Manage To Change

The Speed of Trust

Steven M.R. Covey, author of The Speed of Trust, was the opening keynote speaker today at the SIIA Content Forum in San Francisco.

Covey believes “trust is a hard edged economic driver because it always addresses speed and cost.”

When trust decreases, speed decreases, and costs rise.

Covey also believes that trust is a key leadership competency in the new economy.

Trust is needed to acquire and keep customers, create and maintain community, and inspire and retain team members (employees or otherwise).

According to Covey, trust is a function of credibility and behavior.

You build credibility by acting with integrity, demonstrating respect for people (intent), building and maintaining relevant and current capabilities, and getting results.

However, a personal philosophy of integrity, good intentions, and ever increasing capabilities is not enough. Your actions must support your words.

“You can’t talk yourself out of a problem you behaved yourself into.”

In the end, Covey believes that trust is reciprocal and you must extend it to build it.

“Trust but verify” – but trust first and foundationally.

Note: I will be posting about some of the Content Forum sessions this week.  For detailed coverage of every session, visit John Blossom at Content Blogger.

The Curse of Knowledge

“Once we know something, we find it hard to imagine what it was like not to know it. Our knowledge has “cursed” us.”

I’ve started reading Made to Stick by Dan and Chip Heath.

According to the Heath’s, there are six principles that, if followed, greatly increase the chances our ideas will catch on.

The principles are simple and reflect a certain degree of common sense – yet, we don’t often follow them!

The villain (as they call it) is the curse of knowledge.

They tell the story of an experiment performed by a Stanford candidate for a PhD in psychology.

The student assembled two groups of study participants: tappers and listeners.

The tappers were given a list of simple tunes (Happy Birthday to You, for example) and had to tap out the rhythm for a listener.

The tappers predicted the listeners would identify half of the tunes correctly. In practice, the listeners were only right 2.5% of the time.

The tappers often got frustrated during the experiment not understanding how the listeners couldn’t identify the tune. 

The problem: The tappers knew the tune. It played in their heads as they tapped out the rhythm. The listeners did not.

What messages might you be putting on your PowerPoints based on a tune only you can hear completely?

Effective communication is critical to change.

I can’t wait to read the rest of this book!

The Radical Edge

Back in July I wrote about The Radical Leap, by Steve Farber. Yesterday I (finally) read the sequel, The Radical Edge. 

Liz Strauss covered my favorite concept in the book, finding your frequency, but there is so much more. 

There’s the Radical Edge defined “achieving simultaneous fulfillment of three of life’s seemingly incompatible spheres…your business, your personal life, and your effect on the world.” 

Then there’s the WUP (Wake Up Pad).  

A WUP is where you record your observations about everything around you. You scan your surroundings, listen to what’s going on, and take note of things. You write them down, record them, or somehow capture them for later reflection.  

There are no arbitrary boundaries. Write down what you see at home, at work, in your neighborhood, on the news, at school – whatever strikes you. Don’t make any judgments about what you’ve written.

Then you ponder (ask questions, consider what it means to you, to business, to life). When you’ve thought about it a bit you introduce your observations to others and discuss them (hopefully you’ll hear about what they’ve seen as well). 

Finally, you do something about what you’ve seen and discussed.

As one of Steve’s characters points out, “you’re not doing this to waste time; you’re doing this to create new ideas.” 

There are many other creativity and leadership insights embedded in this story.

You should read it and see for yourself!

The Art of Hospitality

Today in Shelf Awareness, a daily newsletter about the book trade: 

“Danny Meyer, legendary restaurateur and owner of Union Square Café, Gramercy Tavern and other eateries in New York City and author of Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business, was asked to define hospitality in a recent USA Today interview: 

"Service can be measured based on how well a product was technically delivered. Hospitality can be measured based upon how the recipient of that service felt. Hospitality exists when something happens for you, not to you. It exists when you believe the other person is on your side. Service is truly a monologue. Hospitality has to be a dialogue." [Emphasis added]

The HarperCollins website includes some of Danny's other insights:

• Hospitality is present when something happens for you. It is absent when something happens to you. These two simple concepts—for and to—express it all.
• Context, context, context, trumps the outdated location, location, location.
• Shared ownership develops when guests talk about a restaurant as if it's theirs. That sense of affiliation builds trust and invariably leads to repeat business.
• Err on the side of generosity: You get more by first giving more.
• Wherever your center lies, know it, name it, believe in it. When you cede your core values to someone else, it's time to quit. 

Looks like I’m getting another audio book.

For me, audio books are a life saver. I especially like the abridged versions. Unfortunately, iTunes’ selection is very limited.

The abridged version of this book is available on Audible.com.

Developing Your Personal Brand

Hugh MacLoed hits the nail on the head:

“As the Job-For-Life no longer exists, as the value of the social "position" erodes and the value of the "project" takes its place, personal brand development becomes far more important to one's career.”

Whether you work for a large corporation, a small business, or you’re out on your own, you need to develop and nurture your personal brand.  

Who are you? What do you stand for? When people think of you, what comes to mind?

What kind of work do they associate with you?

What kind of quality?

The trick is that all of these questions are not being asked of you – they’re being asked about you.

As Al Ries points out in the foreward of Catherine Kaputa’s book U R a Brand, “To become successful you need to focus on … creating a positive attitude in the minds of other people.”

If you haven’t guessed, I just started reading this book today.

I’ll let you know how it goes!

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.”

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!