Dream big and take your farm to a new success level
You solve problems on your farm every day. This improves your business efficiency and avoids reoccurring issues. But don’t let your strategic focus end there.
“In problem solving, you are focused on the past,” says Mark Faust, business author and president of Echelon Man-agement. “This is very different from innovation, which is future focused
with an intent to protect a core business while also pursuing new opportunities. Innovation requires thinking about possibilities.”
Innovation, Faust shares, is a change that creates a new dimension of performance.
“Well-run innovation efforts are almost always worth the investment,” he says. “Effective innovation efforts are in-vigorating, fun, profitable and bonding throughout your team.”
Of course, thinking outside the box requires practice. Follow these guidelines.
Connect the Unconnected.
A team with diverse backgrounds and experience will help in this area, Faust says. “In order to connect the un-connected, encourage your team to look at solutions and innovations from outside your company, industry and even sometimes business as a whole.”
Focus on Your Ideal Destination.
Oftentimes, business leaders spend too much time focusing on where they’ve been, says Aidan Connolly, CEO of Cainthus. The traditional strategic model answers key questions in the following order:
- Where did we start?
- Where are we now?
- How we will get there?
- Where do we want to go?
Instead, Connolly suggests, swap the order to: 2, 1, 4, 3. “Spend more time focusing on the destination,” he says.
Challenge the Status Quo.
“Great innovations come from someone asking a great question,” Faust says. “We have seen companies benefit from using these specific questions when discussing their top objectives, challenges and constraints:
- Why can’t we do it this way?
- What would happen if ... ?
Are there other industries or businesses that have faced this same problem, and how could we learn from them?
Flip The Script.
You can often find new solutions by taking a position and flipping it to the opposite view. For instance, have your team discuss why a landlord should rent ground to one of your neighbors.
“Odds are you will all learn something and perhaps innovate your current approach,” Faust says.
Outthink the Competition.
“One of the occupational hazards for leaders, especially in periods of great change, is the ‘paradox of expertise,’” says Bill Taylor, Fast Company magazine co-founder. “The longer you work in a field and the more accomplished you are, the harder it can be to see new patterns, new dangers, new possibilities.”
Leaders cannot limit their imagination by what they know. “Remember, when it comes to making change, the ulti-mate challenge is not to outmuscle or even outhustle the competition,” Taylor says. “It’s to outthink the competi-tion. If you as a leader are determined to keep learning as fast as the world is changing, you’ve got the best chance to outthink the competition.”
Intensely Study Customers.
“There is a Japanese saying used in many businesses: genchi genbutsu. It means ‘go to the spot and see for yourself,’” Faust says. “The idea is to go to your customers as they are using your product or service and intently study them and their situation. What you observe will almost certainly lead to innovations.”
Network with the Best.
For this strategy, Faust quotes a sign hanging in nearly every office at one company. It reads: “The insights re-quired to solve many of our most challenging problems come from outside our industry and scientific field. We must aggressively and proudly incorporate into our work findings and advances, which were not invented here.”
“As a leader, you must extinguish the NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome and encourage your people to network widely inside and outside the industry,” Faust says. “Building diverse yet productive relationships will help bring more innovation into your workplace.”
Mark Faust spoke during the 2021 Top Producer Summit. You can access his session through March 31 via the Online Top Producer Summit. Use the code “ONDEMAND” to take $25 off your registration fee.
