Paradox of Innovation and Status Quo

As much as I love change, innovation, #RCUS (Random Collisions of Unusual Suspects per Saul Kaplan) and challenging the Status Quo, I realized how much the comfort and haven of some Status Quo means to me as we got settled at our place in Maine.  The familiar faces in our little grocery store and post office, seeing long-time friends, the same lobster boats and buoys in the harbour provide a sense of calm, certainty, stability that, paradoxically, frees me to challenge, change, and innovate.

Yet there is still constant change.  In Maine, it's in the water.  Several years ago, an old lobsterman had the most elaborate buoys: stripe of red, stripe of white, stripe of red with something different painted in the stripe of white every year such as a buoy, a lobster, and after 9/11, the American Flag. Our kids got one of his buoys every year.   One year, there were about half the number of his buoys in the bay.  When we saw him at the Co-Op, he informed us his wife had died that winter and he just wasn't up to it.  He looked frail.  The next year, his boat wasn't in the harbour and there were no buoys.  He had died that winter.  There were new boats and buoys in the harbour.  Death and renewal.

What does this have to do with innovation, business, anything? I think a lot on (at least) two levels:

1. While we have to embrace the increasing velocity of change and uncertainty for meaningful, effective innovation, change for change's sake is not the goal.   Sometimes the way it is now is really ok.  We need to discern the difference and continually re-evaluate.  Nothing stays totally the same forever.  While the islands, shoals, and hidden rocks are still there, their contours have changed, perhaps ever so slightly, due to the tides, the weather - due to just being there.
2. We need to start looking for subtle changes and patterns that provide enormous opportunities.  Most non-locals here in Pemaquid probably don't even notice the changes in lobster boats and buoys - but they are significant indicators of shifts (and generations).  While boats and buoys are tangible, many times the patterns are in the intangibles, which is harder to perceive (and measure).

So, I leave you with two challenges as you go on your summer vacations, kids baseball and soccer games, walks down the halls at work, visits to plants, boarding planes, even daily commutes:

1. Identify the constants in your life, your work, that are working well and that aren't. Do they need to be changed? Do they provide the stability that allows innovation or do they impede it?
2. Look for subtle patterns and changes - especially in places you don't normally look and think about what opportunities can arise from these.

Please feel free to share your learnings with your fellow readers either through comments here or on twitter at @dscofield or email me

Radical Management Requires Collaboration

On November 5, 2009, I received an invitation from Steve Denning to review a book he was writing ontransforming management, which is clearly broken He wrote: “… I am keen to get feedback from people who have the time, energy and interest to read some chapters and give me critical comments.”  I jumped at the opportunity - passionate about the subject, anxious to work with Steve and a firm believer in the process of co-creation having been through that with Alex Osterwalder for his book.

So, at Angela Dunn‘s July twitter-chat, #ideachat on co-creation, I offered to interview Steve about his perspective on co-creation:

Why did you decide to co-create your book?

I believe in practicing what I preach. I was writing a book about how to proceed in an iterative fashion to gain customer feedback and use that to guide the next iteration.  So, I asked myself why I wasn’t doing that with my own book.  The co-creation process was very helpful to me as an author and people seemed to get a real kick out of doing this.

How did you decide whom to invite and/or include?

I invited my newsletter subscribers, about 4000 people, to help me review the book, expecting just a couple of responses, since I’d tried on a previous book with little response.  Instead, I received over 250 responses!  I also invited an Agile discussion group I’m on and about 50 people responded.  In total, about 300 people who were interested in commenting

How did you manage the ideas and comments?

Since I couldn’t personally handle 300 individual emails, I set up a Google group.  This allowed people could see each other’s comments with less duplication.  This transparency allowed people to build off each other’s comments, which led to very interactive conversations.  People knew their ideas were being heard and not compromised. Out of the 300 total, there were about 20-25 very active people and about 25-30 somewhat active people.  I’d introduce a chapter a week with one to two points on which I wanted feedback and that got the highly interactive conversation going.  These people were all volunteers, which meant they were passionate about the topic since they were giving up their time, energy and intellectual capital.  I found the conversations fascinating. I learned a lot and the book is much better because of it.

Additionally, I wanted to celebrate what many have been doing for decades and share some of the great insights that I have learned from others co-creating with me.  For instance, I wanted to share Jeff Sutherland’s brilliance about Scrum with the world.  I see myself as co-creating with him, interpreting what he has said and hoping that he will see it positively, and for the most part he does.

To some, co-creating can seem like an invasion of other people’s territories; working with others and also building some of your own thoughts.  This issue of intellectual capital has led to faction fights within the Scrum community and I was hoping that this might heal some of those factions.  I don’t think any of the 250 volunteers felt their intellectual capital was being compromised; they were willing to share, which was a wonderful dynamic.

How did you decide which ideas to use, adapt?

I already had drafts of the chapters so that made it easier.  I’d been working on the book for 2 ½ years already. Some of the ideas I’d put forward I had thrown away and other things I hadn’t thought of originally became huge pieces of the book. The book had started about how to manage high performance teams but evolved into how to manage radically and delight customers. That’s because once you’d figured out how to manage high performance teams, you’d figured out how to manage generally; it all started to come together for me.  This was a huge transformation, almost an accidental discovery.  The change in focus had come from doing several workshops & webinars, a form of small-scale co-creation.  In one of those workshops, I mentioned delighting the customer and received a very positive reaction, which sent me exploring that area. So, when I asked for co-creation in reviewing the book, there already been some co-creation.

Having chapters to review gave people something to react to instead of starting from scratch.  People commented on examples they liked, on examples they would like to see, on points they didn’t understand, etc.  If someone didn’t get a point, then I wasn’t being clear enough, so this helped me rethink how I presented some ideas.  In fact, someone asked why high performance teams were in the book and I realized I still had it in there – residue from my previous thinking, reminding me that my whole viewpoint had changed substantially.

The comments from the 250+ co-reviewers really helped me think things through, clarified ideas and concepts and provided me with wonderful examples. I received over 200 pages of input.  This was a voyage of discovery!

What were the benefits of co-creation/co-review?

Well, you get a self-selecting group that is passionate about the topic so they are already very interested and the fact they are willing to volunteer their time shows that.  Co-creation is a great way to learn and get the help of people quickly.  With the 2^ndedition Leader’s Guide to Storytelling, formal reviewers were hired which was more expensive & less productive.  I received less feedback than co-creation (15 pgs. of material vs. 200 pgs. via co-creation) and lower quality of suggestions as well.  Co-creation produced more ideas and more interaction of higher quality faster.  You get more intelligence, less expensively.  It’s also led to beautiful relationships like ours.

What were the limitations or inhibitors of co-creation/co-review?

None!  There is the risk of people arguing with each other, but that can be managed.  There is a risk that people with specific agendas against your idea politicize the group, but if that occurs, you can remove them from the group.

Would you do it again? And if so, what would you do differently?

Absolutely! Can you see any downside?

What advice would you give someone who was thinking of co-creating/co-reviewing?

If you don’t already have a big group, like a following to your blog or newsletter, then it’s harder to find people to help you.   It’s also much easier if you have your book fairly well developed so people can react to it.   You need to have something for people to comment on.  There are different stages and phases in co-creation. For instance, if you have an idea for a book, you can first test the idea by asking your followers if they would be interested in reading a book on “X”, if they aren’t, that tells you something.  If they are, start doing a few webinars and workshops. If people don’t come or really disagree, that tells you something again.  If there is interest, start writing chapters and get them well enough developed to make it easy for people to review and comment.    Just try it! There really is no downside.  Its all upside - very energizing, fruitful, creative.  Why isn’t this done more often? It should be a more widespread process.

--------

For those of you who have been involved in something similar, please share your views in the comments here or email me !

Packaging Up Innovation & Radical Management

In May, I was honored to be part of Steve Denning's workshop on his Radical Management principles for redefining 21^stCentury management.  Recognition that we need to find a new way to ‘manage' work is gaining ground. We tend to think of 21^st Century ‘new management' companies as those in ‘cool' industries: Internet, tech, alternative energy, social media, etc. These companies shun command-and-control!  However, there are some "old" "boring" companies that are surprising 21^stCentury.

So, think packaging. You know, those brown boxes that your amazon books come in? Those displays at the end of store aisles that get you to buy more snacks? It's a commodity business, ruled by big huge vertically integrated behemoths with entrenched hierarchies held sacred.  Kind of boring huh?  You bet...not!

In the middle of Wisconsin (not Silicon Valley) is a 163 yr. old, private family business that reinvented itself, pulled a few classic "Blue Oceans" and looks more like a 21^st Century newbie than a 19^th Century oldie: Menasha Packaging Corporation (MPC).   MPC views their transformation as a journey, not a destination.  Their success is due to their most important asset - people.  And it's not just words, its action based on their values.  MPC has organized itself not as a traditional hierarchy, but as a network to enable and foster their culture.

A small headquarters organization is focused on removing obstacles and leveraging synergies while maintaining a strong entrepreneurial culture in each business.  Instead of centralizing the usual functions and capabilities, MPC relies on standardization, when applicable, to drive efficiency without bureaucracy.  Additionally, if one business has expertise another business needs or could use, it's shared in a center of excellence construct across heterogeneous businesses within MPC instead of being duplicated.  This allows each business to use its resources more innovatively, effectively and efficiently...a rather unique approach for an ‘old' company.

In one business, an employee created an engaging way to identify and monitor safety issues.  To her, this was just a normal thing to do - see a problem, create a solution.  Soon it spread through the plant and shifts, becoming named "Safety Snags".  Eventually, this became an internally branded initiative throughout MPC.

MPCs culture of customer co-creation is based on listening to customers, quickly creating prototypes set in realistic environments, getting feedback and iterating the experimentation/prototyping until its right. This is also done across MPC businesses to find the right solution.

My initial perception when I started working with MPC, of an old manufacturing company, was quickly changed, and continues to be.  It is not just the new, young, hip companies that are reinventing management and seeing the results.  So what does this say? That it is really possible to create and sustain innovation in established companies.  Perhaps, it starts by innovating management itself.