Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve Chair, challenged leaders in today’s Associated Press, for US organizations to view a new economy with stronger job creation. Bernanke warned the White House to come up with a plan for job creation.
Since the unemployment rate sneaked up to 9.5 per cent it’s a critical time to shift directions. Here are five strongholds that could generate endless jobs if you lead innovation with the brain in mind.
1. Universities could add brainpowered leadership courses. Leadership programs that cross silos beyond outmoded traditional restraints, open faster to brainpowered learning and leading practices. How so? Learning would consist of looking for broken cogs in current workplace wheels, and designing innovative alternatives in class to apply at work. Call the course Lead Innovation with the Brain in Mind, and convert lectures into questions, theory critiques into designing collaborative improvements, demands for similarity into fostering quality differences, rewarded talents at the top, into developing multiple intelligences for innovative solutions across differences. Brainpowered tool: Raise IQ for new job creations by developing and supporting multiple intelligences for solutions to current problems, across diverse groups.
2. Organizations can blast open bolted rusty gates that block renewal. Start by hosting an open brainpowered contest for innovations, across departments, and by rewarding new job creations from unlikely places. It’s critical to judge contests with a very open rubric – of specific criteria that all can see. Recently, an international group hosted a contest for innovation and then sadly broke trust for many, by hiding the judging criteria. Some contestants thought it important to gain peer grades on their offering, others thought it important to gain outside support for novel ideas and did so, a few thought videos counted more and so added YouTube. Nobody knew for sure — what was key to winning! Then one contestant called me to report that leaders confessed to using a secret formula for selecting winning entries. The result? Trust was lost and wonderful leaders dropped out of the once promising leadership community. Brainpowered tool: Evaluation of innovative designs is intelligence-fair when exact same criteria that creates a design, is also used to judge that design. Avoid secrets hidden within judges’ heads and you’ll also increase serotonin for trust across differences – with intelligence-fair results as new job opportunities.
3. Government funding and support will frequently find innovative minds outside of stagnant, broken systems. It’s time to step past tired traditions, highly paid grant writers and commonly corrupt practices. Look for places commonly passed over – move forward with innovative mindsets, and support those with pieces still missing to bring about new job adventures the next generation values. Follow through and ensure cynicism or corruption does not follow the dollars. In NY the government made one feeble attempt to fund women business leaders who made a difference. At the celebration dinner several cynical young men at one table bragged about the fact they simply shifted their business into their wives’ names and won the grab. On another occasion we lead a brainpowered conference to CEO’s who complained that to get contracts in NY takes lots of money to controllers. Only one at the table that raised this problem, said he refused to pay bribes on ethical grounds. Cynics concluded that was NY’s way, and added that nobody talks about it. Brainpowered tool: Celebrate ethical advances for ongoing growth – and sidestep cynics who toss toxins into the mix, and shut down innovation.
4. Media take risks daily to air genuine innovation with opposing views well articulated, at all of its unique and different stages. Replace programs on the airwaves currently, that truncate genuine renewal because poor tone, blaming or angry opinions that increase cortisol and chase away the most brilliant innovative thinkers. Cross the ages, so that the elderly and youth can mix innovative offerings for new adventures – in ways that pull together for rewired brains and new possibilities forward. Brainpowered tool: Expect youthful plasticity to change brains from youth to senior years – as innovators reboot for renewal in settings fueled by serotonin.
5. Publishers pony up for innovative books that will change the world from places of hidden or less-known brainpower. It takes risk from innovative publishers who draw more on dopamine to win innovatively, to exchange books by movie stars or political backstabbing to run with an innovative challenge from unsung heroes for a finer employment future. Brainpowered tool: Risk to increase dopamine that fuels ongoing progress, and watch new jobs result because of books that publish designs for a finer future.
Bernanke stated that December, 2010 added 146,00 jobs. In his words, job creation needs to double that amount in order to make a noticeable dent in unemployment. How might brainpowered tools create new jobs, because you took the risk to lead innovation with the brain in mind?
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