A Lean, Mean, Innovation Machine!
Want to increase innovation? Employee engagement? Lower turnover and create a work force that is focused on solving problems? Jag Randhawa tells us how in his new book, The Bright Idea Box: A Proven System to Drive Employee Engagement.
Want to increase innovation? Employee engagement? Lower turnover and create a workforce that is focused on solving problems. In his new book, The Bright Idea Box: A Proven System to Drive Employee Engagement, Jag Randhawa tells us how.
If you only have time to read one book and your business needs a booster shot for innovation and engagement, this is the book you need.
This photo was shared under the Creative Commons Attribution License and has been taken from Tsahi Levent-Levi’s Flickr photo stream.
It’s a lean book that is easy to read. It has just enough information for anyone to understand why building a bottom-up innovation program is important, how to get buy-in, how to implement the program, and ensure its success! Better yet, it can be done with the smallest of budgets.
I’ve read many books on innovation and employee engagement, but this is the first one that ties it all together and gives us the plan to make it happen in our businesses.
This is a “how to” book with just enough theory to launch the innovation program.
I work for an internet marketing startup, and after reading the first chapter, I was going to use the information in this book to inject innovation into our team’s DNA. I’m going to create innovation training in conjunction with our Bright Idea Box Program, based on this book and my other research, books like: Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation by Steven Johnson, and The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work by Theresa Amabile and Steven Kramer.
The book is written in 3 parts:
Part One - The Innovation
Part Two - The Program
Part Three - The Engagement
Jag breaks down business innovation into four categories:
Revenue Generation
Cost Reduction
Business Process
Business Model.
“The results of innovation can emerge as a new or improved product, a new management strategy, lowered cost, added convenience for customers, or selling existing products in new ways or to new markets,” says Jag. When my team talks about innovation, it normally pertains to new products, niches, or marketing ideas. We overlook some places that have huge potential, like improving business processes.
Things like business processes and adding value for customers often get overlooked because they’re not sexy.
How much better would things work if everyone was thinking about improving the way we work instead of just the people whose job it is? Reframing innovation like this is hugely helpful.
Taking advantage of research in neuroscience, Jag uses chunking to help us to remember the steps necessary to implement our innovation program using the acronym MASTER:
Mobilize- Get people involved
Amass- Collect Ideas
Support- Assuring commitment
Triage- Screen Ideas
Execute- Implement Ideas
Recognize- Recognize team members
Jag says, “Innovation = Invention + Execution + Adoption” in other words, ideas without implementations are like seeds that get planted but never watered and tended to. It’s not enough to have good or even great ideas. They have to be captured, evaluated and, if they are worthy, implemented.
The author shows us how to get buy-in from executives, managers, and team members. He suggests we should hire partners, not employees. This is crucial for maximizing team engagement.
Question: In a bacon-and-egg breakfast, what’s the difference between the Chicken and the Pig?
Answer: The Chicken is involved, but the Pig is committed!
One of the best ways to engage team members is to raise their level of commitment. Be the pig! Be committed. When people are empowered and supported to make potentially staggering contributions to the company's success, they are much more likely to be committed.
The author also gives us a great way to filter out ideas that don’t add value to the business. When an idea is submitted four questions must be answered:
1. What is the name of the idea:
2. Description:
3. Benefits:
4. Cost-Benefit Rationale:
The first two are no-brainers, the third is necessary, and the last is gold! Requiring your team to answer these questions makes them think their idea through and sends half-baked ideas back for more development. Anyone who participates in the program will learn how to do a cost/benefit analysis. In other words, they will learn to think like business owners!
This is easily the best business book I’ve read in the last year. If your team lacks engagement, like 74% of employees in the United States, and innovation is something they hear mentioned in the news, you might want to give this book a read and put its ideas to good use.
Looking Around the Corner: Changing Perspective, Changes Everything!
Who would not like to see what is around the corner? If we were cameras, we could just change our perspective and we would be able to see around the corner. Of course we can change our positions as well. Probably the most helpful thing we can do with our minds is to change perspective. In many cases, all
Who would not like to see what is around the corner? If we were cameras, we could just change our perspective, and we would be able to see around the corner. Of course, we can change our positions as well. The most helpful thing we can do with our minds is to change our perspective. In many cases, all we need to do to solve insurmountable problems is to change our perspective. Empirical research from positive psychology and cognitive neuroscience are chuck full of results that tell us that changing the way we see the world, just a bit, can make significant differences in our quality of life, our health, our work, and our relationships.
Many of us do many things every day to shoot ourselves in the foot, and I am no exception. Up until about two months ago, there was a story I told myself that was not true. My whole life, I’m almost 50, I had been telling myself that I sucked with names. I sucked with names! I would meet someone at work, at an interview, or a party, and a few minutes later, I would forget their name. I told myself, “It’s just how my brain works.” It was so bad that I kept a list of all the people I worked with next to my phone so I could look them up as needed.
Then, in my quest for self-improvement, I finally read Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” It blew my mind! In what felt like another lifetime, during my very brief Amway experience, some folks tried to get me to read this book, but the title put me off. In my naive youth, I did not understand that all of us try to influence each other all the time, which is not really what the book is about. As a result of reading the book and following its practices, you will make more friends and be more influential, but that is only because you will be a nicer, more considerate person.
Shortly after reading the book, I was in Kuala Lumpur on vacation and staying at a guesthouse. I decided that I was going to try to remember everyone's name that I interacted with. It was a great guesthouse, and I went on a few group outings that day. I hung out with ten people and could remember all of their names! For the first time in my life, I was good with names! Me! I still remember 4 of them. And the only thing that changed is my perspective. I’ve done this with several other things I thought I was terrible at now, and I’m convinced that I, you, that everyone can learn and be good at whatever they are willing to put effort into.
Changing perspective has so many other possibilities to make our lives better. Changing from a pessimist to an optimist will increase your health, earn you more money, make you happier and result in better relationships. It will even lengthen your life! If someone cuts you off in traffic or exhibits some other sort of public behavior that you find offensive, make up a good excuse for their behavior in your mind instead of thinking the worst of them. Doing this will diminish any resentments you might have and help you let go of any anger you feel. In fact, compassion for someone going through something bad will leave you feeling good. And since you are likely never to find out the reason for their behavior, you might as well choose the response that serves you best.
Learning to be more flexible in our thinking, to see things from other’s perspectives, and changing our perspectives gives us more control over one of the only things we are in control of in our lives, our minds. So why not look around the corner?
Parkinson's Law and ROWE in Government
I recently came across Parkinson’s Law, “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” So bought a used copy of the book since it’s out of print. It was written in 1957 and is mainly about problems with government administration. Nothing much has changed since then. Parkinson talks about how bloated the British Admiralty became between 1914 and 1928. Ships in service decreased by 67.74%, men in the service decreased by 31.5%, dockyard officials increased by 40.28%, and Admiralty officials rose by 78.45%. He says there are two reasons for this. “An official wants to increase subordinates, not rivals,” and “Officials make work for each other.”
In 2008, San Francisco had a population of 809,000, and we had 27,844 civil employees. In San Jose, we had a population of 974,000 with 6992 civil employees. Though in SF, both city and county employees are counted. Does that seem ever so bloated to you? Hell yes! In SF, that’s about one government employee per 30 residents! Are the services in SF 4 times better than in SJ? I think not. Have you tried to get anything done in San Francisco? How about a building permit or inspection? I have some friends who ended up in building inspector/inspection hell last year while trying to open a new restaurant. They were trying to bring money and jobs to the city, and in times of financial strife, you’d think the city would want that sort of thing. Not so much.
If cities like San Francisco were to move to a Results Only Work Environment (ROWE), not only would we end up with the correct number of employees, but they’d be doing a better job and delivering better services. One of the hallmarks of a ROWE is that you very quickly find out who’s doing the work and who’s just punching the clock because employees are judged on results and not solely on the hours worked. ROWE employees work when they want, with who they want in the way they want. The only caveat is that the work gets done. ROWE employees are happier, more engaged, and have a much lower voluntary turnover.
Your thinking, “That could never work in government!” The folks in Hennepin County, Minnesota, and at the Office of Personnel Management in Washinton, DC, would beg to differ. That’s right. We have a state and a federal agency doing it now.
Are Rules and Incentives Killing Health Care?
Do you believe your doctor puts your health ahead of profits? Does the red tape of health care affect the quality of your care? These questions and more are addressed in a book by Barry Schwartz and Kenneth Sharpe called Practical Wisdom. They say that professions like medicine should be a calling, not something you do to make money. Doctors need income, and considering the cost of medical school and malpractice insurance, it needs to be substantial. However, money should be a side benefit for practicing medicine, not the primary motivation.
Practical Wisdom is a concept from Aristotle, “In matters concerning action and questions of what is beneficial, the agent must consider on each different occasion what the situation demands, just as in medicine as in navigation.” Rules get in the way of this kind of thinking. Doctors need to be able to make decisions about how to treat individual patients based on the whole picture of the patient, not through the rules of the insurance companies or hospitals. Incentives can also impede care; doctors are offered incentives to do too much - fees for services or for doing too little via productivity bonuses.
Doctors are under tremendous pressure. Many are expected to spend 15 minutes or less with a patient and solve whatever issue they are having and not make any mistakes. In this system, it’s very hard to push back against the rules to do what you think is right. Many doctors do push back. When they do, it can threaten their jobs and careers. This is a problem because doctors have fewer and fewer opportunities to learn about practical wisdom as they rely more on rules and incentives to guide how they care for patients.
A region’s culture of care is determined mainly by its biggest local hospital. It turns out that the way a doctor is compensated affects things like the quality and cost of care you receive and plays a part in determining the culture of care. At the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, doctors are all salaried and receive no individual fees, the Mayo Clinic is one of the best hospitals in the world, and the region it’s in has some of the lowest costs for health care in the country as well as Medicare costs in the bottom 15% of the country. Central to the culture of care at the Mayo Clinic is the “cultural philosophy of doing the best for the patient.” In contrast to the Mayo, we have Doctors Hospital in McAllen, TX. The doctors all have a stake in the hospital and receive a cut of the profits from every procedure, test and office visit. They are all paid on a fee basis. The region around McAllen has the highest Medicare costs in the country and the people who live there are no healthier. It’s essentially a culture of money, where it’s part of the culture to over-treat and order more tests. Research on intrinsic motivation tells us that the closer money is to a task, the more likely it will interfere with it. This one thing, how we compensate physicians, would go a long way towards fixing our healthcare system.
There is a story in the book about a patient complaining of dizziness. He had seen his doctor and many specialists; months later, no one could figure out what was wrong with him. Finally, he was sent to a special diagnostic clinic at Stanford where for the first time, a doctor asked him what was going on in his life and asked him to describe his dizziness. It turns out that the man had recently lost his wife and his dizziness was a psychological problem, not a physical one. After a few months of therapy, he was back to normal. All this cost and turmoil because his primary care physician didn’t know his patient or bother to gather basic information.
Practical wisdom can be applied to any profession, not just medicine. We see the erosion of autonomy and purpose across many walks of life where rules and incentives interfere with us doing what we know is right. The older I get, the more obvious it is that we live in a world that’s not black and white but in many subtle shades of gray. “Having the know-how to do right by others makes us happy; it gives us the know-how to do right by ourselves.”
Practical Wisdom and Why Education is Doomed!
Our children are being systematically turned into automatons that pass tests. That is, if their teachers think they can pass the test. Otherwise, they’re discarded, and teachers are trained not to spend time with kids they don’t think will pass. I received an advance copy of Barry Schwartz’s and Kenneth Sharpe’s Practical Wisdom just before Christmas, and it’s been making me crazy! You can watch the TED video now. The book is coming out this month.
The words, ‘I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE! from Howard Beale in the 1976 movie Network don’t come close to expressing my outrage. Schwartz talks about how standardized test scores and teaching affect our students. Low-performing schools in New York and other states are forced to teach all of their courses via standardized teaching materials that leave no room for teachers to be creative and help with individual student needs. The much-needed ability for teachers to think on their feet and create solutions as they go is actively being discouraged in most public school systems. Courses are scripted word by word!
Worse, starting in 2003, publishers like McGraw-Hill have trainers and consultants that interrupt lessons and chastise teachers in front of students for not following scripts. In Texas, a consultant hired to raise test scores came in and told the faculty of Beck Elementary School and handed out green, yellow and red highlighters. The consultant said, “Take out your classes’ latest benchmark scores, and divide your students into three groups. Color the “safe cases,” or kids who will pass, green. Now, here’s the most important part: Identify the kids who are “suitable cases for treatment.” Those are the ones who can pass with a little extra help. Color them yellow. Then, color the kids who have no chance of passing this year and the kids that don’t count, the “hopeless cases” - Red. You should focus your attention on the yellow kids. They’ll give you the biggest return on your investment.”
No child left behind my ass! More like every child doomed to mediocrity. Who’s bright idea was it to let the people selling the materials make the tests and evaluate their usage and outcomes? I was in tears as I read this. It’s why I’m sitting here writing now. I had to blow off some steam. This reads like a bad movie to me. The 1990 movie Pump up the Volume had a plot like this, but the principal was expelling the poor performers, not ignoring them.
I graduated from high school in 1982, and there were good teachers and bad ones, better and worse schools, but education was more accessible. Certainly, there was lots of room for improvement. I hated my grade school experiences. It was a special kind of hell. That’s what it’s like for someone who doesn’t fit neatly into square holes, but I did receive an education. Since I don’t have kids and haven’t been in classrooms much, I had no idea what was happening in them. Some of my friends homeschool their kids. Now I know why! It’s hard to believe that things have worsened since I was in school.
If we continue to judge the success of education on numbers alone, we will continue to doom future generations and, inevitably, our entire country to mediocrity at best. Numbers can and will be gamed to the advantage of the few and the detriment of the many.
Innovation is a Virus
Patent holders have told us, primarily large corporations, that intellectual property rights encourage innovation. Copyright laws have been extended from 14 years to up to life plus 70 years. Competition is said to accelerate creativity. Do these ideas serve innovation or corporate greed?
As an artist, I know that creativity is iterative. It’s built upon lots of versions, ever-changing, and constantly informed by the creative works of others. Art begets art. If you try to create art in a vacuum, you may get results, but you’ll get better results if you study art history and exchange ideas, techniques, or critiques with others. The more open we are, the more likely we are to be exposed to a wide variety of ideas and to see the big picture. Compartmentalization does not work very well for spreading ideas.
We have this romanticized idea that innovation is the child of singular genius and that some few of us have an almost magical gift to have aha Moments – it makes for a better story. Steven Johnson, in his new book, Where Good Idea’s Come From: The Natural History Of Innovation, tells us that Innovation is more likely to come from a network of people working intrinsically than from a single person working for profit. We have singular geniuses among us, but they are the exception, not the rule.
People working together for the love of the work innovate at a higher rate because they are more focused on innovation than making money. Copyrights, patents, and corporate security act as barriers to creativity to protect wealth. Johnson doesn’t argue against intellectual property rights, he just recognizes that they can get in the way of propagating new ideas. Putting walls around innovation is like quarantining someone with an infectious disease. It keeps ideas from spreading.
Innovation is like a beneficial virus. The more an idea spreads, the greater chance of its surviving and thriving. If it survives, propagates, and mutates, more exciting things and failures will result. The road to innovation is paved with mistakes. The best ideas, according to Johnson, come from the Adjacent Possible, from the edge of what is now possible, not from giant leaps forward.
More innovation has come from informal talks at coffee houses than brainstorming sessions. As Johnson says, “All of the patterns of innovation we have observed in the previous chapters… do the best in open environments, where ideas flow in unregulated channels.”
Fear, What is it Good For?
What Are You Afraid Of? I spend very little time being afraid. It’s not good or bad, just how I’m wired. I’m not afraid of being hurt or dying. Not afraid of heights, crowds, spiders, water, or anything else I can think of in the physical world. I used to have a fear of success and a fear of being alone. The former I got rid of in my mid 20’s, the latter in the last few years.
At least, I thought I’d overcome my fear of success. It’s apparent to me now that my fear of success is still with me to some degree. I used to shoot myself in the foot just when I was about to win. What’s happening now is I seem to be shying away from seeking or accepting help. The resistance is trying to use this old fear to keep me from reaching out and taking chances. So screw you fear of success! I will get over myself, ask for help, and accept it when it’s offered.
I went to a talk on the new book, ‘The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion’ at the Commonwealth Club last night - expect a review soon. At the Q and A, someone asked, “why do we let fear control us.” Michael Myer had an interesting response. He said if you’re afraid of failing in front of the boss, not conforming, or making the boss mad, those are the wrong kind of fears. If you’re afraid of your work not being great or not being passionate enough, those are the right kinds of fears because they will help you improve your work and who you are.
Another way to look at having the right kind of fear is to have goals that can never be achieved; they can only be strived for. Things like mastering the guitar or being an amazing copywriter. The more time you spend reaching, the better you’ll get at whatever you do. But there’s always room for improvement and ways to improve.
One trick I’ve used to get myself to ask for help is to flip the equation. To ask myself, how do I feel when I help someone? That’s an easy question. I feel great! So, if I don’t let someone help me, I’m being selfish. I’m robbing them of that wonderful feeling of being helpful. Go forth and let someone help you!
You Mean I Don't Have to be Dumb?
Is your IQ fixed? Can anyone learn to play the violin or compete in a triathlon? Is a particular gift a requirement to learn these things? It turns out that intelligence, sports ability, music ability, and just about any ability can be learned, according to 25 years of research by Carol Dweck, a former Columbia, and current Stanford Psychologist.
You are what you think. Perception is reality. That’s the core message from Carol Dweck’s book, ‘Mindset.’ She says we have two mindsets, fixed mindsets, and growth mindsets. People with fixed mindsets believe that intelligence and ability are fixed and can’t be changed or augmented. People with a growth mindset believe that intelligence and ability are a byproduct of focused effort and that we can improve our intelligence with effort and determination. Sounds like mastery to me.
Not only does mindset apply to mental ability, but it also applies to athletics, art, personability, and relationships. Dweck’s research says, “When you learn new things, these tiny connections in the brain multiply and get stronger. The more you challenge your mind to learn, the more your brain cells grow. Then, things you once found very hard or even impossible—like speaking a foreign language or doing algebra—seem easy. The result is a stronger, smarter brain.”
“After seven experiments with hundreds of children, we had some of the clearest findings I’ve ever seen: Praising children’s intelligence harms their motivation, and it harms their performance,” say’s Dweck. More evidence that carrots and sticks are harmful. If you praise effort and growth instead of intelligence or talent, it will have a positive effect. This kind of praise encourages a growth mindset.
In the last six months, I’ve been thinking about the limitations I’d created for myself and decided that that’s just what they were, self-set limitations, not limitations that I was born with or stuck with, but ones I’d put there myself. About a month ago, I took those limitations and turned them into goals. With the help of Mindset and Carol Dweck, I’ve just added a couple more goals to the list.
I’ve been telling myself that I don’t have the talent or ability for drawing (even though I have a BFA), sports, foreign languages, playing a musical instrument, or starting a business. All of these things are now on my goal list. Do you have fixed mindset messages you have accepted or created for yourself? If I can flip the switch on my fixed mindset limitations, you can too! What are you so afraid to fail at that you don’t bother trying?
‘Argue for your limitations; sure enough, they’re yours.’
Richard Bach
Zappos: Happy People, Delivering Happiness and Shoes.
Tony Sheih, CEO of Zappos, has just written his first book,‘Delivering Happiness, a Path to Profits, Passion and Happiness.’ It chronicles Tony’s life, from childhood entrepreneurial efforts to college and his time at LinkExchange. In some ways, it reads like Ricardo Semler’s‘Maverick, The Success Story Behind the World’s Most Unusual Workplace,’ Both books talk about lessons learned, mistakes made, and happy coincidences that lead them to success.
What is Zappos? It’s not a ROWE (Results Only Work Environment). It’s not democratically run, like Semco. Zappos does manage to keep its employees very engaged. Engaged employees result in growth and profits by way of creativity and innovation. The management, led by Tony Sheih focuses on the company culture and delivering happiness.
Zappos has a Culture Book it publishes every year. Everyone who works with or for Zappos is encouraged to contribute to the book describing Zappos culture. They publish all comments and only edit for typos, so the good, the bad, everything gets published.
Zappos does use carrots and sticks, though in a way that employees can control. You can take classes that will bring you to the next career level, and after taking them, you get a small raise. You can take them at whatever speed you like or not at all. Employees are empowered to do their jobs in whatever way works best. There does seem to be a large amount of autonomy. If you look at the Zappos Core Value Document, it’s obvious that they focus on mastery as well:
Create a fun, creative work environment where people are largely self-directed, are encouraged to get better at what they do, and acquire new skills, combined with being a part of something larger than themselves and the result is growth and profit. While Zappos may not be a new business model like ROWE, Results Only Work Environment, it is game-changing.
Their purpose is their culture and delivering happiness. They’ve put most, if not all, of their marketing dollars into customer service, letting their customers be Zappos marketers. This approach is one of the cornerstones of Zappos’ success sounds like it came out of Seth Godin’s playbook. Check out www.deliveringhappinessbook.com. Tony is trying to start a movement.
Uncle Sam Goes ROWE!
The US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is launching a Results Only Work Environment pilot program for 400 of its workers. Currently, there is only one government entity running under ROWE: Hennepin County, Minnesota. Imagine letting government workers work when they want, how they want, and with whom they want. What’s a ROWE, you ask? From the book, ‘Why Work Sucks And How To Fix It.’
13 Guideposts of a ROWE:
People at all levels stop doing any activity that is a waste of their time, the customer’s time or the company’s time.
Employees have the freedom to work any way they want.
Every day feels like Saturday.
People have an unlimited amount of “paid time off” as long as the work gets done.
Work isn’t a place that you go — it’s something you do.
Arriving at the workplace at 2 p.m. is not considered coming in late. Leaving the workplace at 2 p.m. is not considered leaving early.
Nobody talks about how many hours they work.
Every meeting is optional.
It’s OK to grocery shop on a Wednesday morning, catch a movie on a Tuesday afternoon or take a nap on a Thursday afternoon.
There are no work schedules.
Nobody feels guilty, overworked or stressed out.
There aren’t any last-minute fire drills.
There is no judgment about how you spend your time.
Two former Best Buy employees created this work model. The Best Buy corporate office has been running this way since 2004. Voluntary turnover decreased by as much as 90%, and productivity went up by 35%. This is an international company with 140,000 employees. I’s not a new idea, SEMCO has been working like this in Brazil for more than 20 years.
For me, this is a dream come true! I have a goal of bringing motivation 3.0 to governments and institutions. It’s fair to say that the workplaces that would benefit the most from empowerment and productivity are government workplaces.
