Linked to the post on ‘Allow mistakes’ yesterday. For one idea to be great, you have to have tens of duffers. You’re people know where your business is screwing up and many of the ideas/improvements shouldn’t really be coming from you.

The more staff, customers and followers you have the less you control your business. Get real, other people are orchestrating it’s future. Be sensible enough and have the brains to create that environment where your people can offer those suggestions and solutions.

People at the ‘coal face’ and ‘on the shop floor’ often have more valuable knowledge than the control freaks at the top. Let go, free up their time to think. What they come up with may be scary, but there again, that’s my point!

The two are distinctly different yet we use the two words far too interchangeably. As Professor Levitt said in his book “Marketing for Business Growth” in 1974, “Creativity thinks up new things. Innovation does new things.” He said it a while ago but its still as pertinent now as it ever was.

To our detriment in small business, we do mix the words up in our definition. Small businesses are usually a hot bed of ideas and creativity, it’s what makes them so special yet, quite often, we fail to implement the ideas. Both creativity and innovation are crucial to small business. They are the difference between an average and exceptional one.

Innovation in it’s most basic sense starts with constantly asking the questions about every aspect of your business. In it’s most sophisticated sense, it actually simplifies your business. Whilst creativity will generate lots of initial work, innovation should always make things easier for you, if it doesn’t it is actually complication.

Innovation turns lots of ideas into meaningful action. It asks creativity the question; will this add value? And it’s not just about customer interactions, production efficiency, product development or financial investment. Innovation can work just as easily when improving the way you deal with your people!

Innovation constantly asks these questions:

1. What is preventing us from doing what we talk about doing?

2. What do we need to do to improve and add value to our customer experience/employee experience?

3. What is standing in the way of me (owner) getting what I want from the business?

4. What is the best way to do this?

Not only does it force you to think about improving things, it’s a great way to invigorate a team by getting them involved and engaged with the process. Makes innovation a lot easier to implement too!

Coherence in marketing is important, consistency is boring. Being creative and reinventing your messaging/story/tune every so often is critical. Sparking ideas and doing things your market place has never done before delivers that differential advantage.Â

Few companies can afford to coast nowadays and, at their peril should they choose that particular strategy. Consistency is about delivering similarity, it’s a result of messaging and selling, it’s about being tidy. Coherent is about clear communication, variety in what you have to say and clarity in all the marketing approaches you adopt. You’re ability to be creative when being consistent is severely inhibited but being coherent can allow the ideas to flow.

New ideas compel, they captivate, old ideas simply fade into the distance. Grabbing peoples attention with new information has always worked and if it’s done coherently it can lift you apart and take you to the next level of communicating those important marketing messages. Change isn’t an option, it’s safer to create and execute new ideas now than wait for your competitor to do it first.

In a competitive environment and in a market place scrabbling for business to survive, now is the right time to review our approach to marketing. Not in a complex, sophisticated way, just a shift to a different level. Timing is fundamental but a long hard look at what you’re doing and answering a few key questions wouldn’t go amiss. I suspect one of the most crucial points is how do we create a tangible difference to our customer experience? And, what is holding us back?

Over the next six days I’ll talk about a shift we need to be considering. Lets start with the first one;

Marketing initiated by targeted messages to a passive prospect and customer list isn’t sustainable anymore. A movement to new ideas being adopted or created together with customers is the way forward. Encouraging your customers/prospects to be actively involved in your business is a far more interactive, engaging experience than being told what they can have, when and where. It just doesn’t wash with them anymore.

It involves getting up close and personal with customers, something that could be extremely uncomfortable for some of us. Marketing is a creative process, your customers could be more creative than you but suddenly we are in a place where such things are being demanded. It is possible to throw the old marketing rule book out and use ideas that are different, personal, disrupting and just boldly bizarre.Â

Being in touch, jointly designing new products/solutions/services with customers seems to be a ‘no brainer’ and is critical to not just developing great businesses but is crucial to pulling a business out of the ‘bog’ of despair, ritual and dullness.Â

Try it, it could provide you with an opportunity to do things now that you have only previously talked about!

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There are times when we all get sluggish, struggle with self motivation or the hurdles feel that just that little bit high to jump. On bad day it could be plain lazy. Making things happen during these hours/months (hope it’s not years) can be difficult. Heres some potential ideas:

1. Each week do something different. Something you haven’t done before. It doesn’t have to be sky diving but visiting an art gallery, kayaking or sitting in a coffee shop with a good business book will do!

2. Every so often take a ‘team time out.’ Take your people to the cinema, for a walk, bog snorkelling (we Brits do strange things) or visit another business you admire. It gives your team a different perspective, makes them feel valued and gives them a break.

3. Take time out yourself. Its tough running a business. Take time out for at least an hour a day to think. The best ideas often come when you are away from the office, away from staff and away from customers.

4. Every quarter do some house keeping. Set aside half a day when everyone throws out the stuff they don’t need anymore. Brochures, files and paperwork. It’s an opportunity to create a feeling of a fresh start.

Hope it helps….!

Just touching on yesterday’s post relating to creativity. Where does it exist in a small business? Everywhere I guess and in places you least expect. Perhaps in the creative process, those best positioned are the people that are ignorant, young, new to the business and inexperienced . They don’t know how things are supposed to be, they are not blinded by what happens at the moment. They haven’t fallen into the trench of existing beliefs and don’t carry the baggage other people might.

Being new and inexperienced you see things differently, see things other people have failed to notice and they imagine ideas that other people who are narrow, focused and experts just can’t. They don’t know what they are supposed to see, are not organisational captive and, in many respects, haven’t had the life sucked out of them by systems and procedures.

Occasionally, being ignorant is bliss, seeing new ways of doing old things, having a different perspective and thinking about ideas your company has never thought about.