Acronym

To kick off the first day of the Great Ideas Conference in Colorado Springs, Matthew May, author of several books including In Pursuit of Elegance: Why The Best Ideas Have Something Missing, presented "Designing Elegant Solutions," and gave us seven lessons from his journey to making elegant solutions.

One thing that stood out to me was lesson number seven: Taking a break is a big part of any breakthrough.

To be honest, I know I could have written a better blog post if I'd had a chance to take a run and clear my head, completely removed from the project that is writing this blog post. Instead, I'm writing up a few quick takeaways from the opening general session before heading to the first Idea Lab of Great Ideas. I've noticed that some of my best writing ideas come when I'm not dedicating my time to brainstorming them, and May says that removing yourself form a problem (for my purposes, my problem is writing a blog post that captures your interest) is one of the best ways to solve it. Taking a break from a big task at hand is OK, and sometimes slowing down will lead to a better solution. But let's be honest. Sometimes you won't be able to do that. In my case, I want to make sure that those of you who couldn't sit in on May's session this afternoon can read about it now, rather than waiting hours for me to clear my head and come up with a punchy lede. But when you have the opportunity to take time and come up with a slow solution, it's worth it.

Another idea that resonated with me had to do with innovation and how we define it within our associations. Stop for a second and think about how you define innovation. What did you come up with? Who are the innovators among your staff? Are you an innovator?

If your definition of innovation doesn't apply to everyone within your organization, it's time to think about innovation from a different perspective. May says we typically think about innovation in the wrong way, defining it as the outcome of a project or a tangible product or service rather than the creative process and input. As it turns out, everyone you work with can be innovators if they can figure out a way to do their jobs better than before. May says if we don't think of ourselves as having innovative capabilities, we won't be able to innovate. Same goes for your coworkers. If you don't think of them as innovators, it will be harder for them to think of themselves that way, too. Empower your employees and even your members to be innovators for your organization and you'll be one step closer to designing elegant solutions.