Perform An Innovation Audit

Written By Jeremy Utley

“Like an investor checking his portfolio, every three months Bezos sits down with his assistant Kim Christenson to examine and analyze his calendar for the quarter just past. He wants to know, among other things, how much time he has devoted to each of the dozen or so categories to which Christenson has assigned every meeting, phone call, or trip.”

Reading WIRED’s fantastic biographical sketch, The Inner Jeff Bezos from 1999, I was struck both by how much has changed in the world of innovation in the last 23 years, and how much hasn’t. No matter how much the times change, the habits of mind and disciplines of being to which creative geniuses adhere set them apart from their similarly-intelligent and capable peers.

Bezos’s quarterly ritual of analyzing his calendar illuminates two key lessons for anyone who wants to evaluate their own creative practice:

First, as Annie Dillard said, “how we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” For the vast majority of professionals, the calendar — specifically, how FULL the calendar is — is the greatest hindrance to doing creative work. But it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s possible to design a schedule that enhances your creative practice, rather than eviscerate it. And that starts by being brutally honest with yourself about how you spend your time: how much time do you devote to exploratory thinking. The WIRED piece notes that “Bezos spends hours at a time thinking about the future…” which we dismiss as a luxury of the elite to our own detriment.

Audit your calendar for the last quarter, or even the last week, and you’ll discern the priority you place on innovation.

Second, Bezos has defined categories for his activities, which of course calls to mind the notion of a portfolio. If you’re only working on one thing, you’re not experimenting broadly enough. Far from being a distraction, a side hustle, side project, or even a good old fashioned hobby, can provide invaluable insights and afford you the distance you need to get fresh perspective on your main thing.

This isn’t just something that folks with time to spare do. It’s something Nobel Prize winners, corporate intrapraneurs, and generation-defining entrepreneurs do routinely.

Audit your project portfolio to examine whether there are enough inputs to make your mind a connection-friendly environment.

Lots of links today — hope they inform a fruitful innovation audit.

Related: Write Yourself A Love Note
Related: Hack A Creative Calendar
Related: Create A Portfolio
Related: Try More Than One
Related: Experiment Broadly
Related: Hustle On The Side
Related: Pick Up A Side Project
Related: Dirty Your Hands With A Hobby
Related: Redefine What’s Work

Join over 7,847 creators & leaders who read Paint & Pipette each week

Featured
Never Too Old to Learn: How Experience Gives You an “AI Edge”
Never Too Old to Learn: How Experience Gives You an “AI Edge”

Growth mindset expert Diane Flynn shares insights and advice for a more experienced generation of workers who might feel somewhat hesitant to embrace the collaborative superpowers of GenAI.

Stop Hiding Your AI Use (And Make Your Team Stop, Too)
Stop Hiding Your AI Use (And Make Your Team Stop, Too)

Right now, in boardrooms and Slack channels across the globe, leaders are inadvertently creating a culture of AI shame. They're reinforcing the very hesitation they should be helping their teams overcome. It's time for an intervention.

Establish An Input Practice
Establish An Input Practice

The quality of our thinking is deeply influenced by the diversity of the inputs we collect. Implementing practices like Brian Grazer’s “Curiosity Conversations” ensures innovators are well-equipped with a variety of high-quality raw material for problem-solving.

Beware the Siren Call of the Wrong Question
Beware the Siren Call of the Wrong Question

The first question an innovator must answer is not “can I make it?” but rather, “should I?” This has become something of a mantra among CEOs I work with, as a needful protection against the gravitational pull of the organizational bureaucracy.

Practice Process Mindfulness
Practice Process Mindfulness

One of the defining contributions the d.school is helping teams ask themselves, “What kind of thinking is appropriate, when?” We call such clarity being “Mindful of Process.” And it can seem like semantics until you realize we need to show up in different ways.

Try This Now to Build AI Muscles
Try This Now to Build AI Muscles

You’re probably getting fat on AI content: bingeing podcasts, hoarding newsletter tips, saving Twitter threads... While it feels productive, all that consumption is just giving you a knowledge sugar high. And like any sugar high, it’ll crash—leaving you with exactly zero new capabilities.

Wander With Purpose
Wander With Purpose

The most inventive folks I’ve studied are disciplined about seeking inspiration. If you don’t make time to get out of the box, you will not be able to think out of the box, either. It’s not that complicated, but it requires you obliterate clean compartmentalization in favor of messy meandering.

Host A Science Fair
Host A Science Fair

While the winding road to innovation often only makes sense in retrospect, that doesn’t mean you can’t bend the odds. One of my favorite prospective strategies an organization can employ is the classic science fair... but you must approach it correctly.

Who Will Lead the AI Charge?
Who Will Lead the AI Charge?

NYU Chief AI Architect Conor Grennan makes a strong case for why GenAI shouldn't be an IT capability, but rather, championed by HR. He argues that the folks responsible for human behavior change need to be leading the charge.

Do Work For Free
Do Work For Free

In this special guest post, Mo Bunnell, Author of Give to Get, makes a compelling case for a counterintuitive strategy: giving gifts of your expertise as a way to build relationship and give clients a taste for your unique value proposition.

Jeremy Utley
Previous

Protect Unscheduled Time
Next

Have Fun