Shipulski On Design

Posts Tagged ‘Creativity’

If you’re working in a company you like, and you want it to be around in the future, you want to know if it will grow.  If you’re looking to move to a new company, you want to know if it has legs – you want to know if it will grow. If you own stock, you want to know if the company will grow, and it’s the same if you want to buy stock.  And it’s certainly the case if you want to buy the whole company – if it can grow, it’s worth more.

To grow, a company has to differentiate itself from its competitors.  In the past, continuous improvement (CI) was a differentiator, but today CI is the minimum expectation, the cost of doing business.  The differentiator for growth is discontinuous improvement (DI).

With DI, there’s an unhealthy fascination with idea generation.  While idea generation is important, companies aren’t short on ideas, they’re short on execution.  But the one DI differentiator is the flavor of the ideas.  To do DI a company needs ideas that are radically different than the ones they’re selling now.  If the ideas are slightly twisted variants of today’s products and business models, that’s a sure sign continuous improvement has infiltrated and polluted the growth engine. The gears of the DI engine are gummed up and there’s no way the company can sustain growth.  For objective evidence the company has the chops to generate the right ideas, look for a process that forces their thinking from the familiar, something like Jeffrey Baumgartner’s Anticonventional Thinking (ACT).

For DI-driven growth, the ability to execute is most important.  With execution, the first differentiator is how the company investigates radically new ideas.  There are three differentiators – a focus on speed, a “market first” approach, and the use of minimum viable tests (MVTs).  With new ideas, it’s all about how fast you can learn, so speed should come through loud and clear.  Without a market, the best idea is worthless, so look for “market first” thinking.  Idea evaluation starts with a hypothesis that a specific market exists (the market is clearly defined in the hypothesis) which is evaluated with a minimum viable test (MVT) to prove or disprove the market’s existence.  MVTs should error on the side of speed – small, localized testing.  The more familiar minimum viable product (MVP) is often an important part of the market evaluation work.  It’s all about learning about the market as fast as possible.

Now, with a validated market, the differentiator is how fast company can rally around the radically new idea and start the technology and product work.  The companies that can’t execute slot the new project at the end of their queue and get to it when they get to it.  The ones that can execute stop an existing (lower value) project and start the new project yesterday.  This stop-to-start behavior is a huge differentiator.

The company’s that can’t execute take a ready-fire-aim approach – they just start.  The companies that differentiate themselves use systems thinking to identify gaps in resources and capabilities and close them. They do the tough work of prioritizing one project over another and fully staff the important ones at the expense of the lesser projects.  Rather than starting three projects and finishing none, the companies that know how to do DI start one, finish one, and repeat.  They know with DI, there’s no partial credit for a project that’s half done.

All companies have growth plans, and at the highest level they all hang together, but some growth plans are better than others.  To judge the goodness of the growth plan takes a deeper look, a look into the work itself.  And once you know about the work, the real differentiator is whether the company has the chops to execute it.

Image credit – John Leach.

Every day is a meeting-to-meeting sprint with no time for some of the favorite fundamentals like the bathroom and food.  Though crazy, it’s the norm and no longer considered crazy.   But it is crazy.  When you’re too busy to answer emails that’s one thing, but when you’re too busy to realize answering email isn’t progress, that’s a problem.

Our in-boxes are full; our plates are full; our calendars are full. But our souls are empty.

You’re clear on what must get done over the next 48 hours, but the pace is too fast to know why the work is important in the first place. (One of the fastest way to complete a task is to deem it unimportant and don’t do it – all of the done with none of the work.) But it’s worse.  It’s too fast to do the work no one is asking you to do, and it’s too fast to do the work you were born to do.

We have confused activity with progress; and with all the activity, we’ve forgotten what it feels like to think.  We need a retreat.

The perfect retreat eliminates distractions and gives people time to think.  After a nice Sunday flight into Boston, it’s a calm two hour coach ride to rural New Hampshire. (Done right, a coach is soothing.)  After pickup it’s a fifteen minute drive to a remote trail head.  With a pack on your back, it’s a five minute walk to a big, remote cabin.  No cell service, no power, no interruptions.

As you enter the cabin, you unload all your electronics into bin (Yes, your smart phone goes in the bin.) which is locked away for the remainder of the retreat.  You race to get the best bunk, drop your gear, and share a meal with your fellow over achievers. (Y es, the non-disclosures are signed so you can actually talk to each other.)

The first day is all about recognizing the discomfort that comes with no distractions and your natural tendency to create distraction to sooth your discomfort.  The objective is to help you remember what if feels like to have more than 30 seconds of uninterrupted time.  Then, once you remember, it’s time to actually think.

There are no video conferencing capabilities (or electricity) in the cabin, so all work is done the old-fashioned way – face-to-face.  The objective is to help you remember the depth, complexity, and meaning that come when working with actual faces.  Yes, there’s good facilitated discussion, but the topics aren’t as important as remembering how to share and trust.

There is ritualistic work of cooking, cleaning, splitting the wood, and stoking the fire.  The objective is to remember what it feels like to connect the mind to the body and to connect with others.  And, there’s a group hike every day to remember what it feels like to be grounded in the natural world.  (Sometimes we forget the business world is actually part of the natural world.)

After the rituals and hikes have done their magic, the right discussions start to emerge, and deep contemplation dances with deep conversation.  Though there’s a formal agenda, no matter.  With the group’s awaking, the right agenda emerges.

At the end of the retreat, there’s immense sadness.  This is a sign of importance and deep learning.  And after the hugs and tears, there’s a spontaneous commitment to do it next year.  With eyes dried, it’s off the bus station and then to the airport.

You don’t have to wait for the perfect retreat to start your journey.  Start your practice by carving out an hour a day and set a recurring meeting with yourself and turn off your email. And start by asking yourself why.  Those two tricks will set you on your way.

And if you’re interested in a real retreat, let me know.

There’s a lot buzz around reinvention and innovation. There are countless articles on tools and best practices; many books on the best organizational structure, and plenty on roles and responsibilities.   There’s so much stuff that it’s tough to define what’s missing, even when what’s missing is the most important part. Whether its creativity, innovation, or doing new, the most important and missing element is your behavior.

Two simple rules to live by: 1) Look inside. 2) Then, change your behavior.

To improve innovation, people typically look to nouns for the answers – meeting rooms, work spaces, bean bag chairs, and tools, tools, tools.  But the answer isn’t nouns, the answer is verbs.  Verbs are action words, things you do, behaviors.  And there are two behaviors that make the difference: 1.) Take new action. 2) Speak new ideas.

To take new action, you’ve got to be perceptive, perceptive about what’s blocking you from taking new action.  The biggest blocker of new action is anxiety, and you must learn what anxiety feels like.  Thought the brain makes anxiety, it’s easiest to perceive anxiety in the body.  For me, anxiety manifests as a cold sinking feeling in my chest.  When I recognize the coldness, I know I’m anxious.  Your task is to figure out your anxiety’s telltale heart.

To learn what anxiety feels like, you’ve got to slow down enough to actually feel.  The easiest way for overbooked high performers to make time to slow down is to schedule a recurring meeting with yourself.  Schedule a recurring 15 minute meeting (Daily is best.) in a quiet place.  No laptop, no cell phone, no paper, no pencil, no headphones – just you and quiet sitting together.  Do this for a week and you’ll learn what anxiety feels like.

To take new action, you’ve got to be receptive, receptive to the anxiety.  You’ll naturally judge anxiety as bad, but that’s got to change.  Anxiety isn’t bad, it’s just unpleasant.  And in this case, anxiety is an indicator of importance.  When you block yourself from taking an important action, you create anxiety. So when you feel anxiety, be receptive – it’s your body telling you the yet-to-be-taken action is important.

After receptive, it’s time to be introspective.  Look inside, turn toward your anxiety, and understand why the task is important.  Typically it’s important because it threatens the status quo. Maybe it would dismantle your business model, or maybe it will unglue the foundation of your company, or maybe something smaller yet threatening.  Once you understand its importance, it’s time to use the importance as the forcing function to start the task first thing tomorrow morning.

The second magic behavior is to speak new ideas.  To speak new ideas, you’ve got to be perceptive to the reason you self censor.  Before you can un-censor, you’ve got to be aware you self censor.  It’s time to get in touch with your unsaid ideas.  Now that you no longer need the 15 minute meeting for taking new action, change the agenda to speaking new ideas. Again, no laptop, cell phone, and headphones, but this time it’s you and quiet figuring out what if feels like right before you self-censor.

In your meeting, remember back to a brainstorming session when you had a crazy idea, but decided to bury it.  Get in touch with what your body felt like as you stopped yourself from speaking your crazy idea.  That’s the feeling you want to be aware of because it’s a leading indicator of your self censoring behavior.

Next, it’s time to be receptive, receptive to the idea that just as you choose to self censor, you can choose to stop your self censorship, and receptive to the idea that there’s a deep reason for your behavior.

Now, it’s on to introspective.  When you have a crazy idea, why do you keep your mouth shut?  Turn toward the behavior and you may see you self censor because you don’t want to be judged.  If you utter a crazy idea, you may be afraid you’ll be judged as crazy or incompetent.  Likely, you’re afraid saying your idea out loud will change something – what other people think of you.

There are a couple important notions to help you battle your fear of judgment. First, you are not your ideas.  You can have wild ideas and be highly competent, highly valued, and a good person.  Second, other people’s judgment is about them, not you. They are threatened by your idea, and instead of looking inside, they protect themselves by trying to knock you down.

There’s a lot of nuance and complexity around creativity and innovation, but it doesn’t have to be that way.  Really, it comes down to four things: own your behavior, look inside, take new action, and speak new ideas.  It’s that simple.

We’ve been conditioned to ask for direction; to ask for a plan; and ask for permission. But those ways no longer apply. Today that old behavior puts you at the front of the peloton in the great race to the bottom.

The old ways are gone.

Today’s new ways: propose a direction (better yet, test one out on a small scale); create and present a radical plan of your own (or better, on the smallest of scales test the novel aspects and present your learning); and demonstrate you deserve permission by initiating activity on something that will obsolete the very thing responsible for your success.

People that wait for someone to give them direction are now a commodity, and with commodities it always ends in the death spiral of low cost providers putting each other out of business.  As businesses are waist deep in proposals to double-down on what hasn’t worked and are choking on their flattened S-curves, there’s a huge opportunity for people that have the courage to try new things on their own. Today, if you initiate you’ll differentiate.

[This is where you say to yourself – I’ve already got too much on my plate, and I don’t have the time or budget to do more (and unsanctioned) work. And this is where I tell you your old job is already gone, and you might as well try something innovative. It’s time to grab the defibrillator and jolt your company out of its flatline. ]

It’s time to respect your gut and run a low cost, micro-experiment to test your laughable idea. (And because you’ll keep the cost low, no one will know when it doesn’t go as you thought. [They never do.]) It’s time for an underground meeting with your trusted band of dissidents to plan and run your pico-experiment that could turn your industry upside down. It’s time to channel your inner kindergartener and micro-test the impossible.

It’s time to choose yourself.

There’s a lot of negativity around us. But it’s not upfront, unadulterated negativity; it’s behind-the-scenes, hunkering, almost translucent negativity. And it’s divisive.

This type of negativity is so pervasive it’s almost invisible. It’s everywhere; we have processes built around it; have organizations dedicated to it; and we use it daily to drive action.

Take continuous improvement for example. It has been a standard toolset and philosophy for making things better. Yet it’s founded on negativity. It’s not anti-people, anti-culture negativity. (In fact lean and Six Sigma go on their way to emphasize positive culture as a key foundation.) It’s subtle negativity that slowly grinds. Look at the language: reduce defects, eliminate waste, corrective action, tight feedback loops, and eliminate failure modes. There is a negative tint. It’s not in your face, but it’s there.

I’m an advocate of lean and I have advocated for Six Sigma, both of which have moved the needle. But there’s a minimization thread running through them. Both are about eliminating and reducing what is. Sure they have their place, but enough is enough. We need more of creating what isn’t, and bringing to life things that aren’t. We need more maximization.

Negativity has become natural, and positivity has become an endangered species. When there’s a crisis we all come together instinctively to eliminate the bad thing. Yet it’s fourth or fifth nature to come together spontaneously when things go well. Yes, sometimes we celebrate, but it’s the exception. And it’s certainly not our first instinct. (Actually, I don’t think we have a word for spontaneous amplification of positivity. Celebration is the closest word I know, but it’s not the right one.)

Negative feedback is good for processes and positive feedback is good for people. Processes like when their flaws are eliminated, and people like when their strengths are amplified. It’s negativity for processes, and positivity for people.

There should be a rebalancing of negativity and positivity. For every graph of defect reduction over time, there should be a sister plot of the number of good things that happened over time. For every failure mode and effects analysis there should be a fishbone of chart of strengths and the associated actions to amplify them.

It’s natural for us to count bad things and make them go away, and not so natural to count good things and multiply them. Take at the meeting agendas. My bet is there’s far more minimization than maximization.

I usually end my posts with some specific call to action or recommendation. But for this one I don’t have anything all that meaty. But I will tell you how I’m going to move forward. When I see good work, I’m going to publicly acknowledge it and send emails of praise to the manager of the folks who did the good stuff. I’m going to track the number of emails I send and each week increase the number by one. I’m going to schedule regular meetings where I can publicly praise people that display passion. And I’m going to create a control chart of the number of times I amplify positivity.

And most of all I will try to keep in front of me that everything we do is all about people, and with people positivity is powerful.

Everything is about speed – speed through process reengineering, waste elimination, standardization, modularity, design reuse. All valid, but not all that powerful. Real speed comes from avoiding rapid progress in the wrong direction, from avoiding a blistering pace on the wrong stuff. Real speed comes from saying no to the work that creates drag in order to say yes to work that accelerates.

It’s healthy to have time limits and due dates, finite resources, and budgets. These constraints are helpful because they force a cutoff decision: what work will get done and what won’t. And thankfully, all businesses have them – take them away and eliminate all hope of profitability and sustainability. But from a speed perspective, sometime we look at them in a backward way.

Yes, that work would change the game, but we don’t have time. That argument is a little misleading. Truth is, there’s the same amount of time as last year – a week is still a week, and there are still 52 of them in a year. It’s not about time; it’s about the work done during that time. With a backwards view, the constraint calls attention to work won’t get done, but the constraint is really about work that will get done. If the work that doesn’t make the cut is less magical than the work that does, the constraint creates a speed problem – too slow on the game-changing work. The speed problem is realized when the new kid on the block makes magic and you don’t. If the constraint helps say yes to magic and no to lesser work, there’s no speed problem.

Yes, we could reinvent the industry, but we don’t have resources. No, we have resources. But the constraint isn’t really about resources, it’s about the work. And not any old work, the constraint is about the work that will get done. (Not the work that won’t.) If the constraint causes us to stuff our fingers in the holes in the dyke at the expense of eliminating it altogether, the constraint caused a speed problem. It’s a problem because while we’re plugging holes, an eager competitor will dismantle the need for the dyke. Speed problem.

Sure, we’d leapfrog the competition, but we don’t have the budget. No, we have a budget. But, like the other constraints, the budgetary one is also about the work that will get done. If the constraint prioritizes same-as-last-time over crazy, it creates a speed problem. New competitors who don’t have to protect the old guard products will work on crazy and bring it to market. And that’s a problem because you’ll have more of what you’ve always had and they’ll have crazy.

Yes, in all cases, choose the bigger bet. Choose crazy over sane, magical over mundane, and irregular over regular. And choose that way because it’s faster. And here’s why faster is king: The number of countries with a well educated work force is growing; there’s an ever increasing number of micro companies who can afford to bet on disruptive technologies; and the internet has shown the world how their lives could be and created several billion people who will use their parental fortitude to do whatever it takes to make life better for their kids. (And there’s no stronger force on earth.) And it all sums to an incredible amount of emotional energy relentlessly pushing the pace.

The world isn’t just getting faster, it’s accelerating – yes, next month will be faster than this month, but that’s not the real trick with acceleration. With acceleration the faster things get, the faster they get faster. Is there really any question how to use your constraints?

Product costs, without product thinking, drop 2% per year. With product thinking, product costs fall by 50%, and while your competitors’ profit margins drift downward, yours are too high to track by conventional methods. And your company is known for unending increases in stock price and long term investment in all the things that secure the future.

The supply chain, without product thinking, improves 3% per year. With product thinking, longest lead processes are eliminated, poorest yield processes are a thing of the past, problem suppliers are gone, and your distributers associate your brand with uninterrupted supply and on time delivery.

Product robustness, without product thinking, is the same year-on-year. Re-injecting long forgotten product thinking to simplify the product, product robustness jumps to unattainable levels and warranty costs plummet. And your brand is known for products that simply don’t break.

Rolled throughput yield is stalled at 90%. With product thinking, the product is simplified, opportunities for defects are reduced, and throughput skyrockets due to improved RTY. And your brand is known as a good value – providing good, repeatable functionality at a good price.

Lean, without product thinking has delivered wonderful results, but the low hanging fruit is gone and lean is moving into the back office. With product thinking, the design is changed and value-added work is eliminated along with its associated non-value added work (which is about 8 times bigger); manufacturing monuments with their long changeover times are ripped out and sold to your competitors; work from two factories is consolidated into one; new work is taken on to fill the emptied factories; and profit per square foot triples. And your brand is known for best-in-class quality, unbeatable on time delivery, world class performance, and pioneering the next generation of lean.

The sales argument is low price and good payment terms. With product thinking, the argument starts with product performance and ends with product reliability. The sales team is energized, and your brand is linked with solid products that just plain work.

The marketing approach is stickers and new packaging. With product thinking, it’s based on competitive advantage explained in terms of head-to-head performance data and a richer feature set. And your brand stands for winning technology and killer products.

Product thinking isn’t for everyone. But for those that try – your brand will thank you.

There are countless books, tools, processes, methodologies and frameworks for innovation.

And cutting across all theory and practice, the biggest fundamental of innovation is fear.

We define fear as bad because it limits new thinking and new actions, but there’s another way to look at it. We should look at fear as a leading indicator of innovation potential.

When inputs, outputs, or contexts are different than expectations, our bodies create physical symptoms we recognize as fear.  It’s this chemical change in the body, manifested as cold sweats, tingling hands, difficulty in breathing, or knotted stomachs, that’s the tell-tale sign innovation is in the house.

If things are predictable, knowable, understandable, there is no fear.  And if things are predictable, knowable, understandable there is no innovation.  By the associative theorem: no fear, no innovation.

We should learn to use our bodies as innovation barometers.  When pressure builds, especially when we don’t know why, we should recognize our fear, not as a blocker of innovation, but as a leading indicator of it.

Innovation, especially the type that reinvents, is not an in-the-head thing, it’s an in-the-chest thing.  It’s indescribable, un-scriptable, and almost spiritual. Just as migratory birds sense weak magnetic fields to guide themselves home, we can use our bodies to sense fear and guide ourselves along the flux lines of innovation.

Fear is scary and can be uncomfortable.  But for innovation, it’s scarier if there’s no fear.

I like Dave Snowden’s thinking on innovation – starvation, pressure, and perspective shift. Here’s what it means to me:

Starvation – Left to our own, we’ll do as we did before. Starvation of resources pushes thinking away from stale, worn paths. Almost in reverse, define what you don’t want, then construct intelligent constraints (the most difficult part of the whole deal) so it’s out of the design space. Constrain the team so they can’t use the most expensive material; constrain the team so they can’t use the same old technology; constrain them so they can’t use the tried and true business model. It’s reverse thinking, but constraints – telling them what they can’t do – frees up design space. Constraints say “Do anything you want, except this.” which constrains far less than specifications. Constrain them to free them.

Pressure – Left to our own, we’ll reuse old thinking. Time pressure drags thinking out of the ruts of our success. Define creative constraints then, to create pressure, give the team insufficient time to think it through. Force them to swim differently with the problem.  The best way I know is to explain the constraints then give the team fifteen minutes to build a prototype. (Yes, fifteen.) The prototype is non-functional, and can be made from whatever is on hand – cardboard, clay, duct tape, or packing peanuts. The short time frame creates pressure, and the pressure extrudes different thinking.  Building a prototype shifts from learning-in-the-brain to learning-with-the-hands. And since hands learn differently than brains, new thinking is cast.

Perspective Shift – Left to our own, we’ll do a remake. Perspective shift moves us to a different place to create a healthy disrespect for today’s thinking. Seen in the right new light, our successes should look problematic. (From the front a skunk isn’t so bad, but from behind things aren’t so good.) Building a bridge to a new perspective can shift things a little, but for a tectonic shift, formalize the consequences of inaction. Think – “If we don’t do this, a very bad thing will happen.” Perspective shift is all about creating action in a new direction.

You won’t get it right the first time, but, no matter.  The real enemy is inaction.

They say job satisfaction is important for productivity and quality. The thinking goes something like this: A happy worker is a productive one, and a satisfied worker does good work. This may be true, but it’s not always the best way.

I think we may be better served by a therapeutic dose of job dissatisfaction. Though there are many strains of job satisfaction, the most beneficial one spawns from a healthy dissatisfaction with our success. The tell-tale symptom of dissatisfaction is loneliness, and the invasive bacterium is misunderstanding. When the disease is progressing well, people feel lonely because they’re misunderstood.

Recycled ideas are well understood; company dogma is well understood; ideas that have created success are well understood. In order to be misunderstood, there must be new ideas, ideas that are different. Different ideas don’t fit existing diagnoses and create misunderstanding which festers into loneliness. In contrast, when groupthink is the disease there is no loneliness because there are no new ideas.

For those that believe last year’s ideas are good enough, different ideas are not to be celebrated. But for those that believe otherwise, new ideas are vital, different is to be celebrated, and loneliness is an important precursor to innovation.

Yes, new ideas can grow misunderstanding, but misunderstanding on its own cannot grow loneliness. Loneliness is fueled by caring, and without it the helpful strain of loneliness cannot grow. Caring for a better future, caring for company longevity, caring for a better way – each can create the conditions for loneliness to grow.

When loneliness is the symptom, the prognosis is good. The loneliness means the organization has new ideas; it means the ideas are so good people are willing to endure personal suffering to make them a reality; and, most importantly, it means people care deeply about the company and its long term success.

I urge you to keep your eye out for the markers that define the helpful strain of loneliness. And when you spot it, I hope you will care enough to dig in a little. I urge you think of this loneliness as the genes of a potentially game-changing idea.  When ideas are powerful enough to grow loneliness, they’re powerful enough to move from evolutionary into revolutionary.

What is to what isn’t.

What isn’t to what could.

What could to what should.

What should to what will.

What will to what is.

Repeat.