Creativity should be fun – brainstorming and coloured post-it notes are preferred to the hard work of challenging existing practices and solving recurrent problems. As a boss, are you prepared to be told that “you have been doing it wrong”?
All ideas are good; all good ideas are self evident – I have heard my bosses at various moments in my career state “all ideas are good ideas”. This is not true. Some ideas are really bad ideas. Some ideas are breathtakingly stupid. Truly original ideas are often not self-evidently “good”. If you have been part of the existing system for long enough, you will be blind to some great ideas that break long-held assumptions about the way the world should work. Music and book publishing companies will not be capable of seeing new ways of delivering music or book content to listeners and readers that challenge their core assumptions of how the world should work.
Innovation is entrepreneurship – many of the most innovative people haven’t got an entrepreneurial bone in their body – they can be quite impervious to the commercial aspects of their new solutions.
The creative imperative – This is the final and overarching myth – that you and your company need to pursue it in the first place. Innovation has a cost. It needs time, money and attention if it is really to become part of the company DNA. If you are not willing to commit the resources then perhaps your best innovation strategy is to not innovate at all.
I watched the world’s top golfers play in the prestigious PGA tournament over the last 4 days. This is one of the top 4 prizes in world golf and a massive achievement for the overall winner. Winning a “major” is a vital brick in the career of the world’s top golfers.
I want golf and not football as a values system for life.
Dustin Johnson was leading coming into the last of 72 holes and needed only a four shot par to win. His first shot ended out in the area where a large crowd was gathered. His second shot was from a rough scrub area in a sandy patch. He touched the ground with his club before making his swing and striking the ball. He ended the hole with 5 shots. This left him in a tie for first place with two other golfers. He still had a chance to win one of golf’s great prizes (and a lot of money). As he waited, a rules official approached him and told him that the second shot that he hit from the sandy patch had infringed upon the rules. After reviewing the situation, Dustin Johnson took out his eraser, rubbed out the 5 he had scored on hole 18 and wrote in the number 7 – in one self-regulated moment taking away his dream of victory.
I was struck by a massive disconnect between the attitude of the players in golf’s “world cup” and the recent FIFA football world cup in South Africa.
The world’s children grow up looking for role models that drive their developing value systems and aspirations and ideas of what a good life looks like. I believe that sports stars attitudes translate directly into children’s beliefs about what is appropriate behaviour in life.
The French football team were a particularly pathetic example of poor attitude, cheating being ok, laziness and lack of respect for everyone else: countrymen, coaches and the referees. The team should not have been there in the first place having beaten the Irish in a game where Thierry Henry handled the ball into the Irish goal net in plain view of all the world’s video cameras – but not the game’s referee. When the referee gave the goal there was uproar from the Irish team. Thierry and his mates in the post-match interviews did not deny that their victory was a victory of blatant cheating. Every Irish and French boy watched this. Every Irish and French boy saw what the football authorities think is ok – if the cheating is undetected by the referee then it is ok.
The world’s most talented football players spend a lot of time falling over without being touched and arguing with the referee over each and every decision.
Once at the world cup, the french team truly delivered a performance that embarassed every french person that I know. Nicolas Anelka, the captain had a poor attitude in training and was sanctioned by the coach. He publicly insulted the coach. He was taken out of the team and sent home. The rest of the team went on strike and didn’t show up to practice. The coach refused to shake hands with coaches from other teams believing that they had insulted him. All in all, a ten out of ten score for pathetic performance. (French team world cup summary on BBC) The French president was so insulted by this group of fools representing their country that he called them in for a meeting to explain themselves. Two were sanctioned for sex with an underage girl about a week later.
We are currently in a global financial crisis brought upon by banks doing what they could get away with (like the French football team) rather than what they knew to be right (like the golfers). I often hear the claim that we need more regulation. Football won’t change by putting 2 referees on the field. It will only change when the culture of football rejects cheating and ostracizes those that regularly cheat.
The financial services answer is not more regulation – it is about making sure that the 10, 11 and 12 year old children growing up today see more sports stars with the attitude of Dustin Johnson than Thierry Henry and Nicolas Anelka and when bankers celebrate great client service (that was the point of them wasn’t it) rather than publish lists of how much money each dealmaker has scraped together. Goldman Sachs looks more like french football than US golf. I hope that the generation of 10 year olds of today forget about Thierry Henry and remember Dustin Johnson – and 20 to 30 years from now, when they are running Goldman Sachs – they will live with some basic values (not asking for charity; just not lying, not cheating and not stealing) – rather than defining “not illegal” as their operating boundary.
A young man was walking along the shore of the sea. The beach was of pebbles. A wisened old man approached him. “I’ll give you one million dollars if you bring me a touchstone”. The young man paused. “What is a touchstone?” “It looks like any other stone, but when you hold it in the palm of your hand it feels extremely hot”.
The young man wanders down towards the shore and starts picking up pebbles. Initially he takes a moment to feel each stone, but as he gets into the process he becomes so busy picking up stones and throwing them into the sea that he doesn’t really have time to feel each individual stone.
The young man returns to the beach day after day, week after week. The seasons change and the years go by. Daily he picks up stones and throws them into the sea.
One day, a day where the young man is no longer young, about mid-morning he picks up a touchstone – but he is so busy in his process of picking and throwing, picking and throwing that he hardly notices the extreme heat of the touchstone.
He continues to the end of his life, but never again picks up a touchstone.
FIN.
Have you picked up a touchstone recently? Would you know it if you saw it?
Last night’s sunset. I was impressed. As always, the real thing was better than the photo (like how books are always better than the movie (except Star Wars)).
“If something is worth doing, it is worth doing well” is a common english language phrase.
However, it is a very dangerous idea.
Wendy Ulrich, HR guru & author
Perfection is the enemy of progress.
If something is worth doing, it is simply that – it is worth doing. If you start with little experience, you will probably do it poorly – but only by doing it poorly will you learn to do it better – and one day, you will do it well. The only way to do the important, challenging things well is to first do them poorly.
Wendy Ulrich, HR guru says “If something is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.”
Start now while you are still imperfect. Don’t wait.
Post Script: There is obviously a segment of things that should never be done badly: nuclear fuel rod replacement, deep sea oil drilling, scaffolding for building works – but for the majority of us the important things can start with a low level of quality, perhaps in a safe environment. If you write a draft, you can improve if with several rounds of edits. If you want to play piano, you start poorly. Your first big speech will not be as great as your 100th big speech.
This was written on the wall in Mother Teresa‘s home for children in Calcutta and is widely attributed to her. It is often given the title “Do it anyway“:
Do It Anyway
People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway. If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway. What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today, will often be forgotten. Do good anyway. Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway. In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.
—
The words seem to be based on a poem by Kent Keith, but much of the second half has been re-written in a more spiritual way by Mother Teresa.
Mother Teresa, Agnesë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu (Gonxhe meaning “rosebud” in Albanian) was born 1910, in Üsküb, Ottoman Empire (now Skopje, capital of the Republic of Macedonia). Her father, who was involved in Albanian politics, died in 1919 when she was eight years old. She left home at age 18 to join the Sisters of Loreto as a missionary. She never again saw her mother or sister. Agnes initially went to the Loreto Abbey in Rathfarnham, Ireland to learn English, the language the Sisters of Loreto used to teach school children in India. She arrived in India in 1929, and began her novitiate in Darjeeling, near the Himalayan mountains. She chose the name Teresa after Thérèse de Lisieux, the patron saint of missionaries.
At the risk of gross oversimplification, there were five Greek philosophies of happiness.
Socrates – only the poor, those who have nothing to lose, can be happy.
Aristotle – you have to be born rich to be happy (in reality healthy, wealthy, good family, good friends). Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics introduced the good life.
Epicurus – remove all causes of pain to be happy (don’t spend time with irritating people or doing annoying things). “Pleasure is the absence of suffering”.
Stoicism – life is about suffering. Happiness is to accept the obstacles with serenity. Stoicism was founded by Zeno of Citium.
Hedonism – happiness is spending time doing what gives you pleasure. The basic idea behind hedonistic thought is that pleasure is the only thing that has intrinsic value.
In reality, the ancient greeks had no word that exactly matches our current word “happiness”. The closest term from their language was Eudaimonia. Aristotle says that eudaimonia means ’doing and living well’. What is interesting to me is that I view happiness as a state – but the greeks had no word that represented a steady-state happiness – only an active form of happiness that required behaviours in line with a set of virtues.
Am I missing any great blogs out there? Please leave links in the comments if you have found something worth sharing.
A note on how I read blogs – I use Google Reader and subscribe via RSS. I can have a quick scan once a day of what blogs have been updated and read them directly in google reader rather than visiting several blogs. I only visit the blog if I want to make a comment.
He starts: “Here is a paradox. In the financial markets, investment information is rapidly and efficiently diffused. New product and service innovations, be they junk bonds, new forms of options, or debt securities that allocate and price risk in an innovative fashion, get rapidly copied by competitors. But, in the “managerial knowledge” marketplace, there is little evidence of much diffusion of ideas or innovative business models and management practices.
Although there is rapid diffusion of language – the language of quality or six sigma, empowerment or putting people first, employee and customer loyalty and so forth – in many cases, not much actually changes in terms of what occurs on a day-to-day basis and in fundamental organisational models.”
photo credit: AComment
He discusses a couple of examples. Southwest airlines has seen profitability for over 20 years in an industry that is losing money. Their organisation has been widely described in articles, cases and books. There were no secrets to what they were doing. It was decades before others began to imitate the Southwest model.
Another well known example is Toyota (excepting events of the last few months). Toyota for a decade was the automotive byword for quality and productivity. Toyota would regularly give plant tours to its competitors – but those managers came home and repeated what they were already doing – perhaps mentioning some six sigma concepts once in a while to give credibility to their positions.
The task for HR? Human Resources must be concerned with the mental models of the people in the company, particularly its leaders. The role of the company’s execution leaders is to ensure that these mental models turn into disciplined action.
Why does management innovation take so long to spread? What role do Business Schools have in accelerating this process?
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