American Chopper - How Personalities Clash At Work
Today we take a look at the popular Discovery Channel series American Chopper, featuring the misadventures of the Teutul family (Senior, Junior and Mikey) and their company, custom bike manufacturer Orange County Choppers. The relationship between Junior and Senior illustrates two opposing Myers-Briggs type preferences extremely well.
By now, you probably know that every episode of American Chopper features a heated, no-holds-barred argument between Senior and Junior. The argument is about the same thing every week - whether it’s more important to make a good product, or stay on schedule. We witness a classic clash of personality types that might look like something you’ve experienced in the workplace yourself.
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What prevents you from being a great innovator? Not much. Innovators by and large aren’t creative geniuses gifted with da Vinci-like talent. It’s not what they ARE - it’s what they DO. They do these seven things you most likely do not.
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Software, games and books - here’s seven ideal gifts for the innovator on your shopping lists.
The Greatest Creative Thinking Game Ever
Lo and behold, the greatest creative thinking game ever created has been released, and if you are trying to be a more creative thinker it should be on your hard drive right now, and you should have already played it several times through and learned all the tricks, and applied them metaphorically in your professional life.
For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, the game is called Portal.
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Table of contents for 7 Levels Of Change
- The 7 Levels Of Change - Introduction (Part 1 of 9)
- 7 Levels Of Change (Part 2 of 9) - Level 1: Effectiveness
- 7 Levels Of Change (Part 3 of 9) - Level 2: Efficiency
- 7 Levels Of Change (Part 4 of 9) - Level 3: Improving
- 7 Levels Of Change (Part 5 of 9) - Level 4: Cutting
- 7 Levels Of Change (Part 6 of 9) - Level 5: Copying
- 7 Levels Of Change (Part 7 of 9) - Level 6: Doing Things No One Else Is Doing
- 7 Levels Of Change (Part 8 of 9) - Level 7: Doing Things That Can’t Be Done
- 7 Levels Of Change (Part 9 of 9) - Bringing It All Together
The sixth in a nine-part series on Rolf Smith’s 7 Levels of Change, I introduce the fifth level of change - Copying (Doing Things Others Are Doing).
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There is an activity that seemingly has nothing to do with creative thinking and innovation, yet has everything to do with it. And if you start doing this, you will become a more innovative individual. And that one thing is….
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My favorite analogy for problem solving is this: you’ve got a gun and you’re trying to hit a target. The target represents the problem you’re trying to solve. The gun represents innovation. You represents YOU. By aiming at the problem with your gun of innovation you hope to hit the bullseye with the right solutions.
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After thinking a great deal about the IDEO and Doblin information I’ve presented, my views on targeted innovation are entering another evolutionary stage. Again.
Innovation effectiveness is becoming more of a science. Effectiveness is rising as we learn more about what works, and what doesn’t, at the macro level. So what is the role of creative thinking in the science of innovation effectiveness?
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IDEO loves brainstorming. Doblin hates brainstorming. Who is right? Who is the most wrong? Let’s start smacking them together and see what ends up on the floor.
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I began writing this post last week but wasn’t sure where I was headed - now my thinking has crystalized. It all started with the Business Week article regarding the effect of Lean Six Sigma (LSS) on 3M’s innovation processes. Something about the 3M situation bothered me. After I wrote about the Institute for Systems Biology, my perspective on innovation practices changed substantially, but it wasn’t until I considered the two organizations side by side that the source of my 3M frustration surfaced.
Placed side by side, the two organizations are hard to compare. ISB is a young, non-profit R&D group, whereas 3M is a huge established corporation. ISB produces research and the technologies that result are spun off to other companies - 3M develops, markets and manufactures their own products. The only thing they seem to have in common is the need to innovate. If ISB doesn’t produce revolutionary results on a regular basis they will have a hard time securing funding. If 3M doesn’t produce new and improved products, they’ll lose market share. Market leaders create new products - nearly 50% of today’s gross revenue comes from products released within the past 5 years. So being innovative goes hand in hand with being a market leader.
The problem 3M is experiencing seems to come from the fact that, as a manufacturing company, 3M’s operations are process-intensive. ”Innovation,” as it pertains to coming up with ideas for novel new products and solutions, is but a small part of what they do in the big scheme. This makes a company like 3M an extremely attractive target for the LSS crowd. Processes for manufacturing, marketing, etc. can be improved, streamlined, made more effective. As I’ve posted before, improvement is innovation too, but I’m narrowing the context of ‘innovation’ in this post to mean ‘doing different, breakthrough change.’
Regarding innovation, ISB doesn’t suffer that disadvantage. ISB can focus 100% of its efforts on producing novel research, partially due to the fact that systems biology is literally virgin territory. They have built themselves from the ground up as an innovative organization, and in doing so increased the probability that their research will generate revolutionary results.
How well would LSS go over at ISB? What would LSS think of ISB? Maybe LSS would take inventory of research notes et. al. and render judgement on the ‘efficiency’ of their process - ‘you’ll be more efficient if it only takes you X ideas to produce those results.’
And this is the crux of my problem - there is no ‘novel breakthrough innovation’ version of LSS - a process that can be implemented anywhere and produces results. Too many believe that breakthrough innovation is the result of random, accidental creatitity. What we have are bits and pieces of a system floating around in the various ’skunkworks’ and idea labs of corporate America, with nothing to tie them together. In contrast, LSS is a system that can be taught, and in turn has taken a life of it’s own - complete with a culture of “LSS Illuminati.” As a result, LSS carries an air of legitimacy. There are no “Breakthough Innovation Illuminati” to counter the LSS proponents, and I believe that is what 3M is experiencing right now. Who speaks for innovation? Who speaks for creative thinking processes?
Over the weekend I concentrated on the ‘bits and pieces’ of what would constitute the framework of a breakthrough innovation ’system.’ This represents my current collective thinking on the topic, it might evolve. I don’t think you could assemble anything as exacting as LSS, but you can increase the probability of successful breakthrough innovation in this manner. You can invision this as an ‘Department of Innovation’ or a ‘Advanced Business Initiatives’ group that interfaces with various other departments. The components:
1. The people need to be innovators as I have described them here. All four major values - creativity, collegiality, pragmatism, and observation - have to be present. And just like at ISB, they should be a cross-disciplinary group - the more diverse their backgrounds the better. It also might be helpful to establish an internal facilitator ‘guild’ - people with facilitation skills to lead problem solving sessions as needed.
2. Again, taking a cue from ISB - their workplace should be as open as possible, encouraging constant collisions, small group meetings, anything to spur collaboration. “All of us are smarter than one of us.”
3. Once you have the people and the workplace, establish productivity goals. The individuals, as well as the the group itself, should have some sort of “innovation quota.” The concept of establishing an innovation quota is not new - Thomas Edison, according to creative thinking expert Michael Michalko, had a strict personal quota of producing a minor product every ten days and a major product every six months. The results of his personal quota-based innovation system are undeniable - he held 1,093 patents at the time of his death. In order to meet this quota, he had to proliferate ideas. A company might decide they wanted the group to produce a significant product improvement every month, and a major breakthough new product every six months. The best way to proliferate ideas is through focused, facilitated sessions - another benefit of cultivating a facilitator guild. If your innovation function is geared to producing results, it is less likely to be vulnerable to LSS-type analysis.
4. Once the goals are in place, start gathering the low hanging fruit. The group should be adept in ’strategic transfer.’ Strategic transfer jumpstarts revolutionary innovation. A large part of their time should be spent identifying technologies and products in other worlds that can be adapted to theirs. They need to be experts in the lateral connections creative thinking technique. They should also seek access to the ‘failed idea museum’ of other companies - fortunes have been made off the failed ideas of others. The harvest: many ideas for improvements and several for breakthrough adaptations.
5. Finally, the group needs to be pushed into the creative stratosphere to generate revolutionary breakthroughs internally. Part of the innovation quota must involve cultivating crazy, off the wall ideas - the more abstract the better. It is through these ideas that novel, revolutionary innovation occurs. What separates idea from reality is the ability to determine the essence of the crazy idea and how to convert it into a practical solution. Facilitators can make this process more effective.
As I said, this is a framework. Again I invite comments - what is of value, what have I missed?
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