“It was quite a sight! A dozen senior executives from a big, conservative financial services firm, all sitting on the floor in front of a painting, talking about what it could mean and why they think that.”
On a typical dreary November day, and Suzi and I were sitting in the café inside Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. She had just left her job as Head of Design Thinking at Fidelity Investments and I was taking a sabbatical before deciding what would be next for my career. Introduced by a mutual friend, we decided to swap stories over lunch and a walk through one of the museum’s special exhibitions.
She was describing a Visual Thinking (VTS) session she had recently facilitated and the nearly instant impact it had on the way executives expressed themselves and communicated with each other. She saw them engage in a level of creative problem-solving and critical thinking that they hadn’t in the past.
Intrigued, I set off to learn more. What I discovered was a powerful, proven, and gasp fun way to help my clients navigate the ambiguous early days of innovation and embrace their inner curiosity and creativity.
Why should you care about VTS?
Imagine someone says to you, “If you and your team spend 1-2 hours with me each month for 9 months, I guarantee an improvement in your abilities to:
Quickly gather and synthesize accurate and unique insights by listening deeply and re-phrasing what they heard ensure understanding
Think critically and creatively by examining information or an idea from all angles, rethinking it, and deciding whether to keep, revise, or discard it
Communicate more clearly, respectfully, and productively with a variety of people inside and outside the organization
Work cross-functionally because they can apply critical thinking skills confidently to topics outside of their expertise
Innovate and experiment because they have learned how to individually and as a team operate in uncertainty
Provide more effective feedback by phrasing criticisms as questions and engaging in collaborative discovery and problem-solving conversations
Would you make the time commitment?
Now, what if they said, “All you have to do each month is sit together in a conference room and take part in a conversation. No travel. No additional expenses. Just turn off your email and your phone for one hour and have a conversation in a room you already pay rent on.”
Would you do it then?
Of course you would.
Because you’ve been to trainings that focus on only one of the items in the list above and those trainings are expensive, time-consuming, and not nearly as effective as they should be.
Philip Yenawine was the Director of Education at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York from 1983 – 1993. During that time, he noticed that despite the museum’s efforts to organize and craft detailed explanations and interpretations for each piece of art, visitors would still ask lots of “Why?” questions and would remember little, if anything, from their visit.
Frustrated but curious, he and his team began studying developmental research and theory and discovered that what MOMA visitors needed wasn’t explanations, details, and facts, it was “permission to be puzzled and to think. Consent to use their powerful eyes and intelligent minds. Time to noodle and figure things out. The go-ahead to use what they already know to reflect on what they don’t; the first steps of learning.”
Philip and his team with MOMA partnered with cognitive psychologist Abigail Housen to develop and test a process now known as Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS).
In the 30 years since their initial experiments, Philip and Abigail’s work has been used in 28 countries and 58 museums, over 12,000 students have engaged in VTS discussions and 1,200 people have become trained facilitators.
How to do VTS
The secret to VTS’ effectiveness is in the facilitation so if you’re going to do this, invest in an expert facilitator. An expert facilitator is the only way to get the results listed above.
Here’s how a VTS session works:
Facilitator shares a piece of art specially selected so that “the subjects are familiar… but they also contain elements of mystery.”
Attendees take one minute to silently focus on the art
Facilitator asks 3 questions over the hour:
What’s going on in this picture?
What do you see that makes you say that?
What more can you find?
As each individual answers a question, the Facilitator:
Points at what is being observed
Paraphrases what has been said
Links what has been said to what others have said
Facilitator wraps up the session by thanking everyone and sharing something s/he learned from listening. They do NOT give “the answer” because “this isn’t about right and wrong but about thinking and…that the students singly and together are capable of wonderful, grounded ideas.”
That’s it – 1 piece of art, 3 questions, and at least 5 major benefits if you commit to the process.
Seems like something worth sitting on an art gallery floor for, right?
When I worked on P&G’s WalMart sales team, one of my bosses was a big guy with an even bigger personality. He shared his opinions loudly and broadly and one of his opinions was that we needed to stop using the word “breakthrough.”
“If I have to hear one more time about some new ‘breakthrough’ soap, I will throw you out of this office myself!” he would bellow.
Years later, I can’t help but wonder what he would think of the word “innovation.”
In May 2012, The Wall Street Journal published an article positing that, as the word “innovation” increased in usage, it decreased in meaning. The accompanying infographic said it all:
33,528: Times “innovation” was mentioned in quarterly and annual reports in the previous year
255: Books published in the last 90 days with “innovation” in the title
43%: Executive who say that their company has a Chief Innovation Officer or similar role
28%: Business schools with “innovation,” “innovate,” or “innovative” in their mission statements
That may seem like a lot but, remember, that data is nearly 8 YEARS OLD!
The desire for and investment in Innovation in all its forms – accelerators, incubators, startup/venture studios, corporate venture capital teams – has only grown since 2012.
While this may seem like a good thing, the fact that the success rate of innovations hasn’t changed, means that most people react to “innovation” the same way my boss reacted to “breakthrough” – if you bring it up, they throw you out.
To avoid getting thrown out of offices, one of the first thing I do with my clients when we begin working to build innovation into an enduring capability within their companies, is re-establish what innovation is and is not.
Innovation IS something different that creates value.
When people hear the term “innovation,” they tend to think of new-to-the-world gadgets that fundamentally change how we live our lives. Yes AND it’s many other things, too. Let’s break down the definition:
“Something” includes products and technology, it also includes services, processes, revenue models, and loads of other things. Consider this, many would argue, quite convincingly, that the Toyota Production System was one of the biggest innovations of the 20th century
“Different” often surprises people. After all, even Merriam Webster defines innovation as “something new.” But here’s the thing, one of the most commonly cited innovations, the iPhone, wasn’t “new.” Even Steve Jobs admitted it when he said, in his keynote speech, that Apple was introducing three products – a widescreen iPod with touch controls, a mobile phone, and an internet connected device. The iPhone was, however, different because it combined those three devices into one.
“Creates value” is probably the most important part of the definition. All innovations solve problems. Solving problems creates value. If you solve a big problem, either because it’s a problem lots of people have or it’s a very painful problem a few people have or something in-between, you create a lot of value for others and for yourself.
Innovation IS NOTa one-size-fits-all term.
Think of it this way, both a Kia and a Maserati are cars, but you wouldn’t expect to pay Kia’s price tag and get a Maserati (and vice versa). Similarly, both a convertible and a pick-up truck are automobiles, but you wouldn’t use your convertible to carry building equipment to a construction site.
With a definition as broad as the one above, it’s possible for “innovation’ to become even more meaningless as it gets applied to more things. That’s why it’s important to identify different types of innovation.
There’s no universally accepted set of innovation types, which is why I recommend companies consider defining at least three types that reflect their business and forward-looking strategies.
One of the most common set of innovation categories is based on the degree of change required for implementation:
Core Innovation requires minimal or no change to the current business model (customers, offerings, revenue model, resources and processes). Also known as Continuous or Incremental Innovation, this is the unglamorous but deeply important work of constantly improving what you do and how you do it.
Adjacent Innovation changes a significant change to at least one element of your business model. It could be changing who you serve, like expanding from interventional cardiologists to general cardiologists, what you offer, like P&G’s expansion into “durable goods” when it launched Swiffer, or how you offer or deliver it.
Radical innovation is the stuff that gets all the press. These innovations fundamentally change the business, like IBM moving from computers to business services. These innovations are high-risk and require a lot of time, money, and patience to see to fruition. This type of innovation is also called “Breakthrough” but, for obvious reasons, I shy away from that term.
There are many things that need to be done to shift innovation from buzzword to business capability. Defining innovation AND at least three different types is only the first step in moving from innovation theory and theater to building innovation into a true capability that drives sustainable growth.
Or, as I would tell my old boss, “It’s the first step. But it’s a breakthrough one.”
Originally published on December 30, 2019 on Forbes.com
A relentless stream of news and updates are coming at us, warning us about COVID-19, a declining stock market, rising unemployment, and the financial crunch facing millions and millions of individuals and families.
On the other hand, we’re also getting daily notifications from companies about what they’re doing in the face of all of this news, tips for working from home and maintaining our mental health, and encouragement to support our friends, families, neighbors, and strangers in new ways.
Should we be scared or stoic? Isolated or connected? Hoarding or sharing?
Whatever you choose (and it is your choice), I encourage you to also be creative.
I’m not talking about being creative in the capital C way and take up painting, sculpting, composing, or any of the other activities we typically associate with the fine arts.
I’m talking about calmly assessing your situation, clearly acknowledging the constraints that are requiring change, and then exploring the “new normal” you can create.
This is what innovators do and you, yes YOU, are an innovator.
Innovators know that creativity thrives within constraints. If anything is possible and everything is permissible, you can do whatever you want! But that’s not how the world is. Not now and not before COVID-19.
We, people and businesses, have always faced constraints because we’ve never had infinite resources, money, or time. But we acknowledged the constraints and created within them. That’s what we have to do now.
Caterers have to order food well before events take place so when events are cancelled, caterers are left with a lot of food that they’ve already paid for and without the event income that was going to cover their costs.
Devil’s Food Catering in Portland OR faced exactly this situation. Instead of letting the food go to waste or trying to become a take-out shop on their own, they created Handbasket by teaming with other with other Portland area restaurants, breweries, distilleries, bakeries, and other providers to create “handmade menus for quality in-home dining experiences during this of social distancing.”
Some people are gifted with the motivation to workout and some of us, well…aren’t.
In-person classes and personal training are often the solutions we rely on because we feel a sense of connection with our instructors, trainers, and classmates. As gyms close and social distancing becomes a way of life, the loss of live workouts can deepen our sense of isolation.
Recognizing this, local gyms, studios, and personal trainers in cities across the country are offering livestream classes so that we can continue to feel connected AND healthy AND active from the comfort of our own homes.
p.s. the link above is for the Boston area but I found similar articles for Philly, Washington, Houston, and even Wyoming
Spears Who Dare bills itself as TED meets Broadway, “a groundbreaking speaker series produced like a Broadway show, featuring speakers from around the world who want to ignite change and inspire new ways of thinking.”
Scheduled to take place on March 24, the organizers recognized that, like many other live events, their original plans for a live Broadway event needed to change. Last week, they shifted from live to livestream, planning a 6-camera shoot of each speaker and performer sharing their messages and art in an empty theater.
Then NYC closed the theaters. Within hours the organizers shifted again and asked each speaker to record a “mini-movie” that could be edited together to create “a full-blown Speakers Who Dare Film” to be shared with a global audience, viewing together on the original event date.
People
Seeing your coworkers when you can’t (or don’t want to) videoconference
Homemade games for when you’ve already played all the games you bought
More homemade games for when you really need to interact with people outside your own home
How and what will YOU create today?
Just in case you need a nudge…find the perfect gif starring the perfect celebrity expressing the perfect emotion and send it to someone who needs it
When I first heard about this book, a first-person account of innovating within a large corporation, and that it was set in a mental hospital, I thought “Yup, sounds about right.”
The craziest, most inspiring, and strongest people I have ever known are intrapreneurs. Because you have to be crazy to believe that you can change a massive organization, you have to inspire others to follow you into the fight, and you have to be strong to withstand near-constant defeat and, if and when success arrives, shine the spotlight no on yourself but on all the people who fought alongside you.
Gib’s story is similar to those of other Intrapreneurs.
He was in his early-30s and only a few years into his tenure at Accenture when he proposed the creation of Accenture Development Partnerships based on his experience working with Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO), a program in which business professionals would be loaned out by their employers (who would hold their jobs for 6–12 months) to work as volunteers in developing countries. Corporate social Responsibility (CSR) was all the rage at the time and, Gib reasoned, Accenture was well positioned to replicate VSO’s model given its global staff of bright young consultants and list of clients eager to appear to do good in the world.
The next 15 years were a roller-coaster, one familiar to anyone who has tried to innovate in a corporate environment. The ups of getting support, seeing things work, and watching change unfold. The downs of losing champions, justifying your existence, and fighting to maintain your meager resources despite phenomenal results. The ride ended not with a return to the station (aka a quiet role back in the core business) but with a four-day stay at a psychiatric hospital when his friends and family became concerned about his manic energy and fixation on creating a “Fourth Sector” that would combine the best of the public (government), private (business), and third (NGO) sectors to serve humanity’s greatest needs.
3 Profoundly True and Important Messages
Even though his story is one I lived early in my career, when I was an intrapreneur at P&G, and one that, as a corporate innovation consultant, I’ve seen others live, there were three passages in the book that I found so profoundly important and true that they simply must be shared
Innovation, and lack thereof, is a leadership problem.
“At its core, the problem is about leadership. Too many people believe leadership comes as the result of a promotion — or from a fancy job title on a business card. Not at all. Leadership is more of a mindset than a skillset. Leaders can emerge at all levels of an organisation, even low down.”
Corporate antibodies are the #1 killer of innovation
(Reflecting on an unsupportive executive):
“(Executive) was old school leadership. He’d climbed the ladder in the Business 1.0 world. He was programmed to have a single-minded focus on the business fundamentals — an entire career spent cutting cost, growing revenues, driving efficiency. What’s the problem with that? You might ask. It certainly worked for him, and he’d reached the heady heights of the senior management ranks.”
(When asked it this executive was the main problem):
“Yes and no. We also got confronted by legal, tax, compliance, security, you name it. My team bore the brunt of their endless checks, audits, and bureaucracy. I remember having a very strong feeling that we were suffering from a thousand cuts and I was powerless to do anything. Good people were leaving our team out of sheer frustration or pressure.”
Intrapreneurs are the heroes this world needs
“Intrapreneurs are not content with business as usual and aspire to drive change bottom up and inside out of their own organisations. These are the people who won’t change companies when they get frustrated in their jobs or crave more purpose from their careers. Instead, they stay put and change the companies they’re in….
No one ever said it would be easy. Of course it’s risky for your career. Sure, you’ll be laughed at. Told you’re crazy. Overlooked for promotion. Yes, you might even lose your job. I often think of the reactions that a Picasso or a Jackson Pollock must have had when they shared their first works of art. Or how silly that first person trying to start a Mexican wave must have felt when they stood up screaming with their hands in the air, only to find they were the only one. My point is that you may have to be prepared to appear crazy to others if you’re going to be successful in driving change in any organisation.”
In closing
The Intrapreneur is a good read (though it does get a bit self-congratulatory in parts). Reassuring to other intrapreneurs that they are not alone. Perhaps eye-opening to executives who wonder why their organizations aren’t more innovative. Definitely the story of someone on the edge of sanity. Because all intrapreneurs are.
I know that I’m not supposed to say that, especially because I tell other people that they absolutely must run experiments.
After all, experiments are an essential part of the innovation process. There are some things that you absolutely cannot learn unless you go out into the world, interact with other humans, and operate in a real-world setting.
But run an experiment, especially if it’s on something I created? No, thank you. I’ll just sit right here in the safety of my office and polish my idea to within an inch of its theoretical life.
It’s all of us
To understand why running experiments can be stress-inducing, itself helpful to understand what happens in our brains when we’re conducting them.
No matter the type of experiment you’re running, the context in which you’re experimenting, or what you’re trying to learn, simply by running an experiment you are saying to the world (or your team, or your boss, or you peers), “I’m not entirely certain that I’m right. I may be wrong.” That is a very uncomfortable, even vulnerable, position to be in and our brains, always on the look-out for danger, activate our fight-or-flight response, resulting in something that feels a lot like fear.
According to Scott Steinberg, bestselling author of Make Change Work for You, the seven most common fears people report feeling in the workplace are:
Fear of Failure
Embarrassment
Underperformance
Rejection
Change and Uncertainty
Confrontation
Isolation
When you run an experiment, especially if you’re in a function/company/culture where experimentation is not the norm, you are at risk of experiencing at least one, and often all, of the fears listed.
Don’t believe me?
The experiment that never happened
Imagine that you work for a big multi-national food company and you’ve been tasked with creating a new line of snacks targeting Baby Boomers and offering functional benefits like improved version, greater stability, better muscle tone. You’ve done the research and you know the ingredients that can deliver each of the desired benefits. You’ve done some small scale taste testing and you’re confident that the products taste good and have the right texture. You’ve even checked with Legal and they’re confident that you can make the claims you want to make.
The last thing you need to test is that people will pay what you need them to pay for the new products.
You could ask people what they’re willing to pay but you know you’ll get better data if you actually sell the new products to people, asking them to exchange their hard earned money for a bag of nuts. You decide that the fastest, easiest, and cheapest way to do this is to set up a little stand in the company cafeteria, sell your new products, and see what happens.
That’s when things come to a grinding halt.
“What if we don’t sell as much as we need to?” one person asks (fear of failure and underperformance).
“What if people don’t like the products?” says another (fear of embarrassment)
“What if no one buys?” says a third (fear of rejection)
“There is no way that Legal will let us do this. No one has ever done this before. Plus, we’re talking about selling something that contains allergens.” says a fourth (fear of uncertainty and confrontation)
“You’re right,” you finally agree. “It’s better than we keep this work on the down-low. If people find out what we’re doing, they may feel like we’re stepping on their toes and we’ll get shut down.” (fear of isolation).
True story (but I bet you already knew that).
I’ve seen the same thing happen at other clients and in other industries. People want to experiment. They know they need to experiment. But they don’t experiment. Instead, they come up with all sorts of reasons, some very real and true and some greatly exaggerated, why they can’t.
Experiment with experimenting
First, let’s be clear — there are are LOTS of good reasons why some experiments can not or should not happen. If you know for a fact that an experiment is going to break a law, put someone at risk, or potentially result in an unrecoverable financial loss, do not do it! Common sense, people.
But fears are not facts. They are feelings. Feelings that can be acknowledged, addressed, and overcome.
So how do you overcome the feelings that can get in the way of experiments?
Start with a Plan B.
I don’t know about you, but I always feel better when I have a fall-back plan. Many people decide on the type of experiment they need to run and then go for it. Until they hit a roadblock. Then they stop….not just the experiment but ALL experiments. This type of “all or nothing” mindset — if we can’t do this experiment we can’t experiment at all — creates incredible stress because it makes the mere act of experimenting super high stakes.
Instead, start by getting very clear and very specific on what you need to learn — not “Will people pay for this?” but “Will people pay $4.99 for an 8oz bag of nuts.” Then, brainstorm all the ways you could learn what you need to learn, without worrying about the quality of the data you’ll get. Once you have a long list of different possible experiments, assess how complex it would be to run each (high/medium/low) and the reliability/quality of the data you’ll get (high/medium/low). You now have a list of different experiments to run and a sense of the trade-offs inherent in each one. As a result, you should feel more confident in choosing an experiment to pursue because you already have your Plan B (and C and D) identified in case you discover a legal, regulatory, or financial reason that your stops you from pursuing your original experiment.
Change how you talk about experiments.
When people ask we need to run experiments, we often answer with things like, “because I don’t know if…” or “because we need to if….” There’s nothing wrong with those answers per se but admitting that you don’t know something or are unsure of something can feel really really risky. After all, uncertainty can be perceived as risky, dangerous, and even a sign of incompetence.
So try phrasing answers in a way to show that you are somewhere good and the experiment will move you somewhere better. For example, “We know that we need to sell an 8oz bag for $4.99 in order to make our numbers and based on your benchmarks we’re confident that we can do that, but we want proof and this experiment is the best way to get it.” Of course you don’t want to lie but you also shouldn’t discount all the work and learning you’ve done to get to this point. Share that knowledge, get credit for the work, and explain the benefit of continuing the journey.
Turn around your thinking.
Ok, this is going to sound a bit “woo” but, if you’re like me and tend to focus on the worst-case scenario (because then you’re prepared for it!), you need to get out of your head, see your feelings for what they are, and get focused back on the facts before you can move forward. One technique for this is a series of questions known as “The Turnaround”in which you ask (and answer) a series of 5 questions. The questions below are how they would have been phrased in the example above, the root of the question (the part that doesn’t change) is underlined:
Is it true that we will get shut down if we run this experiment? (Maybe)
Can I absolutely know whether it is true before I run the experiment? (No)
What happens when I believe that it is true that we will be shut down? (I don’t want to run the experiment)
What would I do if I didn’t believe that we’ll be shut down? (I would run the experiment)
What are 3 examples of when this thought in this context was not true (1. When our first concept got terrible results, 2. when our initial financial estimates didn’t achieve the required profit margin, 3. when the first taste tests got mediocre results)
By the end of this, you now have 3 facts that refute your 1 feeling. And as I like to say, “don’t bring feelings to a fact party ’cause we ain’t got time for that.”
In conclusion
Everyone gets uncomfortable at some point in the innovation process. For some people it’s the uncertainty at the start, for others it’s the process of setting KPIs without knowing whether you can hit them or not, and for others (like me) it’s the moment when you have to take your beautiful precious idea out into the world and face the fact that it might fail.
By experimenting with the way we approach planning for experiments, talking about them, and even thinking about them, both my clients and I have been able to lessen the fear and anxiety we feel when we don’t know what will happen next and find the courage to move forward, make things happen, and learn what needs to be learned.
