Innovatively Beat the Recession!
Ray Anthony
Game-Changing "Innovader," Speaker, Author, Trailblazer, "Make A Difference Maverick, Creativity Maven
“We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.” – Charles R. Swindoll
Many financial experts were warning us of a coming recession for months. It's here, already. But some in the know are believing it will dig deeper, last longer and be more damaging than most expect it to. The pandemic already weakened our economy and now this administration is putting a further stranglehold on strategic economic growth factors. The indicators from rising interest and mortgage rates, fiscal irresponsibility with out-of-control rising debt, inflation, job losses, stock market downslides, negative GDP, reduced consumer spending and decreasing wholesale-retail sales are already taking hold. According to a new survey from MagnifyMoney in mid-June 2022, 70 percent of Americans believe an economic downturn is on its way.
Most top executives say they think a recession is looming or already here, according to a new survey (of 750 CEOs and other C-suite executives) done in June 2022 from the Conference Board. The survey reflects a rapid deterioration of the economic outlook among top business leaders. Increasing government bureaucracy, social policies and welfare are believed to be negatively affecting certain business performance aspects and economic outcomes.
As an educated economist (BS and MA in economics), I'm now advising people to secure their seat belts and brace for impact. I hope I'm wrong, but experience and intuition, along with my research on what's evolving and building momentum now worldwide, is alerting me that this time it may, indeed, be a different economic foundation weakening with a possible coming severe collapse and crash. That's not hyperbole or financial hysteria. ITR Economics, the oldest privately held, continuously operating economic research and consulting firm in the US with a claimed 94.7 percent forecast accuracy (at four quarters out), is predicting that a second Great Depression will occur in the 2030s.
Can you recession-proof your business and career or at least minimize how it might hurt you? Better yet, is it somehow possible to become more successful? Even if the recession proves to be mild-to-moderate and (hopefully) not gut-wrenching, then getting on the creativity bandwagon pronto will greatly benefit you and your organization anyway. While some business leaders are planning to batten down their hatches, others are taking a different proactive strategy — boosting their organization's value proposition, competitiveness, creative strategies, directions and new products, services and solutions — by smartly preparing for prosperity in a period (or even age) of decline.
Creativity can solve almost any problem, including the seemingly insurmountable ones. If you want yourself and your organization to weather economic storms, competition, changing customer needs or any other challenges your business faces, it starts with ramping up your collective imagination. Whether you call it being more ingenious, original, clever, resourceful, enterprising, visionary or simply creative, you're injecting a powerful form of special brainpower DNA into your company's culture. This often calls for bold, daring and bodacious approaches and ideas. It's time for ramping up and supercharging the innovative disruptive factor in your business. It can't be business as usual, especially now. Developing more creativity in your workforce will motivate them, engage them more, give them a feeling of accomplishment and direction and actually make solving problems or grabbing opportunities highly enjoyable, fulfilling and fun. This will often translate into higher top line revenues and bottom line profits.
No doubt with the upcoming economic storms and other associated challenges we will be facing, there will be restaurants, manufacturers, real estate companies, small-to-large businesses, service providers, technology companies and all kinds of businesses and organizations in all industries will survive, while others will unfortunately bite the dust. Numerous factors will determine who stays and who goes, but I believe those organizations that focus on being much more creative and innovative will be those that outlast and outperform others. To do that, you have to come up with better, bolder, bigger and perhaps even far-out radical ideas, strategies, plans and solutions and then effectively implement them to overcome vexing problems and limitations. In your organization, you may have to imaginatively do the following with these:
1. BUSINESS MODEL. Transform, strengthen and innovate your overall business model.
2. DIFFERENTIATE. Make sure your business seems or is, in fact, unique, different and "special" compared to your "crowd" of competitors. What can make it really stand out and above others?
3. VALUE PROPOSITION. Add to and strengthen your value proposition to your customers to give them more of what they want and need. Exceed their expectations.
4. NEW APPLICATIONS. Look for new applications and uses for your product or service to increase your revenue streams.
5. OPERATIONS. Improve the productivity, effectiveness, quality and efficiency of your operations to give you a boosted competitive edge and help your financials.
6. EXPERIENCE. Develop new ways to deliver a more satisfying, distinctive, worthwhile and enjoyable customer "experience" through your products, services and support.
7. BRANDING & PROMOTION. Even if you are cash limited, try ingenious ways to promote your business. Really clever marketing (including getting free publicity) is the key.
8. ALL "HANDS." Getting ALL your employees and stakeholders (suppliers, partners, investors, and especially customers) involved in coming up with clever, beyond-the-usual ideas to benefit all involved.
A Powerful Creative-Thinking Tool For You
When you ask most people to come up with ideas, whether individually or in teams or groups, they almost always brainstorm and find the "low-hanging fruit" — the generally common and obvious ideas or solutions to a problem, situation or opportunity. The ideal goal is to get the uncommon, unusual, untypical ideas that are "high on the tree" and more difficult to get. Those extraordinary, rare ideas are the ones you need right now. A powerful creativity technique is to REFRAME THE PROBLEM — so you can look at it from new, atypical and very valuable perspectives. That will give you an explosion of extra options to explore and better solve the problem or deal with a situation in a far superior way.
Here's how it works: Define your problem with a question in the obvious way and then come up with all kinds of alternate questions that will enable you to see it from unexpected and fresh angles. Let's say you have a restaurant and the authorities permit you to open it, rather than just have take-out orders and delivery. You ask, "How Can I Get My Business Going Again?" So you can reframe it up questions like these:
These types of "360 Degree Questions" enable people to think about and see the situation in ways that multiply the number of possible ways to solve the problem.
Don't Hold Back On Seemingly Off-Beat, Outlandish and Radical Ideas and Solutions
If you are imaginative, innovative and push the outlying limits of solutions and concepts and propose far-reaching, "blue sky" ideas, you’ve probably experienced push back — and lots of it from others who are much less cerebrally inclined and insightful than you are. But, if you are being bold and courageous as an embedded part of your persona and character — not just acting that way — and if you steadily persist, persevere, and overcome, then you will pave new, exciting solutions during this extraordinarily trying time. You will eventually win BIG. What a difference you will make! With a predicted economic recession on the horizon, most businesses can't afford to develop mediocre ideas and shirk risk.
Apple’s famous founder Steve Jobs narrated a powerfully emotional commercial that summed up his beliefs and philosophy, “Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes... the ones who see things differently — they're not fond of rules. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can't do is ignore them because they change things... they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.” We certainly need to change the world at this time. Maybe you can relate to what Jobs said. I can. Who wants to be “jailed behind the bars of mediocrity and nothingness that we carry around with us?”
Richard Branson, one of the most creative thinkers, bold entrepreneurs and action-driven innovators echoed what Steve Jobs said, “If people aren’t calling you crazy, you aren’t thinking big enough.” So, are you crazy in that righteous and worthwhile way? Do you see something others don’t? Do you want to be a transformational game-changer? Do you want kick the pandemic effects out of your business and life?
First Believe You Can and You Will
Steve Jobs also said, “We’re here to put a dent in the universe. Otherwise, why else even be here?” You’re able to dent or destroy the effect of a downturn in business — as the ecomony shrinks and increasing problems surface — by thinking BIG and being BOLD. The fact is you can think bigger, imagine the impossible, push limits and break records if you so strongly and deeply believe it and then follow through non-stop in ways to make it happen. It begins with whatever you are thinking, think bigger and think “richer” and believe it will happen.
A number of years ago I watched a late-night TV show called Tomorrow where television personality Tom Schneider was interviewing film and TV actor George Hamilton. You might remember him — a suave, well-dressed, fun guy and amorous escort of beautiful women. George had a wonderful, engaging smile and was always sporting a golden-brown mahogany tan, which was something of a pop culture thing. Great branding for him!
During the interview there was a discussion between them about when George was a child and asked his mother if they were poor. His mother replied that they were currently broke, which she described as a temporary financial condition that will be remedied. She said, however, that being poor, though, is a state of mind. That impacted the young George and I found that perspective to be profound when I heard it. It’s not just with money that people are poor, it’s with any way of thinking whether it’s about ideas, solutions, strategies and other related thinking activities. “Poor thinkers” don’t offer ideas, let along grand ones. They believe that their ideas are not worth much, perhaps because they spent too long in work environments that killed the ideas of everyone. Poor thinking is, indeed, a state of mind.
When you take and envision your big dreams, ideas, hopes, plans and push them into your subconscious everyday with an unshakeable belief, you significantly increase your chances of success. About 15 years ago, I was dating this lady and we drove past one of those carnivals with rides, attractions and games they set up in a large parking lot outdoors. We stopped in and I won some small prizes for her throwing darts at playing cards and rolling a ball uphill into various holes in one of those Skee Ball alley machines.
I’m very good at accurately throwing balls and other objects. Then we moved onto one game that only had these huge stuffed elephants hanging from the top of the tent. This game involved throwing a baseball at wooden milk bottles stacked up as 3 on the bottom, 2 in the middle and 1 on top. To win these beautiful stuffed elephants, you not only had to knock the bottles down, but they all had to fall on the floor, none remaining on the wooden shelf.
I can’t explain this rationally, but I absolutely “knew” (not thought, hoped or even believed) that I would win her an elephant. So, I told her, “Look at the various colored elephants on top and pick out the one you want. It may take me 3 throws, but you’ll get it.” She gave me an affectionate look, but likely thought I was just trying to impress her with a dash of chivalrous bravado. The man running the concession must have heard this thousands of times from ardent admirers of their ladies. I looked at those bottles and “willed” them down as I threw my first fast ball and B-A-N-G, as the ball hit, the bottles seemed to explode as they flew high up in the air and all landed on the floor. She was shocked and so was the guy. I later found out that the shelf holding the milk bottles was titled slightly backwards to prevent the bottles from rolling off and the probability of getting them all on the floor was something like 1 in 400-600! When you “know” something because of your deep, deep belief, your subconscious magically makes it come about. That’s true with how you think.
Some Really BIG Thinkers
We could fill up several books with past and present big thinkers, many of whom you’ve never heard about — people who’ve made a “dent in the universe.” Here are just a few:
1. Alexander the Great. His father, Philip II King of Macedon said to his son, "My boy, you must find a kingdom big enough for your ambitions. Macedon is too small for you." At the age of 20, Alexander set out to conquer the known world and in over just 12 years, he conquered territories and countries comprising a million square miles and stretching 10,000 miles long. He fought 70 battles with a relatively small group of about 40,000 warriors, often facing and hardily beating well-trained professional armies 4-5 times their size. Alexander always led from the front on his horse and suffered 30 wounds with 9 being serious. He never lost one battle because of his brilliant strategies, innovations, courage and exceptional command leadership. Alexander always thought big and behaved boldly, bravely and daringly.
2. Henry Ford. He attended a one-room school for eight years, but became a technological and innovative genius and amassed a fortune that today would be worth around $200 billion. Ford created an enormous industry built upon a dependable, rugged car — the Model T — that the mass of people could afford. His River Rouge Complex was an example of his overactive, bigger-than-big thinking and doing. Construction began in 1917 and when it was completed in 1928, it was the largest, most impressive integrated factory in the world. The Rouge complex measured 1.5 miles wide by 1 mile long, with 93 buildings comprising nearly 16 million square feet of factory floor space. More than 100,000 workers were employed there, even during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
3. Walt Disney. He created an entertainment empire. Disney was and still is the epitome of big, creative thinking while rejecting stale “conventional wisdom.” Disney’s first ever full-length animated 1937 movie, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was a huge risk that many sneered at. They called it “Disney’s folly.” It could have finished him, but it was a brilliant, innovative idea that was masterfully produced. It changed filmmaking forever. When Disneyland opened in 1955, his critics predicted a quick, disastrous failure for the novel amusement park with an unusual business model. The rest is history. Disney’s numerous and enormous accomplishments and innovations in movies, television, audio-animatronics and various technology were all fueled by his big, bigger, super bigger thinking, smart risk-taking, unbounded imagination and deep desire to make a difference for families and the world.
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4. Jeff Bezos. A huge, visionary thinker who started Amazon in July 1994 and exploded its growth and product and service offerings. He and his teams innovated new technologies, processes, business models and value propositions. He encouraged his teams to come up with bold ideas and new opportunities that he then added even more substance and impact to them. His ideas and execution of them allowed him to create a new, improved way to deliver goods, music, movies and other services when so many competitors tried it before him and failed. He is experimenting with delivery by drones and is obsessively looking for exciting and radically innovative ways and possibilities to make his businesses more productive, effective and efficient. His incredibly expansive visions, thinking and pursuit of excellence in execution of ideas and solutions made him one of the richest and influential people in the world.
5. Sir Richard Branson, impressive founder of the Virgin Group in the 1970s which controls more than 400 companies in various fields. An entrepreneur, innovator, business magnate, philanthropist and exceptional leader, Branson’s latest big idea was creating Virgin Galactic for space tourism in suborbital flights using a rocket-powered spaceplane. Sir Richard believes that success isn’t measured in financial and material wealth, but is measured by innovation. “I’m a person who looks forward more than looks back,” he notes. His philosophy dictates being rich in ideas and being rich in new approaches, both of which he adds a bigness factor to them.
6. Elon Musk. Everything about him shouts GIGANTICALLY BIG — ideas, solutions, factories, goals, plans and visions of what might be. Whether it is his awesome Tesla cars and new, radical pickup truck or his SpaceX rockets and technology, he is, in reality, more like Tony Stark, the Ironman character played by Robert Downey Jr. in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film franchise, than anyone else.
Musk revolutionized rockets and dramatically slashed the cost of launching into space by enabling the first stage boosters of his Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets to land themselves incredibly accurately and be reused rather than wastefully falling into the ocean as “expendable boosters.” This valuable ability was formerly believed to be unthinkable. Musk now has this spectacular vision and evolving goal of colonizing Mars with fleets of 1,000 of his huge “Starships” departing for the Red Planet every 26 months! Just seeing the size of this massive rocket in development with its unprecedented performance and capability is enough to conclusively prove he just might be the ultimate heavyweight of out-of-this-world thinking and entitled to be known as “King BIG Think.”
Musk said, “SpaceX is like Special Forces... we do the missions that others think are impossible. We have goals that are absurdly ambitious by any reasonable standard, but we’re going to make them happen. We have the potential here at SpaceX to have an incredible effect on the future of humanity and life itself.” If that isn’t a perfect example of big thinking and bold beingness, I’m at a loss to find one. I call that Elon’s “Magnificent, Monumental Manifesto!”
While the previous six examples highlighted men, there are numerous big-thinking women, past and present, including such current leaders such as Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors, Marillyn Hewson, President and CEO of Lockheed Martin and Lynn Doughtie, CEO of KPMG.
What Most BIG Thinkers and Overachievers Have in Common
Briefly, here are some of the habits, beliefs, behaviors, attributes, actions and characteristics that big thinkers typically exhibit. How many of the following would describe you? They:
As was said of Jeff Bezos, big thinkers are “strategically patient and tactically impatient.” They play the long game — waiting, building momentum and getting interim results leading to the ultimate outcome, but give a sense of urgency, laser focus and push to those issues, plans and activities that are vital in the short term.
Why Don’t We Think B-I-G or BIGGER On a Regular Basis?
Before I give some insights on how to be a bigger thinker, let’s look at why we don’t go full throttle when it comes to generating ideas, plans and goals. We:
1. Simply don’t think we can develop great ideas, especially big ones.
2. Have had our ideas regularly shot down either at home or work and become discouraged or unmotivated to keep coming up with ideas.
3. Tried a couple of bigger ideas and they failed really bad.
4. Can come up with big ideas, but don’t know how to implement them.
5. Have co-workers and managers who resist new ideas from anyone, so why try.
6. Feel much more capable and comfortable coming up with small ideas.
How to Get Primed to Develop Big Ideas
Here are some suggestions to get you started thinking about coming up with big, creative ideas and how you might implement them:
One: Believe you Can. Your belief that you can come up with bigger and better ideas and bring about results is an absolutely essential ingredient of winners and game-changers. Develop that power of solid belief. Never underestimate yourself. When you learn about successful people, remind yourself, it’s not about luck (though luck can play a part), but primarily because they had an iron-clad belief they could do it.
Two: Up Your Game. Whatever you’re thinking, think bigger. Most of us put a damaging limit on our ideas for various reasons. We worry way too soon whether we are being impractical and unreasonable. Famous playwright and critic George Bernard Shaw rightfully said, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” How true! Thinking big means thinking in ways that are beyond what you normally do. It’s critical to get out of your comfort zone and habits of limited thinking.
Three: Get Rid of Excuses. All of us at times will find reasons why we cannot or should not try excelling in some area. Typical rationalizations include lack of higher education, the right background, little or no experience, untested skills, that others are somehow more qualified to be big thinkers, that we don’t have the time or energy to do it or any other number of self-imposed cop-outs. Great ideas are no one’s monopoly. Your thinking and playing small doesn’t serve the world. We’re all meant to shine, so stop with the excuses.
Four: Reduce Your Dreaded Fear of Failure. You cannot bring about any positive change and innovate if you fear that you will fail and be judged harshly or ridiculed. Game-changers are used to failing at times and in various ways because coming up with new approaches, inventions and technological innovations, by their very nature, have unknowns associated with their development. But successful people learn quickly to adjust their plans or solutions based upon their discovery of what did not work. Expect setbacks and even criticism. But if you persist and punch through problems, ultimate success is yours.
Five: Develop a Thinking and “Finding” Process. Some people try to come up with all types of ideas every day to get in the habit of doing it. To find ideas, they have their “antennas” always up. They read all kinds of unusual publications, magazines and online sites. When they visit new places, stores, museums, they are on the lookout for anything that they can use for new ideas. Studying trends is also be valuable. Developing a detailed methodology to locate unusual ideas is very useful for getting a wide range of ideas. Find out where and when you tend to get your best ideas and use that for effect. Reading books and articles about creative, strategic and visionary thinking along with those about the innovation process can expand your thinking options for you.
Six: Be Around Other Creatively Successful People. Any time you can be with and work with highly imaginative people who have a history of coming up with powerful ideas, they can significantly help you with your big ideas and assist you in analyzing the efficacy of them. They can assist you to avoid typical mistakes because they have learned from it.
Seven: Build and Nurture a Special Team of Thinkers and Doers. Locate and select the best highly-motivated, driven and enthusiastic people who love being creative and who don’t hesitate coming up with “blue sky” ideas — ones that are far-fetched, bodacious, unconventional and seemingly impractical. They don’t limit their thinking. Your team should also consist of those who can evaluate, analyze and prioritize the best game-changing ideas to implement. Having a smart team who can execute well — quickly and effectively with minimal disruptions and problems — is indispensable.
Eight: Don’t Aim for Perfection or Procrastinate. Big thinkers aggressively and quickly execute on their ideas even when they are not completely ready. A lot of times, it makes sense to move when you’re 80 percent ready. Chances are, only you will know the remaining 20 percent that is missing, so don’t let that “imperfect” idea prevent you from moving forward as you can later work on its completion or fine-tuning.
Nine: Avoid Over Analyzing. It’s very important to carefully look at your idea and seek to understand its strengths, weaknesses and likelihood of being successful. But before you spend a lot of time assessing all the key factors and metrics surrounding it, get feedback from others whose opinion you respect. But, also realize most “grand ideas” were seen with a jaded eye by most people, even experts. Steve Jobs of Apple said he did not use focus groups for revolutionary products simply because even smart people had no sound basis of comparison and understanding in which to accurately judge them. Jobs and other impressive innovators have embraced what Ralph Waldo Emerson advocated, “Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
Ten: Think Big, Start Small. Don’t worry about too many things at once. Take a handful of simple, smaller things relating to your idea and then progress to bigger, more complex ones as you gain experience and knowledge.
Don’t Wait!
Every day that goes by impacts our dormant or slow business. If you want to escape limitations and problems and magically transform your business, you need to know how to think big and devote the time and effort to see your dream, vision or idea become real. By thinking B-I-G, you create a greater runway for your growth to take off and enrich your life. You’ll create the exciting future of your choosing. Use this time to reimagine, revitalize and even remake your business or job. Mark Twain said it so profoundly, “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did."
I wish all of you great success in overcoming the business and personal effects of this upcoming "economic stagflation" and it's nasty effects upon us. So, be more creative and take more smart, calculated risks because you will have more risk by being overly cautious or waiting and procrastinating. Do what many others are not doing. Take the road less taken and make new, exciting and rewarding paths to your success!
About the Author
Ray Anthony is the Chief “Innovader” in The Woodlands, Texas, USA. He is the author of 9 books and over 100 articles on organization change, innovation, leadership, creativity, sales, presentation skills and other strategic business topics. His vanguard book, Innovative Presentations For Dummies (Wiley Publishing) shows how to powerfully reimagine, reinvent and remake presentations that win against the toughest odds. Ray is a successful executive coach, program developer, corporate trainer, videographer, producer and dynamic keynote speaker who has worked with numerous Fortune 500 corporations and elite U.S. government agencies (e.g. CIA, NASA and USSOCOM) to help improve their operational performance and results through creativity and innovation. He can be reached at innovader@comcast.net or cell: 832-594-4747.