Culture of innovation: 4 attributes and 3 kinds of evidence

Last month I got an opportunity to conduct a session on “Fostering a culture of innovation” for Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) business owners in Bangalore organized by Essae Chandran Institute. We began by exploring the following question. “Assume there is a magic wand that has created a culture of innovation in your organization today. What new stuff will you notice when you go back?” It took some time before participants started responding with “passion”, “curiosity”, “ideas”, etc. Culture is a fluffy stuff and it helps to have something more tangible in recognizing whether it is innovative. In this article, I would like to present four attributes and three kinds of evidence that may give an indication of an innovative culture.

1. Curiosity: Curiosity is perhaps the most underappreciated attribute of innovative culture. Are people raising questions in meetings? Are questions appreciated? For a complex challenge, is there collaboration to frame it with sufficient depth? 
2. Creativity: This is the most visible aspect of innovative culture. Idea portals, idea walls, brainstorms, off-sites, if there is idea generation, it is generally visible.
3. Experimentation: In manufacturing and hardware-centric businesses, experimentation may be happening only in laboratories. In software, it could happen anywhere. It could also be visible in prototyping events such as hackathons. Appreciation of good experiments despite failures is an uncommon but crucial aspect of the maturity of the culture.
4. Demo & Review: Innovation review is, in my opinion, the defining characteristic of innovative culture. Who participates in the review? What kind of questions are asked? Are resources (people, budget) allocated? Do demos happen in the review or just slide show?

Some of these characteristics like creativity are visible on the walls as one walks around in the organization or perhaps on the walls of the intranet. Some others like reviews and experimentation happen in conference rooms and labs.  For some of the SME business owners I interacted with last month, experimentation was the most challenging aspect as it involves investment in tools and expertise in designing and executing experiments. And I agree. However, I feel that a culture of continuous improvement is a good place to start the journey as it doesn’t involve major investment. Many times business leaders want to focus only on big bets.

It takes years to build a culture as evident in Toyota's idea management system dashboard. It took five years for the participation to cross ten percent and almost fifteen years for it to reach thirty percent. In contrast, destroying a culture doesn’t take that long. Imagine a CEO sending a curt message saying that failure will not be tolerated. It won’t be surprising if people stop experimenting due to fear of failure.

Appreciation is a tricky lever. If you decide to appreciate every idea, then appreciation loses its significance. And if you decide to appreciate only the successful innovations, then smart failures remain unappreciated. In a place where only success matters, people will avoid risk so as not to fail. One needs to find the right balance between efforts (giving ideas, doing experiments, making a business case) and outcomes.

I feel an innovation review is a powerful lever, especially for senior management. A lot can be communicated through the decisions and feedback given during a review. For example, a review that emphasizes a demo vs just a slideshow sends a message that prototyping matters.

Hope this characterization helps in deriving a basic assessment of the culture of innovation in small and big organizations and gives direction on possible plans of action.

4 quotes from Prof Edgar Schein that are stuck with me

 

Prof Edgar Schein passed away on January 26 at the age of 94. His son and collaborator Peter Schein wrote, “He and I had just finished a work gig at about 5p and were chatting after and a few hours after that he passed away peacefully, no pain, no illness, no hospitalization. As he wanted it.”

Ed Schein’s work had a huge influence on my consulting career – both in the area of culture of innovation and my consulting style. It is no surprise that I have quoted him in sixteen of my blogs since 2008. Many of them were on topics that I found interesting in his books, articles, and interviews. As I added more areas of study like design thinking and mindfulness, I realized I had something to learn from Schein in each of them. In this article, I present 4 quotes from Ed Schein that are stuck with me.

Observation is an intervention: Schein says, “If I go into an organization to observe something, my presence there, what questions I ask, and everything I do is an intervention in that organization’s life.” And adds, “The notion that I can go there and ‘gather data in order to plan an intervention later’ is, I now realize, one of the most nonsensical ideas in the field of consulting.”[1] I have illustrated this in my blog Where does intervention begin? Story of Dr Kiran Bedi’s first day at Tihar Jail (2010).

Changing culture is a misnomer: Schein says, “I think changing culture is a misnomer. You change people’s behaviour, and you may eventually influence their beliefs,” he adds, “If you define culture as a common learned response, then it changes with success. If you impose a new way of doing things, and people try it and it works, then slowly they build a new culture.” [2] I wrote about this topic in my blog – Saying “We need a culture of innovation” is mostly correct and useless (2009).

Focus more on process than on content: When I am in a meeting arguing with a colleague, I may be focused on his argument and my counter-argument. That is the content of the conversation. Schein suggests that I should focus more on the process [3]. For example, can I observe the process of communication, “I am trying to compete with my colleague and showing to others that I am brighter and smarter?” This may lead to a reflection, “Why am I arguing here? Is it possible to appreciate the other person’s point and build a relationship that might lead to a better solution?” Focus on process involves observing how anxieties such as losing an argument and aspirations about one’s career are driving the thinking and behaviour. I wrote about this in – 3 tips on being mindful in the corporate world: An Edgar Schein perspective (2019). Another way Schein puts this is, “Listening to the other is secondary to listening to the self.” [4]

There is no “real problem”, only a set of worries: In the final chapter titled “Concluding comments – some final thoughts on how to be really helpful” of the book “Humble consulting: how to provide real help faster” Schein mentions the following: “To be really helpful requires locating what the real problem is, that is, what is worrying the client while accepting the fact that there is no ‘real problem,’ only a set of worries that may be all over the map. To locate what is worrying the client requires open and trusting communication between client and helper. The client has to feel secure enough to reveal what is personally bothering him or her.” [5] I wrote about this in the blog “My 3 takeaways from Edgar Schein’s Humble consulting” (2016)

In one of the online webinars in May 2021 when asked for final words, Ed asked this question, “Can we get to level-two relationships (i.e. beyond transactional) among countries and among larger units to develop ways of saving the planet and thereby saving ourselves?”

For someone like me who got to know about Ed and his thoughts only through books and interviews Ed’s passing away does not change much. It is such a joy to read/listen to Ed. Thank you, Ed.

Sources:

[1] James Campbell Quick, “The next frontier: Edgar Schein on organizational therapy”, The Academy of Management Executive: Feb 2000, page 32.

[2] Tony Manning talks to Edgar Schain, May 2004.

[3] “Humble leadership: Edgar Schein: talks at Google”, interview by Karen May at Google, Feb 2, 2016 (Ed’s quote is at 18:50).

[4] James Campbell Quick, “The next frontier: Edgar Schein on organizational therapy”, The Academy of Management Executive: Feb 2000, page 32.

[5] Edgar Schein, “Humble consulting: how to provide real help faster,” Berrett-Koehler, 2016.

Image sources: amorebeautifulquestion.com, amazon.com

Yezdi Lashkari’s insights on innovation in the Hitech world

It was a pleasure to have my classmate and friend Yezdi Lashkari give a guest lecture in my course “Strategic management of technology and innovation” at IIM Bangalore last term. Yezdi is currently the Founder of Flexmoney, a leading Fintech startup based in Mumbai that is trying to disrupt digital consumer credit market. Yezdi has had an illustrious career spanning IITB, MIT Media Lab, Seattle, and Silicon Valley and 3 start-ups. Before I could grasp what Internet was all about, Yezdi had sold his first Internet-based start-up Firefly to Microsoft in 1998. He worked with bosses like Satya Nadella and Steve Ballmer at Microsoft. In his talk, Yezdi captivated the class with his nuggets of wisdom. Here are 3 of his insights on innovation in the HiTech world:

     1.      Failure is an option:  Yezdi’s second startup happened around the 2008 financial meltdown and it had to close down. Like many of us, Yezdi grew up in the “failure is not an option” culture in India. Until that point, he had not seen any failure. So this startup failure came as a big shock and disappointment. This is when he got good advice from his angel investors. They said, “You can’t blame yourself for this. The entire world is going down. Take a break. Come back and we will give you money for the next startup”. He realized that that was an amazing attitude. After more such experiences, Yezdi is convinced, “If you are not failing, you are not trying enough.”

2.      Listen from all directions: Satya Nadella was Yezdi’s first boss at Microsoft. He was not the most aggressive boss around unlike the Microsoft culture prevalent at that time. However, he was very good at listening and synthesizing different points of view. Over the years, Yezdi began to appreciate the importance of listening from all directions. Juniors are quite hesitant to speak up when the boss is around. And unless one cultivates the culture that anyone can speak up, ideas get blocked. In the hitech world, young people are likely to be in touch with the latest technology trends. And if one doesn’t listen to them, one may not catch these signals.

3.      Have fun: Corporate world today is extremely fast-paced. One needs to work hard and it also involves sacrifices. However, if you just focus on your career, you are likely to lose out on a lot of joy. Yezdi’s move back from Silicon Valley to India was motivated by his desire to spend more time with his parents. He feels it is important to take breaks and spend time with friends, family, and parents. And Yezdi walks the talk.

Thanks, Yezdi for sharing your wisdom with us!

My 3 takeaways from “Experimentation works” by Stefan Thomke

I have been a fan of both systematic experimentation and Prof. Stefan Thomke for over a decade. Hence, it is not surprising that I enjoyed his recent book “Experimentation works: The surprising power of business experiments”. In this book, Thomke makes some of the core concepts from his earlier book “Experimentation matters” more accessible and brings out the increased scope and scale of disciplined business experimentation in the digital era. I have several takeaways from this book. However, for the sake of creating interest, let me highlight three of them.

Bad vs good experiments:  The book brings out characteristics of what makes a good business experiment. When a CEO of a retail chain J.C. Penney implements a bold plan of revamping the retail stores based on what worked in his earlier stint at Apple, the company is demonstrating HiPPO, a bias for Highest Paid Person’s Opinion. That is not even a bad experiment. When you tinker with rewards to see if it increases productivity, it is an example of trial-and-error or an uncontrolled or a bad experiment. Why? This is because you don’t know the counterfactual. i.e. How do you know that productivity would have increased even without the changed reward? Thomke dedicates a chapter “What makes a good business experiment?” to explain this which I found useful. The attributes of a good business experiment include falsifiability of the hypothesis, feasibility, and repeatability of the experiment among others.  

Scale of online experimentation: With the advent of online digital platforms, designing and running randomized control trials became cheap, fast, and scalable. Thomke dedicates three chapters to present various aspects of online, large scale experimentation. One chapter takes a peek into his favorite experimentation organization - Booking.com which runs more than one thousand concurrent tests on its website, servers and apps every single day. When it is designing a “Book” button, it creates two versions one with say, a yellow button, and the other with a blue button, and then it gets tested live with millions of customers. The color that attracts the most bookings gets used. David Vismans, chief product officer, says, “Our customers decide where to take the website, not our managers.” With millions of page hits every day, even a small one percent improvement in conversion can have a big impact on the business. Booking.com is not alone, LinkedIn runs between five hundred and one thousand experiments concurrently through the year. Goole, Amazon, IBM, and even start-ups have been using this approach to experimentation.

Ethical issues in business experimentation: What if you are testing a differential pricing rather than different colors of the button? Could it be unfair to the customers who pay more? While designing experiments, has care been taken to see safety and emotional impact on customers? In other words, experimenters carry ethical responsibility to test new ideas for integrity before running randomized experiments. Hence, some of the leading experimentation organizations are adding ethical guidelines and case studies as part of their employee training. In one chapter, Thomke looks at seven attributes of experimentation culture such as integrity.

One area which I wish the book covered more is – replication crisis. As of today (June 2020), it is a decade long ongoing methodological crisis in which it has been found that many scientific studies are difficult or impossible to replicate. It mainly affects social sciences and medicine. Since business experimentation is akin to social science experimentation, I feel it is relevant here.

In the epilogue, Thomke imagines future directions of business experimentation. With the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI), could design, execution and analysis of experiments be automated – outsourced to experiment-bots like chat-bots? What if the business decisions themselves are taken automatically without human intervention? Thomke feels, based on the current research, that some of the required ingredients for this to work exist already today.

The book gives a number of pointers for further study which I find very helpful. I strongly recommend this book to managers who care about innovation and experimentation.

image source: amazon.com

My 3 takeaways from Ken Kocienda’s “Creative selection” at Apple

“How does this process compare with Apple’s design process?” is a question that I often get in my design thinking workshops. I talk about a few anecdotal incidents I have gathered from here and there. But quickly admit that I don’t know how it works at Apple. Thanks to Ken Kocienda’s “Creative selection: Inside Apple’s design process during the golden age of Steve Jobs”, we get some idea how the software design process worked during the first decade of this century, at least in the iPhone project. Ken is the father of the autocorrect feature of the iPhone and the book is also a biography of the idea from challenge to release. Here are my 3 takeaways from the book:

Importance of demo-culture: If there is one thing that Ken is trying to emphasize the Apple design process, it is the importance given to building and reviewing demos from top to bottom. Demos would get reviewed at all levels all the time. Selected demos would get reviewed by Steve Jobs and Ken begins the book with a detailed description of the drama associated with one of his demos to Jobs. That time Ken was working on the iPad keyboard and he was exploring how to provide the user with an option of two keyboards – one with bigger but fewer keys and the other with smaller but more keys. He had used a zoom key to toggle between the two keyboards. He was proud of the flexibility he was offering to the user. And yet the 2-3 questions that Steve Jobs asked him during the review played an important role in simplifying the design. Ken calls this iterative design process – demo – feedback – next demo – creative selection, the title of the book.

Role of challenge campaigns: In 2005, Ken was part of a small team of engineers working on the secret phone project called Purple. At one point, all the engineers were called for a meeting and it was announced that from then on all of them were keyboard engineers. It meant that the issue of software keyboard on a touch screen had become critical enough for all the engineering effort to be focused on it. The tactile feedback of a Blackberry-type keyboard was missing in their phone and hence typing accuracy was low. All engineers began to show their demos of various types of software keyboards. This is when Ken invented the autocorrect feature and his keyboard demo was selected for further development. This is an example of how challenge campaigns can be used to solve critical business challenges.  Unlike the keyboard derby example, not all business challenges need to be solved by stopping everything else. However, like the keyboard derby example, they need to emphasize demos and prototyping. And at the end, promising ideas need to be integrated into the roadmaps.

The intersection of technology and liberal arts:  In the chapter titled “The intersection” Ken says, “Apple valued expertise in both technology and liberal arts”. Ken is a history Major and pursued photography seriously for a few years before starting his career as a software developer. “Working at the intersection” was a topic of discussion among Apple employees and there was a half-day course on this topic at Apple University. In the technology industry, I am familiar with, this is hardly the case. People like to hero-worship Steve Jobs, but how many are willing to explore what it means to “work at the intersection”? I guess worshipping has always been easier than exploration in human history.

Apart from these concepts, Ken sheds light on many more areas associated with the Apple culture of his time such as the role of DRI – Directly Responsible Individual, the relevance of empathy & focus, the role of collaboration, the importance of asking oneself, “What do I really enjoy?” especially in the context of individual contributor vs management etc.

In case you prefer listening to audio to reading, I recommend Ken’s interview “Inside the Apple factory: Software design in the age of Steve Jobs”. It covers almost all of these points. 

Image source: goodreads.com

Could the feeling of everyday monotony involve self-deception?

“How to overcome everyday monotony?” is a question that surfaces in my workshops in different forms and from participants of all age groups and positions. Some of them are just a year or two into their career while some are at leadership positions in their organizations. The question gets expressed differently but the essence is the same. They feel that their everyday life is not creative and it has become monotonous or routine. Could this feeling of monotony involve self-deception? That’s what I would like to explore in this article.

Let’s take an example of an activity which many people hate – long commute. And then let’s see if we can generalize the learning to other monotonous activities. Let’s say I end up spending two hours every day on commute. I may carry a feeling that I don’t have any choice but to endure this boring activity. I start building a story involving I as a victim of the situation and how I am suffering every day. I complain every day about my commute to my family members and friends. And that doesn’t change the situation.

As the complaint gets repeated multiple times, the story gets solidified. And the story prevents me from seeing any other option which might be there that might make the commute more peaceful or at least less boring etc. This is an example of self-deception because it involves misperception of reality and misattribution of cause. It is true that the two-hour commute every day is a fact. However, is it necessary that it should generate a feeling of boredom? In fact, we see so many people listening to music or podcasts, watching movies, reading books, talking to friends during their commute. Thus, we can see that the situation does not necessitate boredom. I am deceiving myself by building this complaint that in this situation feeling bored is inevitable. Thus, it is possible that this boredom could involve self-deception. What needs to happen to come out of this self-deception?

Let’s assume leaving the job and working from home are not options right now. Then the first thing that needs to happen is to accept commute as a fact. i.e. stop resisting it or hating it. Then, I could raise a curiosity question: How do I make my commute more interesting? As I observe other people, talk to them about their commute, I find out that different people use different ways of making their commute interesting. Of course, I need to observe and listen with some openness. Because my complaining voice would try to reinforce itself by saying that what works for them won’t work for me. This may be true, but unless I try, I won’t know.

If you don’t like talking about your problems to other people, you could still find ideas if you observe your own commute over a period, say for a week or two. You may find out that it is not equally boring on all days. Say, the commute on Wednesday was better than the other days. Then you may ask, what was different on Wednesday? And, you may see that you had a friend with you in the car or on the bus. Then you may ask, how do I get to travel with friends more often etc. Slowly, you may discover multiple ways in which your commute can become more interesting.

Now, what was done for boredom associated with commute can be done for other activities you find monotonous. There were two things crucial in addressing commute challenge: (1) Raising the question – How do I make it more interesting? And; (2) Observing bright spots – things that are working for others as well as for me. In fact, I keep two diaries (1) Curiosity diary: A list of questions related to thing I am curious about and (2) Bright spot diary: A list of things that have worked well for me. For example, entry no. 57 in the curiosity diary of 2019 reads, “Is reading overrated?” dated 1^st March. And there are 94 entries so far the curiosity diary this year. Similarly, entry no. 15 in the Bright spot diary on 24^th February reads, “In-class interview model worked well in design thinking workshop”.  With both the lists, there is plenty to experiment. How can there be boredom?

In short, complaining about the feeling of boredom doesn’t help. Instead, if we are curious about the source of boredom and question its necessity, then something else may happen. Similarly, if we observe and listen to what is going on within my context as well as others’ context, there will always be ideas worth experimenting.

Could listening be the biggest source of ideas?

“No, no, that’s not possible”. One participant in my workshop was telling another. Both of them had more than twenty years of experience. So they were experienced senior managers. However, what was conspicuously missing in their conversation was listening. And I would like to explore here if listening could be the biggest source of ideas.

The two gentlemen arguing with each other were responding to the idea of remotely monitoring a large power station located in a remote hilly area. The person proposing the idea was saying that it is already implemented in other parts of the world. The other skeptic was firm. He said, “It won’t work in our organization”. They were both from a Public Sector Unit (PSU) and the skeptics were confident that the culture of the organization doesn’t allow such an idea to be implemented.

Perhaps the skeptic was right. Maybe the idea won’t work in their company. However, there was no harm in considering it as a possibility at this early stage. There was no serious study done yet to the best of their knowledge and no experimentation was carried out. What lacked at this stage is listening with “It’s possible” attitude. And perhaps by honing the openness in listening one may access a large pool of ideas.

The situation where one defends one’s ideas and rejects others’ ideas is something I witness in every workshop. The teams have hardly done any experimentation in building their case and yet they are ready to take a position and defend their idea. Instead of defending, if they could just listen and make of note of various comments and suggestions, they would have access to so many more ideas.

A decade ago I wrote a blog “Do ideas float in the air?” It was inspired by an article in New Yorker by Malcolm Gladwell titled “In the air: who says big ideas are rare?” The hypothesis here is that big ideas are floating in the air and are just waiting to be listened to. If your listening antenna is sharp enough you will catch it. It needs “it’s possible” attitude while listening. And it looks like this attitude doesn’t come naturally to many of us.

In 1878, Prof. Barker of University of Pennsylvania suggested to Thomas Edison that he should subdivide electric light so that it could be got like small units like gas. And he listened. Hundred years later (1976) Mike Markkula wrote a document called “The Apple marketing philosophy” and suggested to Steve Jobs that the first tenet of marketing should be empathy, an intimate connection with the feelings of the customers. And Jobs listened.

Today we get to hear ideas not only from personal interactions but also from podcasts, TED talks and other sources of social media. Perhaps all it needs is listening with “it’s possible” attitude and discipline of noting down ideas that interest you. How can your idea pipeline be dry if you listen?

Image source: clipart-library.com

What to do when boss says “Be more innovative”?

“What do I do?” asked a participant in a one on one conversation during a coffee break in one of my workshops. He felt he had been doing all he could on the innovation front. And yet his boss told him, “Be more innovative”. He was a bit upset. What could he do? Here are a few tips.

Listening: In my opinion, the most effective response is perhaps the most difficult one as well. i.e. to listen. Perhaps the boss has some important point to tell. At the very least, everybody carries a need to be listened to. Boss is no different. It could also be an opportunity to understand what innovativeness might mean to the boss. Sometimes the crux lies in the subtle differences in meanings. And an abstract concept like innovativeness can carry so many shades. Hence, I feel the most important thing to do is to listen and understand what boss means by “more innovative”. Perhaps ask questions so that he can elaborate it with examples.

Communication: Sometimes one is doing a number of things related to innovation – identifying new challenges, generating ideas, involving team members, building prototypes etc. However, one area which is sometimes overlooked is communication. Communicating innovation efforts may involve a short write up, a dashboard, a presentation, a demo or a combination of these. I would at least check if the innovation efforts are communicated regularly to the boss.

Challenge seeking: When boss says, “be more innovative” it could also mean following. Some of the key challenges that are important to him are perhaps not getting adequate attention. Hence, it may be a suggestion to prioritize the challenges that are given attention during the innovation efforts. Hence, it may help to probe and find out what according to him are the key challenges worth addressing. When the challenge comes from the boss, there is a higher chance of getting sponsorship for a promising idea.

In short, we looked at three things one can do when boss says, “Be more innovative” viz. listening, communication and challenge seeking. Will it always work? No. But carrying a grudge in the mind is not known to work either.

3 types of reflections and 3 leading questions

“Hi, How are you?” This common greeting is potentially an invitation to reflect. However, we mostly respond with a mechanical “I am fine, thank you” and move on. What would it mean to actually reflect? This is what we explore in this article. Let’s look at 3 leading questions that result in 3 types of reflections.

How did it go? This is perhaps the most common type of reflection. It is like rewind and replay of a chain of events with a critical lens. The time span could be past few days, weeks, months or years of our life.  Or it could be a start to the end of a project we just completed. The primary objective of this reflection is to learn from the past and incorporate the learning in future actions. Three common sub-questions during this reflection are: What went well? What went wrong? And how do we do it better? In my case, I write a note after every workshop where these points are captured.

What next? When we ask, “How to do it better?” we assume, we will continue to do the same or similar thing in future, hopefully, more effectively. “What next?” question suggests that you don’t have to do the same thing as you did in the past. If you have been working in a particular area, “What next?” may prompt you to consider doing something else. In contrast, for someone who is not working, “What next?” may prompt him to consider working. It may involve looking within and asking, “What do I really enjoy?” and then checking how more of it can be done. It may also come from feedback from the environment where a good opportunity is spotted. In my case, I tend to do this reflection every few months. Sometimes there is a course-correction, sometimes not.

What’s going on here? The previous two types of reflections involve looking at the past and into the future. The third type of reflection involves paying attention to what’s going on in the present moment. In that sense, it is a run-time reflection. Present moment may be pleasurable or painful or perhaps neither. The idea is to watch whatever sensation arises and passes. Perhaps there is a story running in the head of how I or someone else did something and that caused something else etc. The reflection involves watching the train of thought. If there is alertness one may even witness hurts and pride getting registered in memory. For me, this is going on almost all the time. It is intensified when the situation is challenging.

For people who are busy in their job, it is considered a luxury to do even the first type (How did it go?) of reflection. However, the most powerful reflection is the third type of reflection (What’s going on here?) The first and second type reflection may happen when you are unwinding say over a weekend or while on a vacation. In contrast, the third type of reflection may catch the unnecessary winding itself, thus eliminating the need for unwinding.

My 3 takeaways from Kazuo Ishiguro’s class – My secret of writing

Last month I came across a session 2017 Nobel winner Kazuo Ishiguro held in Japan for budding writers titled “My secrets of writing”. It is available on YouTube in two parts: part-1 and part-2 (embedded below). I had read four of Ishiguro novels (some of them twice) when I watched part-1. Then I read his latest novel, The Buried Giant. And then I watched part-2 which refers to the novel. I am a fan of Ishiguro and I really enjoyed listening to the session. I thought the quality of questions was very good and that brought out interesting process Ishiguro follows for his writing. I am not a fiction writer (yet). However, I thought some of the elements Ishiguro mentioned could be relevant for anyone involved in a creative endeavour. Here are 3 of my takeaways from the session:

1.      2-3-4 sentence ideas: This is what Ishiguro said – “I try to make sure that the idea can be expressed very simply in 2 or 3 sentences. If it can’t then the idea isn’t very strong or it’s not yet mature.” And what criteria does he use for picking an idea? He said, “When I look at the idea on a page, I want to be able to feel a real potential, real emotion that comes from these sentences. I want to think that there is a whole world in there. I want those few sentences to trouble me and stimulate me. Then I feel I could build a whole novel on it.”

He gave an example of his most famous novel – Remains of the day. The idea can be expressed as: This is a story about a man who wants to be the perfect servant. And he is willing to sacrifice his personal life and many things to be an absolutely perfect servant.

The point is, the essence of an idea can be expressed in a simple way in a few sentences. And yet it may carry the potential to excite you, trouble you etc.

2.      Ideas can be re-located in time & space: Ishiguro says, “I made this discovery… The setting isn’t an essential part of the story. You can move stories to different settings, different places in history. And also I suppose different genres: sci-fi, gothic world, thriller world etc.” In fact, for his third novel, Remains of the day, he re-used his idea from his second novel - “The artist of the floating world” (location: Japan, time: 1950s, 60s) and relocated it in a different time and place (location: England, time: 1920s, 30s). This creates a huge canvas for his stories and also it creates a problem of “location hunting”. His last novel “The buried giant” is placed in 5^th century Britain and belongs to a fantasy genre. It contains ogres, pixies and dragons.

3.      Metaphor as a criterion:  One criterion Ishiguro applies in selecting an idea for further development is by looking at its power as a metaphor. Ishiguro said, “As a writer, I am drawn to big metaphors that dominate the entire story. One of the ways I decide if an idea is powerful or not, is I ask - Is this a powerful metaphor for something important or something very big?” For example, he mentions his latest novel The buried giant presents a story where people lose memories very fast – in a day or so – because of the breath of a giant dragon living in the mountains. Some people want to kill the dragon to bring the buried memories alive, some others want to protect the giant because they feel it is keeping the society from going into a civil war. What is the right thing to do? Ishiguro feels that a story like this can be a metaphor for something all individuals and all societies face all the time. The metaphor is certainly relevant for the centuries old memories related to the communal conflicts and the caste conflicts in India which keep getting resurrected from time to time.

In short, writing the essence of the idea in 2-3-4 sentences, trying to relocate the idea in different time and space, using the power of metaphor as a criterion for idea selection are things any of us can try and experiment with. I certainly will.

image source: part-1 of the session - My secrets of writing

How is innovation related to mindfulness?

I work in two areas – innovation and mindfulness. I mention this while introducing myself. A natural question that I get after this is – are these two areas related? I see them as closely related. However, I could be biased. Hence, I thought of jotting my thoughts down and see if I get any inputs. This is an attempt in that direction.

Before exploring the relationship between innovation and mindfulness, it might be easier to see the relationship between innovation and mindlessness. Let’s take an extreme example – 9/11 attack masterminded by Osama Bin Laden’s organization. 9/11 attack has all the elements of a radical innovation – A novel idea creating a huge impact when executed. The impact was positive when seen from Laden’s organization. They were trying to make the world a better place – from their perspective. It so turned out – their perspective was quite contradictory to the perspective of many others. In fact, rest of the world labelled this act as mindless. Thus an innovation may be the result of mindless thinking and may result into mindless action – at least as seen from a section of society.  

Innovation is a creative response to the perceived challenge. And mindfulness is about perceptual clarity – seeing what is. If what you perceive is distorted or muddled up, no matter how hard you try, no matter how many geniuses you put together, the response will be muddled up. If you don’t have the ability to see if you are solving the right problem, then you may be hurting humanity even if you have the best of intentions.

Let’s take the case of Uber – a company that is known for its innovations and a company whose taxi service is running in 600+ cities across the world. I am a beneficiary of its service and perhaps you are too. Uber has had a rapid growth in a short span. However, things become murky when you ask the question – growth at what cost? It apparently fostered a culture where “back stabbing” of co-workers was encouraged and mistreatment of female employees was ignored. An investigation into sexual harassment issues led to the termination of 20 employees and eventually resulted in the resignation of the company CEO.

Uber is a case where the intent of treating all stakeholders fairly got into conflict with the intent of growing the business at a certain speed. And the intent to grow overpowered everything else. Perhaps Uber is not unique and that every organization that is chasing a quarter-on-quarter revenue-profit targets is undergoing similar pressure. To make sound decisions under such circumstances needs intense awareness of not only what is going on outside – in the meeting room, in the company, in the market but also inside one’s own mind – the anxiety of falling short of the growth target, the damage to self-image for not meeting the investor expectations etc. This awareness is mindfulness.

In short, innovation and mindfulness are connected deeply at the problem definition. Unless one is mindful of the distortions created by one’s own anxieties and aspirations one ends up solving the wrong problem. And nurturing a wrong problem is similar to nourishing a monster. You never know what shape it may take in future.

Image source: wikipedia.org

Sustaining participation in innovation initiatives

I got an opportunity to write an article on “Sustaining participation in innovation initiatives” which appeared in NHRD Journal, Oct 2015 issue. This was a special issue on “HR in innovative organizations” edited by my friend Rishikesha Krishnan. In this article, I would like to summarize the paper in brief. You can read the full paper here.

Key hindrances: One of the key challenges that organizations face in running innovation programs is sustaining participation. People participate enthusiastically in the beginning. However, the energy is slowly dissipated and is replaced by apathy or cynicism. What are the key hindrances in sustaining participation? The paper presents 3: (1) Big bets only approach – i.e. organizations insisting that innovation is only about big bets. This limits the scope of innovation to a few people and most others feel “It’s not for me”.  (2) Lack of help for idea authors: Idea authors especially novices need help while taking their idea from a crude form to an attractive business proposal. The help could be being a sounding board, suggestions regarding prototyping, finding a collaborator, in preparing a business plan etc. If no such helps is available then idea authors may feel frustrated. (3) Absence of dashboard: A simple dashboard can communicate a lot about the progress of innovation activity. On the other hand, a lack of dashboard leaves people clueless. This includes those people who are running the innovation initiative in the first place.

What to do? Core elements: The paper suggests that any innovation initiative should have two core elements: (1) A program management function and (2) A focus on spotting and scaling “bright spots”. Program manager (full time or part-time) would maintain a roadmap and run various interventions which may include running a challenge campaign, training workshops, hackathon event, blogging contest, publishing a newsletter, calendarize reviews etc. “Bright spots” are evidences where things may be working in pockets. Program managers should be constantly on the lookout for such bright spots and see if they can be scaled.

More elements for “Continuous improvement”: If the primary focus is building creative confidence, then it helps to define what an acceptable idea is. Keeping the bar very high will be demotivating and keeping the bar too low will not generate an interest. Moreover, the review of small ideas needs to happen as low in the hierarchy as possible. Otherwise it can become a bottleneck leading to long turnaround cycles.

More elements for “Incubation process”: If the primary focus is on the incubation process, then it helps to run campaigns focused on specific business challenges.  Also management needs to give attention in the form of regular reviews and maintaining a rigor for the reviews.

Hope you find it useful and I would love to hear your comments / suggestions.

Organizational Innovation Ecosystem: A re-look after five years

It has been over five years since I first wrote about various elements of an organizational innovation ecosystem (see the picture above). In this half a decade I got opportunities to meet people from several dozen organizations – from various types such as for-profit, not-for-profit, Government, NGO etc. What did I find? Which elements seem to be in place? Which elements are hard to find? Which elements would I replace today? And which new ones might I add? Let’s explore in this article.

Let’s start with those elements which organizations serious about innovation seem to be putting in place:

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• Idea management process: Many organizations are making serious efforts in improving their idea management process. Some are also trying to bring various disjoint processes under one broad umbrella – e.g. kaizen, Quality circle, Idea portal, R&D, Internal VC process etc.
• Rewards & Innovation day: HR department has been playing a role in putting rewards & recognition process in place. I got an opportunity to visit the stalls put up on the innovation day in organizations like Titan.
• Training programs: L&D department has been playing a key role in rolling out training programs that raise awareness on innovation.
• Laboratory & corporate venture fund: In terms of structures, I see investments in labs and even in putting a corporate venture fund together.

Now, let’s turn to areas where there are challenges:

• Challenge process: Taking ownership of top business challenges and keeping them alive in a challenge book is something that I don’t see much. Managers who take up this role of owning one or more key business challenges are called champions in our book “8 steps to innovation”. A live and prioritized challenge book can bring focus to innovation efforts. It might also contribute to the strategy.
• Success stories: Like Master Shifu follows a bright spot to train Kung Fu Panda, there is an opportunity in digging deeper the success stories and finding scalable approaches. Unfortunately, managers are so busy with problems, that they don’t have time for studying the bright spots – be it the people who give ideas regularly, prototyping etc.
• Partnership network: This is perhaps the toughest asset to build and manage. It takes years and very few people have the patience to look that far. However, it is an extremely potent asset for building innovation capacity.

Any new element I would add today? Perhaps an element titled “innovation sandbox” – structures where experimentation capacity is massively increased in a specific area. Also I would replace the element “Immersive Research” with a more commonly used term “Design Thinking”. And replace “Success stories” with “Bright spot focus”. (See the updated picture below).

Overall, I still feel that the ecosystem view can provide a useful perspective while building innovation capacity systematically.

Starting an innovation initiative: An ABCD approach

Over the past half a decade, I have come across several companies who were interested in either starting or reviving a languishing innovation initiative. Unfortunately, many of them looked at the initiative as launching a series of innovation workshops. Of course, raising awareness is an important part of any new initiative. However, the workshop-only approach makes it much harder to sustain the initiative. Here is an approach I call “ABCD” that in my experience works much better.

Awareness: As I mentioned above, awareness on “what is innovation?”, “How to innovate effectively?”, “How to enable innovation?” certainly helps.  This can be achieved through workshops and knowledge sharing sessions. Apart from inviting internal and external experts to share knowledge awareness can also be raised by sending communication on useful links. Sharing of internal stories of both successes and failures may play an important role because people are able to relate to them more. Hence, internal blogs / presentations matter.

Bright spot: No new initiative gets adopted overnight. Chances are high only a few people join it enthusiastically. In such a situation the voice of “it is not going to work” can be high. What helps in such situations is to ask the questions: What is working well here? And, how can we scale it? For example, if a small percentage of employees give ideas in an idea campaign, we should go interview these people to understand, “Why did they give ideas?” Did their boss play any role? Was it about the reward?  Or was it more like an opportunity to do something exciting? Answers to questions might help in scaling the initiative further.

Challenge campaign: As part of the innovation activity, many companies revive or establish an idea box. For a technology savvy company this could be an intranet portal where employees submit ideas. In some places this is a physical box or a notice board with post-it notes. A typical complaint a few months after putting up an idea box is, “Oh, we are not getting any interesting ideas. Most of the ideas are incremental in nature.”  Incremental ideas play an important role in fostering a culture of innovation. However, if the goal is also to get big impact ideas, then the first step should be framing the business relevant challenges. With these challenges a calendarized campaign can be run inviting ideas in response to one or a few specific challenges. These campaigns not only improve the quality of ideas but also result in inter-departmental collaboration. Credibility of challenge campaigns rests on leadership sponsoring selected ideas for further development. (Check out this 10-point challenge campaign checklist)

Dashboard: Any initiative needs a mirror that reflects the current state. Innovation dashboard serves that purpose. It may capture various pipelines (small ideas, big bets, prototypes, white papers, patents etc.), participation, business impact measures etc.  It may also capture event / workshop information (e.g. hackathon events, blogging competition etc.) The dashboard may evolve as the program matures. The dashboard is used to analyse the health of the initiative and design goals and interventions.

4 reasons why innovation programs in India flounder

Over the past five years, I have been fortunate to have witnessed several dozen innovation programs. I have seen the journey of some innovation programs over 3 to 5 years. In this article, I would like to present 4 reasons why I believe innovation programs in India flounder.

Before I present the reasons, let me share the point in the journey where the programs struggle. Here is a simple and useful 5-level maturity framework that I have used to map various programs.

Most of the programs struggle around level-3. The parameters where the difficulty starts are typically: participation (difficult to sustain at 30%), review process (maintain the rigor and rhythm), prototyping (ideas don’t move) etc.

The four reasons why the programs struggle are: (1) Poor program management (2) Lack of emphasis on experimentation (3) Lack of rigor and rhythm in innovation reviews and (4) No champions. Let’s look at each one briefly.

1.      Poor program management: Any serious program needs a person or at least a function that holds the roadmap. Innovation program is not a one quarter project. It runs over multiple years. You need people who are constantly watching what is working and what is not working, trying to remove the hurdles which are holding things back, deciding quarterly targets, publishing a dashboard, holding events, running campaigns etc. If you tell someone that management of innovation program is 5% of his KRA, chances are high things will not move. Most innovation programs need a full-time or at least a half-time program manager.

2.      Lack of emphasis on experimentation: Ideas by themselves are of little use. You need people to build prototypes and validate some of the assumptions behind the ideas. Many organizations don’t acknowledge experimentation as a legitimate activity. Hence ideas don’t move forward.  Some organizations (e.g. Ericsson) offer sponsorship in the form an experiment week to good ideas. In some places, it is considered acceptable to spend part of your work time (say 15-20%) in experimentation (e.g. Google, 3M). Some places organize events such as hackathon or prototyping workshops where ideas take shape.

3.      Lack of rigor and rhythm in innovation review: Small ideas can get implemented at team level. However, big ideas need attention, review and investment from business leaders. Moreover, funded ideas need to be reviewed regularly to see if they are stuck somewhere or need to be dropped etc. Many times innovation reviews are not given a priority. They get postponed due to priority scheduling of other meetings. Many times the reviews are too lenient. No criterion is used to kill unviable projects. Sooner or later they run out of oxygen. That creates a lot of bitterness. It is much better to systematically kill non-working ideas so that more fresh ideas can be funded.

4.      No champions: I strongly believe in the saying - An idea either finds a champion or dies. A champion commits to a challenge long term and puts his weight behind it. An idea may get stuck due to lack of resources, lack of connections to right people or a narrow vision. A champion pitches in any or all of these areas. This is what George Fernandez did for Konkan railway, what Einstein did for Satyendranath Bose and what Mike Markkula did for Apple. If your organization doesn’t have any champions, then it is going to be difficult for big ideas to move beyond prototyping stage. You should be asking your senior managers, “Which idea are you championing?”

Is innovation really about progress?

I show this picture to the participants of innovation workshops and ask, “Is this an innovation?” There would typically be a silence for a few seconds before someone would say, “No” and then a “Yes”. What is your answer? My answer is “It depends”. From the perspective of Mumbai city, 26/11 terrorist attack is not an innovation. However, from the perspective of the terrorist organization which masterminded the attack, it would be a radical innovation. There is an idea, its implementation and a huge impact indicative of a successful mission.

In the current times, innovation has acquired a positive connotation. When we look at the technology breakthroughs that has permeated our lives, it becomes obvious why. Electricity, telephone, TV, computer, Internet, new life-saving drugs, automobile, aeroplane – these innovations have made our lives productive and enriching. It is no surprise that many for-profit companies are considering innovation as an important lever to achieve their growth agenda. Countries such as India have also put innovation as an important element to improve their GDP growth. So, where is the problem?

Nothing in life is that positive. Twentieth century witnessed killings of over 150 million people in wars and other conflicts. The primary instruments used for these killings - Atom bomb, guns and war planes are also examples of innovations. Production and consumption of guns have also contributed to GDP growth. In fact, there is nothing like a bad GDP growth. If Taj hotel is damaged in a terrorist attack and needs to be rebuilt, the construction work contributes to GDP growth. In fact, a lot of growth has happened by consuming non-renewable resources and adding toxic chemicals to the environment. None of this damage is reflected in the GDP.

I feel, innovation is a tool, just like a hammer. It is value-neutral. You can use it for the good of the world and for the bad of the world. However, there is the catch. Most of us have good intent when we begin a journey and unknowingly it leads us to a wrong place. I am sure Hitler was trying to make the world a better place – according to his perspective. When Chahattisgarh Government mobilized and deployed Salwa Judum movement to counter the Naxal violence in the region, it had good intentions. However, it resulted in human right violations. Unfortunately, ideas don't carry a tag saying "good" or "bad".

Innovations in India and elsewhere will most likely create growth. But at what cost? That is not clear. Perhaps pollution is the other side of the same coin. I guess, I don’t understand what progress means. I prefer to remain curious about its meaning.

Related article:

Role of value system in innovation: An insight shared by Dr. Gururaj (Desh) Deshpande in a talk in 2012 in Bangalore.

Image source: deccanchronicle.com