do_matic

Growth and innovation: what are you commiting to do?

(It's like the pedestrian's creed. From grebo_guru on Flickr.)

Recently, I've been working with companies to design their innovation strategy and to develop a culture of innovation. In related meetings with executive leadership teams, I've been asked to share my opinion on the common pitfalls these companies will face. There are plenty of them, but one stands out recently as a subtle but important challenge.

In a prior post, I described some innovation leadership imperatives:
Share Direction
Give Permission
Provide Support
Commit

The last imperative, handled poorly, can lead to trouble. Leaders and project teams often fail to align themselves and their colleagues around what they are committing to do. Failing to communicate that intention can lead to mismatched investment, timelines and expectations.

For example, "leadership" might be committing to develop new commercial platforms that represent $100s of millions in potential. A pilot team, for the exact same project, might just be trying to learn about a market that's new to them. The team might receive a budget commensurate with a full-bore market blitz, while what they need is a program designed to help them cheaply investigate a new area. They didn't decide whether they should go small to learn, or big to win.*

Ask yourself and your colleagues, what are we committing to do:
to start?
to learn?
to win?
to change?

It might feel like a scary conversation to have, but it's far scarier not to have it.

* I've been digging the WSJ / MIT SMR Business Insight collaboration lately. Here's an article that describes the idea of experimentation at scale.

Hey Colin: What's the one thing you'd measure for innovation?

(The tools of the drycleaner cum tailor's trade courtesy of jek-a-go-go and Creative Commons.)

Hey, we've been designing a lot of measures lately. I've proposed some, Diego has proposed some and you've proposed some. The conventional wisdom says there's no silver bullet. There are input measures, output measures, process measures and readiness measures. Some enterprising folks say you need somewhere between seven and fifteen measures. I've seen books that have listed 50 of them. GE, for a while at least, was managing to just three in any given business.

But if you had to measure one thing, just one thing, for (growth and) innovation, what would it be?

Walt Disney: The prototype

If you're interested in the process of creation or are interested in the dynamics of creative companies, I'd recommend reading Neal Gabler's excellent biography Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination.

This book is a biography in all its glory (nearly 900 pages one third of which are end notes, now in softcover). I'm late to the party, but it blew me away. That's where I pulled the William Blake quote from above. So I decided to write a back-to-school inspired book report on it...

Gabler chronicles Walt Disney's life and efforts through early childhood through the conception of Walt Disney Studios/Enterprises on to the birth and early evolution of Disneyland. I was amazed by the influence of Disney animation and animators from that time period, as well as the process innovation and tool creation required to constantly push the state of the art (e.g., the invention of the concept/role of a dedicated sketch artist, product placement on TV, etc.).

Disney didn't really do it alone. He attracted his early acolytes by doing the coolest stuff. His mission was to make the highest quality and most inspiring animation possible. Camaraderie developed as young people pursued these goals and made it up as they went along. Even as the definition of quality and inspiration shifted, people knew Disney Studios was the place to be.

For the formative part of his career, nothing would stand in the way of Walt Disney's vision and personal pursuit of quality. Not people, not money and sometimes not even the tastes of the American public. His comrades became first his hands then merely objects to pursue his goals - often easily disposed of and abused. It seems working at the studio downright sucked at times. Gabler's Disney is moody, singularly-focused, ruthless and a tyrant. If something couldn't be made the right way, his way, Walt Disney would berate or delay or disengage completely. Despite all of this, the productively being on the edge somehow worked.

Over time, Disney's approach to the organization changed as did his role in it. Check out Disney's begrudgingly conceived, process-based organizational chart from 1943 (discussed in the book and sent to me by Colin and discussed in atissue):

First, Disney was everywhere and in everything. Then, he was in the middle. Once this chart was drawn, he found himself at the start with the story. Then, once he was disillusioned with the animation and enthralled with Disneyland, he was nowhere.

There were all kinds of great connections for me in this book, but what really resonated for me is this:

Not only did the development of Walt Disney Studios and Enterprises provide a blueprint, Walt Disney himself was the prototype of creative leadership in all of its gritty, flawed and wonderful glory. We can all be Walt Disney every once in a while.

If you're interested in such things and stuck with me to this point (and want a shorter starting point), I'd also recommend reading the Ed Catmull Pixar piece in HBR and Hugh MacLeod's Ignore Everybody.

Non sequitur: Go to Alaska when you're old and Sao Paulo when you're young

I recently returned from a great vacation to Alaska. I heard a famous quote while we were in Glacier Bay that resonated with me: "Don't go to Alaska as a young person, otherwise it will ruin all the other things you see after it."

Fresh from vacation, I promptly hopped two redeyes for business in Sao Paulo, Brazil. That was staggering in a completely different way. I live in the big city, but Sao Paulo is staggering in its scale (21MM+ people in the area), diversity, height and breadth. It kept going and going, all of it very tall. Although the greater New York metro area has a comparable population and sprawl, it just doesn't strike me as ruthlessly urban as Sao Paulo.

Being there made me feel excited that, despite seeing awe-inspiring Alaska, there's lots of awe-inspiring things left to see.

[Editor's note: I'm on the road a bit more this week, so the posts are getting posted slower but thought of faster.]

(Mendenhall glacier, outside of Juneau.)

(Looking North in the Johns Hopkins Inlet, just East of the Johns Hopkins Glacier.)

(Sao Paulo: I had my camera with me, but not a minute to snap a shot. This is courtesy of licassuncao. It's kind of embarrassing to put it next to my shots above.)