Foresight 20/20

Individuals and organizations have one thing in common.  We all must carefully balance the time and energy we spend attending to the things that are important, and the things that are urgent.

What's important are the activities that keep you true to your mission.  Who you hire or choose to work with, how you contribute your talents, and how you solve the needs of your market are all important things to consider.  Your choices about them have long term effects on whether you will achieve your ultimate goals.

What's urgent are the activities that sustain you in the immediate future.  How you pay the rent, get the funding, or respond to external changes are all urgent issues that must be resolved along the way.  They are like bumps in the road, and your choices about how to manage them can also have long term affects on whether you will achieve your ultimate goals.

We all must attend to important and urgent issues, and how we balance them will determine our ultimate success.  For example, an entrepreneur may tweek a business model to ensure their company will get funded.  If they tweek it to the point that it is a different business altogether, they have gone too far.  It seems that those who go too far are lacking clarity or vision of their ultimate goals.  They end up becoming a product of the external forces that they have allowed to shape them, and their reactions are driven by panic and fear more than vision and mission.

Today we are seeing unprescedented panic and fear that can shatter our ability to achieve our economic and social goals - if we let it.  This current bump in the road should change the way we do business, but we should not let it change our business.  Yes, we need to innovate, and I believe that the innovations that will add the most value will come from those who clearly define what's important - and decide to make it urgent.

For the last few months, I've been fortunate enough to be a participant in Seth Godin's online experiment - Triiibes.  This is a learning community, (currently, membership is by invitation only) and participants are actively exploring questions about the future of markets and marketing, and the forces that are changing the competitive landscape.  It has been a companion experiment to his latest book:  Tribes - We Need You To Lead Us.  I have learned enormously from the experiment, and offer thanks to Seth for starting it, and to the fellow community members for their participation and enlightened perspectives.

This week, Seth launches the book at an event in New York City.  It offers a new perspective that the future of successful marketing lies in the ability to create, connect and lead tribes.  Why is this important?  Because as innovators we need to learn to rally support from within our companies, our clients, and our peers.  Without the support we need from others we cannot succeed. Without strength in numbers, what we are doing is too scary for most people to support us.  We need to acknowledge their need to belong and believe in something greater than they can imagine today.  We do this for a living, and it's our responsibility to show the way.

In addition to the book, Triiibes - the online community, has collaborated on an ebook of tribal case studies.  Each one discusses elements that get to the heart of what makes tribes successful.  It's available to download for free, and I feel fortunate to have had two case studies selected for inclusion. Download, enjoy, and share!

updatedtribescasebook.pdf (2.97 mb)

I was looking over the last few blog posts and realized that the real purpose behind many of our innovation processes is to help us to work around traditional corporate reward systems.  Defining Active Thinking is a way to ascribe value to a process that many clients undervalue.  Brendan commented that mind-mapping tools are useful because they help to make thought processes more visible, and what's visible is more likely to be rewarded.

Organizations have good reasons for rewarding tangible, predictable processes.  Their main businesses typically revolve around providing high quality, consistent, relaible products or services.  The problem arises when they apply the same reward systems when trying to innovate.  If you haven't read Steven Kerr's article On the folly of rewarding A, while hoping for B it is well worth taking a few minutes to review it.  It's old, but the message is still fresh, and is something that is consistently overlooked.

I do believe that our tools and processes for innovation are useful. It is important to make the innovation process as consistent with our clients' processes as we reasonably can.  If it's too foreign or scary then innovation will never happen.  But sometimes the fit is just too forced.  In those cases, we may be better served to point out the obvious, and define a reward system that will enable the right work to be done.

I was reading a discussion yesterday on a closed site I get to use where it was mentioned that perfectionism is what often holds people back from achieving their goals.  When I think about this in terms of the Active Thinking concepts we've been discussing, I think perfectionism is a contributing factor when there is difficulty with this activity.

This doesn't mean that individuals are necessarily perfectionists, but most organizations reward getting right answers.  The very nature of Active Thinking requires that the team discuss many potential answers that end up being wrong.  By the end of the project, more wrong answers have been discussed than right answers.  This goes against the grain of most organizations, which in most cases is a good thing.  We want to ensure that a company is good at producing reliable products.  But when used at the wrong time it can kill innovative solutions before they have time to mature.

I was managing a team once that was having a very difficult time getting started.  We did a lot of consumer research, and the discussions were swirling around which frameworks would lead us to the answer.  The team was very reluctant to just try a few and discard what wasn't working.  No one wanted to be wrong.  So one day I asked everyone to bring their worst idea to the meeting.  Each team member was asked to present this idea and why it would be the worst thing we could possibly do.  We then guided the discussion toward what it would take to make each idea "less wrong."  This process required us to state our assumptions, question them, and build new constructs.  We were finally on our way.

What I learned is that sometimes the best way to change direction is to exaggerate the direction in which we're already going.  Since everyone was afraid to be wrong, we made being wrong the only way to complete the assignment correctly.  Sometimes being wrong is the only way to be right.

I have to clarify a point made in my last post about taking time to think.  I mentioned that clients tend to get nervous during the point in the project when they don't perceive that anything is happening, and that in fact, this thinking time is the most important part of the project. 

What clients fear is that this time is spent truly doing nothing while waiting for inspiration to strike.  I agree that this seldom works.  What I'm talking about is what I will call Active Thinking.  Louis Pasteur's quote "Chance favors the prepared mind" is relevant here.  Inspiration may in fact strike, but the only way to know if the inspiration is useful is to have done all the active thinking work necessary to prepare the mind to recognize its value.

When I refer to the active thinking part of the process, what is happening is that the team is creating the conditions necessary to prepare their minds for the solution.  They make models, try out analogies, and create frameworks, stories and scenarios.  They discuss these models, test them against their research, and keep going until they have something robust.  By this point, they are able to discern what will work, and what won't work quite easily.  When an idea strikes them, they are able to discern its value quickly, and either embrace it or move on.

I'm going to start using the term Active Thinking.  It's clear that there is a need to define this most important part of the process so that it's not confused with goofing off.

This video "The Process" is a great illustration of Monday's post.  Thank you Katie for sending the link!

http://www.todaysbigthing.com/2008/07/23

Enjoy!

Who is responsible for innovation in your organization, and how do they ensure that it happens in the right way for your company?  Not surprisingly, the answers to these questions vary greatly.  Here are some of the most common answers I've encountered:

• Everyone is responsible for innovation, because good ideas can come from anywhere, and people need to be empowered to bring them forward.
• The Head of R&D, because we need to be developing new technologies that can drive our success in the future.
• The Chief Innovation Officer, who is responsible for forging relationships with technology partners and developing new processes for the organization to integrate them.
• The Head of New Product Development, because innovative ideas are embodied in new products and services.

Of course, there is no single right or wrong answer, as every company is different.  What is striking is that the main focus of these roles is on collecting new ideas and technologies.  I seldom hear of roles that are focused on determining the success criteria for new ideas and technologies beyond internal metrics.

Today I will leave you with a few questions that I'd like to explore further.  How many organizations drive innovation efforts based on success criteria that satisfies consumer goals?  By consumer goals, I mean understanding the motivations behind what your consumers do.  What needs does your product or service really satisfy?  What would provide a better solution and fit more consistently into the consumer's life? 

Finally, who is responsible for ensuring that your organization has the right answers to these questions?

As consultants we are often faced with a dilemma.  Our clients hire us because they need a fresh perspective that is unencumbered by the internal constraints, politics, and metrics that guide the day to day activities.  We know, however, that our recommendations cannot be implemented unless the organization adopts them.  If the recommendations are perceived to be too (scary, out there, different, impossible, etc) the likelihood of adoption is diminished.

This is a tricky balance to strike.  Some consultants solve it by presenting a fully implementable, turnkey solution to the organization.  Success usually requires a mandate from the most senior members of the organization for any type of adoption to occur.  We can see the organizational problems this could cause, but there are times (such as extreme organizational crisis) that it is the best way to proceed. 

Others involve client teams through the entire, messy process.  Success requires that all the client team members are able to suspend judgment while exploring new business realities.  They also need to be able to keep one foot in the comfort zone of the current business, while the other foot is outside their comfort zone.  This is a lot to expect of anyone, and can only work if enough time is invested in selecting these people and setting the right expectations for them to succeed.

It occurred to me the other day that the best results happen with a combination of these methods.  Sean Howard had a post about the role of serious play in the boardroom.  In it, he discussed a frightening experience where he brought crayons and blank paper to a final presentation meeting.  As I was reading the post and related comments, I started thinking about how the level of finish in a prototype can help to facilitate an environment conducive to mutual creation of the final solution.  As I thought about it more, I think the element of timing also played a crucial role.  Sean's team had already done 2 months of work.  While the elements for success existed, there was a need to simplify this complex information in order to communicate it to a diverse group.  Having the group join the process in how to communicate to each other was an excellent way to acheive that goal.

Clients often choose consultants for their proposals of "delivering a turnkey solution", or "involving us every step of the way".  These messages are easy to understand, and can only work under ideal conditions.  For the rest of us, accept the fact that some things are best left to the outsider, and spend time figuring out the best time for mutual creation.  It will be different for each client, consultant, and type of problem.   

In my opinion, one behavior with perhaps the greatest potential to kill to innovation is the aversion to using the phrase "I don't know." 

Let's say you are leading a new project to develop a completely new offering for your company, the outcome is highly uncertain, and someone asks you a question like what you think the selling price of the new offering should be.  Of course you want to give an answer that sounds like you are in control of the process; that you are capable, and confident, and you know what you are doing.  But let's face it.  If you are doing something truly new, you shouldn't have any idea of what the final selling price should be. At least not at the beginning stage of the process designed to figure out what type of offering you should be developing in the first place. 

Would you be empowered at your company to say "I don't know what the selling price should be?", and would you be empowered to follow up that answer with "and at this point in this type of project we shouldn't know the answer to that question?"  If you gave that type of answer, would you be removed as the project leader because you "don't know what you are doing?"  And if you gave an answer that would assure everyone of a certain outcome, would you be sabotaging your ability to truly innovate?

As discussed in an earlier post, companies reward certainty.  Unfortunately, this reward is often employed at every stage of every process.  Would I ever advocate launching a new offering without thoroughly evaluating what the correct price will be?  Absolutely not.  And of course, "I don't know", may really mean that the person doesn't know what they are doing.  What I am advocating is that we consider the context of the rewards we employ.  Rewards should be consistent with the type and scope of the work we are doing.  We should be clear about the expected outcomes of a project, and what types of decisions should be able to be made at each step. 

There is a time and place for every question. If we're not careful, the "right" answer will be given at the wrong time.  At that point, it may as well be the wrong answer.

The Wall Street Journal published their list of the top management gurus today.  Here's the part that was most interesting to me:

...changes show that time-strapped managers are hungry for easily digestible advice wherever they can find it. Today, the most pressing themes include globalization, motivation and innovation. Traditional business gurus writing "weighty tomes" are in decline, he says.

The call is for management by sound bite.  Unfortunately, the themes of globalization, motivation, and innovation don't necessarily lend themselves well to the sound bite.  Well, the problem is that they do, but those sound bites are usually dumbed-down, sexy PR statements.  The real work requires a complex intertwining of skills to ensure success.  Don't get me wrong, each of the top five gurus is very accomplished in their own right, but no single one of them has the right answer.

That's why they can all exist on the speaking circuit.  They all have something valuable to say, and it's up to you to use it wisely.