Cast your mind back pre-pandemic, and you’d regularly chat to Dave in finance at the water cooler, to Rachel from HR in the kitchen grabbing your sandwiches from the fridge, and to Shalisha from marketing while she’s smacking the printer in an effort for it to work! How many of these conversations were more than incidental chats? How many of them sparked ideas and follow-up meetings because you were relaxed and informal and asking about the person’s day, or what they were busy working on? They could be conversations of joy, or stress from things not going quite to plan.
With online and hybrid working, we don’t have the opportunities for these chance meetings and conversations. When was the last time you proactively asked about your team member’s day? Do you find yourself purely talking about tasks?
Two people who created something incredible from a series of accidental conversations like this were Spencer Silver and Arthur Fry who created the world-famous Post-it® notes. You can read the full story here but essentially Spencer, a chemist from Texas was given the task to develop a new adhesive (a super adhesive, more resistant and stronger than any other adhesive before.) He experimented, and while he did produce an adhesive, the issue was that it could easily be removed. He initially thought he’d failed, but in fact he’d just made history without knowing it.
While he perceived the adhesive to be useless, word got round the office of his attempts and caught the attention of older colleague Arthur Fry who had a eureka moment during mass where he sang in his church choir.
During rehearsals, Arthur had a habit of placing small pieces of paper between the sheet music to make it easier to find the hymn during performances, but they would constantly slip and fall out. It was while singing that the scientist thought back to seeing Spencer’s attempt in the office and thought his creation would solve his problem and help become a bookmark for him that would stay in place.
And that was the start of the company 3M which today sells 50 billion units every year. While Spencer initially created a product he didn’t think anyone would ever need, through the chance conversations in work between colleagues, he and Arthur went on to create a product most schools and offices around the world now use!
If your teams are missing their spark, get in touch and let us give them the tools to open up and brainstorm in style!
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