In this series, professionals share the words of wisdom that made all the difference in their lives. Follow the stories here and write your own (please include the hashtag #BestAdvice in the body of your post).

We had an embarrassment of riches. It was 1998, and I was leading an IDEO design team that had dreamt up so many cool ideas — and had created a range of working prototypes now standing in front of us — that we couldn’t decide which direction to take. Somewhere, shimmering out in the distance, was never-seen-before perfection, but we just didn’t know which path to take to get there.

In short, we were doing great work. But we were also stuck.

Then, as we stood pondering the prototypes that we’d made, and debating which was the most awesome, IDEO founder David Kelley strolled by to say hello and to watch us demonstrate our ideas. He listened patiently as we explained our dilemma, and responded with one simple question: "What’s the best alternative available to people today? Choose compared to that."

Behind David’s powerful question is the best innovation advice I’ve ever received:

Compare to reality, not to some imaginary standard of perfection.

The truth was that even our least amazing prototype was miles ahead of the competition. It also happened to be the simplest concept, and the one that most tightly addressed the actual needs we’d heard from people we had interviewed and observed. Even if it didn’t fulfill our fantasies of perfection, we chose that option as the way forward, and we ended up nailing it: our award-winning design sold like hotcakes. Fifteen years later, it’s still in production, making people happy.

I put David’s advice to work every week, because when you get a bunch of talented, energetic people together, it’s incredibly tempting to try and cram as many amazing ideas as you can into whatever it is you’re creating. That impulse leads to things like the Amazon Fire Phone, a technological tour de force that included everything but the kitchen sink, but ultimately failed to satisfy. Compare the Fire’s laundry list of features to the reality-based point of view communicated by Steve Jobs at the 2007 launch of the iPhone, shown above.

Always going back to a benchmark anchored in reality forces you to articulate a clear point of view about what’s truly important. This is the path to excellence.

Some say that rooting your choices in reality is a sure path to mediocrity, but nothing could be further from the truth. Dedicating yourself to understanding what people really want — how they’ll experience a product in the real world — forces you to get away from your desk and make a tangible difference. Instead of just talking about a grand paradise of what might be, putting in the effort to understand people’s day-to-day lives, and then actually producing something that works, is what separates a true innovation from a merely good idea.

Great innovators dream, but they are also relentless about comparing those dreams to the real world, and acting accordingly.

Bernard MarrInfluencer. Best-Selling Author, Keynote Speaker and Leading Business and Data Expert

The One Interview Question Most People Are Not Prepared For!

Any job hunter would be wise to seek out common interview questions and think about his answers beforehand, but what about the questions that haven’t made it onto the lists yet?

One question I’ve heard asked is some variation of, "Tell me something I wouldn't know from looking at your CV," or "Tell me something no one else knows about you."

This question seems to be becoming increasingly common, but it’s still not one that job applicants are routinely preparing for. That means it’s a good place for you to shine.

What is the recruiter looking for?

Of course, I can’t say exactly what any specific recruiter is looking for when she asks a question like this, but I can give you some possible ideas. She might be looking to see:

1. How do you organize your thoughts? If you’re telling an anecdote or story, is it well thought out and well told? Do you connect topics and events linearly, or jump all around?
2. Can you think on your feet? Because this is a less common question, the interviewer may be trying to get you away from canned, rehearsed answers and see if they can get a glimpse of the real you.
3. What do you consider most important for the interviewer to know? What comes out as an answer to this question could say a lot about you. Do you tell a story about your philanthropy and charity work, or about your many awards and accolades, or about family and hobbies?
4. Are you able to relate the story back to the job? It’s a nice indication of higher-level thinking if you can tell a personal story but relate the points about you back to why you would be a good candidate for the job.
5. Are you saying anything you shouldn’t? This isn’t to say that interviewers are trying to trip you up, but they will always be listening for things you shouldn’t reveal about current or former employers, or anything personal that might make them question your qualifications for the job.

Remember, their job is to find the best candidate, so it makes sense that they want to move you away from more rehearsed speeches into more authentic territory — even if that authentic territory doesn’t put you in the best light.

How to prepare for this question.

As with all interview questions, it’s important to think about how you might answer, but don’t compose your answer and memorize it word for word — any savvy interviewer will be able to tell.

Since this is an open-ended question, your answer is an opportunity for you to highlight aspects of your qualifications, history, or skills that might not be immediately noticeable in your resume.

• Keep your core strengths in mind. Go into every interview with a good idea of the core strengths you would bring to the job, and then take the chance to highlight those skills with your answer. For example, if you want to emphasize your organizational skills in a particular interview, you might tell a story of how you organized an elaborate fundraiser at your child’s school, or how you were the president of a particular club at university.
• Think about intangible strengths and soft skills. Your resume should highlight achievements and metrics, but this is your opportunity to highlight your best soft skills. If, for example, your resume says you exceeded your sales goals by a certain percent, you could elaborate by explaining that you were able to do that because of your excellent people skills or your dedication to following up with your leads.
• Share something personal. If the question comes towards the end of the interview, and you feel you’ve already been able to make your case for your job skills, you might choose to highlight something from your personal life that reflects well on your character. Consider sharing only personal things that are universally accepted as positive, like being an avid chess player or enjoying mountain climbing, rather than anything that could be considered controversial, like volunteering with a political cause or being involved in a counterculture.
• Explain why you want the job. This is a great place in the interview to explain why you are particularly passionate about the job. If something in the job description excited you or any personal connection for the field. For example, I knew a young woman who was practically falling out of her chair to apply for a marketing position with a Parkinson's charity because of the work they had done to help her father. This kind of personal connection can demonstrate that you would bring extra passion and energy to the position.

Figuring out how to answer these more open-ended and personal questions is like solving a riddle; the answer should show how you fit into this new job opportunity. As important as it is to think about these questions before you go into the interview, it’s equally important that your answers sound friendly and conversational, not memorized and rehearsed.

In the end, you should feel glad if you get one of these questions in an interview, because they afford you the opportunity to be your real self and highlight any of your best qualities that don’t fit into the resume template.

Have you had this question put to you in an interview? How did you respond? I’d love to hear your stories in the comments below.

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Finally, here are some other recent posts I have written on the topic: