Strategy. Innovation. Brand.
Innovation: Message Sponsors
You want to convince your organization of the need for change. So, you create a killer speech and deliver it convincingly. The job’s done, right? Wrong.
Even if you deliver a great speech to your entire organization, you still have a lot more work to do. It’s just possible that some people in your organization will oppose your changes. They may react to your message with fear rather than trust. They may believe that the change you propose will create more problems rather than more solutions.
Who sponsors your message?
What to do? Recruit other leaders within your organization to sponsor the message. Recruit your thought leaders and opinion leaders — not just your senior managers. Your opinion leaders will come from all levels of your organization. You may well know who they are already. If you don’t, just ask around — people will tell you whom they trust. To recruit trusted opinion leaders to your side, just sit down with each of them and ask for their help. Explain why the change is necessary and why you need their help. Then explain the key elements of the message that you would like them to sponsor.
If you ask for support early in the change process, you’re likely to get it. On the other hand, if you give your killer speech first and then ask for support, it may be harder to get. Opinions have already formed and positions have started to solidify. Like voting in Chicago, you need to recruit sponsors early and often. Learn more in the video.
Innovation and Diversity
I should have studied liberal arts.
Do you have an MBA? So do most of the people I work with at my client organizations. One of the ways I add value is merely by the fact that I don’t have an MBA.
It’s not that having an MBA is a bad thing. It’s that so many companies are run by people educated in the same way — they all have MBAs. The fact that I don’t have an MBA doesn’t mean that I think better than they do. But I do think differently. Sometimes that creates problems. Oftentimes, it creates opportunity.
If all your employees think alike, then you limit your opportunity to be creative. Creativity comes from connections. By connecting concepts or ideas in different ways, you can create something entirely new. This works at an individual level as well as an organizational level. If you read only things that you agree with, you merely reinforce existing connections. If you read things that you disagree with, you’ll create new connections. That’s good for your mental health. It’s also good for your creativity.
At the organizational level, connecting new concepts can lead to important innovations. Indeed, the ability to innovate is the strongest argument I know for diversity in the workforce. If you bring together people with different backgrounds and help them form teams, interesting things start to happen.
In this sense, “diversity” includes ethnic, economic, and cultural diversity. It especially includes academic diversity. As a leader, you want your engineers, say, to mix and mingle with your humanities graduates. Perhaps your lit majors could improve your MBAs’ communication skills. Perhaps your philosophers can help you see things in an entirely new light. In today’s world, innovation requires that you bring together insights from multiple disciplines to “mash up” ideas and create new ways of seeing and doing.
Most companies keep data on ethnic diversity within their workforce. However, they don’t usually keep statistics on the different academic specialties represented among their employees. You may well have enough MBAs. But do you have enough linguists? Philosophers? Sociologists? Anthropologists? Artists? If not, it’s time to start recruiting. The result could well be a healthier, more innovative company.
Creativity: Learning to See
Can you see me?
Jorge Luis Borges once wrote a story about a unicorn that no one saw. The unicorn grazed widely in the town where it lived and made no effort to hide itself. No one saw the unicorn because no one expected to see a unicorn. We see what we know, Borges seems to say. If we don’t know that something exists, we can’t possibly see it. It’s invisible.
I recently bought a car and decided to get it in flamenco red. I liked the color but I also thought it was unique. I hadn’t seen any flamenco red cars. As soon as I ordered the car, I started seeing flamenco red cars everywhere I looked. I hadn’t seen them before because I didn’t know they existed.
If we only see what we know, we’re going to miss a lot of reality. Worse, we’re going to miss many opportunities to be more creative. If we believe that politicians are liars, then every time we see a newspaper article about a lying politician, we’ll see it and register it. If we see an article about a politician telling the truth, we may just miss it altogether. We didn’t know that such a species existed. We’re missing a chunk of reality and an opportunity to open our minds and see and do things differently.
How do you learn to see what you don’t typically see? Here are some pointers:
- Ask your spouse — he or she will see the world somewhat differently. Ask him/her what you’re missing. Suellen says I never see plants. On the other hand, she never sees ’57 Chevys.
- Make a point of it — when you drive to work tomorrow, make a point of seeing something different. You’ll be surprised what you’ve been missing.
- Compare pictures — look at a picture and write down what you see. Then ask a friend (or friends) to do the same. Then compare what you’ve written. In Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman writes that Chinese student see pictures very differently than American students. I’ll write more about that soon.
- Learn to draw — this really gets you to see.
As you learn to see more fully, you should also get more creative. You’ll see connections — and opportunities — that you might have missed before. I sometimes wonder if Jorge Luis Borges was so creative precisely because he sees the world so differently. After all, he was blind.
See more in the video.
Innovation: What’s Your Risk Profile?
Need a spreadsheet?
Quick. What’s your risk profile? Do you like to take risks in business? If you do, you’ll probably seek and consume information in very different ways than your colleagues who are more risk averse. That can be a huge obstacle to innovation.
I often ask my clients to self-assess their appetite for risk on a scale of 1 to 6. People who are very averse to risk give themselves a “1”. People who love taking risks give themselves a “6”. In most cases, my clients distribute themselves along a more-or-less normal curve — a few 1s and 6s and many more 3s and 4s. To innovate successfully, you’ll need people in every category. If you have only 1s, you’ll never venture anything. If you have only 6s, you’ll take far too many risks for your own good.
The issue is that people with different risk profiles also have different information needs. That can stifle communication and that, in turn, can stifle innovation. People who are generally risk averse (in a business sense), want much more information than those who are risk oriented. People who are 1s often want very detailed business cases before making a decision. They want to identify every possible risk in the proposed venture and have contingency plans ready. They also like detailed spreadsheets; lots of quantitative data makes them feel comfortable.
Risk-oriented people, on the other hand, are quite comfortable with less information. They believe that it’s impossible to predict the future. A detailed spreadsheet is no better at predicting the future than a rough-and-ready guess. Further, you can’t control every variable. So, why bother creating detailed spreadsheets and exhaustive business plans? You have to dive in and experiment to learn what will work and what won’t.
To innovate successfully, you need both risk-oriented and risk-averse individuals. They see the world differently and that’s good. Your risk-oriented colleagues can help you spot new opportunities. Your risk-averse colleagues can help you avoid stupid mistakes. The trouble is that the two types of colleagues don’t know how to talk to each other effectively. They have different information needs that are very deeply ingrained and will probably never change. As a leader, you’ll need to step in and serve as an interpreter between the two groups. By doing so, you’ll hear both sides, get a balanced view, and pick those innovations that are most likely to work.
Innovation: The Cynical Rebound and the Grateful No
You’ve told your employees you want more innovation. You’ve sponsored brainstorming sessions. You’ve sponsored mixers to break 
down departmental barriers. You’ve offered prizes. You’ve put up motivational posters. You’ve created t-shirts and coffee mugs with all the right slogans.
So what do your employees do? They offer up good ideas. Yikes! Now what? If your company is like most, your employees have lots of ideas on how to improve your company, your products, and your services. Give them a little encouragement to open up and share their thoughts, and you’ll get a boatload of suggestions.
What could be wrong with that? Well…. unless you plan ahead, you could create a company full of cynics. Your employees will almost certainly come up with too many ideas. You won’t be able to process them all much less implement them all. As a result, you could easily cause the dreaded Cynical Rebound.
The Cynical Rebound is the natural (and universal) reaction that occurs when one is asked for suggestions and then ignored. You can hear the frustration in phrases like, “If you’re not going to listen to me, then why did you ask my opinion?” “They said they wanted fresh ideas but I guess they didn’t want mine.” “I offered up a good idea and never heard anything. That’s the last time I’ll do that.” If allowed to spread, the Cynical Rebound will bring all of your innovation processes to a screeching halt.
How to avoid the Cynical Rebound? Before you begin an innovation campaign, be sure to set expectations appropriately. Let everyone in the company know that there probably will be too many ideas. You won’t have the bandwidth to pursue all good ideas immediately. You’ll need to stockpile some for future consideration. The keep the communication lines open. One of the major goals of the Innovation Free Port is to communicate the status of good ideas as they wend their way through the process. If an idea is stockpiled, be sure to let everyone know– especially the originator.
You can also prevent the Cynical Rebound by using the Grateful No. You’ll need to turn down some ideas. Just do it gracefully. The Grateful No starts by separating the person from the idea. The person is wonderful; the idea less so. Express your gratitude to the person and encourage them to continue to offer new ideas. Then explain — clearly and simply — why you’re not going to pursue the idea in the near term. You need to give a real reason; it can’t be fluff. Continue the explanation until you see the person nodding her head. Then stop — you’ve got the sale so quit selling.
The Grateful No closes the loop. The originator knows that you’ve seriously considered the idea but can’t act on it now. She also knows the reason — which could help her formulate better ideas in the future.
Once it gets started, the Cynical Rebound is very hard to stop. So plan ahead. Set expectations appropriately and make sure you have a working Free Port before launching an innovation initiative. Be sure that your managers are trained in the Grateful No technique. A little planning could save you a lot of pain.
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