Are you a game changer?
The Game Changing” theme of the 22nd Philippine Ad Congress to be held in Camarines Sur’s Water Sports Complex revolves around the concept of innovation — the way you think, the way you create, and the way you execute.
Today, more than ever, marketing communication industry leaders and the people who play the advertising game face the challenge of how to increase productivity and recognition of Filipino creativity amid the changes that are happening on the media front. But merely sending mandatory guidelines to be more creative and innovative and being in step doesn’t immediately work. The industry needs new knowledge, skills and systems that can help you ride the wave of transformation. You have to live and thrive in a culture of game-altering innovation that accepts risk and failure.
Research reveals that many innovations fail because the business and life environment didn’t allow them to flourish. To reduce failures you need a professional approach, a supportive workplace, and an organization that values teaching, learning, and other elements within an ethos of excellence. Innovations should be introduced in a timely manner, create added value, and pay communications dividends. With these expectations, caring leadership, proficient pioneering and ingenious staff are prerequisites. The capacity to get the basics right is crucial — from effective campaign design and development to implementation.
People fuel game-changing actions. Certain values and skills must be imbibed to be successful. To efficiently produce innovation and produce it repeatedly, you need a process to guide the way you think and act given the new milieu. With some help from book author Robert Sutton, here are a few practical principles on how to become a game changer:
• Game changing is in the eye of the beholder. It is clearly manifested in the music of the Beatles and Lady Gaga, the initiatives of Bill Gates, the inventiveness of Steve Jobs and the ingenuity of Mark Zuckerberg. No matter how wonderful something new is, it will only be accepted if people can be persuaded of its value. This notion challenges Ralph Waldo Emerson’s theory that says, “If you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door.” Game-changing schemes can only boom and bloom if they are communicated better, not because they are objectively superior to the status quo or what has been done in the past.
As a game changer you sell an idea, or you work in tandem with someone who can do it. Otherwise your idea will not fly out of your mind. Practice trading your ideas, analyze how others do it, pursue tutoring, and read books on peddling influence. You know that your and other people’s ideas are intertwined, and perhaps inseparable. Train your attention on people who prepare a business plan rather than to the proposal itself. Research reveals that in the presentation of ideas, approvals or disapprovals, depend largely on who is saying what. It is in the messenger and not necessarily the message.
• A leveled-up persuasion quotient helps in making people buy your ideas. Your projection as a game changer is sometimes more important than the ideas you propose. Beware, though, of being too slick. It isn’t always important, and it can backfire if you are seen to be boring, stiff, or somebody who simply recites a list of facts or comes across as just a “guy or a gal in a suit.” As such you are seen as insincere and passionless, or perhaps a dull person who lacks inventiveness. Conversely, being credulous or eccentric can convince others that you reject conventional thinking.
• Presenting a menu of ideas doesn’t work. You may be a prolific creative person who has many tricks in your bag, but it doesn’t necessarily help that you pitch everything that is in your bag. As one movie producer noted, “There’s not a buyer in the world you can convince that you have the same passion for five different projects. What you’re selling is your passion. You’re rarely selling your idea. You are selling you. You’re selling your commitment, your point of view.” The best pitchers spark game-changing thoughts in “catchers,” who join them as “creative collaborators” rather than passive listeners. The magic you unravel is the most important part of the spiel; it’s a seduction, and a promise of what lies ahead. Once your target markets become excited enough to add their own creative touches, it means they are infected by your passion and commitment.
• Flexibility and rigidity are hallmarks of game-changing ideas. Developing new concepts and combining the old with the new are things you can do to modify your beliefs and attitudes easily. Your adaptability often results in the discovery of great ideas that can make a difference in how requirements can be accomplished, plans can be written, or strategies can be executed. Rigidity is likewise necessary for generating game-changing ideas. It helps if you define problems narrowly enough so you can talk to your audiences in a meaningful way, and they in turn will know what to focus on, what to ignore, and how ideas can be started, tested, nurtured and implemented.
A useful guideline for striking a healthy balance between rigidity and flexibility is to hold either the solution or the problem constant, and to let the other vary. The most common strategy is to find a problem and then to search for and evaluate alternative solutions, to keep the problem rigid and the possible solutions flexible. This is the “problem-driven search.” The other way is to hold the solution constant and let the problems vary, or a ”solution-driven search.”
• Discomfort is an inevitable and desirable part of a game-changing engagement. It isn’t much fun, but it helps you to avoid and break out of mindless action. Unfamiliar ideas and things generate negative feelings like irritation, anxiety, and disapproval, as do interruptions of routine action and challenges to taken-for-granted assumptions. If everyone likes your ideas, it probably means that you are not doing many original things. Discomfort also plays another role. Many game-changing ideas were invented because someone got upset about something and did something about it. Inventor David Levy adhered to what he labeled as “The Curse Method.” He averred, “Whenever I hear someone curse, it’s a sign to invent something.” Levy designed the Wedgie lock after he heard a coworker cursing because a thief had stolen his bicycle seat. He noticed that the streets near his lab were filled with abandoned bikes without seats, suggesting there was a market for a good bicycle seat lock. Being uncomfortable or downright unhappy isn’t much fun, but it can be a game-changer’s inspiration.
• Permanence is not permanent. In fact, it can be counterproductive. The organizing principles for routine work reflect the assumption that everything is a permanent condition. On the other hand, the organizing principles for game-changing work reflect the opposite assumption. Both are useful fictions. After all, exploiting knowledge is only wise if what worked in the past will keep working in the present and the future. And bringing in varied ideas, seeing things in new ways, and breaking from history. Game-changing leaders constantly create an alarm system and warn themselves that just because things are working well now does not mean that they will work later, or forever.
Intel’s Andrew Grove is famous for being paranoid about “disruptive” change. He believed that a new technology would always appear and render current technology or business models obsolete. Thus, sustaining game-changing pursuits requires treating everything — procedures, product lines, project teams and organizations as elements that might be useful now but will need to be discontinued or altered at some point. The goal at birth must be planned and obsolescence and graceful death must be part of it.
• Lean is mean. Making everything simple or focusing on what matters most and ignoring the rest results in the sustainability of ideas. It is dependent on how the law of parsimony where frugality, skimpiness, and cost-efficiency are musts. Simple messages travel faster, simpler designs reach the market faster, and the elimination of clutter allows faster decision-making. You have to be lean to run faster and win the game. A simple philosophy about what a game-changing action will be — and will not be — reduces unnecessary distraction and effort. If everyone follows a simple vision, it speeds development, focuses effort, and results in simpler products or services, which will be easier to build or implement.
Game changing has a pair of attitudes: the ability to switch emotional gears between cynicism and belief, or between deep doubt and unshakeable confidence. Unleash its power to reinforce the latent power of creativity in yourself and the people you work with.
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E-mail bongosorio@yahoo.com or bong_osorio@abs-cbn.com for comments, questions or suggestions. Thank you for communicating.
Calling all game-changers out there: register now for the 22nd Philippine Ad Congress at www.adcongress.com.ph. Be ready for action from Nov. 16 to 19 at Camsur.
