At the recent ACCA Conference, I delivered a keynote presentation on innovation! Innovation is one of those 'fluffy and sounds a bit too good to be true' words. But there is a best practice approach to innovation which is completely fluff free! I spent my hour-long time slot introducing attendees to great set of tools for innovation that underpins that best practice approach. For those who weren't able to attend, I am happy to be able to provide a glimpse into that toolkit here. I hope it adds to your arsenal for driving innovation in the cemeteries and crematoria sector.
Tool 1
Find Frustrations. All of society's best innovations remove existing frustrations:
Tool 2
Crush Assumptions. Typically, when we are faced with a problem we need to solve (e.g. a customer frustration we have uncovered!) we will have lots of assumptions. We'll have assumptions about the best way to solve that problem, what's possible/impossible, what we've done before that hasn't worked…. the list can go on and on. All that those assumptions serve to do is fence in our thinking! To combat this:
A great 'crush' for the assumption above could be "What if our customer's loved technology? what ideas could spring from this new reality?". Or, you can be more creative - "What if we could come up with a super simple piece of technology to solve this problem that all our customers could use? What ideas could lead to this happening"
Tool 3
Make important decisions in the morning - especially if they're important, and carry some degree of uncertainty! Decision fatigue is real. Each decision we make through the day depletes the quality of our subsequent decisions and often results in our 'taking the easy way out'. This is obviously unhelpful in the context of innovation, where our best option might be to progress ideas that carry some level of risk!
If you're keen to learn more about this toolkit and its' application in your workplace, shoot me an email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. - I'd love to hear from you!
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