GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

I think we underestimate the power of now, and I think we waste too much emotional energy on the past and future.

We use the past to create self-inflicted paralysis, to rationalize inaction. We dissect our failures to avoid future missteps, and push progress into the future. We make no progress in the now. This is wrong on so many levels.

In all written history there has never been a mistake-free endeavor. Never. Failure is part of it. Always. And learning from past failures is limited because the situation is different now: the players are different, the technology is different, the market is different, and the problems are different. We will make new mistakes, unpredictable mistakes. Grounding ourselves in the past can only prepare us for the previous war, not the next one.

Like with the past, we use the future’s uncertainty to rationalize inaction, and push action into the future. The future has not happened yet so by definition it’s uncertain. Get used to it. Embrace it. I’m all for planning, but I’m a bigger fan of doing, even at the expense of being wrong. Our first course heading is wrong, but that doesn’t mean the ship doesn’t sail. The ship sales and we routinely checks the heading, regularly consults the maps, and constantly monitors the weather. Living in the now, it’s always the opportunity for a course change, a decision, or an action.

The past is built on old thinking, and it’s unchangeable – let it go. Spend more emotional energy on the now. The future is unpredictable an uncontrollable, and it’s a result of decisions made in the now – let it go. Spend more energy on the now.

It’s tough to appreciate the power of now, and maybe tougher to describe, but I’ll take a crack at it. When we appreciate the power of now we have a bias for action; we let go of the past; we speculate on the future and make decisions with less than perfect information; and we constantly evaluate our course heading.

Give it a try. Now.

Sign up here to join 17,000+ leaders getting Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to their inbox every week.

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

There’s agreement: new thinking is needed for innovation. And for those that have tried, there’s agreement that it’s hard. It’s hard to create new thinking, to let go of what is, to see the same old things as new, to see resources where others see nothing. But there are some tricks to force new thinking, to help squeeze it out of ourselves.

The answer, in a word, is scarcity.

In the developing world there is scarcity of everything: food, shelter, electricity, tools, education; in the developed world we must fabricate it. We must dust off the long-neglected thought experiment, and sit ourselves in self-made scarcity.

Try a thought experiment that creates scarcity in time. Get the band together and ask them this question: If you had only two weeks to develop the next generation product, what would you do? When they say the question is ridiculous, agree with them. Tell them that’s the point. When they try to distract and derail, hold them to it. Don’t let them off the hook. Scarcity in time will force them to look at everything as a resource, even the user and the environment itself (sunlight, air, wind, gravity, time), or even trash or byproduct from something in the vicinity. At first pass, these misused resources may seem limited, but with deeper inspection, they may turn out to be better than the ones used today. The band will surprise themselves with what they come up with.

Next, try a thought experiment that creates scarcity of goodness. Get the band back together, and take away the major performance attribute of your product (the very reason customers buy); decree the new product must perform poorly. If fast is better, the new one must be slow; if stiff is better, the new one must be floppy; if big, think small. This forces the band to see strength as weakness, forces them to identify and release implicit constraints that have never been named. Once the bizarro-world product takes shape, the group will have a wonderful set of new ideas. (The new product won’t perform poorly, it will have novel functionality based on the twisted reality of the thought experiment.)

Innovation requires new thinking, and new thinking is easier when there’s scarcity – no constraints, no benchmarks, no core to preserve and protect. But without real scarcity, it’s difficult to think that way. Use the time-tested thought experiment to marinate yourself in scarcity, and see what comes of it.

Sign up here to join 17,000+ leaders getting Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to their inbox every week.

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

Situation A

• The economy has picked up, but your sales have dropped off.
• Competitors’ products work better than yours.
• Competitors’ product launches are more frequent than yours.
• The number of competitors is increasing.
• The sales team is angry – they cannot sell against competitors.
• The product roadmap is more of the same.

The situation is clear – you’re behind your competitors, and they are accelerating. The action plan is clear – leapfrog your competitors.

Declare failure with the more-of-the-same product roadmap, and imagine a new one. The new one must leapfrog your competitors (though they’re accelerating). Imagine a new product roadmap that’s so radical it’s borderline ridiculous, that’s so outrageous you’re afraid to present it. (A sign it’s right on-the-mark.) Imagine one you have little to no idea how to do. Now, take the best of the ridiculous product roadmap and replace the oldest parts of the old one. Create a nice hybrid, and make it happen.

Situation A is tough because there is stress around the company’s future, and it’s easy because there’s a clear reason to innovate – company survival.

Situation B

• The economy has dropped off, but your sales have picked up.
• Your products work better than your competitors’.
• Your product launches are more frequent than your competitors’.
• There the number of competitors is decreasing.
• The sales team is happy – they can sell against competitors.
• The product roadmap is more of the same.

The situation is clear – you’re ahead of your competitors, and they are accelerating. The action plan is clear – leapfrog yourself.

Declare failure with the more-of-the-same product roadmap, and imagine a new one. The new one must leapfrog yourself (though you’re accelerating). Imagine a new product roadmap that’s so radical it’s borderline ridiculous, that’s so outrageous you’re afraid to present it. (A sign it’s right on-the-mark.) Imagine one you have little to no idea how to do. Now, take the best of the ridiculous product roadmap and replace the oldest parts of the old one. Create a nice hybrid, and make it happen.

Situation B is easy because there is no stress around the company’s future, and it’s difficult because there is no clear reason to innovate.

There’s no reason to argue which situation you’re in, no need to argue which is more difficult. Either way, leapfrog something.

Sign up here to join 17,000+ leaders getting Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to their inbox every week.

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

You are you, and work is work, but work must fit you, not the other way around. Yet we hose it up most of the time. Most of the time it’s: “improve your weaknesses” or “close your gaps”. Make no mistake, this is code for “change yourself so you fit our work.”

I say we flip it on its head; I say change your work to fit you; I say do your work differently; do it in a way that takes advantage of your strengths; do it the way you think it should be done. It’s your work; you’re the expert; you know it best. You choose. Change your work.

With an uncertain economy and high unemployment, this change-the-work stuff sounds scary, but it’s scarier not to do it. Your company’s global competitiveness is weakened when you’re asked to change to fit the work; but when work changes to fit you, your company is more competitive. Think about it – you’re more engaged, you’re happier, you’re more productive, and you do better work.

What could be better for your company?

What could be better for you?

Sign up here to join 17,000+ leaders getting Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to their inbox every week.

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

When asked how to improve manufacturing, the recipe is clear: lean. When asked how to improve engineering, the recipe: there isn’t one. Each engineering improvement effort is unique; though there are common themes and building blocks, each has its own fingerprint.

Each company has its own strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats; each company has unique products and markets; each its own goals; each its own culture; each its own future state. Informed by uniqueness, the recipe is unique. To create your unique improvement recipe, I suggest WHY, WHAT, HOW.

WHY

Before your engineering improvement recipe can be formed, the fundamental shaping question must be answered. Take a breath, fire up your laptop, put on your headphones, and queue up your best music. Type this question:

WHY does our business demand we improve engineering?

Now, type the answer. (Literally.) Use nouns and verbs to explain why engineering must improve. If you can’t, stop. Without a clear, concise, jargon-free answer nothing can be done to advance the cause. (Though there can be plenty of activity, there can be no progress.) Without the WHY, you cannot pass GO. You must create a clear, concise WHY.

Seek out help from trustworthy people to create the WHY. Don’t move forward until you understand it well enough to explain it to the engineering organization. Now, with WHY in place, it’s time for WHAT.

WHAT

Informed by WHY, it’s time for WHAT. Secure a quiet spot, scare up a big piece of paper, and grab your favorite pen. On the top of the page, write this question:

WHAT does engineering improvement look like?

Now, draw the picture. (Literally.) Use sketches, scribbles, arrows, blocks, and people’s names to describe what improved engineering looks like. Sit in the future and describe it in present tense. Once drawn, review it with folks you trust, revise it, and repeat. If you cannot draw the future, keep trying. Once you have something, review it with folks you trust, revise it, and repeat. Don’t move forward until you draw it clearly enough to explain it to the engineering organization. And with WHAT in place, it’s time for HOW.

HOW

The first step of HOW is similar to WHAT. Pick up your favorite pen, come back to the now, and draw a picture of today’s engineering capabilities, engineering’s current state. Again, use scribbles, blocks, arrows, and names.

The second step is to define the difference between future and current states. With future and current state pictures side-by-side, perform a mathematical subtraction: future state – current state. The difference is HOW. A block in future state that’s not part of the current state is a new thing that must be created; a new arrow in the future state is an activity, interaction, or relationship that must be created; a new person, named or unnamed, represents new thinking. Things that appear in both states are strengths to build on.

The third step, prioritization. Start here:

What engineering strengths will we build on?

It’s important start with strengths. It sends the right message to the engineering organization: we must build on build on what works, build on what got us here. Engineers need to know that, fundamentally, their work is good, and major building blocks are in place, the foundation is solid.

What development areas will we improve?

Take care with this one. To avoid a demoralized engineering team, there should be fewer development areas than strengths. Though there may be many development areas, call out only the most important.

What’s the right first bite?

The most important improvements are those that strongly support the WHY; there’s a natural sequence of things (socks before shoes) that must be respected; and there’s a finite amount of work that can be done. Use these three lenses as the start of a prioritization framework.

Building blocks for engineering improvement are the same for all companies: people, tools, and processes, but there are many types of people, countless engineering tools, and all processes can be improved. WHY, WHAT, HOW can help define your unique improvement fingerprint: the right people, the right tools, the right processes, shaped by your unique company goals, and improved in right sequence.

Sign up here to join 17,000+ leaders getting Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to their inbox every week.

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

Creating new products that provide a useful function is hard, and insuring they function day-in and day-out is harder. Plain and simple, engineering is hard.

Planes must fly, cars must steer, and Velcro must stick. But, at every turn, there are risks, reasons why a new design won’t work, and it’s the engineer’s job to make the design insensitive to these risks. (Called reducing signal to noise ratio in some circles.) At a fundamental level engineering is about safety, and at a higher level it’s about sales – no function, no sales.

That’s why at every opportunity engineers reduce risk . (And thank goodness we do.) It makes sense that we’re the ones that think things through to the smallest detail, that can’t move on until we have the answer, that ask odd questions that seem irrelevant. It all makes sense since we’re the ones responsible if the risks become reality. We’re the ones that bear ultimate responsibility for product function and safety, and, thankfully, it shapes us.

But there’s a dark side to this risk reduction mindset – where we block our thinking, where we don’t try something new because of problems we think we may have, problems we don’t have yet. The cause of this innovation-limiting behavior: problem broadening, where we apply a thick layer of problem over the entirety of a new concept, and declare it unworkable. Truth is, we don’t understand things well enough to make that declaration, but, in a knee-jerk way, we misapply our natural risk reduction mindset. Clearly, problems exist when doing new, but real problems are not broad, real problems are not like peanut butter and jelly spread evenly across the whole sandwich. Real problems are narrow; real problems are localized, like getting a drip of jelly on your new shirt.

How to get the best of both worlds? How to embrace the risk reduction mindset so products are safe and help engineering folks to try something radically new? To innovate?

We’ve got the risk reduction world covered, so it’s all about enhancing the try-something-new side. To do this we need to combat problem broadening; we need a process for problem narrowing. With problem narrowing, engineers drill down until the problem is defined as the interaction of two elements (the jelly and your shirt), defined in space (the front of your shirt) and time (when the knife drops a dollop on your shirt). Where problem broadening tells us to avoid making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches altogether (those sandwiches will always dirty our shirts), problem narrowing tells use to put something between the knife and the front of your shirt, or to put on your new shirt after you make your sandwich, or to do something creative to keep the jelly away from our shirt.

Problems narrow as knowledge deepens. Work through your fears, try something new, and advance your knowledge. Then define your problems narrowly, and solve them.

Innovate.

Sign up here to join 17,000+ leaders getting Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to their inbox every week.

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

We’re starting to come to terms with the green revolution; we’re staring to realize that green is good for our planet and even better for our business. But how do we put greenwashing behind us and truly make a difference?

To improve recycling, find the non-recyclable stuff in your product and design it out. Make a Pareto chart of non-recyclable stuff (by weight) by major subassembly, and focus the design effort on the biggest brown bars of the Pareto. (Consider packaging a major subassembly and give it its own bar.)

To improve carbon footprint of logistics, find the weight and volume of your product and design out the biggest and heaviest. Make a Pareto chart of weight by major subassembly, and focus the design effort on the heaviest brown bars. Make a Pareto chart of volume by major subassembly, (Make cube around the subassembly and calculate volume in mm³.) and focus the design effort on the biggest bars. (Don’t forget the packaging.)

To improve energy efficiency of your factory, find electricity consumption and design it out. Make a Pareto chart of electricity consumption by major process step then map it to the product – to the element of the product that creates the need for electricity, and focus the design effort on the biggest bars.

Going forward, here are some thoughts to help grow your business with green (and save the planet):

• It’s easier to design out brown than to design in green.
• To design out brown, you’ve got to know where it is.
• The product creates brown – look to the product to eliminate it.

Sign up here to join 17,000+ leaders getting Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to their inbox every week.

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

We’re too busy. All of us. Too busy. And we better get used to it: too busy is the rule. But how to make too busy feel good? How to make yourself feel good? How to make the work better?

Pretend there is abundance; plenty for all; assume an abundance mindset.

There’s a subtle but powerful shift with the abundance mindset. Here’s the transition:

me to we

no to maybe, maybe to how

The abundance mindset is not about doing more; it’s about what we do and how we do. With the abundance mindset everyone feels better, our choices are better, and our work is better.

Lincoln said “Happiness is a choice.” I think it’s the same with abundance. We’ll always be too busy, but, if we choose, there will always be an abundance of thoughtfulness, caring, and mutual respect.

Sign up here to join 17,000+ leaders getting Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to their inbox every week.

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

Last month a group of engineers met secretly to reinvent the US economy one company at a time. Here are some of the players, maybe you’ve heard of them:

Alcoa, BAE, Boeing, Bose, Covidien, EMC, GE Medical, GE Transportation, Grundfos, ITT, Medrad, Medtronic, Microsoft, Motorola, Pratt & Whitney, Raytheon, Samsung, Schneider Electric, Siemens, United Technologies, Westinghouse, Whirlpool.

Presenter after presenter the themes were the same: double profits, faster time to market, and better products – the triple crown of product development. Magic in a bottle, and still the best kept secret of the product development community. (No sense sharing the secret sauce when you can have it all for yourself.)

Microsoft used the secret sauce to increase profits of their hardware business by $75 million; Boeing recently elevated the secret methodology to the level of lean. Yet it’s still a secret.

What is this sauce that doubles profits without increasing sales? (That’s right, doubles.) What is this magic that decreases time to market? That reduces engineering documentation? That reduces design work itself? What is this growth strategy?

When trying to spread it on your company there are some obstacles, but the benefits should be enough to carry the day. First off, the secret sauce isn’t new, but double the profits should be enough to take a first bite. Second, its name doesn’t roll off the tongue (there’s no sizzle), but decreased time to market should justify a taste test. Last, design engineering must change its behavior (we don’t like to do that), but improved product functionality should be enough to convince engineering to swallow.

There are also two mapping problems: First, the sauce has been mapped to the wrong organization – instead of engineering it’s mapped to manufacturing, a group that, by definition, cannot do the work. (Only engineering can change the design.) Second, the sauce is mapped to the wrong word – instead of profit it’s mapped to cost. Engineering is praised for increased profits (higher function generates higher profits) and manufacturing is responsible for cost – those are the rules.

With double profits, reduced time to market, and improved product function, the name shouldn’t matter. But if you must know, its name is Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DFMA), though I prefer to call it the secret sauce that doubles profits, reduces time to market, and improves product function.

Sign up here to join 17,000+ leaders getting Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to their inbox every week.

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

We are responsible for our actions, for what we do, for our work, and others are responsible for their response to it. (That’s why they call it responsibility.) Though we know we can’t control others, we still snare ourselves in worry trap: What will they think? Will they like it? What will they say?

Worse than the worry trap, however, is when we actually change our work based on what others will think. A big no-no. We’re asked to do the work because we’re talented, we’re uniquely qualified, we’re the experts. Why do we let opinions of others wield so much power? Who cares what they say. We will let our work speak for itself.

There’s not much in life we have control over, but work is one of them. We control most everything about it: the what and how, the caliber, the tenor. We choose to do marginal work, average work, great work, or magical work. It’s our choice. We choose. When we chose to do magical work, its voice powerful enough to drown out the less capable, the politically motivated, and the CEO.

So go do magical work. Do work so good you don’t remember how you did it, so good you don’t think you could do it again, so good it scares you. But be ready – magical work, by definition, is misunderstood.

What will they say about your magic? It doesn’t matter, magic’s voice will drown them out.

Sign up here to join 17,000+ leaders getting Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to their inbox every week.