Business and Creativity — Third Thought

Take the Dare

15th of May ~

I’ve been getting a little too comfortable. So, I recently took on a new challenge: a pro bono project in Bangladesh.

Three flights: 10.5 hours, 6.5 hours and 5.5 hours. That’s what it takes to get to Dhaka, Bangladesh. It is a city of 16 million, the 9th largest city in the world and, until last month, I couldn’t have found it on a map. All I knew of Bangladesh is that it’s shockingly poor and George Harrison did a concert for the country 40 years ago. I’ve learned that Bangladesh is a new country, formed in 1971 after a liberation war that cost more than 400,000 lives. Citizens are passionate about their country and Goldman Sachs named it one of the Next-Eleven economies. Still, Bangladesh is unfortunate in its geography. Floods and cyclones routinely devastate the country. The stunting rate of children under 5 is over 40% and it is the only country where the average height is getting lower. Before I left I was inoculated against polio and typhoid, diseases that are still alive there. My assignment was a large retreat for the entire team on the PROSHAR project, a food security program funded by USAID.

I arrived at 2:30 am at the Dhaka airport nattily dressed in my new shalwar cameez, a modest ensemble for a country that is 90% Muslim. I was kindly shuttled through purchasing a visa, then passport control, by an airport official. A rep from the hotel met me and, dazed and confused, I arrived at the Royal Park hotel. When I got out of the van my glasses fogged over–temperatures ran 85 to 99 degrees with humidity over 90%. All week my complexion was dewy and my hair had a newfound exuberance.

The next day I learned that the meeting was moved a day ahead because a hartal (general strike) had been called and travel would be impossible. As it was traffic was astonishingly chaotic. At one point carts drawn by water buffaloes joined the road.

Still everyone managed to arrive and nearly 100 of us gathered at the retreat site. I redesigned the agenda to adapt to the new schedule–a daily activity, usually done at dawn on 5 hours of sleep. The meeting was conducted in English but as there were only 3 native speakers (2 ex-pats and me) we often asked someone to interpret and much of the meeting was held in Bangla. I was confronted with novelty in all directions–new food, jet lag, electricity that popped out 5-6 times a day and the sheer size and complexity of the gathering. I haven’t worked that hard in years!

This has been the experience of a lifetime. I LOVED working with the creative, engaged team members.

They were playful and resilient–a hallmark of Bangladeshis. I have enormous respect for the work they are doing. I cherish the personal connections.

It’s not as though I climbed Mt. Everest but I do feel satisfaction in meeting the challenges. I come home with more appreciation for the basic rights we enjoy (safe tap water, relative stability, traffic laws, continuous electricity) as well as the luxuries (good coffee, soft mattresses). I value being stretched beyond my normal routine. I am enriched because I took a chance and said, “Yes” to an opportunity that scared me.

If you’ve been getting a little too comfortable I encourage you to do the same.

Everyday Innovation

13th of March ~

Innovation can be an intimidating goal. We can’t all be developing iPhones and new molecules that save lives. Does that mean we can’t be innovative?

I like to differentiate between capital-letter I innovation, ‘Big-I’ innovation and ‘Small-i’ innovation. Let’s start with Big-I innovation. This is the kind of product or service that we’d call a blockbuster. Think for a minute about a blockbuster that’s come out in the last few years. Might you be thinking iPhone? Ipad? Kindle? Each of those products are exciting and really changed their industries. Heck, they changed our behavior.

Bet here’s a surprise: PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT is not the best place to put your innovation efforts.

An innovation strategy firm called Doblin did some fascinating research on the cumulative value of innovation investments. They looked a ten-year window and found that, sure enough the greatest innovation effort was in product development…by far, more than double the next category. But the cumulative value creation for the company had the LEAST to do with product development. The efforts that made a difference were things like changing business models—shifting the way you make money, strategic alliances, improving the customer experience and a lot of not so glamorous, back-office kind of innovation.

Which brings me to ‘Small-i’ innovation.

‘Small-i’ innovation is what I call everyday innovation. I’ll give you an example. My daughter works at Starbuck’s. She’s a shift supervisor and soon she’ll be training as an assistant manager. She wants to manage her own store within two years. Well, Lizzie got to her current store and realized that if they redesigned the coffee bar it might be faster. She got support from her boss and she streamlined the process.

This shaved approximately ten seconds off the production of each coffee drink. You might say, “Big deal”. And it’s not a big deal. She’s not going to get on the cover of Fast Company for that. But how many coffee drinks do you think they do in an hour? I’ll tell you—an average of 60 to100 transactions an hour, some with multiple coffee drinks. They’re open 15 hours each day, 365 days a year. All of a sudden that 10-second time savings starts to look pretty good. It’s over 4 million seconds! That’s over 1200 man-hours. And if you’re managing in the service business you know that’s significant. Her boss certainly thought so and recognized her for the effort.

So, Starbucks saved some money thanks to my daughter’s everyday innovation. They also got something else. And this is important:

Innovation will get you more than bottom-line results.

You see Lizzie was very engaged in making the store run more efficiently. She’s just a little more loyal thanks to the fact that her boss appreciated her extra effort. And that’s also worth a lot to Starbucks.

Right now HR managers are dismayed at the declining employee engagement scores. Engagement has to do with commitment to the company’s work, the morale…really the amount of discretionary effort employees are willing to give to a company. Well, involving your employees and colleagues in innovation is a great way to engage them. People WANT to solve problems. They WANT to use their brains. Trouble is, most of the time leaders feel that they need to come up with the answers. But I’ve seen it happen time and again—innovation projects engage people.

Plus, if you develop a reputation as an innovative manager, or department, if you’re known in the marketplace as an innovative company you will be able to attract top talent. Imagine a newly minted engineer coming out of MIT or Stanford. This talented engineer graduated with honors and can get a job anywhere. What company might they consider? I’d guess Google. Not only are they kicking out all kinds of cool products, but employees have the option, the expectation that they’ll spend part of their time on their own pet projects. Geez, I want to work for Google.

And it doesn’t matter if you’re recruiting for a mid-level manager or a front-line barista. You still want the best talent you can get. Do you want the fresh-faced honor student? Or do you want the poor shlub who can’t make eye contact? Of course, you want the best.

So, I encourage you to broaden your ideas about innovation. Start creating a Climate for Innovation and prepare to be delighted.

Goofy to Great

6th of March ~

Last week I gave a presentation to a group about Everyday Innovation. I think it’s a good idea to make innovation part of everyone’s job. The corollary is that ideas get a hearing. Not every idea will be God’s special snowflake but they at least deserve attention and a response.

And sometimes the wackiest ideas lead to really useful ideas. Here is my favorite story about an idea that went form Goofy to Great:

My first job as a baby consultant was for a large utility company. Some years prior they had convened a task force to solve the problem of heavy snow on the transmission lines in the middle of Wyoming and other sparsely populated areas of the country. Heavy snow occasionally caused lines to go down which knocked out power for a lot of people. The then-current practice was for human beings to walk the line with long vertical poles to knock the snow off. No, not a great method.

So the task force was developing alternative methods and generated some sensible ideas. But as the meeting went long they started to get a little punchy. One person suggested. “Let’s just train the bears to shake the poles.” “Yeah‘, said another, “we could put pots of honey on the top of the transmission towers and when they climb up to get the honey the snow will shake off!“. But how to get the pots of honey on top of the towers for the bears? “How about helicopters?” someone suggested. And they all enjoyed a chuckle at the absurdity of it all.

“Wait a minute,” said a woman who’d been a nurse in Viet Nam. Anyone who’s seen the opening credits of the TV show M.A.S.H. is familiar with the windy impact of the helicopter landing. So was this former nurse. “If we just fly the helicopter over the line, the snow will blow off.”

And that is how a goofy idea became a great idea.

(Dave Preston photo)

After my presentation two of my audience members informed me helicopters are also used to blow snow off the oil pipelines and off the stem depression of nearly ripe cherries so the rain won’t cause them to spoil.

The motto of the story: fear not the absurd.

Innovation is an Unnatural Act

26th of February ~

Look at any organization chart and you’ll see a familiar list of Departments. Look at your own organization charts and assess how many of those groups are involved in regulatory and risk management activities. Organizations need structure and controls. Lots of controls. The older the industry the more the controls. Each time an exception happens a new policy or risk management mechanism is put in place.

Bureaucracy seldom supports innovation.

Look at how you spend YOUR day. How much of your time is spent reacting to crises and putting out fires? When was the last time you and your colleagues convened a meeting to explore possibilities?

Reactivity is the enemy of Innovation.

My point is that innovation requires proactive work. And in most companies there’s no Department of Innovation. Research and Development is involved in new product or service development but that’s just one slice of your innovation opportunities.

Most of us don’t spend time looking for more work to put on our schedule. We’re busy enough managing what’s in front of us, thank you very much.

Innovation is not easy. It requires a degree of freedom and collaboration that is unusual in most cultures. So, how do you know how well your organization supports innovation?

The BEST tool I know is the SOQ. It assess your organization climate on nine dimensions.

It’s also an excellent referendum on your leadership quality, as leaders have the greatest influence on innovation climate.

Learn more here.

Bees Know

4th of November ~

Recently a friend described a group activity she’d experienced at a conference. Using the metaphor of a working hive, the worker bees went all over the room to gather ‘honey” (group intelligence) and came back to their home hive. It reminded me of research from Alex Pentlands, Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT.

(photo source)

Creative teams need information. We can learn about environmental scanning from the world of biology and the hard-working bee gives us a nice model. When the hive needs a new home, a few Scout Bees head out to search for a potential site. These Scout Bees scan and discover. They specialize, thus efficiently using the overall resources of the group.

But simply finding the information isn’t enough. That information must also be integrated. When the intrepid Scout Bees find a promising location for the future hive they (our favorite image!) do a ‘vigorous dance’. Eventually, more bees get interested. A critical mass gets interested and then the hive can move.

“The bees’ process suggests that organizations that alternate as needed between the centralized structure and the richly connected network can shape information flow to optimize both discovery and integration.“, says Pentlands.

Once again we identify the challenge of balancing the need for centralized coordination and the freedom to explore and discover.

As whimsical as Dancing Bees are, there is good research to support the effectiveness of similar processes in helping teams work creatively and effectively. Read more about it here: How Social Networks Work Best.

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