Sticking to what you do well ...

I came across this shop in Lisbon, Portugal. They sell eels in cans. Only eels in cans. One flavor. They have two sizes, big size and small size. And they have been selling eels in cans and only eels in cans since 1942.

I found it a refreshing approach in a world where we are constantly bombarded with "new and improved". Found your favorite tooth paste ? Very likely you will no longer find it in in six months or so, replaced by dozens of "new and improved" flavors, sizes and packagings. Toilet paper for some time comes in double (2x) size and triple (3x) size. And I recently came across another "innovation": we now have 1.5 x and 2.5 x regular size. Really running out of ideas on the never-ending "new and improved" front !

If a company can survive for nearly 80 years on canned eels, let this be an inspiration to stick what you really want to do and do not allow yourself to get sidetracked, however tempting this may seem, and however many others are running around after every new trend and opportunity that comes around !

Learning together !

One of the great things of my "new" 4-year old career is that I come to meet and get to know great like-minded people. You could call them competitors but I prefer to see them as colleagues from whom I can learn and whom I can help as well.

I am happy to help other consultants, trainers and facilitators in Thailand to improve their facilitation skills. Graphics and visuals can bring a lighter touch to the many flip charts we like to make. I know for sure that my flip charts are way too boring, so I will be one of the 20 participants to learn from Kailin Huang.

Although still 2 months away, only 5 seats remain !

Nipping ideas in the bud ..

I keep on coming across managers who tell me their team members have no ideas or inputs when asked for them. I wrote a blog sometime earlier about what you can do to create an environment where people are more comfortable to share their ideas. With a rote learning education and associated culture, many folks in organizations in Asia are not used to ask, challenge or propose.

Illustration by Saul Steinberg

So managers should put extra effort in inviting their team members to share their ideas. But I have come to think that the real problem is elsewhere. The real problem lies in the reaction the manager offers when someone brings up an idea. The courage to share the idea is often squashed but the very first things the manager does while the words are still floating in the air.

Those first things can be ...

1. the body language ... What does your FACE say when someone shares an idea ? Does it show genuine interest or does it show that this idea is not what you expected ?

2. the dreaded "but" ... as in "Great idea, but ....". But is then followed by "let me explain you why this won't work", "I have tried this in my years of experience and ..." or "this is not compatible with the main plan" ... or a combination thereof !

3. the follow up ... If you do not act upon the ideas your team proposes, or better still, give them the green light to act upon their own ideas, you are sending the message that you had the better answers anyway.

Next you find yourself frustrated with your team members' lack of ideas, input or creativity, think about how you react when they do propose something.

Looking for A-Ha: what neuroscience tells us about creativity

That was the title of my talk at ASCIM 2016 in Bangkok recently. I really enjoyed preparing for this talk. It took me probably a full 4 days of researching, reading, putting pieces together and then changing them all again. The best reward for this kind of effort is double. First of all, I learned a lot by preparing for this. The reactions from participants during the talk, and from those that came up to me after the talk, confirmed that they had learned some valuable new things as well. Nice visual summary made by the conference drawer to remember the key points !

Innovation by deletion

I recently came across an interesting idea in the Dialogue magazine from Duke EC. It is simple yet we often do not think about innovation in this way. Full credit to the author Lisa Bodell.

When we think of innovation or read about it, the focus is nearly always about doing something new, creative, different, something nobody else has thought about. But the authors of this article turn things upside down: very often, innovation can be (indirectly) increased by STOPPING to do stupid things that take up time and energy. They call this the Kill A Stupid Rule tool. I think this is especially true in large organizations.

So here is the approach. Bring your team, department, division together and have them brainstorm or think about "stupid things we do". Stupid rules. Stupid reports, meetings or practices. Stupid processes that were put in place at some point by somebody, but where nobody remembers the purpose or benefit. There are no limits to what can be brought up. Anybody who thinks there is something stupid going on can list this as something the team should consider.

The team will then organize all these "stupid ideas" in the traditional 2x2 matrix, along the axes of "easy versus difficult to implement" and "low or high impact on the organization". The obvious priority is to focus on the quadrant with the easy to remove/high impact topics. The team can vote to pick one stupid rule they all agree to kill right here and now, and evaluate the following weeks that canceling this rule is indeed  feasible.

Asking teams to do something new, something innovative on top of everything else that fills their working days is often a challenge. Change in this direction is hard. But the opposite can be very liberating and invigorating. Removing a "stupid" rule or process or way of doing things can free up time, energy and focus ... and open the possibilities for innovation. It empowers team members to be able to redesign the way they do their current work.

Why brainstorming won't get your team out of the box

Brainstorming is a very popular tool to address a problem or challenge with a team. The logic is that the ideas of a handful of people will be more creative or powerful than those of an individual. No issue here. In a brainstorming session, each participant takes turns to come up with an idea, and all are listed on a flipchart, without evaluating, judging or even reacting. The long list of ideas is then reduced, ideas are voted on, or combined.

Brainstorming is very intense. Energy is high. Participants think hard to come up with a brilliant idea waiting their turn ... and hoping that nobody else will have the same idea ! Nothing worse in a brainstorming session than to have your neighbor steal the idea you were about to share !

Neuroscience has demonstrated the limits of brainstorming when it comes to finding real breakthrough ideas. Because of the high level of energy and the dynamics of a brainstorming session, participants come up with those ideas or solutions that require the least thinking effort. The brain is forced to work hard: while others shout their ideas, the brain works overtime to come up with something - anything - by the time it's its turn. After a second of relaxation once the idea has been added to the list, it's back to thinking hard to come up with something - again, anything - before the next turn.

Research by David Rock (Mr. Neuroleadership) has shown that forcing the brain to think under time pressure does not mean great ideas will pop out. It is quite the opposite. Real breakthrough ideas occur when the brain is at rest. When some question or riddle jumps around in our unconscious brain, the weaker connections between neurons are activated: those are the things we know but we don't use them routinely. And that's where new solutions are found. So David Rock recommends the following process. When you are faced with a really complex challenge, spend some time with your team to agree on what the key question is the team should answer in order to solve this challenge. Let the team disperse, and go back to what they regularly do. Then bring them together, one or two days later. The brain has been allowed to rest, and the question has been playing around in team members' brains over this period. Doing a brainstorming at that moment will deliver far superior ideas than the immediate brainstorming.

Need urgent and great new ideas ? Slow down first !

Looking for a-ha's ?

In a recent HBR article (November 2014), Mohanbir Sawhney and Sanjay Khosla indicate 7 areas where people or organizations can look for new insights and new ideas for products or processes or improvements in general. They define insight as an “imaginative understanding of an internal or external opportunity that can be tapped into to improve efficiency, generate revenue, or boost engagement.” A more simple term is “the a-ha moment” that we have all experienced at some point. The authors list different areas where individuals or teams should be looking for such insights, like  anomalies in customer data or evaluating the frustrations customers (internal or external) have with your organization’s services. They explain clearly WHERE to look, but the key of HOW to look is a bit buried and not made really explicit. They end each of their 7 sections by giving examples of how to actually find these insights, and the how in this case is ... the question ! The authors each time highlight the potential discovery by examples such as “ask yourself … is this or that possible ? what would happen if … ?” And this part ... the HOW ... is really the key to creating insights, because you can apply this to any situation, way beyond the 7 proposed by the authors.

Asking questions to yourself, and hoping that some of them will generate an insight, is possible but limited by our own mental models. It is difficult to pull yourself out of your comfort zone and questions that you ask yourself would probably be limited in depth or degree of innovativeness. So that’s why it is useful to put a group of people around a table, and instead of brainstorming for solutions or answers to a given problem, ask each to come up with questions. The rule is that people can only state questions, and nobody will be answering them. The questions are there to stir up ideas. Just like in brainstorming, no questions are off limits, and nobody can react and judge what others are saying.  At first it will be a bit awkward, and some of the questions will be very basic. But keeping the practice up for some time, you will create a dynamic where certain questions trigger other questions. Don’t be discouraged by sometimes long periods of silence. Thinking is not a bad thing when it happens !

You can hope for a-ha moments while in the shower or doing your favorite sport. Or you can teach your team to create them by asking each other questions … Give it a try !

There is an i in team

There is an i in team. I am referring to the i of innovation. When we think about innovation, we like to think about those individual geniuses that have entered into the history books. Archimedes in his bath tub (an invention, not an innovation, I admit) or Steven Jobs with the latest i-something. Innovation seems to be the realm of extra-ordinary people, and so there are books and training courses to think like Steve Jobs. I am not sure how many innovations occur thanks to training courses in innovation …

A whole different view of innovation was presented in a recent blog by Samuel Bacharach, summarizing an interview with Jef Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon. Bezos describes his innovation process as follows: "In my experience, the way invention, innovation and change happen is [through] team effort. There's no lone genius who figures it all out and sends down the magic formula. You study, you debate, you brainstorm and the answers start to emerge. It takes time. Nothing happens quickly in this mode.”

Three critical elements to innovation, that are in fact in direct opposition of the stereotypes.

1. It’s about a team, not a genius. It’s a group process.

2. It’s a process (not a light bulb) with debate, brainstorming,  and playing with alternatives.

3. It takes time. You can’t force creativity by scheduling an innovation meeting on Tuesday morning (or any other day).

That is exactly the reason the Action Learning process very often delivers innovative and creative ideas to complex problems. In an Action Learning session, the team asks questions to understand the problem in all its aspects, not to jump to (incomplete) solutions. Action Learning is the perfect team process as it includes reflection on the learning that is taking place. And in fact, although innovation cannot be sped up, the Action Learning session’s structure and intensity ensures that within a couple of 2 hour sessions, significant breakthrough solutions have been developed.

No time to learn ?

I often hear that managers (at any level) are so busy they have no time for organizational learning or learning in general. They are loaded with back-to-back meetings. Or visitors they have to take care of. Urgent events keep them busy. And of course emails, and reports, and more emails. When you talk about learning, they refer to the training program  that was fixed during last year's budget period and which is probably very similar to the one the year before. There really is no time left, not at the end of the day, nor the end of the month. There is simply no time. Someone told me recently that it seemed there were fewer and fewer hours in a day (I checked, there aren't).




Reg Revans curve on learning vs change

Learning does not mean studying or going to a training course in a hotel room. Training is about discovering the solutions or best practices for yesterday's problems. Learning is about using the experience that exists in a team, asking questions about the situation and reflecting on how actions should be taken in the new and changed environment. Learning allows your team to develop solutions for tomorrow's problems. Reg Revans said that if an organization can learn faster than the rate of change in its environment, it will prosper. If the organization learns slower than the rate of change, the organization will eventually collapse.

Everybody is aware that changes are happening faster and more intense than ever. Technology, social media or supply chain models change faster than in the past. In the past, when changes happened more slowly, the way teams learned allowed the organization to stay ahead and develop new business opportunities. When changes accelerate exponentially, these ways of learning no longer work.

The way a team learned in the past, can no longer sustain the organization. If we cannot learn faster and therefore grow with these changes, failure is ahead.

If you don't manage to learn, as an individual, or a team, or an organization, it's only a matter of time until you are overtaken by the changes around you. Maybe it is urgent to think about when you will make time to learn.


The Land of the Smiling Curve ?

Thailand has made a name for itself over the last decades for efficient manufacturing, in particular in electronics and automotive assembly. The country is known for a dedicated and attention-to-detail workforce. Most if not all of industrial activities today are manufacturing or assembly. AEC 2015 is offering exciting opportunities and serious challenges. What should Thai manufacturers do in this context ?

Smiling curve, downloaded from rieti.go.jp

The concept of the smiling curve was developed in 1992 by Stan Shih, the founder of ACER (Taiwan). He highlighted the fact that margins in manufacturing were getting squuezed and that manufacturers need to move out of pure assembly and look for more added value if they want to remain profitable. A company can either go for the R&D and innovate in developing components that other companies need (think Samsung selling to Apple), moving towards the left on the curve. Or they can focus on service and product design (think Apple), at the right hand side.

The total "cost" of an iPhone assembled by FOXCONN for Apple is 179 US$. Out of this, 6.5 US$ is the cost of labor, the Chinese added value. The rest, 172.5 US$ is made up of raw material and compenents, all of which are imported from other countries (Korea, Japan, Germany, the USA and other countries). The iPhone's real added value is in the hands of the component designers and suppliers (172.5 US$) and the dealers, retailers and Apple itself (equivalent to 321 US$ for an iPhone sold at 500 US$) (info from presentation at KMAP 2012 by Prof Jay Lee, based on Xing and Detert, 2010).

With neigbouring countries, with significantly lower labor costs, opening up, pure assemblers will clearly be challenged. Not in the short term, because established supply chains, economies of scale and experience will continue to provide an advantage over new and smaller startup operations. But if the Thai assemblers stay with their current business model, they will definitely lose their competitive edge in the 5 coming years.

Thailand is known as the land of smiles but maybe the challenge, with AEC 2015 around the corner, will be more about the dangers of remaining stuck at the bottom of the "smiling curve" ...