bandwagon, many have resisted, for a variety of reasons. That appears to be changing.

According to Forrester Research, an independent research company that provides marketing, business and technology advice to business leaders, over the next five years social media marketing will grow at an annual rate of 34% – faster than any other form of online marketing, and double the average growth rate for all online mediums. Even more telling, during that time span business spending on mobile media marketing will increase three-fold, while spending on social media will increase more than four times.

What’s behind this sudden anticipated increase in business usage of social media?

Remember when the Internet first burst upon the scene and everyone proclaimed it as the greatest thing since sliced bread? Well, a lot of companies lost a lot of money trying to figure out how to use it effectively. It took nearly a decade for people to learn how to turn it from a novelty item into a highly effective business tool. Not just in terms of selling products online, but as a powerful communications tool the likes of which we had never seen before.

It took a while to understand that the real power of the Internet was its ability to make information ubiquitous. Once we learned how to use the Internet to put information in the hands of the people who need it any time, anywhere in the world, it revolutionized the way we conduct business.

Social media is now going through the same learning curve, only it’s happening much faster. Business leaders have figured out that there’s a lot more to social media than the ability to connect with people through Facebook or keep friends updated on our whereabouts via Twitter. We’re discovering how to use the multitude of channels and platforms to change the way we position our products and services in the marketplace and how to build beneficial relationships with prospects, customers, and other key stakeholders.

What have we learned so far? That social media has tremendous potential in three key areas:

Brand building and monitoring. Brand building used to be a one-way activity. With social media, it has become two-way. Customers are already talking about you and your products and services on social networking sites. Creating “official” social media channels allows you to participate in those conversations and have some control over how your brand is perceived by the market. It also allows you to monitor what the market is saying about your competitors and what they are doing. When you monitor consistently, you can gather valuable competitive intelligence and better understand emerging unmet customer needs.

Attracting traffic. Companies that depend on online searches for potential customers to find them are now using social media profiles to improve their rankings with search engines. Major search engines like Google and Bing incorporate information from blogs and social networking sites into their process for ranking web sites. Social media bookmarking tools like Reddit and Digg enable you to generate traffic by posting blogs and linking and/or responding to blogs and articles. Videos posted on YouTube, the world’s second largest search engine, and similar sites can also be optimized for search engine indexing. Today, if you don’t show up in a search, you don’t exist.

Finding new customers. Creating a company profile and posting blogs, articles, and other information about market trends and issues positions you as an expert in your industry. Regular updates about your business on your personal social media accounts can spark others to send business your way. But perhaps the best thing about social media is its ability to target very specific groups of prospects and customers and address their individual interests in a very personal way. People want to feel like they belong to something special. Social media allows you to build loyal followers and create a sense of community around your company and its products and services.

The initial learning curve has passed. Smart companies are no longer asking, “How can we use social media to increase business?” Instead they’re applying the lessons that have already been learned and are aggressively looking for ways to implement social media faster and better than their competitors.

If you have yet to embrace social media, the train is leaving the station. Will you be riding up front with the engineer, or will you get left behind on the platform?

Andy Grove, the founder of microchip giant Intel, once said, “Business success contains the seeds of its own destruction.”

Just look around and it’s hard to argue with him. General Motors. Enron. Washington Mutual. Lehman Brothers. PanAm. The landscape is littered with once-dominant companies that have lost their position of market leadership or gone completely out of business.

These companies withered away due to internal rather than external factors. Convinced of their own immortality, they grew fat, bloated, and lazy, and refused to keep up with changing market conditions. They grew overconfident in their ability to stay ahead of competitors. They ignored or misjudged evolving customer wants and needs. Or, as they say in Texas, they simply got too darn big for their britches and lost touch with their customer base.

How can this happen to such highly successful companies? They had access to resources that most firms can only dream about. They had capable, experienced leadership. They had well-established brands that people knew and trusted. They had long track records of success to continue building upon. What went wrong?

The answer lies, at least partly, in our brains.

The human brain excels at taking in large amounts of data, sifting, and analyzing that data, and then forming patterns. Most of this activity takes place just below the level of conscious awareness, so that we’re not even aware when we’re doing it. Way back in our caveman days, this kind of pattern recognition coupled with instant and consistent response was a good thing. It allowed us to quickly identify predators, remember the location of food and water sources, and engage in other activities that supported our survival. We responded to these inputs of data the same way each time and it worked because the pace of change was pretty darn slow. In today’s modern world, not so much.

The problem is that once these unconscious patterns and responses get established, they can be very difficult to break, especially when they get reinforced by all the trappings of success. That’s why the more success we achieve, the more we tend to do things the same way. After all, it has worked for us up to that point. We are constantly screening in the data that proves us right and screening out anything contradictory. Unfortunately, the world is changing all around us, but our deeply ingrained patterns of seeing the world a certain way cause us to filter, distort, or ignore the information coming in, so that we only see what we want to see. As a result, we continue doing the same things the same way, without ever stopping to question whether the time has come to start doing things differently.

How else to explain GM’s behavior over the past few decades?

I hate to kick GM while they’re down, but they’ve become the poster child for ignoring the obvious. Soaring gas prices. Global sales of smaller, more fuel-efficient cars. The increasing popularity of hybrids and alternative fuels. Despite the evidence surrounding them, all GM could see was a world that wanted large, powerful automobiles. So they continued to churn out over-sized gas guzzlers while watching their market share erode year after year and they continued trying to negotiate in the same way with the same unions years after the data suggested that relationship needed to change dramatically on both sides.

Here’s the kicker: don’t think you have to attain FORTUNE 100 status to become a victim of this “success syndrome.” Simply combine success at your level with a large dose of complacency and the brain’s natural tendency to see what you want to see and you, too, can enjoy a rapid fall from grace.

How can you avoid such a fate? I ran across a good article the other day (http://www.deniseleeyohn.com/assets/files/pdf/resources/DLYohn%20Success%20Syndrome%20Article.pdf) in which the author, Denise Yohn, offered three strategies for avoiding the dreaded success syndrome:

1. Instill a culture of truth telling. In many organizations, data gets collected and presented in a way that people think the leaders want to hear. Instead, leaders must insist that people tell the truth and then reward them for doing so, even when the truth hurts.

2. Celebrate failure. Successful companies often stop failing because they stop taking risks. Leaders need to ensure that failure continues to happen even after success is attained.

3. Be a little paranoid. Like a sentry patrolling the front lines, constantly scan the horizon for emerging threats, and be vigilant about preparing for change.

To this I would add, never take your success or your customers for granted. Constantly ask, “How has our customer’s world changed in the past six to 12 months? Are the ideas, assumptions, processes, and systems that made us successful still valid in today’s world? If not, what do we need to change and how do we need to change it?”

The brain is a marvelous instrument. But sometimes it just gets in our way or we don’t even visit it. Don’t assume that what you think know about your customers, your markets, and your business is still true. Don’t assume that loyal customers will stay if you fail to keep up with their changing demands. And never let yourself believe that you are too big, too successful, or too important to fail.

It’s a powerful story about a woman, Temple Grandin, who overcame autism to become one of the most influential figures in today’s livestock and animal husbandry industry. Not only is Temple’s story a testament to the ability of the human spirit to overcome tremendous obstacles, it teaches many principles that all business leaders would do well to embrace.

When diagnosed at a very early age, doctors said Grandin would never speak. When they recommended life-long institutionalization, Grandin’s mother refused to accept that possibility, and continually pushed her daughter to develop her abilities and learn to work around her autistic limitations.

With the support of her mother and several key mentors along the way, Grandin went on to graduate from college and earn a Ph.D. in animal science. More important, she revolutionized the livestock industry by designing innovative systems that improve herd management and facilitate more humane treatment of the animals we depend on for food. (Lesson #1: Don’t let others tell you what you can and can’t do!)

In North America, almost half of the cattle are handled in a center track restrainer system that Grandin designed for meat plants. Her innovative curved chute and race systems for cattle are used worldwide, and her writings on the flight zone and other principles of grazing animal behavior have helped many companies to reduce stress on their animals during handling. Grandin also developed an objective scoring system for assessing handling of cattle and pigs at meat plants that is currently used by many large corporations to improve animal welfare.

At first, livestock companies balked at implementing Grandin’s designs due to the high cost. But when they saw how much money they could save through lower manpower costs, fewer deaths and injuries to cattle, and more efficient slaughterhouse systems, implementing the designs became an easy choice. (Lesson #2: True innovation is always cost-effective.)

Here’s the most important lesson of all: Grandin was able to come up with her revolutionary designs because she saw the world differently than anyone else in the industry.

Because of her autism, Grandin could see patterns in livestock movement and behaviors that others couldn’t. She studied how the cattle responded to all the different aspects of the stockyard/slaughterhouse process. She listened to their mooing to determine how they communicated with each other. She got down on her hands and knees in the mud and the muck to see what the cattle saw as they moved through the chutes. In other words, she literally got inside the cows’ world to understand what the stockyard experience was like for them and how she could make it better. (Lesson #3: Get an understanding of your customers and other stakeholders as much as you possibly can.)

As with many real breakthroughs, people initially scoffed at her. Just an autistic woman with a tenuous grip on reality. Plus, the industry was dominated by men and their “good old boy” notions about how to process cattle. But once they began testing Grandin’s designs, they quickly realized how much more efficiently and humanely they moved cattle through the system.

Unless you suffer from autism, you probably don’t have Grandin’s innate ability to see the world differently. And I’m not suggesting you get down on your hands and knees and crawl around in the mud and the muck to make your business better. (Unless that’s part of your business process.) But the principles are the same.

Innovation involves looking at your world and the world of your customers in ways that no one else has seen before. It requires constantly questioning the way things have always been done in your industry. And it requires asking on a regular basis, “How can we do things cheaper, faster, better, or different in order to add more value to our market?”

If you haven’t seen the movie, I highly recommend it. Grandin found a way to turn her biggest liability into her greatest strength. And in her triumph, there are lessons for all of us who lead people and organizations. How can we learn to see our world, and the world of our customers, differently? And, how can we turn our own weaknesses into strengths?

Recently I was doing a keynote presentation on innovation when a member of the audience, a senior manager at a large company, posed this question:

“What’s the difference between individual and organizational innovation? We have plenty of people who come up with good ideas, but nothing new ever seems to get done in our company.”

This particular manager happens to work for a well-known company that likes to consider itself innovative, so his question momentarily took me by surprise. But one thing I have learned over the past few years is that our assumptions and beliefs about what goes on inside an organization versus its public persona are often two very different things. And there is no shortage of misguided ideas and assumptions about the innovation process.

In business, innovation is the act of applying knowledge, new or old, to the creation of new processes, products, and services that have value for at least one of your stakeholder groups. The key word here is applying. Too many people assume that innovation consists solely of coming up with good ideas. That’s part of it, of course. But in order to have true innovation, you must implement. You have to actually do something different that has value. Brainstorming or chatting about new ideas does not qualify as innovation.

Individual innovation has to do with the content of innovation. It involves examining your own thinking process to understand why you think the way you do. More important, it involves pausing your thinking process every now and then and contemplating how to change perspectives, how to challenge your own assumptions, how to consider the opposite of what you normally think, how to ponder multiple right answers, and how to do things differently.

Organizational innovation is all about the context for innovation. Context includes the culture, leadership styles and norms, competencies of individuals, teams and functions, business processes, performance measures and strategies. Have you created a context in your company that encourages, inspires, and fosters doing things differently? Do you have systems and processes in place that operationalize doing things differently on a regular basis?

Most organizations operate from a “control and manage” mindset. When people bring up new ideas, the leaders smile and say, “That’s nice. Now go back to your job and get me that report.” In other words, keep doing the same things in the same ways. Organizational innovation involves developing the spirit, tools, processes, and attitudes that encourage people at all levels to every now and then pause and think differently.

Not about everything, of course, because you have to do some things the same way in order to be effective. But every once in a while it pays to stop and ask “What if….?” For example, “What if our biggest competitor purchased us? What would they see? How would they approach our market differently?” Or, ”What if we didn’t know what we already know about our customers? How would we go about determining their wants and needs? How would we use that information to add more value than anyone else in the industry?”

Like everything else, fostering organizational innovation starts at the top. People pay far more attention to what you do than what you say. So if you want to encourage innovation at all levels, you have to model it. Practice the concepts and tools of innovation. Practice screening in (rather than screening out) more data so that you can look at things differently. In particular, learn how to look at things outside your industry and make new connections to your business.

When I worked for The Coca Cola Company, every year the chief marketing officer flew to Paris for the fashion shows. Why? To see the fashion trends and get ideas on how new styles could be applied in the beverage sector. It is easy to look around your own sector, at similar companies and get ideas. Part of your job as a leader today is learning to look in new and different places for ideas that can be applied to your business.

Every time you have a thought bubble that says, “I am right!”, deliberately pause and ask, “What if I’m wrong? What if there’s a different way to see this?” Innovation doesn’t mean you walk around wondering if you’re wrong all the time. The idea is to force yourself (every now and then) to open your mind, suspend your assumptions and judgment, and simply ponder, “What if…?”

When you learn to insert the “What if?” pause once or twice a day, you’ll come up with more new ideas. You’ll model an important behavior that will help set the context for innovation in your company. And you may be very surprised at the answers you get.

What is your next “What if?” question?

Okay readers, it’s time to test your business IQ. Which word does not belong in this group?

• Radar
• Kayak
• Raven
• Repaper

If you answered “kayak,” you’re right! It’s the only word that doesn’t start with the letter R.

But wait. If you answered “raven,” you’re also correct because it‘s the only word that isn’t a palindrome (reads the same forwards as backwards).

Hold on a second. If you answered “repaper,” you’re also correct because it’s the only word with more than five letters.

What’s the point of this exercise?

To point out that in business, as in life, there are often many right answers. But we are trained to constantly look for the right answer. So when the first idea that comes up looks good, we tend to shut down our thinking processes and run with that idea instead of opening the door to other potentially better or different ideas.

This is especially true in meetings and group settings where people are often more concerned about avoiding conflict than they are about dealing with the issues that need to be addressed. In fact, one of the biggest problems with group decisions is the rush to consensus that typically occurs whenever the first good idea pops up or when the loudest person in the room feels strongly about something.

In our culture, reinforcement for having the right answer starts early in life. Remember how good it felt in elementary school to get called on by the teacher and give the right answer in front of the whole class? At the same time, it felt equally bad to give an answer that wasn’t correct. So from a very young age we learn that if we want to look good in front of our peers, as well as authority figures, we’d better have the right answer.

As we grow older and progress through school, it becomes even more important to get the right answers. Things like final exams, SATs, and grade point averages play critical roles in shaping our futures, and they all depend on getting the right answers. Students who get the most right answers are rewarded with the best schools, the best jobs, and often the best opportunities in life.

In the business world, this well-conditioned quest for the right answer translates into what I call “jumping to solutions.”

Business is all about solving problems for our customers and for our organizations. So whenever an idea pops up that seems to solve a problem, we automatically shut down our critical thinking processes and accept it as the solution. We might take the time to debate how the idea needs to be implemented. But once an idea gets accepted as the solution, we become blind to anything else that might solve the problem in a different, more effective or efficient way.

Unfortunately, good ideas are not necessarily the best ones. To do what’s best for our organizations, we need to open our minds and consider all possible options, not just the first one that looks good. We need to consider that there may be multiple solutions to the same problem and focus on advantages and disadvantages of each or even if more than one solution is called for to meet the needs of differing stakeholders.

How do we stop jumping to solutions?

Start by encouraging divergent points of view during discussion of the problem. If people aren’t offering them, make a point to ask for them. For example, “We all seem to be locked into this one track. Does anyone have a different point of view?” “What if we had to come up with three solutions, what would they be?”

Make it a policy not to automatically accept the first good idea that comes along. Write it down on a flip chart and say, “That sounds good. Before we get into that, let’s see what else we can come up with.”

Don’t let your positional authority get in the way. For example, “Look, just because I’m the boss doesn’t mean I know everything. I really want to hear your thoughts on this subject, especially if you see it differently than me.”

Finally, analyze your decision-making process. Ask questions like:

• Did we thoroughly consider the issue or did we rush to consensus?
• Did the CEO or team leader unduly influence the decision?
• Were alternative points of view encouraged or shut down?
• Do we have real data to support our decision or are we making stuff up?
• Is there more than one “right” answer to this problem?
• What have we overlooked in our discussion?

Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it’s the only one you have. What are you doing to make sure your team comes up with all the right answers?

Have you taken a serious look at your customer relationships recently? If not, now would be a good time.

Recently, IBM polled more than 1500 CEOs, general managers, and public sector leaders around the globe on a variety of topics, including customer relationships. This cross-section of executives represented organizations in 60 countries and 33 different industries.

When asked how they saw customer expectations changing over the next five years, 82 percent of survey participants said they expect customers to demand a better understanding of their needs. Not ask for, but demand. Seventy percent said their customers would expect new and different services.

So it’s not surprising that business leaders are putting customer intimacy higher on their list of strategic priorities. In fact, 88 percent of those polled identified “getting closer to the customer” as the most important factor in realizing their strategies over the next five years.

Keep in mind that these are not consultants, keynote speakers or “thought leaders” making these statements (although we do make valuable contributions every now and then ourselves). These are leaders of highly successful multinational organizations saying, “Here’s what we need to do in order to achieve our strategic goals.”

Like many things in business, reinventing customer relationships is much easier said than done. Based on what they learned in their survey, IBM recommends three specific strategies:

1. Make customers your #1 priority.

Every employee in the company needs to be responsible for customer satisfaction. Not just those who work directly with the customer, but every employee.

Make it easy for customers to do business with you. This requires giving employees the information and authority to solve customer problems without a lot of red tape. Measure all employees on a customer satisfaction metric. And most important, make sure you know (don’t guess) what customers value and what motivates them to buy your product or service.

2. Use two-way communication to strengthen relationships.

The old days of sending out a customer satisfaction survey once a year are long gone.

Make customers part of your team. Find new ways to communicate (i.e. social media) and new ways to evaluate and leverage what they tell you.

Get customers involved in your R&D or new product development efforts. Involve your customers before and beyond the sale, including care and service. Make doing business with you as transparent as possible. Ask customers how you can make it easier for them to do business with you.

3. Turn customer data into customer information.

Develop new ways of gathering, analyzing and using the information customers provide about how you can help solve their problems and achieve their goals. Make sure this information gets to everyone in your organization who needs it.

These strategies seem right on target. But I would strongly recommend one critical action step before implementing any new customer relationship initiatives – unlearning what you think you already know about customer relationships.

Our assumptions, beliefs and “thought bubbles” about the way things work are so deeply ingrained that we often don’t realize how strongly they affect our thinking and decision-making processes. Until we identify and discard outdated ideas, attitudes and assumptions about customer relationships, any efforts to move forward with new approaches will feel like walking up a down escalator. Reinventing customer relationships starts with challenging everything we think we know about them.

This involves asking questions like: When was the last time we thoroughly reviewed our customer relationships? What has changed in our world since then? What has changed in our customers’ world since then? What assumptions are we making about our customers that may no longer be true? What assumptions are we making about how to deliver value to our customers that no longer may be true?

These questions help people to break away from the attitudes and assumptions that keep them stuck in the past. The following exercise encourages people to start looking ahead and thinking in new and different ways:

Imagine that you’re starting the company over from scratch, so for the moment put aside everything you know about running your business. Imagine also that you have no constraints or resource limitations. With that in mind, ask the following questions:

• How would we go about defining customer wants and needs?
• How would we serve this market differently?
• What new technologies would we use to communicate with customers?
• How would we organize internally to better serve our customers?
• What things that “have always been done this way” would we do differently and why?
• If we could solve one customer problem that would put us so far ahead of the competition that they could never catch up, what would it be?

Obviously, no company has the luxury of unlimited resources. So not every idea you come up with will have practical application. But the goal is to jolt people out of their customary ways of thinking so they can begin the process of reinventing customer relationships without the burden of potentially outdated thought processes. So first get very clear on what you are currently thinking. Then define what your new customer relationships need to look like. Then get to work on reinventing them.

One final finding from the IBM survey: organizations that excel at extracting previously undiscovered insights from vast amounts of customer information will enjoy a huge advantage in deepening existing connections and creating new relationships. So if you believe (as 1500 CEOs around the globe do) that customer relationships represent a key component to strategic success, it ultimately comes down to three critical tasks:

• Engaging your customers in new ways to increase loyalty and generate new demand and revenue sources.
• Getting customers more involved in your product and service development processes.
• Learning how to turn customer data into information and using it to empower employees to deliver more value to your customers.

As the survey indicated, today’s customers aren’t asking to be treated differently. They’re demanding it. How are you reinventing yourself and your business to meet that demand?

Have you been watching the World Cup?

I am a huge soccer fan and really enjoy the World Cup because it’s such a fascinating international spectacle. Plus, it never fails to serve up some interesting lessons that have real application in the business world. For example:

Life isn’t always fair. The U.S. team was victimized more than once by highly questionable calls by the ref. Fortunately, the players quickly put the calls behind them and stayed focused on playing winning soccer. In business, sometimes our competitors don’t play fair. Or markets react in strange, unanticipated ways. If we overreact and get caught up in the problem rather than the solution, we can easily get off track and miss opportunities. In soccer and in business, focus on winning is critical to success.

The best team doesn’t always win. The first round saw numerous upsets by supposedly inferior teams. In fact, for the first time ever both the defending champion (Italy) and runner-up (France) failed to advance to the second round. Likewise, in business the best product doesn’t always win. An inferior product with superior marketing often trumps a better product that is poorly positioned in the minds of consumers. In soccer and in business, winning often comes down to who executes the better strategy and connects most effectively to others, not who has the best or most talent.

Other cultures think very differently than the U.S. One word says it all – vuvuzelas. Have you ever heard anything more annoying in your life? Can you imagine paying hundreds of dollars to watch your team play and having to listen to that incessant buzzing the entire game? And yet, much of the world has embraced them. Another not-so-subtle reminder that when doing business abroad, don’t expect customers or competitors to think like you.

It only takes one big play to win the day. After 90 minutes of play (and many missed opportunities to score), it appeared the U.S. would end up with a tie against Algeria. Which meant that, depending on how England fared, the U.S. might fail to advance. But with two minutes to go in stoppage time, Landon Donovan scored on a rebound off the Algerian goalie and saved the day. In today’s markets, one big play (disruptive innovation) can make the difference between market leadership and being an also-ran.

But here’s what really made me sit up and take notice about this World Cup.

According to CNNTech, the dramatic ending to the match between the U.S. and Algeria came close to setting a new record for Internet traffic. Immediately following Landon Donovan’s goal, Internet traffic spiked to 11.2 million visitors per minute, moving the event past the 2008 presidential election and into second place for the highest traffic day of all-time. In addition, tweets containing “USA” spiked to six percent of total tweet volume.

Think about that for a minute.

Eleven million Internet visitors per minute translates to 670 million per hour, or roughly 10 percent of the world’s population! And with Twitter averaging 55 to 60 million tweets a day, it becomes increasingly clear that the world is communicating in new and different ways.

What does this mean for your business?

The answer depends on whether you see it as a problem or an opportunity. If you see it as a problem, you’re already in trouble. If you see it as an opportunity, the issue then becomes how to take advantage of it.

Start by asking some basic questions. Are we currently using these new communication channels to reach out and connect with our customers, employees, and other stakeholders? If not, why not? What are our basic assumptions about how we connect with our customers and markets? Are these assumptions still valid? How do we know? What “thought bubbles” do we need to reset in our brains in order to effectively connect with our key stakeholders in new and different ways?

Used to be if we wanted to watch the World Cup, we got tape-delayed TV. Now we can watch it live on TV, the Internet, our cell phones, iPods and PDAs – basically anywhere that has wifi. Which means that customers can now access your business at any time from virtually anywhere in the world.

How is this changing the way you think about doing business and connecting with your customers?