by Robyn Bolton | Jul 11, 2023 | Leadership, Tips, Tricks, & Tools
You are a leader, an innovator, and an optimist. You see what’s possible, and you sell people on your vision, encouraging them to come on the journey of discovery with you. You’re making progress, getting things done until *WHAM* you run right into that one person. You know who I’m talking about.
Dr. No.
Sometimes you see them coming because they’re from Legal, Regulatory, Finance, or another function that has the reputation of being a perpetual killjoy.
Sometimes you hear them coming:
- “Why are we doing this? Don’t we have enough to do?”
- “We tried this in 19XX. It didn’t work then, and it won’t work now.”
- “I don’t have time for this. I have real work to do.”
Sometimes they sneak up on you, privately supporting your efforts only to undermine your efforts publicly.
But they’re always there. Waiting for the opportunity to not just rain on your parade but to unleash a category 5 Hurricane of obstacles, barriers, and flat-out refusals on your innovation efforts.
This is precisely why Dr. No is among the first people to invite to the parade.
Why You Need to Say Yes to Dr. No
Let’s be honest, no one wants to do this. At best, Dr. No’s negativity and smug predictions of inevitable failure are downers, dampening and discouraging the culture of questioning, experimentation, and learning you’re trying to create. At worst, it can feel like working with a saboteur hell-bent on doing the “I told You So” dance atop the ruins of your innovation team.
But just like eating your vegetables, you need to do it because it will make you and your innovation efforts healthier, stronger, and more likely to live longer.
How to Say Yes to Dr. No
Step 1: Be Human. Together.
As with many things in life, the first step is changing how you think and behave. Naturally, you have feelings, perceptions, and even predictions about Dr. No and their likely behavior. Set them aside. Not because they’re incorrect but because you can’t move forward if you’re standing in a hole.
So, start with what you have in common – Dr. No is a human being, just like you.
Like other human beings, Dr. No needs to feel connected and accepted. When they don’t feel connected and accepted, they will feel defensive and under attack and respond by taking steps to protect themselves and their jobs. But when they connect and feel accepted, you have the foundation for psychological safety.
To establish a connection and foster a feeling of acceptance, try:
- Acknowledging the importance of the job they’re doing and its impact on the business
- Asking questions to understand better how they think and what they prioritize
- Building a rapport by sharing some of your aspirations and concerns and asking about theirs
Step 2: Invite Them on the Journey
People love what they create. It’s the only way to explain why people have outsized attachments to IKEA furniture, distorted art projects, and failed products.
Invite Dr. No to be part of the creation process. Don’t tell them they’re part of it, that’s the business version of kidnapping, and no one likes being kidnapped.
Instead, express your desire for them to be involved because you value their perspective. Ask them how and when they want to be involved. Share how you want them to be involved. Then work together to find a solution that works for both of you. Stay open to experimenting and changing how and when involvement happens. Make this a learning process for both of you as you work to do what’s best for the business.
Step 3: Stay curious
One of the most valuable lessons from Ted Lasso (and not Walt Whitman) is the importance of being curious, not judgmental.
As you do the work of innovation, there will be times when Dr. No lives up (or down) to their name. No matter how much time you invested in your relationship, how much psychological safety you built, or how involved they were in the process, they will still say No.
If you are judgmental, that No is the end of the conversation. If you’re curious, it’s the start.
So, get curious and ask,
- What causes you to say that? (probe on what they see, think, and feel)
- Have you seen something like this before? What was the context? What happened?
- What do you need to see to say Yes?
Engage them in solving the problem with you rather than defending themselves against you.
Can Dr. No become Dr. Yes?
Maybe.
I’ve seen it happen, even to the point that Dr. No became the team’s loudest champion.
I’ve also seen it not happen. But even then, the No is less harsh, devastating, and final.
You won’t know until you try. Certainly, you won’t say no to that.
by Robyn Bolton | Jul 3, 2023 | Innovation, Leadership, Tips, Tricks, & Tools
When my niece was 4 years old, she looked at her mom (my sister) and said, “I can’t wait until I’m an adult so I can be in charge and make all the decisions.” My sister laughed and laughed.
Being in charge looks glamorous from the outside, but it is challenging, painful, and sometimes soul-wrenching. Never is this truer than when you must make a tough decision and don’t have all the data you want or need.
But lately, I’ve noticed more and more executives defer making decisions. They’ll say they want more data, to hear what another executive thinks, or are nervous that we’re rushing to decide.
This deferral is a HUGE problem because making decisions is literally their job! After all, as Norman Schwarzkopf wrote in his autobiography, “When placed in command, take charge.”
When you decide, you lose
A decision is “a choice that you make about something after thinking about several possibilities.” Seems innocent enough, right? Coke or Pepsi. Paper or plastic. Ariana Madix or Raquel Leviss (if you don’t know about this one, consider yourself lucky. If you choose to know about it, click here).
The problem with making decisions is that loss is unavoidable. Heck, the word “decide” comes from the Latin roots “de,” meaning off, and “caedre,” meaning cut. When you choose Coke, paper bags, or Ariana, you are cutting off the opportunity to drink Pepsi with that meal, use a plastic bag to carry your purchases or support Rachel in a pointless pop culture debate.
Decisions get more challenging as the stakes get higher because the fear of loss skyrockets. Loss aversion, a cognitive bias describing why the psychological pain of loss is twice as acute as the pleasure of gain, is common in cognitive psychology, decision theory, and behavioral economics. You see this bias in action when someone refuses to ask questions or challenge the status quo, to take a good deal because it’s below their initial baseline, or to sell an asset (like a house) for less than they paid for it.
No decision is the worst decision
Deciding not to decide is often the worst decision of all. Because it feels like you’re avoiding loss and increasing your odds of making the right decision by gathering more data and input, it’s easy to forget that you’re losing time, employee engagement and morale, and potential revenue and profit.
When you decide not to decide, progress slows or even stops. No decision gives your competition time to catch up or even pass you. Your team gets frustrated, morale drops, and people search for other opportunities to progress and have an impact. The date of the first revenue slips further into the future, slowly becoming just a theoretical number in a spreadsheet.
Decide how to decide
In a VUCA world, a perfect, risk-free decision that offers only upside does not exist. If it did, the business wouldn’t need an executive with your experience, intellect, and courage. Yet here you are.
It’s your job to make decisions.
Make that job easier by deciding how to decide
Tell people what you need to see to say Yes. “I’ll know it when I see it” is one of the biggest management cop-outs ever. If you don’t know what you want, don’t waste money and time requiring your team to become mind readers. But you probably know what you want. You’re just afraid of being wrong. Instead of allowing your fear to fuel inefficiency, tell the team what you need or want to see and that, as they make progress, that request might change. Then set regular check-ins so that if/when it happens, it happens quickly and is communicated clearly.
Break big decisions down into little decisions. I once worked with a team that had an idea for a new product. They planned to pitch to the executive committee and request 3 million dollars to develop and launch the idea. After some coaxing, we decided to avoid that disaster and brainstormed everything that needed to be true to make the idea work. We devised a plan to test the three assumptions that, if we were wrong, would instantly kill the idea. When we pitched to the executive committee, we received an immediate Yes.
Present options and implications. As anyone with a toddler knows, you don’t ask yes or no questions. You give them options – do you want to wear the yellow or pink shirt? If they pick something else, like their Batman costume, you explain the implications of that decision and why the options previously presented are better. Sometimes they pick the yellow shirt. Sometimes they pick the Batman costume. You could force them to make the right decision, but no one wins. (Yes, I just compared managers to toddlers. Prove me wrong).
It’s your decision
Being in charge requires making decisions. When you decide, you lose the option (maybe temporarily, maybe forever) to pursue a different path. But you can’t be afraid to do it.
After all, “Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains.”
by Robyn Bolton | Jun 21, 2023 | Innovation, Leadership, Tips, Tricks, & Tools
As the world around you becomes more volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA), you know that you need to build skills to navigate it and inspire others to follow your path.
But what if you are the source of ambiguity?
Because you are. Every time you speak.
The words we use always have clear meaning and intent to us but may not (and often don’t) have the same meaning and intent to others.
That’s why one of the first and most essential things a company can do when starting its innovation journey is to decide what “innovation” means. It may seem like an academic exercise, but it becomes very practical when you discover that one person thinks it means something new to the world, another thinks it’s a new product, and a third thinks it means anything commercialized.
Ambiguity = Efficiency?
“Innovation” isn’t the only word that is distractingly ambiguous. Language, in general, evolved to be ambiguous because ambiguity makes it more efficient. In 2012, cognitive scientists at MIT found the ambiguity–efficiency link, noting “words with fewer syllables and easier pronunciation can be ‘reused,’ avoiding the need for a vast and increasingly complex vocabulary.”
You read that right. In language, ambiguity leads to efficiency.
Every time you speak, you’re ambiguous. You’re also efficient.
The RIGHT level of Ambiguity = Efficiency!
In 2014, researchers at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona found that language’s ambiguity is critical to communicating complex ideas,
“the researchers argue that the level of ambiguity we have in language is at just the right level to make it easy to speak and be understood. If every single object and concept had its own unique word, then language is completely unambiguous – but the vocabulary is huge. The listener doesn’t have to do any guessing about what the speaker is saying, but the speaker has to say a lot. For example, “Come here” might have to be something like “I want you to come to where I am standing.” At the other extreme, if the same word is used for everything, that makes it easy for the speaker, but the listener can’t tell if she is being told about the weather or a rampaging bear.”
.
Either way, communication is hard. But Sole and Seoane argue that with just the right amount of ambiguity, the two can find a good trade-off.”
A certain level of ambiguity is efficient. Too much or too little is inefficient.
How to find the RIGHT level of Ambiguity for “Innovation”
In everyday life, it’s ok for everyone to have a slightly different definition of innovation because we all generally agree it means “something new.” Sure, there will be differences of opinion on some things (is a new car an “innovation” if it just improved on the previous model?). Still, overall, we can exist in this world and interact with each other despite, or maybe because of, the ambiguity.
Work is a different story. If you are responsible for, working on, or even associated with innovation, you better be very clear on what “innovation” means because its definition determines expectations and success for what you do. If it means one thing to you and a different thing to your boss, and a third thing to her boss, you’re in for a world of disappointment and pain.
Let’s avoid that. Instead:
- Define the word
- Get everyone to agree on the definition
- Use the word and immediately follow it with, “And by that, I mean (definition)”
Gently correct people when they use the word to mean something other than the agreed-upon definition. Once everyone uses the word correctly, you can stop defining it every time because its meaning has taken root.
So, the next time someone rolls their eyes and comments on the “theoretical” or “academic” (i.e., not at all practical, useful, or actionable) exercise of defining innovation, smile and explain that this is an exercise in efficiency.
by Robyn Bolton | May 11, 2023 | Leadership, Stories & Examples, Tips, Tricks, & Tools
“We have successfully retained the opportunity for improvement.”
When the CEO said this to kick off a meeting, I knew we were in for an adventure. He smirked at the corporate double-speak, paused for the laughter, then outlined all the headwinds facing the business. But the only thing I remember from that meeting was his opening line.
I think about it all the time. Because it seems to apply all the time.
And despite the turmoil brought on by a pandemic, a war, and an economic slowdown, we have successfully retained the opportunity to improve how we deal with uncertainty.
That isn’t to say we haven’t improved over the past three years. In fact, at an event sponsored by NextUp, four executives from P&G, CVS, Hannaford, and Intel shared what they learned and how they changed while navigating uncertainty.
Listen more
Dave DeJohn, Director of Operations for Hannaford, talked about the importance of listening deeply and constantly to employees, especially those on the front lines. Consistent with its core values of family, community, quality, and value, store associates are trained that the customer is always right. However, as incidents of verbal abuse increased during the lockdowns, employee satisfaction and mental health declined. By closely listening and observing what was happening in stores, Hannaford’s leadership modified their customer service approach to “the customer is always right, within reason” and empowered employees to stand up for themselves and each other when faced with hostile shoppers.
Stronger relationships lead to stronger results
Every executive shared stories from the early days of working from home – technical glitches, kids invading calls, and even cats positioning themselves awkwardly in front of cameras when the human stepped away. Far from being signals of a lack of commitment or professionalism, these moments transformed roles and titles into human beings, juggling all the things humans must juggle. Once people started seeing others as fellow humans versus bosses, peers, or subordinates, they connected on a human level and formed genuine and trusting relationships. Those relationships led to better collaboration, more effective troubleshooting, and better business results.
Concise concrete communication is critical
In periods of uncertainty, information is power. But it’s also constantly changing. For that reason, constant communication is a must. But in a large organization, communication often comes from multiple departments – employee relations, HR, health and safety, operations, and marketing, to name a few – and that can be overwhelming. For this reason, DeJohn learned that keeping every message concise (ideally the length of a tweet but no more than a short paragraph) and concrete (specific, tangible, tactical rather than high-level platitudes) proved critical to keeping people aligned and moving forward.
Just because you can, doesn’t mean you need to
Keris Clark, VP of Sales at P&G, spoke about the drastic shift in her work/life balance when she could no longer travel to see customers or attend meetings. Instead of taking the first flight from Boston to Seattle for a meeting and then a red-eye back home, she suddenly had time to work out, cook, and spend time with family. As travel became safer and invitations to far-away meetings came in, she thought more critically about whether or not to book the tickets. Like most of us, she still travels for some things, but it’s no longer the default option now that more people are used to video calls and other ways of working.
We can do things differently and still deliver
COVID’s effect on the supply chain is well documented, and Tiffiny Fisher, Chief of Staff and Technical Assistant for Intel’s America region, gave us a view into Intel’s situation in the earliest days of the pandemic. With fabrication, assembly, and testing sites throughout Asia, Intel had to work quickly to figure out how to continue operating while staying with government lockdown guidelines. Ultimately, hundreds of employees volunteered to leave their families and live in hotels near Intel facilities so that they could continue operating. It was a huge sacrifice by employees and probably not one that anyone would want to make again. Still, it proved that Intel, with the support of its employees, could quickly make massive changes to its operations while continuing to deliver results.
Uncertainty can be deeply uncomfortable, even frightening, even though we face it every day. Building the skills to navigate it and learning lessons about what works and doesn’t can make it easier. But if you still struggle, don’t worry. It just means you’ve successfully retained the opportunity for improvement.
by Robyn Bolton | Apr 2, 2023 | Innovation, Tips, Tricks, & Tools
The Official Story
“Innovation” is not peanut butter.
You can’t smear it all over everything and expect deliciousness.
When discussing innovation, you must be specific so people know what you expect. This is why so many thought leaders, consultants, and practitioners preach the importance of defining different types of innovation.
- Clayton Christensen encourages focusing on WHY innovation is happening – improve performance, improve efficiency, or create markets – in his 2014 HBR article.
- The classic Core/Adjacent/Transformational model focuses on WHAT is changing – target customer, offering, financial model, and resources and processes.
- McKinsey’s 3 Horizons focus on WHEN the results are achieved – this year, 2-3 years, 3-6 years.
It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the options and worry about which approach is “best.” But, like all frameworks, they’re all a little bit right and a little bit wrong, and the best one is the one that will be used and get results in your organization.
The REAL story
Everything in the official story is true, but not the whole truth.
“Innovation” is not peanut butter.
You can’t smear it all over everything and expect deliciousness.
When doing innovation, you must remember your customer – the executives who make decisions, allocate resources, and can accelerate or decimate your efforts.
More importantly, you need to remember their Jobs to be Done (JTBD) – keep my job, feel safe and respected, and be perceived as competent/a rising star – because these jobs define the innovations that will get to market.
3 REAL types of innovation
SAFE – The delightful solution to decision-makers’ JTBD
Most closely aligned with Core innovation, improving performance or efficiency, and Horizon 1 because the focus is on improving what exists in a way that will generate revenue this year or next. Decision-makers feel confident because they’ve “been there and done that” (heck, doing “that” is probably what got them promoted in the first place). In fact, they’re more likely to get in trouble for NOT investing in these types of innovations than they are for investing in them.
STRETCH – The Good Enough solution
Most like Adjacent innovation because they allow decision-makers to keep one foot in the known while “stretching” their other foot into a new (to them) area. This type of innovation makes decision-makers nervous because they don’t have all the answers, but they feel like they at least know what questions to ask. Progress will require more data, and decisions will take longer than most intrapreneurs want. But eventually, enough time and resources (and ego/reputation) will be invested that, unless the team recommends killing it, the project will launch.
SPLATTER – The Terrible solution
No matter what you call them – transformational, radical, breakthrough, disruptive, or moonshots – these innovations make everyone’s eyes light up before reality kicks in and crushes our dreams. These innovations “define the next chapter of our business” and “disrupt ourselves before we’re disrupted.” These innovations also require decision-makers to let go of everything they know and wander entirely into the unknown. To invest resources in the hope of seeing the return (and reward) come back to their successor (or successor’s successor). To defend their decisions, their team, and themselves when things don’t go exactly as planned.
How to find the REAL type that will get real results.
- “You said you want X. Would you describe that for me?” (you may need to give examples). When I worked at Clayton Christensen’s firm, executives would always call and ask for our help to create a disruptive innovation. When I would explain what they were actually asking for (something with “good enough” performance and a low selling price that appeals to non-consumers), they would back away from the table, wave their hands, and say, “Oh, not that. We don’t want that.”
- “How much are you willing to risk?” If they’re willing to go to their boss to ask for resources, they’re willing to Stretch. If they’re willing to get fired, they’re willing to Splatter. If everything needs to stay within their signing authority, it’s all about staying Safe.
- “What would you need to see to risk more?” As an innovator, you’ll always want more freedom to push boundaries and feel confident that you can convince others to see things your way. But before you pitch Stretch to a boss that wants Safe, or Splatter to a boss barely willing to Stretch, learn what they need to change their minds. Maybe it will be worth your effort, maybe it won’t. Better to know sooner rather than later.
by Robyn Bolton | Jan 10, 2023 | Innovation, Tips, Tricks, & Tools
What happened the last time you asked your team for ideas?
A. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch.
B. Got some ideas but nothing new or noteworthy
C. Got lots of ideas, but very few were relevant, new, or big
D. The clouds parted. The angels sang. The Ideas forever transformed our business.
My guess is you answered A, B, or C
(If you answered D, let me know because I need to learn how you did it).
While there are dozens of reasons why D did not happen, the most common one is this:
You asked for ideas.
You said, “Hey, I want to hear your ideas.”
Or maybe you got more specific and said, “I want to hear your ideas about how we can do better.”
What your team heard was “Hey, I want to hear your ideas as long as they’re the ideas I want to hear and pertain to the topics I want to hear about, but I’m not going to tell you the topics, so share at your own risk and may the odds be ever in your favor.”
So your team stayed quiet.
Good news, you can turn the odds in your favor if you do this ONE thing:
Give them constraints.
It seems counterintuitive.
After all, shouldn’t creativity be unconstrained?
Isn’t ideation all about blue sky crazy thinking?
Doesn’t innovation require us to unshackle ourselves from what is practical and dream of what’s possible?
No. No. No.
Constraints fuel creativity
You don’t have infinite money, people, or time. *
Which means you have constraints.
Don’t run from that fact. Don’t hide from it. Don’t ignore it,
Embrace it because it is what fuels creation, innovation, and growth.
No one knew that better than Orson Welles (and he was a pretty creative guy)
“The enemy of art is the absence of limitations, ” he told filmmaker Henry Jaglom. “Economically and creatively, that’s the most important advice you can be given. You have limitations; you don’t have $ 1 million to blow up that bridge, so you have to create something else on film to produce the same effect. Instead of having money to hire hundreds of extras, you have to sneak a cameraman in a wheelchair through the streets of New York City and steal the shot, which gives you a look of much greater reality.”
If constraints can create Citizen Kane, imagine what they can do for your business.
Constraints demand focus
Think about the last movie you saw that was way too long. Or the book that could have been an article. Or the meeting that should have been an email.
When you have all the money, time, or resources you need, you can do anything and try to do everything. Unfortunately, the result is usually a bloated confusing mess that leaves your customers feeling like they’ve lost more than they gained.
But when you only have 2 hours or 300 pages to tell a story, 20 minutes instead of four hours for a presentation, or $10,000 to create a new product, you get crystal clear on what you’re trying to accomplish, prioritize what you need, and leave everything else behind.
Constraints cause tension which leads to choices
In The Offer, a fantastic series about the making of The Godfather, there’s a great scene in which the studio executive demands that Francis Ford Coppola cut 45 minutes from the film (and helpfully suggests cutting all the scenes set in Sicily). The reason? So that theaters can host five showings per day instead of four.
Two hours is a constraint.
Sicily is where Michael abandons all hope of a normal life.
The tension between revenue and story, business and art, is real.
Tension requires you to make choices. Constraints shouldn’t always win. But they should always be present.
Constraints create value
The next time you ask for ideas sprinkle in some constraints.
- “I’d like your ideas for how we can use existing assets to expand into new markets.”
- “How can we earn more money from existing customers without raising prices?”
- “What can we stop doing so we can focus on high-priority work and avoid burnout?”
You’ll find that adding a few constraints to your request for ideas will be an offer your team can’t refuse.
*If you do have unlimited people, money, and time, please let me know. I’d love to talk to you.
