Posts by Valerie Patrick
The Insight Behind Perspective Matters for Innovation
I learned about the importance of the source of insight behind a person’s perspective in my innovation job at Bayer MaterialScience. The breakthrough for introducing a new composite material to the mass transit industry came when we hired an industry expert. The industry expert had sold a competing product to this industry that had been…
Read MoreA Structured Analytical Approach to Team Collaboration
A recent client of mine said I delivered a structured approach and deep analytical skills to help their team approach a nebulous problem through collaboration. This feedback made me realize that ‘collaboration’ is one of those nebulous words like ‘innovation’ or ‘sustainability.’ While the consensus is that these concepts will lead to high performance in…
Read MoreThe Power of Perspective is Motivation Enough
A recent exercise in changing perspective got me thinking about both the power in and the motivation for changing perspective. I sing in the Greater Harmony Chorus (http://www.greaterharmony.org/), a member of Sweet Adelines International (http://sweetadelineintl.org). At my last chorus rehearsal, we were asked by the Director to use our cell phone to record ourselves as…
Read MoreThe Power of Head and Heart to Affect Change
Head and heart is a powerful combination to affect positive change. When I first saw my good friend Andrew Winston give a keynote address on the topic of sustainability, I was struck by the equally strong intellectual and passionate elements of his speaking style. His message energized me and I am still working on what…
Read MoreGetting Beyond Limited Thinking for Great Results
This post examines getting beyong limited thinking for great results and was inspired by the keynote I delivered at the National Biodiesel Board’s annual meeting last month (http://www.biodieselconference.org/2015/PDFS/pocket_guide.pdf). Just like limited thinking can get you in trouble on Valentine’s Day with the one you love, limited thinking can be a problem for focus and lead…
Read MoreSocial Intelligence for Health and Wealth
The pursuit of health and wealth are candidate motivators for New Year’s resolutions and are more linked to what I am calling ‘social intelligence’ then you may realize. In his book, Emotional Intelligence (copyright 1995, published by Bantam Books, ISBN 0-553-37506-7), Daniel Goleman talks about the abilities of emotional intelligence that help us to thrive…
Read MoreReigning in Subject-Matter Expertise to Improve Work
One of the things I like to do over the holidays is grow existing or develop new subject-matter expertise which helps me improve my contributions to business meetings and facilitated collaboration. In other words, the holidays are a great time for me to catch up on my ‘fun’ business reading! This got me thinking about…
Read MoreSTEMming the Science Communication Gap
I am calling the lack of effective communication between STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) and non-STEM professionals the ‘Science Communication Gap.’ In addition, STEM professionals are outnumbered by non-STEM professionals. In 2011, STEM professionals represented only 25% of the overall professional workforce (http://dpeaflcio.org/wp-content/uploads/The-STEM-workforce-2012.pdf). I think a big contributing factor to poor science literacy in…
Read MoreCurrent Science of Collaboration
As a trained STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) scientist with an above-average interest in collaboration, I would really like to understand the current science of collaboration. This post started with the question of whether or not collaboration comes naturally to gathered people. The search for an answer to this question took me on a…
Read MoreLeveraging Stakeholder Engagement for Sustainability
Those in sustainability leadership positions at their organizations understand the importance of stakeholders in achieiving sustainability results. For example, business environmental gurus Daniel Esty and Andrew Winston in ‘Green to Gold’ recommend stakeholder mapping as a key component to a sustainability business strategy (http://www.eco-advantage.com/). This stakeholder mapping is largely geared towards an organization identifying new…
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