Posts Tagged ‘innovation’
The Hidden Value of Weakness
(Image Credit: Doug Buckley of http://hyperactive.to)
What if your weaknesses were actually your strengths – but you just haven’t figured out what those weaknesses have been trying to tell you, or how to transform them intro strengths yet? (Wouldn’t you feel better about feeling weak?)
“I believe in shaking up the way things are done.” –Leo Babauta, zenhabits.com, in “When Being Who You Are Challenges the Norms“
Embracing your weaknesses can help you shake things up to challenge the norms. Thanks to @ChrisSpagnuolo for tweeting that this was the best thing he read a few days ago, which made me click the link and read it too. I appreciated it as well – because I also believe in shaking up the way things are done. However, my approach is a little different: whereas Leo reflects on the impact he’s had on others by being vegan, minimalist, self-employed, carless, and so on – I believe you can shake up the way things are done by aspiring to be the best you that you can be – especially when you being your best means embracing aspects of yourself that others (or society) typically view as weaknesses.
Here’s what I mean. A few months ago I was having a deep talk with my friend @jack122112, lamenting my lack of ability to focus. (At least that’s how I interpret it… and how it feels.) I’m all over the place, and always have been. I have three degrees in three different fields, and a fourth Master’s that I almost completed. I’ve had jobs as a software engineer, a manager of software engineers, a data analyst, a post office contractor, a physics and calculus tutor, a psychiatric office manager, a medical biller, a business analyst, a scientific analyst, a secretary, a management consultant, an engagement manager, and a professor. The books I can see from where I’m sitting right now cover topics from quality to eclipses to brewing beer (which I don’t do, I just think about) to statistics to ergonomics to dream interpretation. I’ve explored topics and done research in a hodgepodge of areas to the point where it probably looks, from the outside, that there’s no cohesive theme among my interests.
But there is a common element – a point of cohesion – and that’s ME.
Jack wasn’t bothered at all by my dilemma. “Well,” he said, “perhaps your ability to connect with so many ideas in so many different areas IS your strength. Why are you so bothered that you can’t seem to focus in one area? Maybe that’s just not what you were meant to do. Maybe you should accept it.”
Women for a long time were kept out of the workplace because they were thought to be too weak or emotional for many jobs. People used to throw away very little, and nothing was ‘disposable’ because that was thought to be wasteful … wait, maybe that wasn’t so bad. What if you could shake things up … just by being who you are? Without having to do anything but tell someone who or what you are? –Leo
I’ve spent the past few months just accepting my dilemma, and not worrying about it too much. Maybe I’m just not meant to focus in one area, I’ve told myself, and I will discover the hidden strength in this. And paradoxically, since making this decision I’ve been more focused and content – and much more productive.
So here’s an exercise for you. What’s your weakness? What bothers you the most about your personal habits? And why do you think it’s such a problem?
For example, let’s say you just can’t get things done. You totally lack productivity… you’re a slacker. There’s a hundred things you know you have to do, but if no one is pushing you to do them, you’re just going to go off and play video games. And feel like a total loser. And apologize to the people you’ve let down when parts of your world come crashing down around you. (If I were you, the first thing I’d ask myself is, why do I need to be so productive anyway? Challenge the foundations upon which the assumption lies.)
What if your weaknesses are trying to tell you something? A few years ago, after bemoaning my struggles with time management, I discovered that I have enough time (and enough focus) for everything I truly want to do. And for those things I don’t get done, or just don’t have the energy to focus on, I’ve got to be real with myself — and figure out which one (or more) of these five obstacles are getting in my way! Then, after unveiling the root causes of my weakness… I can move on with a grounded, practical solution to transform it into a strength.
The Secret to Innovation = A Cure for Depression?
I really like Doug Buckley’s Facebook posts (he’s from http://hyperactive.to). Our connection was purely accidental – he tagged a picture of the back of my husband’s head on Facebook as his own, and after a short online debate (where he finally acknowledged that I was probably an expert in recognizing the back of my own spouse’s head) we friended one another. Doug posts great photos and images (like the one on the top left of this post), insights, quotes and music about 40 or 50 times a day. One of Doug’s recent gems was “Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.” ~ Winston Churchill
The ability to move from one failure to another (presumably, using each as a valuable learning experience) with no loss of enthusiasm! Wow, I thought… not only is that the secret to innovation, but… I am SO not good at doing that. When I’m facing a failure, I do what any sane, logical person in the grips of Chinese handcuffs will do… I pull harder. I rearrange the deck chairs faster. I get really &$^#&^$& angry. Then I pretend like everything’s OK. And when I can’t deal with pretending any longer, I break down into tears (hopefully not around other people).
Then, in the words of Fred and Ginger, I pick myself up – dust myself off – and start all over again.
(I just read this again, and just so you don’t miss the point of that last sentence… after I dust myself off, I’m starting again on the negative pattern of trying even harder. What, you think I’d give up that easily?)
It’s a miserable approach, though, regardless of how noble it sounds. Pulling harder or pushing harder (whatever you’re doing) requires more effort and rarely generates better results. And if you’re pushing against someone else who’s not ready to see your light, or pushing on a project that other people just aren’t ready to play within the bounds of, well… good luck.
I’m a smart person. I’m solution oriented. I can make things happen!! As a result, I doggedly pursue my goals. And when I’m meeting with resistance (especially when that resistance doesn’t seem to make sense to me), I don’t respond very gracefully at all. (Sometimes I even turn psycho-chick, which makes me feel even more disturbed, because I’m pretty level headed in general and I wouldn’t act like that, would I?)
The illusion of control is an affliction that’s unique to humans. Bears looking for salmon will move on if their favorite spot in the river isn’t producing. If people were bears, we’d stick around, keep waiting, commit to a positive attitude, convene a quality circle or tiger team, rehash past data that proves the salmon used to be there (or extrapolate to show they will be there again, really), wish real hard that the salmon are still there, pretend nothing has changed, craft convincing arguments that the cost/benefit of moving to another place in the river is prohibitive (or my favorite, just cost neutral), curse the river, wish we’d never gotten into the habit of eating salmon in the first place, lose all motivation, lose sense of the meaning in one’s life without the salmon, or sit on the riverbanks weeping over the ephemeral salmon who just won’t show up no matter what we do. Pretty pathetic. Nowhere near as agile as moving to another spot in the river where the salmon may have moved on to themselves.
Professor of psychology Jonathan Rottenberg has hypothesized that this resistance mechanism is also what compels depressed people to stay in bed – hiding under the covers, retreating into sleep or alcohol or drugs (pick your poison) – is just a way to deal with one’s inability to disengage from efforts that are failing. He writes:
So this alternative theory turns the standard explanation on its head. Depressed people don’t end up lying in bed because they are undercommitted to goals. They end up lying in bed because they areovercommitted to goals that are failing badly. The idea that depressed people cannot disengage efforts from failure is a relatively new theory. It has not been much tested in research studies. However, the idea is well worth exploring. It fits well clinically with the kinds of situations that often precipitate serious depression — the battered wife who cannot bring herself to leave her troubled marriage, the seriously injured athlete who cannot bring himself to retire, the laid off employee who cannot bring herself to abandon her chosen career despite a lack of positions in her line of work. Seeing these depressions in terms of unreachable goals may be useful clinically, and may help us better understand how ordinary low moods can escalate into incapacitating bouts of depression.
To be innovative, we have to learn how to detach from failure quickly and move on with the next stage of our ideas with enthusiasm. If Rottenberg’s new hypothesis has merit, to escape depression we have to learn how to detach from failure quickly and move on to our next goals or the next phases of our lives – with enthusiasm.
Can a futuristic mental health intervention increase our personal innovative potential?
My hunch is yes. There are always other fish in the sea.
I Can Solve Your Problems Better Than Mine
(Image Credit: Doug Buckley of Hyperactive Multimedia at http://www.hyperactive.to)
Last week in a conversation with a friend I mentioned “you know how it’s easier to solve other peoples’ problems than to solve your own?” I was using this as a lead-in to a longer discussion, because he has some problems (in my opinion), and I’m really convinced I know how to solve them. I can see very clearly how he’s getting in his own way, self-sabotaging his own efforts, and refusing to face an aspect of himself that he should just confront directly.
“No,” he replied. OK, I thought – guess that ends that conversation. I didn’t pursue it any further.
Turns out you really CAN solve other peoples’ problems better than your own. According to a recently published research paper by Evan Polman and Kyle Emich, people were better able to engage in the abstract thinking required to solve complex problems if they believed they were making decisions on behalf of someone else. With greater psychological distance, a larger proportion of test subjects were able to develop workable solutions.
So when faced with a dilemma… ask someone else for advice. And make sure they’re not too close to you, meaning they can remain detached enough to present a solution based on resistance-free abstract thinking.
Here are some additional articles about the Polman & Emich (2011) study:
The Mature Entrepreneur – Part II
In our previous post, we talked about the 30+ entrepreneur who, after building a career working for others, is now ready to be his or her own boss. Presumably, you’re reading this post because this person is you. (If not, imagine for a few minutes that it is.) Whatever your start-up is, it probably represents a passion for you. You have innovative ideas and you’ve branched off on your own because you need the freedom to realize your vision. But how did you reach this point? How did you figure out that starting a new initiative was your calling?
Nicole’s favorite definition of quality is from the now-deprecated ISO 8402, which defines quality as “the totality of characteristics of an entity that bear upon its ability to satisfy stated and unstated needs.” Now, imagine the entity is you. What characteristics of your self or your environment will help you satisfy stated and unstated needs – in other words, get things done right and produce solutions that customers or users will really love? Nicole needs an environment that’s flexible enough to hear her out on her craziest ideas and maybe even work with her on them, respect her for the times when her crazy ideas have panned out big, and provide extra support for her (sans unconstructive criticism) where she needs it, and the benefit of the doubt when she can’t totally explain her intuition.
Amy also needs freedom to explore intuition. But above all, she craves an environment where everyone brings their A-game to form a collaboration greater than any one of the individuals, with each of the individuals committed to collective betterment of the company and to creating useful products customers love. So what happens when your work environment works against you? You might find yourself reading this post.In “The Curve of Talent,” Eric Paley talks about A players. We all know an A player when we see one. They exude optimism and skill, their ideas are big and risky, and they can create absolute magic given the opportunity and right environment. The problem is, according to Paley, that “few large corporations create cultures that give A players room to win.” What happens to A players when they aren’t given room to win?Paley doesn’t really go into much detail here. But from personal experience, we can give you a synopsis of the downward spiral:
1. The A player comes up with some revolutionary idea that could solve some really pertinent problems. In most cases, he or she is really interested in sharing that idea with other A players (or open minded B players), sculpting those ideas into even better ideas, and creating a shared plan for doing something awesome.
2. Often, there are few A players around. The A players who are around are usually interested in hearing the idea, adding their awesome ideas to the idea, and brainstorming until a totally new and even more amazing idea emerges that everyone’s all psyched to work on. This A team (no pun intended) will figure out how to bootstrap the time, effort, energy, and funding (in most cases) to realize their idea. At this point, they’re all super excited and can’t wait to go.
3. In the absence of other closed-minded B players who would get in the way of the awesome idea, the A’s will fly and do great things! But usually (in a large organization), they will have to convince some B and C managers that their idea is worthwhile. Often, the B’s and C’s will resist the idea. There’s not enough time. Not enough manpower. The way we do it has worked just fine for a long time. Maybe they’ll drag the argument on for a few months. Or a year or two. Lots of talk and time lost in idleness.
4. The A now has to make a choice between two options: Option 1) Do it anyway, and hope that when the B’s and C’s see the idea in action, they’ll pretend it’s their own and forget that the new idea was not originally part of the accepted plan. Option 2) Abandon the idea. Feel contempt for the shortsighted B’s and C’s who wouldn’t (or weren’t able to) see the genius in the vision. Try to ignore that sinking feeling in the gut that comes when your new idea is shot down.
5. Since Option 1 rarely works out in the A’s interest, Option 2 is probably more likely to be selected. So what happens after an A player selects Option 2 a few times? He or she might sink into a terrible depression, lose all sense of professional confidence, feel no satisfaction in any work any more, change jobs to get away from the naysayers, get on mood stabilizing medication, bring the professional dissatisfaction home where the dark cloud will linger over everyone who lives there indefinitely, or all of the above.
Or, the A will go launch a startup.
So what environment is best for A players? Answer: Startups and other entrepreneurial ventures, of course! Paley states:
To succeed, most startups need some core team of A players; folks who can “write the book and not just read it.” These are an incredibly rare breed of people who not only have a clear idea how to competently accomplish their functional objectives, but actually lead the organization to innovate and be world class within their functional area. They raise the bar on the entire organization.
Moral of the story: the Mature Entrepreneur is likely to be an A player. If you have a great idea – coupled with the guts, energy and knowledge to go make it happen, you might be an A. So if you’re a little nervous about striking out on your own at your “advanced” age, take comfort in the fact that you wouldn’t be doing this unless you were part of this rare breed.
And just think about how fun it will be to finally work with other like-minded A’s.
The Mature Entrepreneur
(This post is the result of a collaboration between Amy Shelton and Nicole Radziwill. Image Credit: Doug Buckley of Hyperactive Multimedia at http://www.hyperactive.to)Up and coming young entrepreneurs in the U.S. are often the focus of articles because their success is the American dream. Start from nothing. End up with everything. But what happens when you aren’t starting from nothing? Maybe you are a 30+ professional that dreams of making a decent living doing what you love. You already have a career and maybe even a family too. Now you’re ready to be your own boss and take a chance. You are the mature entrepreneur.
The struggling entrepreneur is often romanticized as living in a post-college frat house where co-founders scrape by on peanut butter and jelly, Ramen noodles, and sharing a house – creating a start-up commune of sorts – until they make it big. However, the 30+ entrepreneur probably has a family and, although the thought of working with their co-founders is inspirational and exciting, the thought of actually moving in with them is not. (We even know a few entrepreneurs who – gasp! – moved themselves and their families back in with mom and dad for a while to save money while working on their start-up.) Rather than making it big, the mature entrepreneur is probably more focused on applying his or her life experiences and expertise to earn a decent living doing what she loves.
There was an interesting thread on Hacker News recently where a woman was asking advice from fellow hackers who work from home and have kids. The conversation thread was very long and is still active, talking about the practical concerns of pursuing entrepreneurship while fulfilling family obligations, and finding balance between work and life. According to Wikipedia, the average age of marriage today is 28.4 years for men, and 26.5 years for women. The average age of first time mothers was 25 in 2006. So anyone interested in entrepreneurship post-30 is probably married and probably has children. This adds a huge layer of complexity to planning any business, especially since the mature entrepreneur is often taking a big financial risk that could easily impact his or her family.
In addition to financial risk, there is also an emotional risk associated with being an entrepreneur who’s starting a new venture. First, it’s very easy to become a workaholic. You might be holding a regular full-time job while chasing your passions and making your new ideas real at nights and on weekends. Conversely, it’s very easy to become a “lifeaholic.” That might seem strange, but when you’re pursuing your true interests, it might seem like you’re not working at all. Most of you might say “Hey! That’s great! That’s exactly what I want!” But there can be a deep sense of dissatisfaction associated with being able to make your own schedule and call your own shots, especially in the early stages of a venture before your ideas really take off and start to pay off. You can spend as much time as you want with your kids… with your spouse.. you might ask yourself “Am I really working hard enough?” The mature entrepreneur will devise a means to continually self-assess to achieve a happy medium between being a workaholic and a lifeaholic, recognizing that it’s easy to fall on either end of the spectrum.
The best part about being a mature entrepreneur (whether you’re living with your partners, your parents, or your own nuclear family) is that, like we said before, you aren’t starting from nothing. You have plenty of experience behind you, and whether your venture succeeds or fails, you know that it will be a valuable learning experience. You also have a network of people around you who will support you and share in the victory when you make it big, or be there to console you when you fold.
Most importantly, you aren’t starting without the awareness that the ultimate goal is to become a passionate workalifeaholic (or lifeaworkaholic) who can realize new ideas with ease!
Eliminating Waste using Zombie War Analysis
If quality and continuous improvement are important to you, you should have a fundamental understanding of zombies and the role they play in quality management. Furthermore, understanding zombies might help you understand yourself better too. In fact, performing a zombie war analysis (on either yourself or your organization) could be the next great lean tool for identifying and eliminating waste from processes.
Huh??!?! Zombies… are you sure? Yeah, I’m sure. And no, I didn’t know much about zombies either until yesterday, when I read My Zombie, Myself: Why Modern Life Feels Rather Undead in the New York Times by Chuck Klosterman. (The savvy zombie thumbnail at the left by AMC is from his article.) In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a zombie movie before. That might change, though, now that I see the zombie concept has a direct bearing on understanding modern work life.
Here’s why: battling the endless barrage of emails, texts, requests for your time, and sorting through the steady stream of social media chatter is like a zombie apocalypse. They just keep coming and coming, and you just keep fighting and trying to let it all not overtake you and drive you nuts. And the whole thing might never end:
Every zombie war is a war of attrition. It’s always a numbers game. And it’s more repetitive than complex. In other words, zombie killing is philosophically similar to reading and deleting 400 work e-mails on a Monday morning or filling out paperwork that only generates more paperwork, or following Twitter gossip out of obligation, or performing tedious tasks in which the only true risk is being consumed by the avalanche. The principle downside to any zombie attack is that the zombies will never stop coming; the principle downside to life is that you will be never be finished with whatever it is you do…
This is our collective fear projection: that we will be consumed. Zombies are like the Internet and the media and every conversation we don’t want to have. All of it comes at us endlessly (and thoughtlessly), and — if we surrender — we will be overtaken and absorbed. Yet this war is manageable, if not necessarily winnable. As long we keep deleting whatever’s directly in front of us, we survive. We live to eliminate the zombies of tomorrow. We are able to remain human, at least for the time being. Our enemy is relentless and colossal, but also uncreative and stupid.
Battling zombies is like battling anything … or everything.
The only way to WIN the war is to reduce the number of zombies that you have to deal with. So, my appeal to quality managers everywhere: Ask your people what processes feel like zombie wars, and brainstorm ways to reduce the number of zombies so you don’t have to shoot so much. By tapping into the highly sensitive emotional wisdom of everyone who has to work with or deal with a process, you can call out the zombies and start eliminating them.
My appeal to PEOPLE everywhere: ask yourself what aspects of your life feel like a zombie war, and brainstorm ways to reduce the number of zombies. You’ll eliminate waste from the processes that the zombies are appearing in, while saving on ammunition, reducing stress, and possibly even increasing the joy in your life.
The simple act of thinking about the “things you’ve got to deal with” in terms of which ones are zombies (and which ones are not) might be just the innovative boost you need to identify and eliminate critical packets of waste floating around your organization. Or your life.
Tuning Into Your Innovation Frequency
How can our company be more innovative? How can I help to catalyze innovation? These are popular, relevant and contemporary questions. And like many of the other challenges we have to deal with in our organizations (and our lives), these questions are simultaneously tricky and nebulous.
The answer: for your organization to be innovative, YOU have to PERSONALLY tune into your innovation frequency. If you’re feeling it, you will be better able to identify great ideas, get into flow as you think about and work on these ideas, and be more willing to let go of ideas or projects that aren’t great (or ideas that maybe just aren’t at the tipping point yet, or that are not totally aligned with who YOU are, or that someone else should ideally be working on).
I started thinking more about these questions because I was inspired yesterday by Create Better Things by Abandoning Crap and Focusing on the Good Stuff. The secret to success is laser-sharp focus on accomplishing something you love, along with the willingness to let go of things you might love but that just aren’t moving right now – or just aren’t moving you. Here are some of my favorite excerpts from this article and video:
- “You have to be critical about getting to the parts that go right to your heart.”
- “The only reason you get into something like this is because you want to make something so memorable that it’s special.”
- “To make something great, you have to find the courage to ditch the things dribbling along at half-past average. “
Tuning into the innovation frequency requires not only external assessments, but internal assessments of progress as well. The external assessment asks you to evaluate whether progress is actually being made. Can you see it? Can you measure it? The internal assessment asks you how you FEEL about what you’re doing when you’re doing it. Do you get into flow, and if so, how easily? If working on a project feels like sticking fingernails in your own eyes, this is probably a good sign that your energy would be best directed elsewhere.
Result: no New Year’s Resolution for me. I’m taking on an Old Year’s Resolution, and using the month of December 2010 to prune away all those activities that are not progressing OR that I’m not totally tuned in to the innovation frequency. I’m on a mission to get all the fingernails out of my eyes, pronto.
I owe it to all those great ideas and efforts that will soar when I become courageous enough to close doors on the past, and let new unknown doors open before me. Those truly innovative and exciting outcomes that even I don’t know about yet deserve a rich, full life.
