innovation – Vayomar

Studies have found that only 7% of the messages we send are verbal – the other 93% are sent in some non-verbal way. This percentage probably shocks you. The bottom line is this: people first pay attention to your body language, and only afterwards do they hear what we’re saying.

Much has already been said about the importance of body language in sending messages and its basis on our status as speakers. But the question that frequently arises is: what can we do to change this? How much of our body language is innate and how much of it can we acquire?

Every individual has his/her own starting point, some finding body language more natural while others struggle. The key is to become aware of the strengths and weaknesses of our body language. Through this, we can learn to elevate our strengths and improve upon our weaknesses. This awareness will help us succeed in dramatically increasing the quantity of the messages we send, as well as the understanding of those messages.

Up until now, studies have mainly dealt with just one of the three aspects of body language.

1. How We’re Perceived – This relates to the audience, and how we succeed in transmitting our message. It applies to how we can improve our status before an audience and transmit our message, as well as using techniques like voice, eye contact, movement, etc.

Today more and more studies are dealing with the two additional aspects of body language, and if we relate to them, we can significantly improve the transmission of our messages.

2. Reading the Audience – Body language can help us to read the audience, to understand and to identify the small nuances that will help us make the right connection (an audience can be anything from one person to an entire stadium). For example, if someone in the audience slightly raises or lowers an eyebrow, we can assume that he/she has a question to ask or that he/she doesn’t completely agree with what we said. Before they are able to interject their question or opinion, try to ask that person, “Did you want to add something? Do you have a question?” The immediate message will be “they understand me, the speaker is reading me before I even said a word.”

The more we are aware of the small nuances in the audience’s body language, body movement, facial expressions, and eye contact, the more we will succeed in creating a better connection, and our message will be transmitted in a much better way.

3. Effect on Ourselves – This is the most innovative aspect: body language not only influences how we are seen by the audience; it also affects how we perceive ourselves. It can succeed in influencing us and how we succeed.

Amy Cuddy, one of the leading researchers in the field of body language, performed many experiments and found that if, just before a job interview, we take two minutes to ourselves in the bathroom or in the car and we stand in a “super power position,” we will walk into the job interview with more self confidence, and our chances of receiving a position reply are that much greater.

Cuddy claims that this isn’t a “fake it ‘till you make it” situation, but rather “fake it ‘till you become it.”

This principle answers the question concerning innate body language as compared to acquired body language. At the beginning, it may seem a little false or forced, but later on it becomes part of our DNA. It will influence not only how we are perceived by others, but also on how we perceive ourselves, and it will help us succeed in business, in our personal lives, and beyond.

In the next few weeks, we will carefully examine each of these three aspects of body language more carefully, so that the next time you present in front of a crowd, your body language will help to captivate your audience and let them connect with you easily!

To hear all of Amy Cuddy’s TED talk on body language, CLICK HERE.

By, Gur Braslavi and Stephen Fox

We often associate great intellectual breakthroughs with a single eureka moment of a single inventor, such as Newton’s apple. The reality, though, is that innovation is the moment when many smaller ideas are pulled together to deliver a unified solution to a specific problem. Those who are skilled enough to accomplish this alone come around once in a lifetime. What about the manager who needs to innovate within his own company? There must be a better solution than waiting to hire the next Albert Einstein to the R&D department. Rather, managers must learn to harness the existing powers of their organizations in order to find solutions faster and more reliably. The answer is conscripting innovation.

What exactly does it mean to conscript innovation? The word “conscript” is typically a military term, meaning to be drafted or compelled into service. So to conscript innovation means to be drawn to be innovative, drafted into being creative.

The challenge is not for us to provide the solutions to our own problems, but rather to conscript a wide spectrum of talents together in order to innovate. Introducing new lines of thought and skills into the solution process allows us to break free from the internalized boundaries we have set for ourselves and find solutions that may otherwise have been overlooked. The problem is how to entice others to join you on your quest for the next great idea that will change your business, or maybe even your entire industry.

Conscripting innovation is a three-part process that will allow you to create an ideal environment to accomplish your goals, including focusing on a specific problem, fostering an environment for success, and making a problem fun to work on.

Part 1: The first step towards conscripting innovation requires managers to have their employees focus on a single objective and direct certain people to solve a single problem. Managers must take complicated ideas and strip them down into a simpler goal that others will be easily understood. With new perspective come new solutions. Take a look at the aircraft company, Boeing, during the early 1990s; individual departments within the company lacked coordination with each other, which lead to a lot of wasted time, resources, and money. Rather than implement changes from the top down, management decided to tackle this problem by opening the lines of communication between the departments and developing “accelerated improvement retreats” for the top employees in each group. When working together, they found that many of their processes overlapped, allowing the company to cut down significantly on the overall manufacturing costs.[1] The solutions did not come from around the boardroom table, but rather used the perspective of engineers, assembly workers, warehouse managers and pilots to find innovative solutions to the company’s process of manufacturing planes.

Part 2: The second step in conscripting innovation is to foster a creative, yet productive work environment. In general, this must be done through a long process of creating a supportive company culture. While creating “thinking spaces” with bean bag chairs and foosball tables can help, the way innovative ideas are treated by upper level management is what will decide whether or not employees are willing to put their necks out on the line. The way to achieve it is to develop a culture of innovation that does not punish employees for taking calculated risks, even if they fail. HP Software has implemented an impressive program called the “innovation stream” in order to overcome this problem. The stream flows throughout the organization, asking for input from all departments and levels, similar to the way Boeing had done; however, the difference is in the encouragement that HP gives their employees. They can receive points for submitting ideas, critiquing the ideas of others, and lending their expertise to design teams for the best ideas. These points can be used to purchase days off and other benefits. More importantly though, employees who are serious about working on their innovations are given time each week to work in development teams. HP has found that when employees are allowed to take the lead on their own ideas, it allows the large company to develop the entrepreneurial spirit that used to be reserved for smaller, start-up companies. This culture of innovation gives employees the courage to put forth their ideas and the support to turn them into products that will help HP continue to grow.[2]

Part 3: The third step of conscripting innovation says that the assignments employees are working on must be fun and enjoyable. Studies have found that people are far more willing to expend their time, energy and resources on tasks that they enjoy. An example of this can be seen in the discovery of supernova, where each year more professional and amateur astronomers search larger portions of the sky for these rare phenomena. The result has been an exponential increase in the discovery rate of supernova and many more associated breakthroughs in the astronomy community.[3]

In finding an innovative solution to your own problem, the dilemma becomes how to conscript others to work together. This requires focus on the question at hand, a culture that promotes innovation, and most of all, a fun and enticing process that attracts others to actually want to invest their time. You are not trying to bring the solution to others, nor are you assuming to know what the solution may be, nor are you saying there is even a viable solution. What you can do is bring together the collective knowledge necessary to find an innovative solution. So what is the focus of your company: on finding the solution to your problems or learning how to conscript others to innovate with you?

[1] “Can Boeing Fly High Again?” Http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~nora/FT351-3/CS.pdf. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Nov. 2012.
[2] Gvirtsman, Ahi. “HP Innovation Stream.” Tel Aviv, Israel. 13 Nov. 2012. Lecture.
[3] http://www.universetoday.com/26495/a-supernova-story/