Hurdles are for

Jumping over.
The hurdles to innovation are similar. Our own personal middle managers are culprits keen to sidetrack creative ideas before they even have a chance to become innovations. There are numerous reasons for this. As we manage our day to day activities our internal  manager may fear that if we follow-up on a brilliant idea we will move into new areas and out of our comfort zone. She/he may not want to deal with the change implicit in implementing the idea. He/She may fear the loss of her own power through as another part of  our brain takes charge of implementing a potentially innovative idea.

This is not to say that all our internal managers are innovation hurdles. Rather that in many of us our internal managers are perceived as hurdles. On the other hand, when we are open to new ideas our internal managers are  conducive to the innovation process, it is a huge benefit to us. But when they are hurdles, that becomes a problem.

Problems Are Challenges
But wait! As we have learned before the innovation process typically starts with a problem. It simply needs to be turned into a challenge so that people can work on solving the problem with creative ideas!

The first step in the creative problem solving process, which is the basis of the front end of any viable innovation process, is to understand better the problem.

The second step in the process, and this is the most important step, is to use the information from step one in order to ask why questions, for example: “why is our internal managers suppressing ideas?” 

The answer might be: “because we have no motivation to push good ideas forward.” That's a good answer. But it's not good enough. Indeed, the best practice is to ask “why?” five times. By doing so, you may discover that you are not rewarding yourself  for new ideas; you believe you are overly pressured to perform routine tasks; and that you believe you may lose face if you back a failing idea. In short, you are not rewarded in any way for pushing ideas forward, even if those ideas are winners, but you believe that you risk consequences if an idea we champion does not work.

In such an environment, any potentially innovative idea starts with a tremendous handicap. Moreover, one can hardly our internal manager for discouraging ideas.

Evaluation Criteria 

The next step in the innovation process is to define the criteria by which you will evaluate ideas. This can be done before or after the idea generation process, but it is usually more smarter to do it beforehand. In this situation, criteria will probably include: viability of implementing the idea, ease of implementing the idea, expected effectiveness of the idea; avoidance of conflict from middle managers, minimal disruption (In some cases, you may actually want to encourage disruption in a new process. But, for all the sexiness of “disruptive innovation” the truth is, most of us do not like their lives to be disrupted)

With this information, it becomes relatively easy to formulate one or more innovation challenges that can be used to generate ideas. For example: “in what ways might we motivate [or 'reward'] ourselves to champion new ideas?"or “in what ways might we encourage our internal managers to start more innovative projects?”

At this stage, you go through the usual idea generation process and get lots of ideas. This done, you can combine ideas and evaluate them using the criteria you have identified. Now, does that not sound like a lot more fun than moaning about middle managers being hurdles to innovation?

Best of all, this process can be used to identify and define other hurdles to innovation as well as generate ideas to solve them. Indeed, the biggest hurdle to innovation is probably allowing hurdles to become insurmountable. But you would never catch a leader thinking that way!

Developing Intuition

Developing intuition starts by realizing you have it already. If you've ever had a hunch about something, that was intuition. Intuition is just your mind using more than what you are consciously aware of. But can you trust your intuition? How do you improve it?


1. Recognize it and encourage it.
2. Study it to make it more trustworthy.
3. Give it good information to work with.

Gary Kasparov will admit that a computer can calculate chess positions many moves further ahead than he can. Yet he still beats the best computers out there because of his intuitive grasp of the game. His experience allows him to combine analysis with a "sense" of which move is best. Try to find areas in your own life where you intuitively operate.

When I bought a my Nissan, I saw them all over. Maybe you've had a similar experience. Looking for and recognizing a thing trains your mind to find more of it. The same process will happen if you watch for your intuition - you'll start to see more of it.

Unfortunately, a strong hunch can be for irrelevant reasons too. If you were kicked by a horse, as I was as a child, you might have "intuitive" hunches to be nervous around horses for the rest of your life. So even learning to recognize your intuition and encourage it may leave you wondering when to trust it.

Study Your Intuition

Start questioning your hunches. Study your strong feeling about that horse, and you might say, "Oh, it's just my fear of horses." Get in the habit of paying attention to and studying your intuitive feelings.


Where does your intuition work best? If you're always right about your intuitive stock picks, give a little credence to them. On the other hand, if your hunches about people are usually wrong, don't follow them. Just pay attention more, and you'll be developing intuition about your intuition.

Give Your Intuition Good Information

Your skill, knowledge and experience determine the potential effectiveness of your intuition. No weak chess player will never intuitively beat that computer, like Kasparov can. Learn enough about a subject, before expecting good hunches about it - or before trusting the hunches. Work in the area you want more intuition in. When enough information is in your mind, it will go to work for you with or without your conscious participation, so feed it well.

Recognize your intuition and you'll have hunches and ideas more often. Study it and you'll learn when to trust it. Give it good information and you'll be repaid with good hunches and ideas. This is the simple formula for developing intuition.