LeadingMinds Tip 142: Hurrah for the Human Imagination!

This week’s LeadingMinds Tip comes to you from Kimberley Hare of Kaizen Training, and is an unashamed ‘Hurrah’ for human creativity and imagination.

I was lucky enough to spend last week for the TED 2009 Conference (Long Beach and Palm Springs).  What an amazing experience!  This was my first live experience as a TEDster, although I’ve been fanatical about TED since 2006 when they first decided to share the talks – free to the world.  We often show selected talks on our Leadership Development Programmes as a great way of stimulating discussion and insights.  If you’re new to TED, I’d urge you to go check out www.tedtalks.com 

Imagine being in a community with 3,000 or so like-minded, passionate and world-shaping people - just the conversations I had in the breaks gave me goose-bumps! I laughed, cried, cheered, danced, sang, connected, and got more inspired than I can remember for a long time.

My blog from the whole four days is far too long to send round here – although expect to see tips focusing in on some of my favourite TEDTalks over the coming months!  The conference was split into 12 themes:  Reboot, Reframe, Reconnect, See, Understand, Invent, Dream, Discover, Grow, Dare, Predict and Engage.

What I love about TED is how eclectic it is… the programme is packed with seemingly unrelated topics – scroll to the end of this tip for just a glimpse of some of the highlights for me. 

And then – because we human beings are meaning-making creatures - everything comes together, everything is connected to everything else.  The stimulation of this kind of ‘hot-house’ is intense – and also a little bit magical I think.  I believe it’s almost impossible NOT to become smarter after four days of this kind of immersion.  I know for myself that I created breakthroughs on several issues that I’d been struggling with, and returned to the UK feeling revitalised and full of ideas for the year ahead.

And it got me thinking about creativity, problem-solving and leadership in organisations.  Does your organisation, department or team do enough of this kind of thing?  (And I’m not talking about the traditional annual conference where senior managers drone on about last quarter’s results and next year’s targets, accompanied by the obligatory Powerpoint.  You know the ones - where 80% of people aren’t listening anyway because they’re feeling a bit worse for wear from the free bar the night before – and Thank Heaven the lights have been switched off…)

I realise not all organisations can afford to fund everybody signing up for a TED Conference and jetting off to Palm Springs for four days – but how can you create a similar effect using the creativity and ideas that already exist in your people?  How about pulling a group of people together to watch a few fascinating TEDTalks and then facilitate a discussion about the implications for your business? How much is it costing your company – especially in the current climate – to not have access to these breakthrough ideas?  Perhaps the solutions to all your current challenges either already exist in the minds of your people, or could be awakened by creating this kind of learning community?

Quiz Questions (we’ll send a prize to the first three subscribers who send in correct answers to these questions!)

1. What is the world’s largest English-speaking country?
2. What are the three biggest killer diseases worldwide? (the ones that Bill Gates and his Foundation is focusing on eradicating)
3. Who was sitting next to Kimberley on the flight home from Los Angeles?

Some highlights from TED2009:

• Bill Gates on eradicating global diseases and creating better teachers
• David Hancock – specialises in creating ‘robots with character’ using emotional modelling systems
• Ben Zander on leadership and possibility
• Tim Berners-Lee (who invented the world-wide web) on the next paradigm shift in linking data
• Pattie Maes with just the coolest demonstration of seamless and portable ‘sixth sense’ technology that you wear around your neck
• Al Gore with an update on climate change
• Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface, on becoming a zero-impact/carbon footprint organisation by 2020
• Saul Griffiths – who’s managed to work out how to use kites flying at 2000 feet to generate energy
• Seth Godin on Tribes – and how leaders with courage create a movement
• Oliver Sacks on visual hallucinations
• Ed Ulbrich – Chief animator on “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” on how he and his team have created the next generation of e-motion capture CGI
• Art Benjamin – a “mathemagician” who makes a passionate plea for teaching risk and probability to our business leaders (he argues the current economic crisis would not have happened if more people understood statistics)
• Hans Rosling with an update on the spread of Aids/HIV
• Louise Fresco on the importance of bread and new understanding about how we can feed the world more effectively
• Elizabeth Gilbert (who wrote the fantastic book “Eat, Pray, Love”) talking about genius, creativity and unnecessary suffering
• Al Meyers with a demonstration of new 3D learning environments (think Second Life but learning about, say, Ancient Rome by walking around it)
• Jim Fallon who has isolated the neurochemistry and genetic markers of serial killers
• Jenny Morel, who came to demonstrate the most recent generation of human jet-packs (I want one!)
• Nalini Nadkartni – an ecologist, who has come up with fantastically creative ways of getting the world interested in the importance of tree canopies (including marketing a “Tree Top Barbie” for young girls!)
• Kary Mullis, a micro-biologist, who has found a way of attaching alpha-gel epitopes (!) to pathogens so that the immune system eats both – he’s just successfully cured mice who were injected with anthrax using this technique.
• Bonnie Bassler – a bacteriologist working at the cutting-edge of bacterial communication (both inter and intra-species)
• Evan Williams, the CEO of Twitter, on their plans for the future.  2000 new applications have been uploaded by users in the last year alone.
• David Mirrell, an IT whiz, who got frustrated by being limited to a single cursor or mouse – and dreamed of being able to reach into the computer with both hands and your mind – has now invented ‘siftables’.
• Dan Ariely (“Predictably Irrational”) on some of his recent experiments in the psychology of cheating
• Barry Schwartz on practical wisdom
• Liz Coleman – College President on the importance of cross-disciplinary education
• Lena Maria Klingvall - a true inspiration - singer, artist, Olympic gold medallist swimmer, author, speaker.  Born with no arms and only one leg.
• Vertical farming…. becoming human virtuosi… economics professors… global predictors and futurists… Poetry…. Art…..
• Loads of music and dance, and theatre  – including a fusion jazz concert by Herbie Hancock, and a wonderfully charismatic performance by Jamie Cullum.
• And much, much, much more!

 E-mail me at directors@kaizen-training.com if you’d like either the full blog, or a list of our top 5 TED Talks to go and watch online.

(p.s. you can also watch TED Talks on TV if you have Sky - EMTV, Sky Channel 200)