Shipulski On Design

Archive for the ‘Fear’ Category

Innovation isn’t a thing in itself.  Companies need to meet their growth objectives and innovation is the word experts use to describe the practices and behaviors they think will maximize the likelihood of meeting those growth objectives. Innovation is a catchword phrase that has little to no meaning.  Don’t ask about innovation, ask how to meet your business objectives. Don’t ask about best practices, ask how has your company been successful and how to build on that success.  Don’t ask how the big companies have done it – you’re not them.  And, the behaviors of the successful companies are the same behaviors of the unsuccessful companies. The business books suffer from selection bias. You can’t copy another company’s innovation approach. You’re not them.  And your project is different and so is the context.

With innovation, the biggest waste of emotional energy is quest for (and arguments around) best practices.  Because innovation is done in domains of high ambiguity, there can be no best practices. Your project has no similarity with your previous projects or the tightest case studies in the literature. There may be good practice or emergent practice, but there can be no best practice. When there is no uncertainty and no ambiguity, a project can use best practices.  But, that’s not innovation.  If best practices are a strong tenant of your innovation program, run away.

The front end of the innovation process is all about choosing projects. If you want to be more innovative, choose to work on different projects. It’s that simple. But, make no mistake, the principle may be simple the practice is not. Though there’s no acid test for innovation, here are three rules to get you started. (And if you pass these three tests, you’re on your way.)

• If you’ve done it before, it’s not innovation.
• If you know how it will turn out, it’s not innovation.
• If it doesn’t scare the hell out of you, it’s not innovation.

Once a project is selected, the next cataclysmic waste of time is the construction of a detailed project plan.  With a well-defined project, a well-defined project plan is a reasonable request.  But, for an innovation project with a high degree of ambiguity, a well-defined project plan is impossible.  If your innovation leader demands a detailed project plan, it’s usually because they are used running to well-defined continuous improvement projects.  If for your innovation projects you’re asked for a detailed project plan, run away.

With innovation projects, you can define step 1.  And step 2? It depends.  If step 1 works, modify step 2 based on the learning and try step 2.  And if step 1 doesn’t work, reformulate step 1 and try again. Repeat this process until the project is complete.  One step at a time until you’re done.

Innovation projects are unpredictable.  If your innovation projects require hard completion dates, run away.

Innovation projects are all about learning and they are best defined and managed using Learning Objectives (LOs). Instead of step 1 and step 2, think LO1 and LO2.  Though there’s little written about LOs, there’s not much to them.  Here’s the taxonomy of a LO: We want to learn if [enter what you want to learn].  Innovation projects are nothing more than a series of interconnected LOs.  LO2 may require the completion of LO1 or L1 and LO2 could be done in parallel, but that’s your call. Your project plan can be nothing more than a precedence diagram of the Learning Objectives.  There’s no need for a detailed Gantt chart. If you’re asked for a detailed Gantt chart, you guessed it – run away.

The Learning Objective defines what you learn, how you want to learn, who will do the learning and when they want to do it.  The best way to track LOs is with an Excel spreadsheet with one tab for each LO.  For each LO tab, there’s a table that defines the actions, who will do them, what they’ll measure and when they plan to get the actions done. Since the tasks are tightly defined, it’s possible to define reasonable dates.  But, since there can be a precedence to the LOs (LO2 depends on the successful completion of LO1), LO2 can be thought of a sequence of events that start when LO1 is completed.  In that way, an innovation project can be defined with a single LO spreadsheet that defines the LOs, the tasks to achieve the LOs, who will do the tasks, how success will be determined and when the work will be done. If you want to learn how to do innovation, learn how to use Learning Objectives.

There are more element of innovation to discuss, for example how to define customer segments, how to identify the most important problems, how to create creative solutions, how to estimate financial value of a project and how to go to market.  But, those are for another post.

Until then, why not choose a project that scares you, define a small set of Learning Objectives and get going?

Image credit – JD Hancock

The holy grail of Additive Manufacturing (AM) is high volume manufacturing.  And the reason is profit. Here’s the governing equation:

(Price – Cost) x Volume = Profit

The idea is to sell products for more than the cost to make them and sell a lot of them.  It’s an intoxicatingly simple proposition. And as long as you look only at the volume – the number of products sold per year – life is good. Just sell more and profits increase.  But for a couple reasons, it’s not that simple. First, volume is a result. Customers buy products only when those products deliver goodness at a reasonable price.  And second, volume delivers profit only when the cost is less than the price.  And there’s the rub with AM.

Here’s a rule – as volume increases, the cost of AM is increasingly higher than traditional manufacturing. This is doubly bad news for AM. Not only is AM more expensive, its profit disadvantage is particularly troubling at high volumes. Here’s another rule – if you’re looking to AM to reduce the cost of a part, look elsewhere. AM is not a bottom-feeder technology.

If you want to create profits with AM, use it to increase price. Use it to develop products that do more and sell for more.  The magic of AM is that it can create novel shapes that cannot be made with traditional technologies. And these novel shapes can create products with increased function that demand a higher price. For example, AM can create parts with internal features like serpentine cooling channels with fine-scale turbulators to remove more heat and enable smaller products or products that weigh less.  Lighter automobiles get better fuel mileage and customers will pay more. And parts that reduce automobile weight are more valuable.  And real estate under the hood is at a premium, and a smaller part creates room for other parts (more function) or frees up design space for new styling, both of which demand a higher price.

Now, back to cost.  There’s one exception to cost rule.  AM can reduce total product cost if it is used to eliminate high cost parts or consolidate multiple parts into a single AM part.  This is difficult to do, but it can be done.  But it takes some non-trivial cost analysis to make the case.  And, because the technology is relatively new, there’s some aversion to adopting AM.  An AM conversion can require a lot of testing and a significant cost reduction to take the risk and make the change.

To win with AM, think more function AND consolidation.  More (or new) function to support a higher price (and increase volume) and reduced cost to increase profit per part. Don’t do one or the other. Do both. That’s what GE did with its AM fuel nozzle in their new aircraft engines. They combined 20 parts into a single unit which weighed 25 percent less than a traditional nozzle and was more than five times as durable. And it reduced fuel consumption (more function, higher price).

AM is well-established in prototyping and becoming more established in low-volume manufacturing.  The holy grail for AM – high volume manufacturing – will become a broad reality as engineers learn how to design products to take advantage of AM’s unique ability to make previously un-makeable shapes and learn to design for radical part consolidation.

More function AND radical part consolidation.  Do both.

Image credit – Les Haines

There’s disagreement on what is creative, innovative and disruptive. And there is no set of hard criteria to sort concepts into the three categories. Stepping back a bit, a lesser but still important sorting is an in-or-out categorization. Though not as good as discerning among the three, it is useful to decide if a new concept is in (one of the three) or out (not).

The closest thing to an acid test is assessment of the emotional response generated by a new concept. Here are some responses that I consider tell-tail signs of powerful ideas/concepts worthy of the descriptors creative, innovative, or disruptive.

When first shown, a prototype creates fear and defensiveness. The fear signals that the prototype threatens the status quo and defensiveness is objective evidence of the fear.

When first explained, a new concept creates anger and aggression. Because the concept doesn’t play by the rules, it disrespects everything holy, and the unfairness spawns indigence.

After some time, the dismissive comments about the new prototype fade and turn to discussions colored by deep sadness as the gravity of the situation hits home.

But the best leading indicator is surprise.  When a test result doesn’t match your expectations, it generates surprise. And since your expectations are built on your mental models, surprising concepts contradict your mental models. And since your mental models are formed by successful experiences, prototypes that create surprise violate previous success.

If you’re surprised by a new concept, it’s worth a deeper look. If you’re not surprised, move on.

If you’re not tolerant of surprise, you should be. And if you are tolerant of surprise, it’s time to become fervent.

Image credit – Raul Pop

Creativity and innovation are dominated by uncertainty. And in the domain of uncertainty, not only are the solutions unknown, the problems are unknown. And yet, we still try to use the tried-and-true toolbox of certainty even after it’s abundantly clear those wrenches don’t fit.

When wallowing in the mud of uncertainty and company leaders ask, “When will you be done?”, the only real answer is a description of the next thing you’ll try to learn. “We will learn if Step 1 is possible.” And then the predicted response, “Well, when will you be done with that?”  The only valid response is, “It depends.”  Though truthful, this goes over like a lead balloon.  And the dialog continues – “Okay, then, what is Step 2?”  The unpalatable answer, “It depends. If Step 1 is successful, we’ll move onto Step 2, but if Step 1 is unsuccessful, we’ll step back and regroup.” This, too, though truthful, is unsatisfactory.

When doing creative work, there’s immense pressure to be done on time. But, that pressure is inappropriate. Yes, there can be pressure to learn quickly and effectively, but the expectation to be done within an arbitrary timeline is ludicrous.  Managers don’t know this, but when they demand a completion date for a task that has never been done before, the people doing the creative work know the manager doesn’t know what they’re doing.  They won’t tell the manager what they think, but they definitely think it. And when pushed to give a completion date, they’ll give one, knowing full well the predicted date is just as arbitrary as the manager’s desired timeline.

But learning objectives can create common ground. Starting with “We want to learn if…”, learning objectives define what the project team must learn. Though there’s no agreement on when things will be completed, everyone can agree on the learning objectives. And with clearly defined learning objectives and measurable definitions of success, the project can move forward with consensus. There is still consternation over the lack of hard deadlines for the learning objectives, but there is agreement on the sequence of events, tests protocols or analyses that will be carried out to learn what must be learned.

Two rules to live by: If you know when you’ll be done, you’re not doing innovation. And if no one is surprised by the solution, you’re not doing creative work.

Image credit – Michael Carian

With this blog post, I’ve written a blog post every Wednesday night for eight years, with no misses and no repeats.

It started while on vacation at a friend’s house where he suggested I write a blog. I had no idea what a blog was or how to write one. I didn’t know that a blog usually sits on a website and I didn’t know how to make a website or even how to pay someone to make one. And once I stopped hiding behind the transactional work, I realized I didn’t know what to write about or how to start.

Right out of the gate I learned that starting is difficult. I was anxious and afraid and I told myself all sorts of scary stories that didn’t come true. As I pushed through the basics of creating a website, there were plenty of opportunities to stop, but I didn’t. There was a force pushing me, and though I didn’t know where it came from I was happy when it woke up with me every morning and stayed by my side.

Before starting I had no website and then I had one.  I moved from no to yes.  Creating something from nothing feels great when you’re done, but not beforehand. But I wasn’t even done starting.

The first time I faced the blank screen I was paralyzed. I had many ideas and none of them good enough. I wrote and rewrote paragraphs and scrapped them. I wrote whole drafts and scrapped them. I didn’t have the confidence to say what I wanted to say and let people judge my work. What would they say about me? Would they think about me? Do my words make sense? Are they interesting? Are they right?

At some point I got too tired, my resistance weakened and I hit the publish button. I was still afraid, but in a moment of weakness I sent it anyway. Though I catastrophized before sending, nothing bad happened when I sent it. Nothing good happened either, and I was fine with both.

Self-judgment is a powerful blocking mechanism, but I broke through for the first time. Now, going on 416 times, I’ve started with a blank screen, pushed through my self-judgment and wrote a post.  It’s easier now, but it’s still not easy. And it won’t be easy next year. In fact, what I learned is the posts that caused the most uneasiness in me made the largest impact on others. I learned if I put my deepest personal thoughts into my writing, others appreciated it.  But more importantly, I stood three inches taller after writing it.

With my posts, every week I must to create something from nothing. Every week I must think deeply, distill and write clearly. At the end of every post, I know more about the subject I wrote about. In that way, I can be my own teacher. And every week I must push through my self-doubt and publish. And in that way, every week I create the causes and conditions for self-growth.

Everything gets better with practice. And my practice of starting with nothing and ending with something has helped me be more effective in domains of high uncertainty.  I still feel anxious, but I know it won’t hurt me. And now I use my anxiety for good – as a leading indication that I’m working in new design space. And when I don’t feel anxious, I know to stop what I’m doing and work on something else.

Image credit – Steve Jurvetson

Try – when you’re not sure what to do.

Listen – when you want to learn.

Build – when you want to put flesh on the bones of your idea.

Think – when you want to make progress.

Show a customer – when you want to know what your idea is really worth.

Put it down – when you want your subconscious to solve a problem.

Define – when you want to solve.

Satisfy needs – when you want to sell products

Persevere – when the status quo kicks you in the shins.

Exercise – when you want set the conditions for great work.

Wait – when you want to run out of time and money.

Fear failure – when you want to block yourself from new work.

Fear success – when you want to stop innovation in its tracks.

Self-worth – when you want to overcome fear.

Sleep – when you want to be on your game.

Chance collision – when you want something interesting to work on.

Write – when you want to know what you really think.

Make a hand sketch – when you want to communicate your idea.

Ask for help – when you want to succeed.

Image credit – Daniel Dionne

If you put yourself out there and it doesn’t go as you expect, don’t get down.  All you are responsible for is your effort and your intentions.  You’re not responsible for the outcome. Intentions don’t drive outcomes. In fact, be prepared for your work to bring out the opposite of your intentions.

If you put yourself out there and it goes poorly, don’t judge yourself negatively. Sometimes, things go that way. It’s not a problem, unless you make it one. So, don’t make it one. Just put yourself out there.

The clothes don’t get clean without an agitator. Hold onto that, and put yourself out there.

How do you know you’ve put yourself out there? The status quo is angry with you. The people in power want you to stop. The organization tries to scuttle your work. And the people that know the truth take you out to lunch.

If you put yourself out there and your message is met with 100% agreement, you didn’t put yourself out there. You may have stepped outside the lines, but you didn’t put your whole self on the line. You didn’t splash everyone with a full belly flop. There wasn’t enough sting and your belly isn’t red enough.

You won’t get it right, but put yourself out there anyway. You can’t predict the outcome, but take a run at the status quo. You don’t know how it will turn out, but that’s not a reason to hold back, it’s objective evidence it’s time to take a run at it.

Don’t put yourself out there because it’s the right thing to do, put yourself out there because you have an emotional connection.  Put yourself out there because it’s time to put yourself out there. Put yourself out there because you don’t know what else to do.

Be prepared to be misunderstood, but put yourself out there. Expect to be laughed at and talked about behind your back, but put yourself out there. And expect there will be one or two people who will have your back.  You know who they are.

No sense holding back. Get over the fear and put yourself out there.

The only one holding you back is you.

Image credit – Mark Bonica

Success is the enemy of new work. Past success blocks new work out of fear it will jeopardize future success, and future success blocks new work out of fear future success will actually come to be.

Either way you look at it, success gets in the way of doing new work.

Success itself has no power to block new work.  To generate its power, past success creates the fear of loss in the people doing today’s work. And their fear causes them to block new work.  When we did A we got success, and now you are trying to do B.  B is not A, and may not bring success. I will resist B out of fear of losing the goodness of past success.

As a blocking agent, future success is more ethereal and more powerful because it prevents new work from starting. Future success causes our minds to project the goodness and glory the new work could bring and because our small sense of self doesn’t think we’re worthy, we never start. Where past success creates an enemy in the status quo, future success creates an enemy within ourselves.

But if we replace fear with learning, the game changes.

I’m not trying to displace our past success, I’m trying to learn if we can use it as springboard and back flip into the deep end of our future success. If it works, our learning will refine today’s success and inform tomorrow’s. If it doesn’t work, we’ll learn what doesn’t work and try something else. But not to worry, we’ll make small bets and create big learning. That way when we jump in the puddle, the splash will be small. And if the water’s cold, we’ll stop. But if it’s warm, we’ll jump into a bigger puddle. And maybe we’ll jump together. What do you think? Will you help me learn?

Yes, it’s scary to think about running this small experiment. Not because it won’t work, but because it might. If we learn this could work it would be a game-changer for the company and I’m afraid I’m not worthy of the work. Can you help me navigate this emotional roller coaster? Can you help me learn if this will work?  Can you review the results privately and help me learn what’s going on?  If we don’t learn how to do it, our competitors will. Can you help me start?

Success blocks, but it also pays the bills. And, hopefully it’s always part of the equation. But there are things we can do to take the edge of its blocking power. Acknowledge that new work is scary and focus on learning.  Learning isn’t threatening, and it moves things forward. Show results and ask for comments from people who created past success. Over time, they’ll become important advocates. And acknowledge to yourself that new work creates internal fear, and acknowledge the best way to push through fear is to learn.

Be afraid, make small bets and learn big.

Image credit – Andy Morffew

What would you do if:

You had to push through your fear of being judged?

You had to break some rules to get an idea off the ground?

You had a concept that would displace your most successful product?

Your colleague tried to scuttle your best idea?

You knew it was time to stop judging yourself negatively?

Your colleague asked you to help with a hair-brained idea?

You were asked to facilitate a session to create new concepts, but no one could explain what would happen after the concepts were created?

You weren’t afraid your prototype would be a success?

You thought you knew what the customer wanted, but didn’t have the data to prove it?

You were asked to create patentable concepts you knew would never be commercialized?

Your prototype threatened the status quo?

You were asked to facilitate a session to create new concepts and told how to do it?

You were told “No.”

You saw a young employee struggling with a new concept?

You were blocking yourself from starting the right work?

You thought your idea had merit, but you needed help testing it in the market?

You were asked to follow a standard process but you knew there wasn’t one?

You were asked to come up with new concepts though there were five excellent concepts gathering dust?

You were told there was no market for your new-to-world prototype?

You had to bolster your self-confidence to believe wholeheartedly in your idea?

There is a name for what you would do. It’s called innovation.

image credit – UnknownNet Photography

If some talks to you in an angry way, what do you do? Well, if it’s a family member you take it personally and respond with equal and opposite anger. If it’s someone at work, you take it personally but use a bit more restraint.  And in both cases, the root of all the trouble is taking their anger personally.

There can be no argument if the second doesn’t accept the radiated negativity of the first. In that way, arguments are like tennis – it takes two to play a match worth watching.  But in the heat of the moment, and even in the residual heat after the moment, it’s tremendously difficult remember their anger is about them.

The natural tendency is to focus on the injustice of the other’s anger. They’re out of line, they’re wrong, they shouldn’t yell like that. But pouring your energy into that bucket won’t end the arguments. You can’t control their behavior, you can only control your response to their behavior. The only way to end the arguments is to look inside and figure out why you take their anger personally.

If their anger threatens you, you’ll take it personally and respond in-kind.  And what is threatened is your image of yourself.  If you don’t think highly of yourself, you call your caliber into question and respond with anger to prop up and protect your self-image.  But, if you don’t think their rage applies, you won’t be threatened and you’ll respond effectively. And you’ll be able to help them be more effective.

When you respond to anger with kindness, people notice.  It may take them a while to understand there is no hidden agenda and your kindness truly kindness, but when they do, they change and your relationship changes.  Trust and mutual respect blossom and the future has no limit.

It’s not easy to respond to anger with kindness. But in the end, it’s worth it.

Image credit – Dean Hochman

If you can’t imagine it, it can’t be done.

But if it can’t be done, how can you imagine it?

No one is buying a product like the one you imagined. There’s no market.

No one can buy an imaginative product that doesn’t yet exist. There may be a market.

Imagine things are good, just as they are.

Imagine an upstart competitor will obsolete your best product.

Let’s fix what is.

Let’s imagine what isn’t, and build it.

Don’t waste time imagining radical new concepts. There’s no way to get there.

Use your imagination to create an unobtainable concept, then build a bridge to get there.

Imagine the future profits of our great recipe. Let’s replicate it.

Imagine our recipe has a half-life. Let’s disrupt it.

To be competitive, we’ve got to use our imagination to reduce the cost of our products.

To be competitive, we’ve got to use our imagination to obsolete our best work.

Put together a specification, a detailed Gannt chart and make it happen on time.

Imagine what could be, and make a prototype.

Let’s shore up our weaknesses and live to fight another day.

Let’s imagine our strength as a weakness and invent the future.

We are the best in the industry. Imagine how tough it is to be our competitor.

Imagine there’s a hungry start-up who will do whatever it takes to get the business.

We’ve got to protect our market share.

Imagine what we could create if we weren’t constrained by our success.

Imagine how productive we will be when we standardize the work.

Imagine how much fun we will have when we reinvent the industry.

Ask the customer what they want, built it and launch it.

Imagine what could be, build a prototype, show the customer, listen and refine.

Let’s follow the script. Imagine the profits.

Let’s burn the script and imagine a new one.

Image credit — Allegra Ricci