Principle 8: Learning, innovation and continual improvement (Item 4)
Continual improvement and innovation depends on continual learning.
In order to get innovative ideas, you must systematically eliminate
the barriers to innovation (eg structures, traditions, politics, fear
in the workplace).
Innovation is natural for all people. It's in your genes. Many people
are naturally very creative. But we still don't see much innovation.
Why not? Why don't we see more of it?
Innovation is a fragile thing. Very easily destroyed. It belongs in
the high ground of imagination, inquiry and initiative - all of which
rely on freedom, independence, absence of fear, difference, high autonomy
and mistakes. In most companies, the environment is very different from
that picture. If inventiveness and innovation are to thrive, they need
a very considerable hand.
Some of the reason is covered in detail in Principle 7 (`Enthusiastic
People') — you actually have to work quite hard for people to volunteer
their enthusiasm and resourcefulness. Structures, traditions, politics,
fear in the workplace, all act to counter people's natural innovation.
And this would get you only to the lower levels of the triangular diagram.
We often see bosses demanding that their people be innovative or creative
and at the same time actively discouraging such innovation. The following
are further examples of why the creative process does not often happen
in the workplace.
Perhaps fortunately, your competition has to deal with the same issues.
Control and reward. Most
companies establish control and reward systems to ensure reliable performance.
These are good things. However, they can work against your need for
innovation. Beware that you are not saying, "we want you to innovate"
but then rewarding only behavior that sticks to the status quo and punishing
asking questions. Rewarding A while hoping for B.
Most researchers believe offering rewards for creativity and innovation
cannot and does not work effectively. This is despite the common practice
of offering or withholding rewards to try to stimulate creativity. When
the planned `improvement' produces `more of the same', the normal response
is to vary the reward system, or to have yet another search for new
ideas.
Environment not supporting.
In most companies, the necessary supporting environment is absent for
Principles 1 (`Role Models') and 7 (`Enthusiastic People') to work.
Senior managers have not worked to establish an environment of trust
or to adequately set direction. The supporting environment necessary
for employees to enthusiastically volunteer their resourcefulness and
innovation is absent. Offering a few rewards is of little help if all
the supporting environment is absent or is working against you. Having
Principles 1 and 7 in place is almost a prerequisite for Principle 8
to work.
Scarce resources. People
don't have time. One of the common mistakes companies make is to downsize
to the point of efficiency. Every one is busy to the point that they
have no time for anything beyond dealing with the here and now, the
daily grind. If you are constantly fighting alligators, you just don't
have time to think of new ways to drain the swamp.
You need to have time and space to be able to think of new ways of
doing things. You need the actual time as well as the emotional space
to want to do so.
You have to be looking. Before
you can find something, you have to be looking for it. The problem must
be clear.
Each of us has a part of his or her brain (the Reticular Activating
System) that filters out information that you do not want. The filter
is a very good thing. If you did not have it, you would be swamped with
"junk". Your senses would be overwhelmed with so much information
you would not be able to function. Because of this filter, you let in
only information that you want. The filter's job is to let only important
information through. The downside of this is that your filters can take
out too much.
Before you can find something, you have to be looking for it. Until
you want it, even if it is right in front of you, you will not be able
to see it. The first step to finding anything is to know that you need
it. Only then do you opens your awareness to opportunities around you.
This is one of the keys to innovation.
The process is actually quite orderly. First, you need to identify
a problem that needs solving. Then you can begin to look for solutions.
Of course, the problem must be very clearly defined for this to work
to your advantage. Otherwise, you will find the solution to the wrong
problem.
No pressure. If there is no
pressure, there is no need to change. Pressure can be essential. Pressure
can range from gentle disquiet with the status quo through to "solve
this or you die". The disadvantage of pressure of the `you die'
magnitude is that many people become paralyzed or are less able to identify
which problem needs to be solved. They frequently lock onto the wrong
problem and so come up with the wrong solution.
It would be good if the pressure were a bit less than that and if the
problem was clear. Good — but not always possible.
Lack of good tools. In general,
the tools available to assist thinking are fairly poor. We can go through
the iterations described by Hoffmann. However, it would be very much
better if tools existed to take short cuts. The de Bono, Goldratt and
TRIZ tools allow some of that. However, their use is very limited.
Comfort zones and conservatism.
People get very comfortable being able to fight the fires they know.
They develop skills in dealing with the problems of yesterday. Often,
those skills were very hard won. There is always the fear that those
fire-fighting skills will not work in the New World. People don't want
to learn new skills with new bruises. If is easier to pour scorn on
the new idea – don't let it get off the ground.
People in companies have seen it all before. The boss comes out with
some new idea that will save the world and make us all rich. Six months
later, that one is dead but he now has a bigger and better one. Or,
with the churn in companies, we probably have a new boss who is pouring
scorn on the previous boss's ideas. Why get interested in any of them?
It is likely that inertia, conservatism, or the limitation of our current
intellectual and technological reach, causes us to stick with the past.
Rigorously enforced standards.
Standards are very good for controlling your processes and reducing
variation in products and services. However, often they are so rigorously
enforced that people are not allowed to even think about a new way of
doing something – even if mounting pressure from changing technology,
customer demand or market forces would suggest that new ways are imperative.
Inertia. There appear to be three
parts of inertia.
- People become stuck in past technology and the way they have always
done things and just don't want to find a new way. For example, when
a company invests in a technology, it usually becomes locked into
that technology (until it gets its moneys worth). Even if technology
used by others in its industry has far surpassed that old technology.
- It is usually not possible to take to big a step. In complex systems
and in a competitive environment you can only innovate to the extent
that resources, technology, market forces and current physical or
structural complexity will allow. For example, you cannot innovate
faster than technology will allow or that you can persuade your customers
to buy the strange product of service. You cannot have ideas today
that you will not have the knowledge for until tomorrow.
- People become caught in the thinking of how they were taught. Then,
when they go to teach they apply exactly the same approach. Unfortunately,
the technology has probably moved on. (This applies in almost all
fields.) For example, in the case of skiing, we now have shaped skis.
We no longer have grooves down the middle of the ski that were there
in the 1960s. However, the techniques that were necessary for grooved
skis are still the ones insisted on by the ski instructors certifying
body. This means that because of standards inertia, teaching skiing
is lagging 30 years behind the technology.
Poor ability to use information.
You must have a viable process to make intelligent use of information.
A customer suggestion that a product could solve a much richer problem
will not be exploited in a company that cannot communicate the suggestion
in a way that develops the necessary political and technical momentum.
Psychological temperament.
Not everybody is good at finding new ways of doing things. The work
on psychological temperament suggests that large numbers of people in
companies will resist change. The Guardians make up almost 40% of the
community and are even more strongly represented in many companies.
Guardians are practical, common sense people who see their role as being
responsible and doing their duty. They usually do not want to change.
The need to change suggests that what they have been doing so far has
not been good enough. Guardians will improve and refine (the lower levels
of the triangular diagram) to make things more practical and useful.
Guardians are very, very good at this continual improvement work. They
will seldom innovate or invent.
Innovation or invention is usually left to the independent rationalists.
Most companies have very few of these and because they are often very
independent they may not feel the need to be seen to fit in with the
rest of the company. They are often viewed as eccentric or arrogant
and their new ideas discounted or ignored.
An interesting paradox. Most people in the company not able to innovate
and the few who are able to do so are ignored.
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