Collaborative Innovation

I listened to a fascinating podcast by John Seely Brown.  It was part of Stanford’s Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Lecture Series. The podcast is called: Collaborative Innovation and a Pull Economy.

He talked about the difference between the old model of doing business and the new one. The new one being focused on developing talent and creating environments where people can grow and flourish together.  But then he took it another step and talked about the power of Collaborative Innovation.
According to a paper by Dr G Venkatesh ”Collaborative innovation begins when people come together to solve problems and/or develop customer-centric solutions that are beyond the scope, scale or capabilities of the individual. ”

It part of this whole “open source” philosophy where together we can achieve exponentially more than we can separately. Not only has it been proven to work incredibly well but I would venture to say that it will become an essential way of operating.  But since many do not yet understand this model those who do can prosper ahead of the curve.

I also appreciated it because it was yet another person talking about the power of intrinsic motivation. When people are participating in Collaborative Innovation it is an dynamic environment where people are fascinated and are pulling out of each other more than usual. This makes for a stimulating and satisfying work environment and is a concept that needs to be understood and adopted by many more companies.

Continuous Improvement

I was thinking of the story about W. Edwards Deming and  the story about how he had this philosophy of continuous improvement but people in the American  auto industry were not interested so he ended up teaching it in Japan to Toyota. The  rest is history.  Here is a definition from Wikipedia:

“The term kaizen ( Japanese for “improvement”) is a Japanese word adopted into English referring to a philosophy or practices focusing on continuous improvement in manufacturing activities, business activities in general, and even life in general, depending on interpretation and usage. When used in the business sense and applied to the workplace, kaizen typically refers to activities that continually improve all functions of a business, from manufacturing to management and from the CEO to the assembly line workers.^[1] By improving standardized activities and processes, kaizen aims to eliminate waste (see lean manufacturing). Kaizen was first implemented in several Japanese businesses during the country’s recovery after World War II and has since spread to businesses throughout the world.^[2]“

In another expert on Wikipedia it talks about his system of profound knowledge see below:

“The Deming System of Profound Knowledge

“The prevailing style of management must undergo transformation. A system cannot understand itself. The transformation requires a view from outside. The aim of this chapter is to provide an outside view—a lens—that I call a system of profound knowledge. It provides a map of theory by which to understand the organizations that we work in.

“The first step is transformation of the individual. This transformation is discontinuous. It comes from understanding of the system of profound knowledge. The individual, transformed, will perceive new meaning to his life, to events, to numbers, to interactions between people.

“Once the individual understands the system of profound knowledge, he will apply its principles in every kind of relationship with other people. He will have a basis for judgment of his own decisions and for transformation of the organizations that he belongs to. The individual, once transformed, will:

• Set an example;
• Be a good listener, but will not compromise;
• Continually teach other people; and
• Help people to pull away from their current practices and beliefs and move into the new philosophy without a feeling of guilt about the past.”

Deming advocated that all managers need to have what he called a System of Profound Knowledge, consisting of four parts:

1. Appreciation of a system: understanding the overall processes involving suppliers, producers, and customers (or recipients) of goods and services (explained below);
2. Knowledge of variation: the range and causes of variation in quality, and use of statistical sampling in measurements;
3. Theory of knowledge: the concepts explaining knowledge and the limits of what can be known (see also: epistemology);
4. Knowledge of psychology: concepts of human nature.”

It is fascinating that these ideas have been around for half a century and yet the majority of companies exercise very little if any of this wisdom and  of course many have developed highly effective ideas on how to grow profitable,  sustainable businesses where there is high employee engagement and satisfaction so why  do so few companies employ these ideas.

Creating a culture of value

The Story

This journey into creating a culture of value in companies and organizations actually started years before I had any familiarity with the words “organizational development” It started with a core passion to see things done in the most optimized way possible. To see things done with wisdom and excellence. It started with the desire to see individuals, myself included, empowered to discover there key giftings or signature strengths then move forward with them in roles that gave them opportunity to use those gifts consistently so that they could be developed to a level of mastery. Really you can only reach a level of mastery in these areas of signature strengths. You can get pretty good at other things but you have to have this synaptic inborn talent in an area to really excel at a high level. In order to do this you first have to discover what those things are if you don’t already know. To move forward you have to deal with the obstacles that stand in your way. Believe me those obstacles will make themselves clear as you try to move forward. As you navigate these troubled waters character is developed that is a foundation for you to operate in the higher level of your calling with sustainability. In other words without ending in a big shipwreck. Nothing is more powerful than walking fully in the gifts and calling that you were created for…. but nothing is more destructive than stepping into that too soon before character issues are worked out and developed to a level of maturity that can carry the power in a healthy way.

The next step for me came as I was developing a value proposition for business owners to offer Aflac to their employees. The value proposition is this. “I help companies to increase employee loyalty and productivity by helping them to create or enhance a culture where the employees feel valued”

I started thinking about other ways that I could help my clients create this culture of value. It turned into a research project. I started having coffee with everyone met who had experience and expertise related to this. HR people, organizational psychologists, CFOs, CEOs etc. As I started having these conversations I was excited about how engaging this topic was for people. I started to become more familiar with Organizational Development and as I realized what it is I realized that it is the same passion I had to see transformation in individuals but it could bring transformation to whole groups of people! And transformation in a company means productivity, profitability and innovation both for new products and for how to do existing business better.

Some core elements are trust, authenticity and encouragement.

Trust relates to first trusting yourself, knowing that you are going to do what you say you are going to do on a personal level. Then it relates to being trust worthy, being trusted by other individuals whole groups trusting each other both trusting their motives and trusting their competency to accomplish what they are trying to accomplish.

Authenticity is where people discover their true voice. They find who they really were created to be and operate out of that center, no small thing. As this begins to happen within an individual then alignment begins. As it happens in group of working together out of their individual and collective authenticity then you get a synergy that really starts to gain momentum. When you get this with an whole company you have exponential growth and profit, not to mention job satisfaction, engagement, creativity and innovation. When you create an environment where people can tap into their
true gifts then you are tapping into so much more resource and brilliance than the average company does.

Encouragement has to do with how you communicate with one another in a way that continually calls forth that true voice in one another. It is a recognition an affirmation and proclamation of who you are and who “we” are and where we are going. When you walk more fully in authenticity, find and use your true voice its not just a good thing for you it is a good thing for us! I am sure we’ve all had times where there was someone on your team that was really not operating in their giftings, to say the least, and seen how it can make things difficult for everyone and put a huge drag on efficiency. I liken it to a jet boat. I used to work on a 49 passenger jet boat on the Yukon river. It had three jets that when working together brought the boat “on plane” and had a speed and efficiency that got us to our destination in about 3.5 hours. If one of those jets sucked a rock into the impeller either slowed or incapacitated a jet then the speed and efficiency went down not by one third but by much more. It could take us 6 to 8 hours. So you can see the importance of having all three jets working. When Turst, Authenticity and Encouragement are working properly then look out, there is power to really go somewhere!