Basics...

  • Since it generally requires a team to have adequate knowledge, their ability to learn from and learn with each other strongly affects the synergy of the output.
  • Idea relevance is largely determined by the knowledge basis of those involved in discovering and taking advantage of the new viewpoints.
  • Individual creativity is simply one viewpoint of a mutual co-creative process.
  • Strategy and Innovation are based on discovering different and better ways to understand the situation and opportunities.

Friday, June 11, 2010

It's not resistance to change ... you are wrong!

We are hurt and frustrated when people and organizations reject our ideas, the AHA's which were such a profound experience for us.

It may be that they reject highly creative ideas or do not understand your idea and its benefits, but there is a very real possibility that you are wrong! That your idea responds well to the problem as you understand it, but fails on critical issues that you are unaware of.

I found an interesting dynamic when I surveyed working innovation leaders certified in value engineering. Among the many questions, I asked if there were ideas that involved multiple departments, that involved multiple company levels, or that were so different that they had to re-explain the problem to the company.

I think that most people would label ideas high on these factors as highly creative, because they have to overcome so many barriers to acceptance. They would expect that these ideas would be least likely to be accepted.

Amazingly, these were the teams which had the highest level of idea acceptance!

As I looked over this data and my experience in the field, I realized that many "creative" ideas are too focused, and do not respond to the breadth of real world issues that affect the client. In other words, the ideas are inadequate ... we are wrong!!!

Ideas grow out of our understanding and values. If an engineering team does not understand the marketing dynamics, the ideas they generate to best fit the engineering context may have negative effects on marketing. This all-engineering team can have an AHA that is relevant to engineering, but is incapable of a "relevant AHA" that fits the whole problem.

Therefore, when we propose our ideas and encounter rejection, we should seriously consider that they might be seeing a part of the problem which we do not see. Instead of trying to "sell" them on our great idea, we should continue our creative efforts, including this new factor. We should treat the person who rejects us as our co-creator.

Of course, it is better if we manage to include that knowledge and values in the creative process. It may be that deliberate creativity and innovation is all about finding/constructing an individual, team, collaboration, or organization that has enough breath of knowledge and perspective to have a relevant AHA on the problem.

Organizations are designed to sub-divide problems into chunks that fit the minds of the available employees. We give engineering problems to engineers and accounting problems to accountants. Managers are expected to be capable of sub-dividing the problems, then synergizing the various sub-solutions into an optimal outcome. This has the advantage of letting people go deep into special issues without being distracted by other issues

We can increase the breadth of perspective and knowledge in various ways. We can hire or develop individuals who have a broader perspective. This is the rationale for rotating people through different departments to attain those various perspectives or to have students study multiple disciplines like engineering and medicine and law and business. Unfortunately, knowledge evolves so fast that by the time the process is complete, half the knowledge is obsolete and even wrong.

Another solution is to have a superHero problem solver who interacts with many different knowledge holders, gaining knowledge from each and having them check the details of the area of the solution they are familiar with.

My preference is assembling a team of people who in combination cover all the relevant knowledge, issues, and values, then working to maximize their creativity, cooperation, cohesiveness, and insight. This is not easy, especially as communication is deformed by differences in style, personality, national culture, values, etc. If you assemble a group with more diversity that you can handle, the collaboration will dissolve into confusion, anger, and chaos.

I think this may be the true definition of innovation leadership: the ability to assemble people with disjoint knowledge and values and create a process of interaction that overcomes differences and enables them to discover ideas and relevant AHA's that are invisible to others.

Developing these abilities in yourself and others is a complex but worthwhile endeavor.

2 comments:

  1. For some reason in my mind the word "chaos" is a positive word. I wonder if chaos is a desired, or even a necessary condition in the transition towards creativity and innovation.

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  2. Transition requires a release of well-believed paradigms and precepts ... the very definition of chaos.

    But some creatively develop innovations which fit inside the "reality" of others, and require no transformation to accept and use.

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