Innovation Safaris:
The best way to kickstart creativity & get your team unstuck

Emily Smit

So when and where we meet, we meet online monthly. We cover topics that help us become better leaders and build better cultures. So next month we'll be meeting on March 23. It'll be the same time, 830 via Zoom. And we're going to be diving into creativity and leadership, protecting your own playground. This is going to be such a fun conversation. Jess has so much energy and I can't way for her to share that. With all of you.

Emily Smit

So this would not be possible without our sponsors. Megan was not able to join us from Dream Bank this morning, but just a little bit about Dream Bank. So, Dream Bank is a space put on by American Family Insurance and they believe that your dream is the most valuable thing that they own. And that's why they created Dream Bank. It's an inspirational community destination and a digital experience. So it's all about discovering your dreams, whether you need information, motivation, or just a space to get down to business and figuring out details. They host a lot of events, mostly virtual, but they're starting to get back in person this year, which is super, super exciting. So this one that they actually have later today is the rebel woman of mathematics. So if this is calling your name, I will put the link in the chat and you can go ahead and check out this event and other events that they have coming up later this month. I'll turn things over to Leah to.Talk a little bit about the park.

Leah Roe

Hi, team. How's everyone feeling today? Put an emoji, say it out loud, put it in the chat. How are we feeling right now? Thumbs up. Feeling good? Hearts. Love it. So we are the perk. We are premier leadership and culture development studio. And our mission here at the Perk is to build the world's best leaders. We're not looking to build good leaders or great leaders. We are focused on building the world's best. Has anyone read the book Essentialism or know Essentialism? Yes. Few of you? It's one of my favorite, favorite books. I love it so much. And so this is inspired by Essentialism to kind of tell you a little bit more about what we do. So at work, you want results like this, but what ends up happening is you get results that are more like this. And why does this happen? It happens because people are working like this. We have competing priorities, we have different ideas. Sometimes the vision is not aligned. Sometimes there's a lack of trust. We're all working on stuff, but we're all going in different directions. And so that can cause things to feel misaligned, it can cause friction.

Leah Roe

There can be a lack of progress. So in the work that we do, we help take teams from this to this. We help take them to clarity, alignment, and success. And the way in which we do that is through our coaching and training programs that focus on leadership, development, team connection, trust and communication, inclusion and belonging. We focus on employee well being in terms of burnout and overwhelm, and also on defining and scaling cultures. So that is what we do here at the park. Now, Emily, do you want to stop sharing? And I will share my screen. Yeah. Cool.

Leah Roe

So now we are going to dive into our topic of today. Hold on. Can you all see my screen?

Leah Roe

Fabulous. Okay, I am so flipping excited for today. You all have no idea. This is our first time doing a Fireside chat, or as I'm going to I like to think of it a total geek out session with Chris McCarthy. So when I learned about the topic of Innovation Safaris, which I'll go into how I learned about it, my mind was blown, and I was like, I must meet this person. Then once I met him and talked to him, I was like, I must share all of this with the world. So let me tell you a little bit more about Chris. So Chris is a change rebel and healthcare innovator. He founded ILN Coaching and Consulting, which helps organizations and leaders improve and build their innovation systems. So ILN Coaching and Consulting is an offshoot of another organization that he founded in 2005 called the Innovation Learning Network. And so it's an international organization of 40 care delivery systems, foundations, and design firms that are committed to sharing innovations, teaching innovation approaches, and building friendships. He led the organization from its inception until 2009. Also, just so you know, when I met Chris, I'm like, you're fascinating and amazing and just an incredible human.

Leah Roe

And then when I read his bio, I was like, oh, and you have an insane amount of other amazing things going on. So he's done a lot. He's published. Everyone is wanting to know about him and his work. And I loved in his bio, he said at the end, in his spare time, he obsesses about fitness, musicals, and skiing through the trees. So, Chris, can you hold up your arm? He was skiing, and he spent last night in the emergency room skied through some trees. But I also wanted to I did musicals. What's your favorite musical?

Chris McCarthy

That's a tough one, but I would have to say Sunset Boulevard. I think it's deeply underrated, but yeah, I got to see it in New York City with Betty Buckley. And if you know anything about musicals, betty Buckley is the queen. And so that was quite the moment for me. Yeah.

Leah Roe

Amazing. Well, we're so happy you still are here after being in the Er all night from your skiing. So let's dive in. Okay, so I first learned about Innovation Safaris a few months ago. I was at one of our clients company retreats in Chicago and Key Care. So it was Dr. Lyle Berkowitz who was talking, and he was talking about innovation and he had this slide up, and he said, to be innovative at your company, you need to get inspired by others. And he was like, there's always more good ideas out there. And then he's like, for example, Innovation Safaris, you should visit other organizations to level up your own company. And so he said, I used to be a part of this group, and we would go on Innovation Safaris. We would physically go to other organizations and learn from them and then try to apply what we learned to our own business. So we would think about, what if our healthcare system was run by Nordstrom? What if our healthcare system was run by NASCAR? What if our healthcare system was run by Tom Shoes? So you would get totally out of your element, learn about a new company, and then be like, what can we take from this?

Leah Roe

Apply it to our own company to make it better. And so, when I heard that, I don't tell him. I probably spaced out for the rest of the retreat because I was just so into this concept and I've just been thinking about nonstop. So I'm like, okay, so what if my slides aren't working? So I've been thinking about with the perk in my company, what if this company was run by sorry, screen is not working. Zenda, it's worth the wait. Okay, we're going to get there anyways. I'll stop sharing. But I've been everywhere I've been going. So I love this restaurant called Bar Taco, and I'm like, what if Bar Taco ran the perk? What if any company I'm at, I'm just trying to take little learnings. So, that being said, I totally geeked out about this concept from knowing about 30 seconds worth of it. So I thought, let's bring in the expert. Let's bring in Chris to really learn what this concept is and how we apply it to our businesses. So, Chris, what is an Innovation Safari?

Chris McCarthy

Hi there, everybody. Well, first, I want to let you know that it is not broken. It is a horrible sprain, but they did put it into a cast for as long as I can tolerate it. And anybody who's about to go skiing, you're going to have a wonderful time. And thank you, Troy, for the comment about my hair. It's very hard to style with one hand, so I appreciate the comments. So thank you for that. You've lifted my spirits. Good morning, everyone. So the Innovation Safari, leia and I were riffing about this last week, and it's kind of turned into the title of this talk of this Fireside chat. It truly is a way to both get unstuck in your thinking. So, as probably many of you are aware, when you are deep in a problem, and sometimes as the stress level goes up, we start putting on blinders and we start getting hyper, hyper, hyper focused. And hyper focus can be very good, but it can also prevent you from seeing solutions that could really help you. And so there's an intentionality in creativity and being curious, and there are many ways to break out.

Chris McCarthy

And the Innovation Safari is a concept that is kind of the cousin to analogous research. So analogous research comes from human centered design, and that is when you have a very specific problem, we go out into the world and look at other industries to pull specific pieces of gold into a solution. The Innovation Safari is very similar, except it's a click up. So it's often used more with strategy. It's often used when just generally there's a malaise in the organization and you're trying to break through to something that's more expansive and joyful, and you're trying to jazz up what you're doing. And so, again, similarly, like the analogous observation, you are really thinking about how do other industries do what they do, and can I pull that into my organization or maybe even just shift my thinking, even just for a moment, to allow myself and my organization to imagine a different way of doing what we do?

Leah Roe

Yeah, and Chris, when you and I were talking, we were talking about it's almost like a work vacation where, you know, when you go on vacation, you get out of your day to day, you get out of your comfort zone, you allow your mind to be open and you get inspiration and new ideas. But this is doing it intentionally and structured for work. So it's not like, hey, go on an Innovation Safari while you're on PTO or on the weekend. It's like, no, we're going to take this full day or couple of days, we're going to go out together. We're going to see different companies, let our minds be open and be inspired of new ways of doing things.

Chris McCarthy

Yeah, for sure. I think all of us have this experience. I'm kind of doing it right now in Utah in my skiing vacation. But when we kind of let go of what we normally do for small periods of time, just how inspirational, and we get these sparks of ideas. So when I'm skiing through the trees, I'm thinking about that, but my brain is decompressing. A lot of people have this experience with exercise, like they're running on the treadmill and all of a sudden their brain starts beautifully melting and new things start emerging. And just to what you said, this is a way to do that intentionally and more as a group or as an organization and bring the power of that into what we do in our worlds of work.

Leah Roe

Okay, love this. Tell me the history of it. How did you create this? Why did you create this?

Chris McCarthy

Yeah, so as I said earlier, it does come from analogous observation. And I don't know, can we pull up those those mini cases? Because I think this is probably a great time to show those many cases. Again, this analogous observation is used for a specific problem. And Innovation Safari is used for a more meta, generalized problem. And so I'm going to give you two analogous and I'm going to give you one Innovation Safari. So the first one, I was running a project at Kaiser Permanente, which is the largest integrated care delivery systems in the nation. And we were trying to understand how do our elders meaningfully age? What is it that they do for themselves? And that really helps some elders just to somehow be successful to the end, and then others are kind of just having a really complicated time with it. And so we used analogous observation where we started brainstorming and thinking about, well, who could we learn from? So if you can go to the next slide. So we came up with a whole technique. You're using Innovation Safari or analogous observation, really, you're thinking about a broad set of organizations and you want to go broad because you don't know where you're going to find the gold nugget.

Chris McCarthy

So in this scenario, we actually talked to eight different industries, but three of them ended up giving us gold. The first was we talked with NASA. And from NASA we came to understand that they're the most as we all know, astronauts are the most robust humans on the planet. But when they're off planet, they're the most vulnerable humans, period. Like they are off on a spaceship on their own. And so NASA really thinks critically about every single thing that can go wrong, and they plan for it. And so we thought about, well, what would that look like? If we were really trying to plan for our aging? How could we take the most complicated things and just make them easy? The second thing, we talked to Burning Man. We went to visit the Rangers. And the Rangers are the people that really care for everybody at Burning Man and keep them safe. If you don't know what Burning Man is, it's a large music festival, an art festival that happens in the desert in Nevada every year, about 70,000 people show up and it's extreme environment. You're in the desert, it gets 100 degrees, you have to bring everything.

Chris McCarthy

And they talked about a principle which was called radical self reliance. And that meant that you as an individual have to be completely prepared to take care of yourself. But you also know that the community will care for you if something goes wrong. And we thought that was a really beautiful principle that we could apply to our aging. We should really think about how do we take care of ourselves? But we should develop and we should have communities that can step in and we're not left on our own. And the third was my favorite. We ended up at the Honolulu Zoo. So we were working with elders in Hawaii, and I just Googled aging and Hawai and Honolulu Zoo popped up. They have the oldest animals on the planet in captivity. This turtle is, I think it's 300 years old. It was giving to the Queen of Hawai before it was a state from England. From the Queen of England 300 years ago, and it's been living in the zoo ever since. And from them we learned the power of the caregiver. The zookeeper is like a caregiver, and the animals love them. And the caregivers really know their personalities.

Chris McCarthy

When the vet comes, the animals act like they're totally normal. So if this turtle was sick, it would immediately act like it's normal because it doesn't want to be perceived as sick to the vet who's going to hurt it. And this is the exact same thing in human health. And so we started really thinking about the power of the caregiver and helping their loved one really get the care they need and not prevent themselves from showing what's wrong. So a quick example. Three very different industries, all giving gold to healthy aging. Yeah. Let's go to the next one. Medication Administration. This is also from Kaiser Permanente. Kaiser worked very hard using improvement science to lower its medication errors. But then it plateaued. Like, all of a sudden, it just couldn't get better. And so we thought this was a great time to use safaris to try to break through this challenge. And so we talked to about ten different organizations. We sent nurses, pharmacists and doctors to all these different organizations. A Safeway grocery store and a Lexus dealership. If you go to the next slide, where we struck gold was they went to pilot school and they got on a plane.

Chris McCarthy

We did not fly the plane, but they got on the plane. And some pilots in training were sharing with them. There's a concept called the sterile cockpit. And I'm sure all of you know what this is. If you don't know the words for it, you've experienced it. It's that bell that goes off ten minutes into flight. So all of a sudden you're taking off and the bell goes off and they say, you can take your seatbelt off or everything's fine. That actually is more for the pilots. The pilots, during that time that they're taking off or landing the plane, are doing nothing except focusing on that activity. They can't eat, they can't go to the bathroom, they can't talk to each other unless it's about landing the plane or taking off. So that's called the sterile cockpit. And the nurse who went there said, I have these poisons in my hand. I'm about to give them to a patient and everybody interrupts me, can I have a sterile cockpit when I do this? If you go to the next slide. That concept we built into a process. And I'm not going to explain exactly what this is, but you can see at baseline, it was low.

Chris McCarthy

We implemented this system and one month later, they doubled their ability to have a safe medication pass, and that stuck around two months later, this ended up spreading to all 40 hospitals and 65,000 nurses across Kaiser Permanente and lowered the medication administration error rates for that organization. So just two quick examples of where this came from and really inspired us to continue to get out into the world to find gold.

Leah Roe

Is anyone else's mind blown? Isn't this incredible? What's coming up for people?

Participant

I just tossed in the chat, chris, are you selecting the safaris you send your clients on, or do you feel like any safari is going to allow for that innovation?

Chris McCarthy

Yes, both. So the thing you don't want to do is get caught up in trying to select the perfect safari because you can't predict where you're going to find this gold. And I always say, I love this idea of gold because in order to find a tiny bit of gold, you have to dig through a lot of dirt, but it's worth it because gold is so valuable. So this is very similar to the safari. I think it's easy to get disappointed if you go somewhere and you're like, wow, that was interesting. But if you do enough of those, all of a sudden you do zero in on this gold nugget and are able to do something with it. So we shouldn't have a high bar and anybody can brainstorm. And I always encourage people to just look around their own neighborhood, what stores, what industries are local. And the other side, the second part of is it this or that? Yes. I can also step in, and people who do this more often can work with you to really hone that in and really provide a total journey. So it's not just about finding the organizations, but it's about getting there, synthesizing debriefing, and sifting out that tiny gold nugget.

Chris McCarthy

So it's a little of both. Is that helpful, Lisa?

Leah Roe

Yeah, chris, I'm curious. I do a lot of mindset work in coaching, and so I'm curious, do you talk about when you go out in the innovation safari, the mindset you want people to be in or if you want them to eliminate distractions? Like, is there some prep work for the people to make sure that they are fully engaged in the experience?

Chris McCarthy

Yes, there's a bit of a set up. So the first is to clear your mind and go with an open mind. We often say a fresh set of eyes, so we often will take a moment before we go in to ground ourselves in some way. We want to help people let go of why they're there. So, for example, this could have been very problematic if I'm in that example with Kaiser Permanente and the nurses passing medications, if all they were looking for were ways to fix medication errors, they would have missed everything around them. It may have been actually hard to accept that I was getting on a plane, talking to pilots in training instead, we want people just to kind of go on vacation, just go and be curious about what others are doing. And that relaxing. And that curiosity allows you that problem is in the back of your brain. It's percolating. But if you're hyper focused at all times on it, as I said earlier, you're putting a blinder on the possibility. So, one, we ask people to come with fresh eyes. We take a moment before we go in and we often will put together a tiny safari guide.

Chris McCarthy

It's usually three or four questions. It's nothing complicated, but it's basically asking them to jot down what's interesting to you while you're here. A very simple sketch, something that you've seen sometimes sketching. Those are your personal sketches, your personal notes that also unlocks different ways of understanding. And then at the end, after they experience the whole thing, we'll ask them to write down their three top takeaways. What often happens is it's days later when we pull everybody together to start sharing their individual insights is where the AHA start happening. Maybe I wrote down something. I didn't even know it was gold. It's my colleague who, when we're talking about it and synthesizing, is just like, wait, holy crap. That thing you just said, that is exactly what we need to do to translate. So again, that's the set up. So we talk about how do you do these things? It's rarely, Eureka, I found the gold. Usually it's these notes. You jot things down and coming back and us discussing where all of a sudden we call it kind of sifting. You're sifting the dirt, the gold starts popping out.

Leah Roe

What I love about that too is it's like going on the safari and being curious, but then you're coming back and you're connecting with your team and you're collaborating. I love that. Go for it.

Chris McCarthy

Now, I was just the other piece of that is you don't always strike gold. So we have to share the wealth. So we have to make sure that everybody else that went to safaris that didn't yield the gold they were looking for, they had to go do that too in order for this to happen. So we want to make sure when we do these things that the mindset is like, we know you're not going to find gold everywhere, but we don't know where you're going to find gold. That's part of what this technique is. And so that's another important piece of this. Because a group could come back and be like, that was a waste of time. But if we didn't send everybody out, I don't know which one is going to find the gold. All I know is that we need a broad group of people to go out to a broad group of industries. I know we're going to find something that's going to help us.

Leah Roe

Lisa, you have your hand raised.

Participant

Sorry to have so many questions. So you're hunting for gold but does it ever happen in reverse where we're on the safari, they're like, oh, my God, I see. We do something like that, this, and it's terrible, and we need to stop doing it. Is there ever, like, a reverse effect, or are you putting people in the mindset of, look for innovation, don't look for the shit.

Chris McCarthy

Actually, we're looking for any of it. Yeah, for sure. If you notice something that was way off, you bringing that back. And in some way that's also helping guide you to where you don't want to go. That's kind of gold, too. So it's not just about finding the thing that can help you. If you find something that will stop you from doing something that's not great, that's pretty awesome, too. Yeah, I love that. I'm not sure if that's what you were asking, but that's where my head went when you were saying that.

Participant

Yeah, that's where I was like, are we avoiding the ugly crap? Because I'm sure not all the places are spectacular.

Chris McCarthy

Correct. But I will say the one thing that when you do these safaris.

Chris McCarthy

The safari host is often showing off in a good way. I don't say that negatively. I say that beautifully, that they're showing you the best of what they are. You're there, you're another industry. Actually, that's also a really beautiful point, too, because you're not a competitor and you're a different industry. They often will just share way over share in an awesome way where you can learn so much, and they're showing off. They want you to walk away and say, wow, this Lexus dealership. Their process of customer service is incredible. They did this, this and that, and they talked about how they improved their scores. It's rarer that they're showing you what's not working, but they're over sharing on what is working, and it's because you're not their competitor or their industry.

Leah Roe

Diana, do you have your hand raised? Yeah.

Participant

So what's really coming up for me right now, this is very interesting, very cool is the phrase, like, creativity is a process, right? So what I'm trying to balance in my very analytical brain right now is how much is process? How much is innovation, and how do you structure that so you have that opportunity for innovation?

Chris McCarthy

Does that make sense? It does, and I love your question. Yeah, I am a process dude. My background was process engineering back in the 90s, where I've evolved to over the years. This is not just innovation Safaris, but I believe we need just enough process to liberate innovation. So those are guardrails. What are the minimum guardrails and processes that we put in place to yield as much positive benefit as possible? In the innovation Safari, there is setup. There is producing an innovation guide. Like, a few couple of questions. It's instructing people on the mindset that's all process, and it's synthesizing afterwards. The worst thing you can do on these is send people off and hope that they'll come back with something that's not good enough, that would be wasting people's time. You got to close the loop. So when they come back now, the responsibility of the organization, whoever sent them, is to now debrief and pull out the learnings and more importantly, apply the gold. What did you learn that you could apply now? This is not just going away and hoping so that's the difference between vacation and work. I can go to Utah, and if nothing inspires me, I'm not in trouble for it.

Chris McCarthy

I'm not wasting anybody's time. I'm still feeling good about myself. I did something fun. This is going out there being curious, but I do think it's the responsibility to extract value and apply it. And that's the process.

Leah Roe

And I love that.

Leah Roe

That so aligns with coaching. In coaching, we talk about what makes coaching. Coaching is taking your learning and putting it into action. Otherwise, we're just having a really nice, high level theoretical conversation. And so it's the responsibility of the coach to come in and say, okay, based on what you've learned, what are you going to do now? What are you going to commit to? So I love that piece of the innovation start where it's not just sending people out, it's then bringing them back and really facilitating that process around, taking that learning and putting it into action.

Chris McCarthy

That's right. And we see this across the board with a lot of these techniques that you'll have people do something, but you don't close the loop. And I think that's what's most powerful about the best organizations who innovate is they're closing the loop on all these creativity processes that they're dragging the value into what they do in real time. And it's not just about spark. I hope we all know that. It's not the lone innovator who has this moment of eureka. It's a lot of hard work. It's a lot of fun, but it's hard work. And it's about being very intentional about how you close those loops, for sure.

Leah Roe

Chris, can you tell us, are you designing an innovation safari right now?

Chris McCarthy

I am. So I am pulling together an innovation gathering in June for a whole bunch of safety net organizations. Safety net organizations are the people that are caring for mostly medicaid patients. So the underserved. The underrepresented. And so we're gathering for three days in June. And right now, we are starting to put together what experience do. Let me take one step back. We're doing something really unique with this one. So we're gathering 80 people, and day one, we're not even having them gather together for a welcome. When they get off their planes, they're going directly to their safari site. So we're really trying to shake their brains with really cool stuff so that when we get together for the first time as a group of 80 on day two, their brains are already unlocked and ready to. Go. But just, for example, for that group, we're sending them off to an organization that helps teenagers learn to garden. And there's a whole lot of life lessons on gardening and on health. And so a very interesting organization. We're sending them to a design museum. We're sending them to a food lab. So this food lab is really thinking about how do we take the food and the output of farms from around local areas and translate that into something nutritious in unique ways.

Chris McCarthy

So really thinking very broadly about how do we take these 80 leaders and innovators in an industry that's medicaid is probably one of the most complicated care delivery systems. They are pressed, they are working hard. We want to give them this moment of, like, looking for inspiration in the soil. I love this gardening one. And really unlock and relax into the next few days and be inspired to do something different in their industry.

Leah Roe

That's so cool. I was just wondering, does anyone have an example of maybe I mean, maybe you didn't know as an innovation sparri at the time, but something you did where it's kind of out of your element or a different industry, and you were able to bring that learning back to your company or to your team, putting people on the spot.

Participant

Leah this is kind of bringing up some other themes for me, but the idea of people who job hop between industries with previous experience from other roles and other companies, and you kind of like, I've walked into a new industry like, four times in my career and just seeing things just a little bit differently. But manufacturing that experience for people who haven't been outside of that, I think is very exciting. But I'm like, hey, this is a great, positive way for me to spend my resume on innovation Safaris.

Chris McCarthy

Yeah, to your point, Diana. When I'm hiring for my design teams, I will often hire outside of the industry that they're going to work in. So, at Kaiser Permanente, the design team I built, 75% of that team were designers from other industries for the very reason you just brought up. Because actually, that is exactly what this is about, is bringing other industry experience into what we're doing. Yeah.

Leah Roe

I was thinking of an example. I feel like the best innovation Safari I didn't know was an innovation Safari at the time was when Dan and I went to South Africa several years ago, before we had kids. And it was our first vacation where we truly it was probably unsafe because we didn't pay for WiFi or anything, so nobody could contact us. Probably looking back was not the best choice. Probably should have had phones. But anyways, we were totally immersed and open, and we were in Mabonang, which is this neighborhood in Johannesburg, and it's like the art district, and it's so cool. And I read an article while I was there about the designer of this neighborhood, and they're like, you should be taking all this credit because you're the one that did this. And he's like, no, I just created the space. The people are the ones that came and made it what it is. And I was VP of People and Culture at the time, and I was like, that was a game changer for me, where it's like, it's not my job to be in the middle of the culture and be trying to make all this happen.

Leah Roe

I need to design the space, and it's the people that make it what it is. And so that, for me, was I see now was like an innovation safari.

Chris McCarthy

Yeah, for sure. And I think it maybe it was Lisa that brought up this idea of seeing something that's not great, and this is probably as an individual. So if you're doing your own personal safari, that's the thing. We remember the most of things that are off the rails. So when you have a bad experience, that is a great opportunity if you can remember to think about, like, what am I or we doing that's similar to that awful, awful moment. Harder, though, because it kind of passes through our brain faster, is when something awesome happens, to take a step back and say, what are we doing? That could be like that. So if you can kind of hold both of those as you're on vacation or exploring the world, or you can pull so many interesting nuggets into your organization.

Leah Roe

So, Chris, how do we get started? Like, if we're all leaving this, we're definitely going to do an innovation safari. How do we do it? What do we do?

Chris McCarthy

Yeah. So first, I would say be intentional, so I wouldn't just go out and do a safari. If you're working on a strategic plan, if you're working with a group of people that are having a particular challenge because you want to connect it to meaning, that would be the first thing is really make sure that it's connected to something that you're really doing in your organization. The second is to really start thinking about where and who might I learn from? And sometimes this is I think people can get again, hung up on the perfect place to send everybody. Instead, what I do is I will draw, like, a ten mile we will draw a ten mile radius around the location of the team and really just on a Google map, like, what are the interesting businesses that pop up and start jotting those down and then selecting? Which ones do I think could be interesting? Again, I'm not trying to predict who's going to give gold. I'm just trying to say I need ten organizations. These are the ten that I think are most interesting. And then the third piece and I said this earlier, the most important piece is the debrief, and that is the extraction of what I learned.

Chris McCarthy

And I think those are the three things I would keep in mind, keeping it connected. Don't overthink where you go, but close the loop, I think are the three things I would say could really go a long way.

Leah Roe

Yeah. And Chris, when you and I were geeking out about this last week, one of the things we talked about was that this is a demonstration of a curiosity value at a company. If you're a company that says you value curiosity, you value innovation. This is taking it from just words on a paper or a website to actually doing it, to showing your team. Could you imagine if you're an employee looking out there and you see like, this company does innovation safaris. What a cool recruitment tool. What a cool retention tool. What an engagement tool. Employee experience throughout all the culture. Buzwords. Like it hits on all of them.

Chris McCarthy

Yeah, for sure. And depending on the spectrum of where your organization is, totally gets it or doesn't get it, I would also think about how you frame this. So we've been using words like vacation and let your brain relax a little bit. I would say that's for progressive organization, that's for an organization that gets curiosity and knows the value. If you're on the other end where it's like, oh, we're not sure about this, then I think you got to be careful with your word choice because this actually is not a vacation. As I said, this is hard work. It's fun, it's meaningful, it's valuable. I can prove that it brings value. But those might be the kind of words that you use with an organization that's more conservative, is that this is a part of the hard work of innovating, and this is creating the space of curiosity that we value. So again, depending on where you are, you're going to be thinking very critically about the kinds of words you use to describe this particular kind of activity.

Leah Roe

Yeah. And I will say I was talking to a client about this concept, and one of the things that was helpful when I did that was they're a large company. And so I've seen through their LinkedIn post that they're sending people from one location to another location to learn best practice and learn what that location is doing. And so I was like, could you imagine then doing that, but totally at a different company, like outside of the industry? And they were like, oh, that would be really awesome. So that was a cool way that they could understand it too.

Chris McCarthy

Yeah, for sure. Any time you can leverage what they're already doing. Imagine if they went to visit their own site and then they said, three more organizations at that same geography. Now you're not adding any additional cost. So I think there's ways to really bring this together. But again, the most progressive organizations are going to be like, we know the value, let's do it. And you don't have to oversell, but it's but the conservative ones who are just trying to understand the processes of creativity and curiosity. They need a bit more conservative voice to bring it to life.

Leah Roe

Or maybe just send them this recording and it'll prove it. Corey, you have your hand up? Yes.

Participant

I'm curious if there's anything you do to prime the business or organization you're visiting. So it's not just a group of people showing up to tour and see what the organization does. You're really looking to learn more about the organization, have them provide more details. So how do you go from, we don't just want a tour, we want a little bit?

Chris McCarthy

Yeah. So I often go over the years let me take a step back. I started more precise in my early days of doing this. So I would say we are working on medication administration at Kaiser Permanente, and we are trying to learn how to reduce medication errors. So we want to come visit you in some way. I've already scared them, so now they're starting to think about, what can I do to help you? I've now transitioned to we're coming for inspiration, and we want you to show off, show us, like, we're looking to solve complex challenges and learn how people really innovate and come up with new ideas and put them into practice. But really, we just want you to show off. Like, what are you most proud of in your organization? That has yielded far better results than when I bring what I thought was precision and because, again, I'm already putting blinders on them by asking them, be precise where I'm trying to get them deliberate so I can do the extraction. I don't want them to try to figure out what I need. I want them to show the best of who they are and have me do the hard work and figure out what I need.

Chris McCarthy

So I'll often even say, Is there, like, a mini workshop? Do you need any product testing? Use my group to test your new product. Whatever you want to do with the time that you have for us, go for it. That has yielded far better results than being precise for me.

Leah Roe

Okay, we're going to do some annotating because I want to know. All right, so there's an annotate button at the top of your zoom. So if you could all type in here from your own perspective, what's a company you would like to visit on an Innovation safari? Any company or industry, anything Troy runs to visit a dot type it epic. Milwaukee Bucks. Good one, Dan. Yes. With the annotate, you have to put the like what is it? The font one?

Emily Smit

Yeah. So if you want if you've never annotated before, if you go to view options, at the top of your screen, there's a little drop down carrot. Then there's the annotate button. You can click on that, then it'll.Give you the option to choose text, and then you just click right on the screen, type your answer, and click away, and then it'll show up.

Leah Roe

Budweiser. Trader Joe's Hip Camp. Yes. Disney. Chris, what about you? What's a company like you're dreaming of doing an Innovation Safari at?

Chris McCarthy

Oh, boy. I would love to actually go and talk to those who do real safaris in Africa and really go deep on so I did a safari many years ago, and I wish I paid more attention. But what I remember from it was this experience that just blew my mind, and I would love to get behind the scenes to understand. How do those safari programs and safari guides, how do they assemble what seem like perfection? So that's what I would love to understand. Yeah.

Leah Roe

Chris? Yes. I will go with you. An innovation Safari. On the safari. I agree on the safari in South Africa. And it was experience. It was just mind blowing.

Chris McCarthy

Yeah. And that's not a ten mile radius. That's like a 10,000 miles radius. So we may have to expand out, but yeah, let's do it.

Leah Roe

All right. Can one of my amazing teammates clear? Gosh, they're so good. They're so on top of things. So you can annotate this or if you want to say it out loud, what's coming up for you? What is one way that you think innovation Safari could help your team? Don't be shy. Okay.

Participant

I was going to start typing, but. It's just too much.Yeah. I would love to go on a Safari to some process places. So I am not a process person. I am a process person because I believe that it has to exist in order for success. But coming up with the process, I need to see some good ones. So I would love to go to some I typed in Aurora. There are a healthcare system down here that's really gone to lean as far as. How they do everything. They're really process improving, and I would love to find out how they got there in such a unique lean environment.

Chris McCarthy

Just a quick comment. If you're looking for an awesome process one, go to Inn Out Burger and do the drive through and pay attention to the process. I've done this one, and it just blew my mind.

Participant

That is a great one. I used to live in Arizona, so I know what in and Out Burger is, but I think a lot of these Midwesterners haven't had the luxury.

Leah Roe

I've had it. It is delicious. Didn't pay attention to the process, just paid attention to the burger.

Chris McCarthy

But good to it's hard not to.

Leah Roe

Yeah. How about what's one way that innovation Safaris could help you personally? Again, you can type or say out loud. How would it help you? Personally.

Chris McCarthy

I would say that everyone always thinks, like the company they work for, the problems they have are so unique or so complex. But if you go to somewhere like quick trip. Any of those stores you go to, it's amazing how many things go on each day to make those stores. Like, look how they do and how much product they move and things. And it's intense. It can just give you some perspective on how do you simplify a problem and not just be in your own head. I'm like, oh, this is just a big problem. It's like, well, break it down. Other people do amazing things during every day too.

Leah Roe

Yeah, this is awesome. One way that since I've learned about the concept of innovation safaris, which was October, I'll never forget October 2022 because it's when my mind was totally blown forever. But it has actually helped me to be more present when I'm on vacation. So usually as an entrepreneur, when I went on vacation in December, usually I'd be like, I have so much more to do, I have more emails, I should be really focusing on that. And I was like, you know what? This is an innovation safari for me. And so I need to be present and curious and open mind. And when you are curious, it forces you to be present. So it's actually by treating weekends or adventures or vacations as an innovation safari for myself, because I never know when inspiration is going to strike. It's allowed me to be more present and fulfilled because of it. Chris, you've changed my life. Okay, we have a few more minutes. What else is coming up for people? Does anyone have anything they want to share or questions for? Chris? Who's going to go on an innovation safari? Yes, Leah?

Participant

I feel like I'm constantly asking questions in this session. I'm going to take the opportunity since it's here. A lot of this to me, sounds like it's observing, right? Like you're trying to increase your levels of observation so that you can apply things to your own life. Do you have tips like Leah was just talking about, like, when you're on vacation, being more present, but to be I don't know what the correct translation of that word is, but to observe more and how to absorb to what's.Going on around you.

Chris McCarthy

Yeah, just a couple of things and they're not going to be surprising to you. It's just a little bit of planning and intentionality. Just like in the work world, we'll have project plans and we'll put calendar invites. There might be just simple things like, that is just put a little calendar appointment for yourself on your vacation, whatever code word you want to use, maybe it's wake up and that's for you to just take a moment and randomly observe. What I wouldn't want you to do is try to observe everything on your vacations because that's putting you into a space of work again. But what if you put two or three little pings for 20 minutes scattered on your calendar and all of a sudden you're skiing and you get a ping, like, observe, like, oh, what's happening around me? What can I learn from this moment? So it's really about intentionality, and then it's again, same as I said earlier, it's closing that loop. If you did learn something, what are you going to do with it? Like, just observing and being, okay, well, this was interesting, or, wow, I learned something, but now I didn't take the next step and do something with it.

Chris McCarthy

And that applies to so many things that we do. It's the application that gets you the value.

Participant

So, Chris, you had said that you would want it to ping while you're skiing, but I would recommend that you pull over and not get another broken hand.

Chris McCarthy

Very good. Yes. Thank you for that. I love safety first. For sure.

Leah Roe

Diana, the other thing that was coming up for me too, there is chris, you haven't been talking about find the most boring companies you can and then go see what they're doing. It's like, plan on going to things that are exciting for you that you're super interested in. It's a lot easier to be present and curious with something that you want to geek out about. So I like to do that because then I know and then also eliminating distractions during it. And what I think is really cool about doing a company Innovation Safari is again, don't be like, okay, I want you all to be on Innovation Safari. So on your nights and weekends, do it. It's like intentionally creating the space, being like, for this whole day. We're all eliminating distractions while we're here. I don't want you on your phone. I don't want you checking email. Everyone at the office knows that you are on an Innovation Safari. You are allowed to be totally here.

Chris McCarthy

Yeah, it's the work. It is the work.

Leah Roe

Yeah, people's minds are working. What else, Chris? What do you want everyone to walk out of here knowing about Innovation Safaris?

Chris McCarthy

Mainly how valuable they are? Again, it can seem like and especially when you're trying to get somebody who's a bit inhibited to do these kinds of things, it can seem like it's it's a waste of time. Or like, if you can't tell me right now what I'm getting out of it. And I think that really ties into we talked about earlier, this culture value of curiosity and innovation. Almost all organizations have these values. And so this is a demonstration. We know it's valuable. If you go out there and you look at ten organizations, I guarantee you, you are going to find some gold. So it is valuable, but it truly is fun. It's fun to get outside your industry. And, yeah, I think those are the two things. It's valuable and it's fun. I mean, what better way to make culture, like, something that you want it to be?

Leah Roe

Yeah. Troy, you had your hand raised.

Participant

I just realized it was time. But just real quickly, I just think 945. Yeah. I have a company that would never, ever do this, ever. And so I've encouraged us that we have to do a professional development every Wednesday. And so yesterday we actually had one to look at us internally and kind of do an internal safari, and that was really monumentous. And I just am curious of your thoughts. I did have to step away a couple of times, so I might have missed it. But what are your thoughts on internal safaris and just making sure that you're checking the boxes and making sure that your heartbeat is really there? If you're not willing to go externally and see what are some wow factors elsewhere.

Chris McCarthy

I think internal safaris can be good, and I think if they're framed really intentionally and carefully, I think you want to be careful that it doesn't feel like an audit, that you're looking for inspiration. And so I think where it works best is if you know a department or a unit or another piece of your organization is doing something really interesting and well, and you do a safari to see that, it's going to lower the anxiety of your group who's being observed or being interviewed or however you set it up. I think these can get a little bit dicey internally. Now we should be looking internally for inspiration and pulling that knowledge. So for sure you can do it, but I would just be careful on how it's framed. But to your other point about like, this would never, ever, ever work. I think some things that can help with that hurdle is many cases like I just shared. If you took that Kaiser Permanente case and showed how a safari, how curiosity helped lower medication errors, which is a super important, dangerous thing that happens and really saved millions of dollars for Kaiser Permanente because they did this.

Chris McCarthy

It may not work right away, but the more little cases that you show how others have done this can help make it a little more palatable, to give it a try.

Participant

I think our company, it would work. I don't think our leadership would take the risk. So there's a little bit difference, but I do agree. So what we did yesterday is we took one thing that we do really well and had everybody contribute to what they do to help make it well, and then all of a sudden, it broke into like, okay, there are some other areas that we can apply this. So I like that you had said that, because that's really what we did. So thank you.

Chris McCarthy

Awesome. Yeah.

Leah Roe

I think something to think about with what I want you all to walk out of here with is when you're feeling stuck personally, or you as a team is feeling stuck. This is a great option because when you're stuck, it's really hard to be like, how do I get unstuck? I want you to think innovation safari.

Chris McCarthy

Yeah.

Leah Roe

Go for it.

Chris McCarthy

Yeah, I was going to say just one more point and back to Troy, because a few more things just fun for me. And it's also to what you said, Leah, just now. Also, when you think Innovation Safari, I want you to walk away thinking other industries, not my industry. So to Troy, to your point, what you just described, I would call positive deviants. And it's one of my favorite concepts where I'm looking for deviant from the norm. And usually we associate that with the negative, but I'm looking for the positive deviant. So who in my organization is just nailing it? But we don't know why they're nailing it, because they're just like us. And so we're going to go and learn from these positive deviants. And that could be a whole nother talk, but that's inside your industry usually. So what you just did was I would describe as a positive deviant activity. Innovation Safari is other industry, not my industry. So I'm in healthcare. I'm going to look at airlines. I'm going to look at grocery stores. I'm going to Bernie, man. I'm not going to cigna. I'm not going to sutter. I'm not going to other healthcare organizations.

Chris McCarthy

Yeah. So just a little nuance there.

Leah Roe

That positive deviance that I also love. It reminds me of Michael Scott in the office when they're like, what are you doing? Right? For some reason, his branch is the best, even though he's totally weird. Okay, anyways, as we're coming close to time, can you all see my screen again? Like we talked about earlier, I'd be a terrible coach if I let you all just leave after this fascinating conversation. So what is one thing that you are going to take from today and put into action? And I'm going to say in the next 30 days, write it down, put it in the chat. I want some people to share out loud. What is one thing you're taking from today and that you're going to put into action?

Participant

Leah for me, so I'm coming back in like, a month, and so we'll have some time together as a perk team in person. And so I want to do an Innovation Safari as a team on our calendars.

Leah Roe

Yeah. Yes. Let's do it.

Participant

I want to help put one together for the team and commit to doing one by the time that I come back to Puerto Rico.

Chris McCarthy

Nice.

Leah Roe

And we'll do one in Puerto Rico.

Chris McCarthy

Yeah.

Leah Roe

Great. How about one more false wants to share their commitment?

Participant

Leah I'm always here to jump in. This is Diana again. So I'm thinking about this. I'm an entrepreneur, a solopreneur, and I go on a lot of networking, like coffees. And I think this is just going to blow up my networking coffee. It's going to change the questions I'm asking. Sometimes I roll my eyes to meet with someone that I don't feel like is maybe a relevant meeting. But this is kind of giving me a lot more purpose than that now. So thank you very much, Chris and Leah.

Leah Roe

This is great.

Chris McCarthy

Awesome.

Leah Roe

Yay. Okay, so if you all how can.

Participant

I chris, can you drop your LinkedIn in the chat so we can follow you if you have a LinkedIn profile?

Chris McCarthy

I do, I'll do that right now.

Leah Roe

Yeah. And sorry, my screen started going wild. I was trying to do this so you could be Chris's best friend, like me. Email him, get to know him. He's the best. And if you want to learn more about innovation sparring. Also, Chris does this for a living. This is his business. He designs these, so you definitely need to work with him. So, Steph, we should talk to Chris as we're designing ours that we want to do. Yeah, let's do that.

Chris McCarthy

I would be happy to help in any way. Yeah, for sure. So I just dropped my link in, so please follow me. If anybody has follow up questions, you can ping me there or email me on the slide. Very easy. Chris@iln.org.

Leah Roe

Amazing. Thank you. Thank you, Chris, for sharing all of this amazingness with us. Thank you, everyone, for coming, for being so present and engaged. I hope this was a little mini innovation safari to start your day. And yeah, we'll see you all next month on Culture Community Day, the best day of the month.

Chris McCarthy

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Leah Roe

Thanks, everybody.

Chris McCarthy

Thank you.

Leah Roe

Bye, friends. Bye.