Manage To Change

Going Full Circle

In Free Agent Nation, Dan Pink talks about the days when most people worked at home.

They were farmers and blacksmiths and bakers, and they had everything they needed at home to make a living.  

There weren’t work/life balance issues. Work was life and life was work. The family was there and they all worked together. 

Then something happened: The Industrial Age.

We no longer had everything we needed at home to make a living.

There were suddenly “barriers to entry”.

So someone with money provided the building and the tools and we showed up, as did hundreds of others, to make the car, or print the advertisement, or do whatever our employer needed us to do. 

Most of us got used to going out of our homes to make a living. Even if we weren’t on the assembly line, for decades we still left every morning to go do our jobs.

Companies had scale. They could produce, sell, market, and distribute better than we could alone. We needed them and they needed us. 

Because we weren’t home, we started to feel guilty. We missed our kids, our spouses, and our dog. 

We felt stressed.

No matter how hard we worked we couldn’t make everyone happy or fit everything into our day. Something always had to give.

Most of the time we gave up on ourselves: our health, our leisure time, or even our sleep.

We felt more stressed.

Then something else happened: The Information Age. 

Technology advanced quickly and dramatically. As it did, its cost declined. Barriers to entry began to disappear.

We could be small again. In fact, being too big was a problem. Being too big slowed down innovation and decision making and made us less competitive. 

We could be small. We could even be one person. We could work in our homes and cheaply connect with anyone we needed - anywhere in the world.

But, we forgot how to work from home. We forgot how to set our own schedule. We forgot how to blend our family with our business.  

Luckily, we’re learning it all over again!

Happy Friday!

We’re all Marketers: Now What?

If you believe that everyone is a marketer (or should be), as I do, then Seth Godin’s post today is a great reminder of our accountability. 

“Marketing (the use of time and money to create a story and spread it) works. Human beings don't make rational decisions, they make emotional ones, and we've seen time and again that those decisions are influenced by the time and money spent by marketers.”

We’ve talked about how people make decisions. 

When we market ideas within our company, we are using our knowledge and influence to impact the decision making process.

We may be stating facts and figures, but we tend to showcase the ones that strengthen our case.   

It could very well be because we believe in our case, but a little self-diagnostic couldn’t hurt.

Is the project we want to get started really for the benefit of our company and our customers?  

If you were the CEO, would you think your project was the best way to spend limited time and money? If not, why not?

We are all accountable for what we market and sell – even if we’re selling ideas within our own company.

What Should Managers Do?

There are many though provoking resources we can read about management and leadership. They cover leadership qualities, attitudes, and perspectives in great detail (some of my favorites include: Tom Peters, Bob Sutton, Steve Farber, David Maister, Phil Gerbyshak, and Fast Company). 

But, if we were to focus on execution (assuming we have a team and we know our objectives), what actions would we define as essential to being effective managers? 

I believe there are two things good managers DO continuously. 

1. They remove obstacles.
2. They reward and redirect people.

Managers anticipate, negotiate, and remove roadblocks that cause their team to waste time or get too frustrated. They handle the politics, “plant the seeds”, negotiate the trade-offs, and take the bullets so that the team has what they need to keep moving.  

Part of “removing obstacles” is not becoming one. Managers support their team. They never blame the people they manage for failures or inadequacies – especially in public.

While they may not blame a team member for failures, they do reward and redirect people as needed.  Sometimes this means helping someone identify and develop an area where they’re having difficulty.  

Sometimes this means admitting that someone isn’t appropriate for the team (or the team isn’t appropriate for them) and taking actions to reassign or remove that person. 

Most often, though, this is where a manager stands up for the people they manage and makes certain that team members are appreciated and rewarded for their efforts. 

Can you think of something a manager must do that doesn’t fit into one of these categories?

Weird Ideas That Work: Filter the Noise

The last three of Robert Sutton’s Weird Ideas That Work tell us to ignore sources that most people consider “good” counsel: customers, critics, financial experts, people that have solved our problem before, and our own past successes. 

There is a time and place to test new ideas and listen to these sources (see Weird Idea 9), but it isn’t as we’re first identifying the possibilities.

Weird Idea 9: Avoid, Distract, and Bore Customers, Critics, and Anyone Who Just Wants to Talk About Money  

This chapter focuses on when and how to invite or banish attention from “outsiders”. Times to banish attention include:

“When the team is developing a brand-new product, solution, or service, and not making incremental improvements in existing ones” 

“When outsiders keep insisting that things should be done the way they’ve always been done”

“When people are spending too much time working on ways to present innovative ideas, and not enough time developing ideas”  

Weird Idea 10: Don’t Try to Learn Anything from People Who Seem to Have Solved the Problems You Face

Capitalize on naiveté.  

“Sometimes being ignorant, but curious, playful, and persistent, is better than knowing the way things are supposed to be done and the way that others have done them.”

Weird Idea 11: Forget the Past, Especially Your Company’s Successes 

“…the way the human brain operates makes us prone to repeating what we have done in the past, especially if it was successful.”

When discussing ways to forget about the past, Professor Sutton talks about starting a separate company or business unit, locating it far away from the corporate center, and doing “everything possible to get people in it to ignore, defy, and rebel against the organizational code.” 

Sutton quotes William Coyne, a former 3M R&D executive: “After you plant a seed in the ground, you don’t dig it up every week to see how it is doing.”

This last batch of weird ideas helps keep the seed in the ground until it’s ready to push through on its own!

Weird Ideas That Work: The Right Projects

As we continue to review Robert Sutton’s weird ideas, we need to consider what to do after you get the right people and build the right environment to encourage innovation.  

How do you know which ideas will lead to successful new products?

You don’t.  

But, weird ideas seven and eight will give you a couple of tips!

Weird Idea 7: Decide to Do Something That Will Probably Fail, Then Convince Yourself and Everyone Else That Success Is Certain

Chances are we have already decided “to do something that will probably fail”. Most attempts at innovation do fail.  

The only way to give an idea a fighting chance is to “convince yourself and everyone else that success is certain”. “There is overwhelming evidence for the power of positive thinking, that belief can create reality.”

Professor Sutton reviews several studies pointing to belief and commitment as critical success factors in innovation. “Taken together, these studies and cases imply that, if you can’t decide which new projects or ideas to be on based on their objective merits pick those that will be developed by the most committed and persuasive heretics you can find.”  

Great advice: “Focus on “pulling the plug” on failed ideas more quickly, not on reducing your failure rate.”

Weird Idea 8: Think of Some Ridiculous or Impractical Things to Do, Then Plan to Do Them

1. By considering the opposite, you may make clear what ought to be done 

2. By considering crazy ideas, you might just find ideas that aren’t so crazy after all. “What could be a dumber idea than selling Pet Rocks? Perhaps not selling them…jolt people into questioning the existing dogma and…generate counterintuitive ideas.”

3. By acting on a crazy idea, you may just “develop an idea that others won’t copy – at least right away.”  

As Professor Sutton points out, “…many new ideas are generated by people who are seen as deviants within their companies, industries, and societies…thinking and acting differently is given lip-service in most companies, but when people actually do it, they are ignored, humiliated, and fired.”

One caution: “Outlaw even light-hearted ridicule and put-downs when people suggest these wacky ideas.”

Should We Be Offended?

Offensive: causing resentful displeasure; highly irritating, angering or annoying. 

Change is offensive. 
It challenges the status quo. 

Learning is offensive. 
It forces us to grow.  

Decision making is offensive. 
It’s discriminating.  

Leadership is offensive. 
We don’t always get our way.

Innovators are offensive. 
They challenge us. 

Thinkers are offensive. 
They ask a lot of annoying questions. 

Honesty is offensive. 
Sometimes the truth hurts. 

Integrity is offensive. 
Its presence highlights where it’s absent.

Please, offend me!

Weird Ideas That Work: The Right Environment

Today is “environment day” in our continuing overview of Robert Sutton’s Weird Ideas That Work.

Once you have hired the right people, how should you manage them?

 

Weird Idea 4: Encourage People to Ignore and Defy Superiors and Peers 
(PS – That’s even if you’re their “superior”!!!!)

“Jeffrey Pfeffer likes to say that managers should be required to take something like the physician’s oath: “First, do no harm.”” 

What harm can they do?

Managers can squash ideas because they don’t understand them, feel threatened by them, or aren’t really listening. They tend to avoid healthy conflict because it’s uncomfortable. In the very worst cases, they may even reject ideas to protect their turf! 

“…innovation…increases when employees don’t ask for permission before doing things, don’t bother to tell managers what they are doing, and even defy their superior’s orders.”

We’ve talked about rules and asking permission here before. 

Weird Idea 5: Find Some Happy People and Get Them to Fight

“…conflict (and the criticism it entails) is damaging when it causes ideas to be rejected before they can be developed well enough to be evaluated.” 

BUT…

“When an idea is beyond its infancy, but still unproven, constructive conflict is crucial for developing and testing its value.” Constructive conflict is “task” or “intellectual” criticism offered “in an atmosphere of mutual respect”. 

Weird Idea 6: Reward Success and Failure, Punish Inaction

We learn from our failures. We have more failures than successes. Intelligent failure moves us closer to success. Inaction causes us not just to stay where we are, but to fall behind. Inaction is far more dangerous than intelligent failure. 

The problem is that organizations don’t tolerate failure very well.

To compensate for this, Sutton considers that perhaps this weird idea should be “Reward failure even more than success, and punish inaction.” 

We now have ideas on who to hire and how to manage them, but what should they be doing?

Next week we’ll discuss weird ideas for considering which projects will make a difference.

Weird Ideas That Work: The Right People

In continuing our overview of Robert Sutton’s Weird Ideas That Work, let’s talk about people. 

“Driving out variation makes sense when organizations do proven things in proven ways that still work…When innovation is the goal, however, organizations need variations in what people do, think about, and produce.”

We also need variation in who we hire! 

Weird Idea 1: Hire “Slow Learners” (of the Organizational Code)
The organizational code is “…assumptions about why things are supposed to be done in certain ways…shared norms…” If you want innovation, you need varied perspectives and ideas. If you want variation you need to hire people that aren’t eager to assimilate.

An interesting point raised is that slow learners may have symbiotic relationships with “fast learners” who can “…protect and insulate them, and who can translate and promote their ideas.” 

Weird Idea 1.5: Hire People Who Make You Uncomfortable, Even Those You Dislike
“…another way to find a few useful misfits who will ignore and reject the organizational code.” 

Weird Idea 2: Hire People (You Probably) Don’t Need
“…they sometimes produced useful new products or ways of working that people who had the “right” skills never would have dreamed up.”

Hire the people with skills you might need.  

Sutton refers to innovative people and companies as packrats “…collecting ideas, people, and things they don’t seem to have any immediate use for, but they can’t bring themselves to forget or discard.”

This makes perfect sense. If most innovation involves combining existing ideas or elements in new ways, then you need to keep collecting people and ideas to have the raw materials to innovate! 

Weird Idea 3: Use Job Interviews to Get Ideas, Not to Screen Candidates
It’s very difficult to pick the right candidate for a job based on the classic “tell me your strengths and weaknesses and your biggest accomplishment” job interview.

What if we used interviews as our opportunities to “rent” someone’s brain? What if we gave them problems we can’t solve or are having difficulty managing? What would they do? Why?

Wouldn’t this give us an opportunity to get to know the candidate better and, regardless of whether a job is offered and subsequently accepted, gain a fresh perspective? 

Once we have the right people, we’ll need to provide the right environment – more about that tomorrow!

Weird Ideas That Work

In 2002, Robert Sutton published the book Weird Ideas That Work: 11 ½ Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation. His ideas, perspective and style immediately got my attention. 

It was the first time I read anything that described creativity and innovation with phrases like:

“You just need to be skilled and motivated at gathering knowledge from diverse sources, and then at figuring out how it might be put to new uses.” 

“In the right hands, nothing succeeds like failure.”

“…all great technologies are blends of other technologies” 

“They automatically think of every possible permutation instead of assuming that existing ways are best.”

“…ability to see links between otherwise disconnected fields.” 

And finally: “My weird ideas spark innovation because each helps companies do at least one of three things: (1) increase variance in available knowledge, (2) see old things in new ways, and (3) break from the past.”

Professor Sutton’s ideas can be viewed as a “menu” for innovation. As with any good menu, time will introduce variations, additions, and adjustments, but the foundation is a solid base with which to start. 

1. Get the right people (Ideas 1, 1.5, 2, & 3)
2. Build the right environment (Ideas 4, 5, & 6)
3. Work on the right projects (Ideas 7 & 8)
4. Filter out the noise (Ideas 9, 10, & 11)

Over the next several posts we’ll cover them all. Hopefully when we’re done you’ll be interested in learning more about Professor Sutton and his more recent weird (and not-so weird) ideas!

Updated 8/23: Professor Sutton covered these today on his blog.  As a result, I made a few edits to more accurately reflect his thoughts.

Check this out: Tom Peters interviews Bob Sutton about his weird ideas!

Starbucks Created a Monster – ME!

I was sitting in Starbucks telling my husband about how picky I have become with coffee.

Now, Starbucks wanted me to be picky.

They wanted me to prefer their roasts to (God forbid) Maxwell House or Folgers (remember that stuff that came in the cans?).

And I do.

But, when my Starbucks barista pulls my shot too long or short – I can taste it.

I really can. I couldn’t before. I can now.

When it’s not made exactly the way I asked for it, I can taste that too. 

When it’s not right, I ask them to fix it.

I can’t drink it anymore when it’s not right.

They ruined me! 

But they got just what they wanted.

If they ever stop delivering what I’ve been trained to expect, I’ll leave and never look back. 

They got just what they wanted.

Now it’s up to them to keep it.

(PS. After I posted about what I expect, I saw Seth Godin posted about What People Want  an interesting combination!)