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Why Evidence Plays a Key Role in Scaling Innovation

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Prove it to me!

Why Evidence Plays a Key Role in Scaling Innovation

GUEST POST from John Bessant

A good idea will sell itself, right? Unfortunately not — Emerson was spectacularly wrong when he suggested that all you needed to do was build that better mousetrap to have the world beating a path to your door.

History is full of examples of innovations that, whilst being good and proven solutions, more than just a gleam in their inventor’s eye, stubbornly refused to scale. They failed to have impact on a widespread basis.

Think about Earl Tupper and his alchemical miracle, creating an award-winning product out of the unpromising raw material of black sludge waste from oil refining. Tupperware eventually made it as an innovation which scaled but it was only after Brownie Wise teamed up with him and pioneered the social marketing which brought the product into the homes of key influencers.

Or Toshiba, investing close to a billion dollars in the technology underpinning what they saw as the next generation of high quality DVD recording, only to fall in the final straight as the market opted instead for Sony’s Blu Ray system. This was a fascinating echo of the story which Sony had encountered decades earlier when its Betamax video tape format lost the battle to the VHS standard, despite having many technical advantages over its rival.

Or Better Place, an ambitious green start-up that offered to make the world more sustainable by introducing battery swap technology for electromobility. Despite raising a huge amount of venture finance and gaining the backing of world leaders and CEOs prepared to set up factories the vision fell apart after three years.

These are not the failures of foolish and unprepared entrepreneurs; they all had much to offer and had proven their technologies worked. But they each stumbled over one or other of the many rocks strewn in the way of those trying to make the journey to scale. There are plenty of them in the world of commercial innovation — and in the field of social change, innovations designed to have an impact and change the world, it’s even more difficult.

Evidence and scale

One of the challenges is around the role of evidence. At its simplest we adopt new things because we see some benefit in them, they make our lives easier, more comfortable or better in some way. That’s what gives rise to the S-curve shape which you can find associated with any innovation — it isn’t a case of all or nothing, adoption takes time. And one of the key influences on that is the role of evidence.

For early adopters it’s a matter of being convinced enough by data or demonstrations that the innovation has real advantages to offer — they’re looking for hard and measurable facts to underpin their decision. But as we move along the road diffusion becomes more of a social process as well.

The more we see others getting benefit, the more we’re prepared to take the risk. Shaping our perceptions of new things so that we adopt them sooner is a huge part of what advertising does and it plays on our desire for evidence. Being persuaded — by facts, figures, demonstrations or simple observation accelerates the process.

Think of Washington Carver’s famous attempts to get rural farmers in the southern USA (a sceptical breed) to adopt new strains and methods. Simply giving them the hard facts wasn’t enough — his success came when he could show that the crops in his demonstration fields grew higher or thicker than those around. Seeing is believing — and it reminds us that evidence comes in many forms and can be communicated in different ways.

It’s also a matter of who is offering us the evidence — can we trust it, can we believe it? The advertising industry has played this tune for a long time, persuading us about the virtues of better toothpaste or headache pills by invoking the (eminently trustworthy) authority of medical practitioners. We also listen to key influencers, opinion leaders whose perceptions we trust — and we’re much more likely to adopt something if it is recommended by ‘people like us’.

All of these factors help shape the familiar S-curve pattern which we see over the life of innovations whereby adoption accelerates after the initial first wave. There’s a kind of snowball effect with the accumulation of evidence (especially the experience of satisfied adopters) driving up the pace of adoption. (Or not — negative evidence or word of it can quickly stop adoption in its tracks).

So if we are concerned with trying to scale our innovation it’s worth looking a little more closely at the role evidence plays, at the monitoring and evaluation processes which build that evidence base, and at how evidence is communicated. We could do a lot worse than break our review down into some key question areas — the who, what, when and how of scaling evidence.

Who?

Who needs evidence? Well, self-evidently (!) adopters, as we’ve seen, it’s a key part of the innovation decision process. But we often use proxies — opinion leaders — to influence our decisions — whether it’s the Jones’s we try to keep up with or our favourite social media influencer. Adoption is based on trusting others judgment and we assume they have reviewed the ‘evidence’ in coming to their decision.

Beyond that there’s another group — investors. Whether it is donors funding social innovation or government promoting a new technology or individual investors in a crowdfunding campaign those investors are looking for evidence to shape their behaviour. Is the innovation worth doing — is there evidence of demand and potential impact? Is there evidence downstream of actual impact, and along the way are the trends in the right direction? And afterwards, was the investment worthwhile, was it done well, could it have been done better, what have we learned? All questions which require evidence.

And then there’s the innovators themselves, the teams growing and scaling their innovation. Their core approach in coming up with their original solution will have been based on prototyping and experimenting, pivoting as they learn from the market what works and what doesn’t. And that experimental learning cycle doesn’t stop once the solution is established. If anything the journey to scale requires even more of this pivoting and adaptation to suit different contexts and situations on the scaling journey. Once again what the team needs is evidence.

In the field of social innovation there are other stakeholders to consider, all of whom have influence on whether or not an innovation can scale. Research on innovation scaling in the humanitarian sector suggests that there are many different players involved, each of whom have different evidence needs, as shown here.

(Source: ‘Building evidence for scaling’, ALNAP Response Innovation Lab, 2020)

What?

So what kind of evidence do we need? And, in a world increasingly plagued by fake news and unreliable facts ,what constitutes ‘good’ evidence? There isn’t one size fits all, different players (as we’ve just seen) look for different kinds of evidence.

During a recent webinar Lydia Tanner of The Research People showed a helpful graphic which underlines this point; evidence is very much a matter of horses for courses.

(Source: ‘Building evidence for scaling’, ALNAP Response Innovation Lab, 2020)

Of course we’re looking for evidence of impact, of relative advantage. But in the field of social innovation where donors and funders may be asking the question there’s also a need to provide evidence that the problem is important and the ‘right’ one to address, and that the solution has real value to end-users. Is there real advantage to the solution, is it compatible with the context into which it will operate?

And on the left had side of the diagram there are considerations of how well the solution is delivered. This involves reflecting and collecting data on the innovation process itself and how well it is working , alongside the nature and experience of the solutions being offered.

There’s also something important about the quality and reliability of the evidence we assemble. Clearly our aim should be to provide proof, facts which can be verified — not for nothing does the healthcare sector place so much weight on randomised control trials as a gold standard to help determine whether a new medicine is effective or not. RCTs are all about assembling an evidence base of reliable and robust data. The trouble is that getting at good evidence is difficult, not least because there are so many kinds of information we can assemble as ‘evidence’ — not least those vanity metrics which tell us that ‘20,000 people can’t be wrong…..’!

When?

And then there’s the when question. When should we start to assemble our evidence base and when does it have most impact? The simple answer is ‘always’ — throughout the innovation and scaling process.

At the start of the scaling journey we want evidence to reassure us that there is potential demand, that our innovation will be solving a big enough and important enough problem and that what we have developed represents a robust solution which is capable of being scaled. Without this to back up our claims we’re unlikely to get very far in trying to convince others to buy into or support our solutions.

During the process it’s all about pivoting, using evidence of success and failure to help shape and adapt our innovation to suit different contexts. In the social innovation field the ‘market’ may involve a number of different players but the principle is the same. We can use the different kinds of evidence outlined above to help us get a better fit between innovation and context. Which will increase our chances of successfully scaling it.

A simple example might be the case of Netflix. Early on in their innovation journey Netflix realised that their entertainment supply model based on shipping DVDs by post was not the way to go; whilst their model worked there was increasing evidence that people were turning to online streaming of music and the same was likely to happen to video as high speed internet bandwidth became available. So they pivoted to a streaming approach, learning with the newly-emerging market while at the same time maintaining their video-by-post approach.

(And contrary to popular myth Blockbuster didn’t simply plough on with its old bricks and mortar solution using shops as rental hubs. They saw the evidence of Netflix ‘s successful new online model and developed their own solutions to emulate it. But their wider value network had too much invested in the original model and was reluctant to let go. So in spite of the evidence they couldn’t change their business model with the resulting collapse of their operations).

And at the end of the process there’s an opportunity for collecting a different kind of evidence, around learning. If we succeeded, why and what can we do more of next time? And if we failed, what can we change? Smart organizations concerned with learning to repeat the innovation trick develop ‘routines’ — embedded patterns of behaviour which become ‘the way we do things’ around innovation. These routines find their way into polices , procedures and processes — but not by accident. There’s a need for post-project reviews, set down meetings and other devices to capture learning. The trouble is , particularly with projects which have not gone so well, that there’s a tendency to cover up and disguise things — obscuring the evidence we need so badly to help us improve things next time.

How?

Which brings us to the how? How do we set up robust and flexible monitoring and evaluation so we can collect the different kinds of evidence needed to by different stakeholders? What frameworks and tools are available? What different approaches might be needed under different circumstances? Not surprisingly there is no simple answer to this but a clear need to put an evidence strategy in place at the outset of the innovation scaling journey. Since evidence will play such a key role we need to allow time and resources and develop or bring in expertise to work on this aspect of our project in parallel with rolling out our solution.

And we need to think hard about how we communicate the evidence we acquire to a variety of different audiences. How do we build on good evidence to tell the innovation story? Adoption of innovation is a social process which is accelerated or retarded by more than facts; it depends on perceptions and on social influence. That’s a lesson which comes through repeatedly in the work of Everett Rogers, the ‘godfather’ of innovation diffusion research and it continues to play a key role according to current research findings. It’s also clear from the experience of would-be innovators trying to scale their solutions

There was nothing wrong with Earl Tupper’s product innovation except that no-one was particularly interested in buying it. That all changed when he switched his marketing from in store sales to doorstep selling and through that to the in-home party. Brownie Wise was one of the early demonstrators and quickly proved her facility at persuading home-makers to adopt the product. Her sales pitch was essentially around changing the way in which the core evidence — that the product worked and was a viable better food storage solution than traditional glass jars — was communicated and perceived.

She had great attention-grabbing skills — for example one of her ‘party tricks’ involved filling a Tupperware bowl with tomato soup and throwing it across the room where it landed, seal still intact and without spilling and staining the carpet. But she accompanied these tricks with a much more powerful approach which was to engage the party hostesses as sales agents. Their ‘source credibility’ — the degree of trust and respect in which they were held by their peers — meant that they were powerful opinion leaders, able to accelerate adoption across social networks. These days we’d call them ‘influencers’ but whatever the label the way in which they could amplify the positive perception of evidence played a key role on the successful scaling.

So what lessons can we take from this? First we should remind ourselves that scaling innovation is not automatic it’s a long and difficult Journey — and one in which evidence makes a difference. Evidence is what drives and accelerates (or retards) that S-curve around adoption.

But we need to consider an evidence strategy — it’s not just that we need evidence but we need to think about who’s it for and their different needs, what form it can take that will be convincing, how are we going to communicate the story, etc.?

Innovation is what what’s helped us as a species to survive and grow in what is still a very hostile, turbulent and uncertain world. But that innovation process hasn’t been a matter of simply adopting every new idea because it’s new. That’s a very dangerous approach, not least because many innovations may take us in the wrong direction. We’re actually quite cautious about adoption; we’re not risk averse but we’ve evolved to be careful about the risks we take. Having credible evidence occupies a place centre stage in that adoption decision. Which means that if we’re serious about scaling our innovation then we need to take the evidence question seriously.

You can find my podcast here and my videos here

And if you’d like to learn with me take a look at my online course here

Image credit: Dall-E via Bing

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Disagreements Can Be a Good Thing

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Disagreements Can Be a Good Thing

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

When you have nothing to say, don’t say it.

But, when you have something to say, you must say it.

When you think your response might be taken the wrong way, it will.

When you take care to respond effectively, your response might be taken the wrong way.

When you have disagreement, there’s objective evidence that at least two people are thinking for themselves.

When you have disagreement, confrontation is optional.

When you have disagreement, everyone can be right, even if just a little.

When you have disagreement, that says nothing about the people doing the disagreeing.

When you have disagreement at high decibels, that’s an argument.

When you have disagreement, disagreeing on all points is a choice.

When you have disagreement, if you listen to sharpen your response, it’s a death spiral.

When you have disagreement, it’s best to disagree wholeheartedly and respectfully.

When you have disagreement, if you listen to understand, there’s hope.

When you have disagreement, it’s a disagreement about ideas and not moral character.

When you have disagreement, intentions matter.

When you have disagreement, decision quality skyrockets.

When you have disagreement, thank your partner in crime for sharing their truth.

When you have disagreement, there is sufficient trust to support the disagreement.

When you have disagreement, sometimes you don’t, but you don’t know it.

When you have disagreement, converging on a single point of view is not the objective.

When you have disagreement about ethics, you may be working at the wrong company.

When you have disagreement, there are no sides, only people doing their best.

When you have disagreement, the objective is understanding.

When you have disagreement, it’s the right thing to have.

When you have disagreement, there may be disagreement on the topic of the disagreement.

When you have disagreement, you are a contributing member, even if you stay quiet.

When you have disagreement, why not be agreeable?

When you have disagreement, it’s okay to change your mind.

When you have disagreement, you may learn something about yourself.

Image credit: Unsplash

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Maintaining the Illusion of Control

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Maintaining the Illusion of Control

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

Unhappy: When you want things to be different than they are.
Happy: When you accept things as they are.

Sad: When you fixate on times when things turned out differently than you wanted.
Neutral: When you know you have little control over how things will turn out.
Anxious: When you fixate on times when things might turn out differently than you want.

Stressed: When you think you have control over how things will turn out.
Relaxed: When you know you don’t have control over how things will turn out.

Agitated: When you live in the future.
Calm: When you live in the present.
Sad: When you live in the past.

Angry: When you expect a just world, but it isn’t.
Neutral: When you expect that it could be a just world, but likely isn’t.
Happy: When you know it doesn’t matter if the world is just.

Angry: When others don’t meet your expectations.
Neutral: When you know your expectations are about you.
Happy: When you have no expectations.

Timid: When you think people will judge you negatively.
Neutral: When you think people may judge you negatively or positively.
Happy: When you know what people think about you is none of your business.

Distracted: When you live in the past or future.
Focused: When you live in the now.

Afraid of change: When you think all things are static.
Accepting change: When you know all things are dynamic.

Intimidated: When you think you don’t meet someone’s expectations.
Confident: When you know you did your best.

Uncomfortable: When you want things to be different than they are.
Comfortable: When you know the Universe doesn’t care what you think.

Image credit: Pexels

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Five Secrets to Being a Great Team Player

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Five Secrets to Being a Great Team Player

GUEST POST from David Burkus

Our world requires collaboration. Just about every job now requires collaborating on teams and every employee’s calendar is full of evidence of collaboration. In one study, up to 85% of participants’ work weeks were spent working in direct collaboration or a result of collaboration with a team.

But it can be difficult to collaborate with people whose perspectives, preferences, and personalities are different from our own. Still, getting what you want from your work and career requires being a great team player. And if you want to be a leader, you’ll need to be a great team player first. (And really…that will never stop…even leaders often lead in teams.)

In this article, we’ll outline the five (5) essential qualities needed to become a great team player—and offer a few ways to develop those qualities and get them noticed.

1. Capable

The first quality is that great team players are capable. This is a fundamental quality of anyone working, really. You must have the necessary knowledge, skills, and abilities to do the tasks being asked of you. But on teams, it’s just as important to be seen as capable by the other members of your team. The team needs to know they can rely on you—and that when you say you’ll have something completed it will be completed on time and as you said.

Working with teams, the way you demonstrate your capability is two-fold: Do what you say you’re going to do, and don’t say something you don’t know to be true. Over time, keeping these two commitments will demonstrate that you can be relied on—because you are capable.

2. Humble

The second quality is that great team players are humble. While great team players are capable, they also don’t think too highly of the skills and knowledge they have. Great team players don’t think little of themselves, they just understand that the needs of the team come before their own. Humble teammates aren’t fighting for their ideas to be heard all the time or seeking to dominate in debates. Instead, they use their voice to amplify others and contribute the bigger, team-wide wins.

Working with teams, humility is often inferred based on behavior in meetings, whether in-person or virtual. Humble teammates aren’t trying to be the lead role in the meeting, instead they’re often acting as a facilitator ensuring every teammate has a chance to speak. And when they do speak, it’s often to build upon others’ ideas instead of constantly insisting on their own.

3. Helpful

The third quality is that great team players are helpful. The best way to put capabilities and humility into practice is by helping others on the team—not constantly trying to convince others to help you. Great team players are the ones in meetings thinking about what they can contribute and how they can help others get unstuck. At the same time, it’s important to be careful not to over-help and lose the needed time to complete your own commitments.

Working with teams, the easiest way to assess your helpfulness is to audit your calendar. Look at everything scheduled on your calendar last week and compared the appointments that furthered your personal goals versus the appointments that helped others hit their goals. You don’t want helpful appointments to dominate, or even be half and half. But if 25 percent of your calendar is spent helping others, then it’s a safe assumption that they see you as helpful.

4. Flexible

The fourth quality is that great team players are flexible. As teams work to complete projects, changes will happen—pivots are required. All work requires flexibility. But often in the face of change many people respond by becoming more stubborn and insisting even more on their original ideas or plan of action. Great team players serve the team by reading the changes in the environment and helping the plan pivot quickly.

Working with teams, the most common changes that require flexibility often happen around priorities. New tasks get added to the team’s list, or environmental changes reshuffle what is urgent. When that happens, taking the lead to check-in with the team and discuss how changes affect priorities can keep the team more productive and keep you seen as a flexible, but high performer.

5. Purposeful

The fifth quality is that great team players are purposeful. All great teams have a sense of purpose behind their work—they know why their work matters and that keeps them bonded together and motivated to achieve more. Great team players amplify this purpose by becoming a source of supporting stories and constant reminders about that purpose. This includes not just talking about why the work that team does matters, but also how it fits into the larger mission or vision of the organization and why that matters.

Working with teams, the easiest way to reinforce purpose is to share gratitude on a regular basis. But not just any old thank you note. Purposeful gratitude expresses appreciation for the effort someone else put in, but also includes a reminder of how that effort helped serve the purpose of the team. Regularly done, it not only builds camaraderie amongst the team, but it also enhances motivation.

As you review this list, one or two qualities probably stood out as ones you already embodied—but one or two probably stood out as ones you need to work on. That’s true for nearly everyone, and it creates a great plan of action. Get started improving where you need to—and get started getting noticed where you already shine. That will help you not only raise your own performance, but help support everyone else on the team as they do their best work ever.

Image credit: Unsplash

Originally published at https://davidburkus.com on April 10, 2023

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25 Secrets to Growing Leaders

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25 Secrets to Growing Leaders

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

1. If you want to grow leaders, meet with them daily.

2. If you want to grow leaders, demand that they disagree with you.

3. If you want to grow leaders, help them with all facets of their lives.

4. If you want to grow leaders, there is no failure, there is only learning.

5. If you want to grow leaders, give them the best work.

6. If you want to grow leaders, protect them.

7. If you want to grow leaders, spend at least two years with them.

8. If you want to grow leaders, push them.

9. If you want to grow leaders, praise them.

10. If you want to grow leaders, get them comfortable with discomfort.

11. If you want to grow leaders, show them who you are.

12. If you want to grow leaders, demand that they use their judgment.

13. If you want to grow leaders, give them just a bit more than they can handle and help them handle it.

14. If you want to grow leaders, show emotion.

15. If you want to grow leaders, tell them the truth, even when it creates anxiety.

16. If you want to grow leaders, always be there for them.

17. If you want to grow leaders, pull a hamstring and make them present in your place.

18. If you want to grow leaders, be willing to compromise your career so their careers can blossom.

19. If you want to grow leaders, when you are on vacation tell everyone they are in charge.

20. If you want to grow leaders, let them chose between to two good options.

21. If you want to grow leaders, pay attention to them.

22. If you want to grow leaders, be consistent.

23. If you want to grow leaders, help them with their anxiety.

24. If you want to grow leaders, trust them.

25. If you want to grow leaders, demonstrate leadership.

Image credit: Unsplash

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Culture Secrets for Attracting and Keeping the Best Employees

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Culture Secrets for Attracting and Keeping the Best Employees

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

What’s happening on the inside of an organization is felt on the outside by the customer. It is more important than ever to create a culture that attracts and retains the best employees. Good or bad, the culture and employees operating within it will influence the customer experience. That’s why today we’re going to dive into creating a workplace culture that gets and keeps your best people.

“Toxic workplace” is a common buzzword in today’s society. An article in Business Insider says nearly 30 million U.S. workers think their workplace is toxic. However, toxic workplaces don’t usually start out that way, and if they do, they find it difficult to survive in today’s hyper-competitive landscape. So, assuming the path is paved with good intentions, what goes wrong along the way?

While many companies are founded upon core values, rarely are those values consistently seen throughout the organization’s leadership. The two keywords in this statement are consistent and leadership. If your organization’s leadership and management aren’t representing its stated values, how can you expect their supporting employees to do so? Moreover, if the leadership isn’t consistently representing the company values, their actions can be even more polarizing.

Like it or not, humans remember bad memories longer than good memories; it’s a scientific fact that leads back to evolutionary behaviors. That means if your leaders are not consistently, meaning always, acting with the organization’s core values in mind, they aren’t representing the values at all. This will be noticed and remembered by employees. And, you can’t expect your people to act any differently than the leaders they are supposed to follow and admire.

So why implement a corporate culture in the first place? Jonathan Keyser, the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of You Don’t Have to Be Ruthless to Win, states, “A good culture equates to so much more than just an enjoyable workplace or a happy team. A strong culture acts as a safeguard to protect your business’s most valuable resources. When companies do not focus on their culture, they are prone to significant setbacks, including a loss of brain trust, costly recruiting fees, training and development time, and stunted interpersonal collaboration, which all equate to a financial loss.”

When Keyser is not out speaking to organizations about how to create the culture of selfless service that gets employees to stay, he’s running a successful commercial real estate company. USA Today calls Keyser “The Commercial Real Estate Industry Disrupter.” I had a chance to meet with Keyser to discuss his book and he shared five steps to creating a healthy workplace culture:

1. Reflect – Keyser asks, “What type of employee do you want to attract?” You start by creating a mental persona for that individual. You want to define the behaviors and attitudes you are seeking. You also want to know what would attract that person to your organization. That will be reflected in your organization’s behavior. Keyser adds, “Once you define what’s important to your employees, follow the same process for your clients.”

2. Specify – Keyser says, “The problem with most corporate values is they are ambiguous. Companies will write words and phrases like integrity, teamwork and hard work on their office walls and don’t give context as to what those words truly mean within the workplace.” Go beyond the writing of the words and add simple and clear definitions or descriptions of how they are to be used at work. Start with your core value key phrases—what do they mean in relation to how your team interacts with each other and the outside world?

3. Differentiate – Is the culture you are implementing different enough from your competitors to win the attention of recruits? If not, you’re just like any other employer. You want to find your difference. For example, one of Keyser’s core principles is to be bold. Plenty of companies claim to be bold. However, Keyser takes it one step further and clearly defines what this means in his company. He says that they do not punish mistakes, because fear of mistakes keeps a person from being bold and willing to take massive action, which is where value is created.

4. Implement – This goes back to the second step, specify. One toxic person can destroy a culture, so it’s crucial to be specific when you outline what type of behavior is expected of your team and what corrective action should be taken if you find misalignment. The words you “write on your walls” must come to life.

5. Realign – The question isn’t if you’ll go out of alignment with the culture you’ve created (or want to create), it’s when. Keyser suggests constantly monitoring and evaluating the culture. Speak to members at the top and bottom of your organization, have your HR team conduct exit interviews, and check online sources like Glassdoor regularly. Keyser says, “A toxic workplace can spread like wildfire, so it’s your job to investigate proactively and realign when necessary.” I refer to this as defending the culture, which may be one of the most important jobs of a leader.

A toxic workplace will challenge the company to keep not only employees, but also customers. The leaders’ ability to define core values, as well as live and demonstrate them to employees is the key to creating an enduring, positive culture. These five steps to creating a healthy workplace culture will also help you prevent a toxic culture so you retain your best employees—and your best customers.

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com

Image Credits: Shep Hyken

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LEGO Knows Why Companies Don’t Innovate

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LEGO Knows Why Companies Don't Innovate

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

“Lego’s Latest Effort to Avoid Oil-Based Plastic Hits Brick Wall” – WSJ

“Lego axes plans to make bricks from recycled bottles” – BBC

“Lego ditches oil-free brick in sustainability setback” – The Financial Times

Recently, LEGO found itself doing the Walk of Atonement (see video below) after announcing to The Financial Times that it was scrapping plans to make bricks from recycled bottles, and media outlets from The Wall Street Journal to Fast Company to WIRED were more than happy to play the Shame Nun.

And it wasn’t just media outlets ringing the Shame Bell:

  • “In the future, they should not make these kinds of announcements (prototype made from recyclable plastic) until they actually do it,” Judith Enck, President of Beyond Plastics
  • “They are not going to survive as an organization if they don’t find a solution,” Paolo Taticchi, corporate sustainability expert at University College London.
  • “Lego undoubtedly had good intentions, but if you’re going to to (sic) announce a major environmental initiative like this—one that affects the core of your company—good intentions aren’t enough. And in this instance, it can even undermine progress.” Jesus Diaz, creative director, screenwriter, and producer at The Magic Sauce, writing forFast Company

As a LEGO lover, I am not unbiased, but WOW, the amount of hypocritical, self-righteous judgment is astounding!  All these publications and pundits espouse the need for innovation, yet when a company falls even the tiniest bit short of aspirations, it’s just SHAME (clang) SHAME (clang) SHAME.

A LEGO Atlantis 8073 Manta Warrior (i.e., tiny) bit of context

In 1946, LEGO founder Ole Kirk Christiansen purchased Denmark’s first plastic injection molding machine.  Today, 95% of the company’s 4,400 different bricks are made using acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), a plastic that requires 4.4 pounds of oil to produce 2.2 pounds of brick.  Admittedly, it’s not a great ratio, and it gets worse.  The material isn’t biodegradable or easily recyclable, so when the 3% of bricks not handed down to the next generation end up in a landfill, they’ll break down into highly polluting microplastics.

With this context, it’s easy to understand why LEGO’s 2018 announcement that it will move to all non-plastic or recycled materials by 2030 and reduce its carbon emissions by 37% (from 2019’s 1.2 million tons) by 2032 was such big news.

Three years later, in 2021, LEGO announced that its prototype bricks made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles offered a promising alternative to its oil-based plastic bricks. 

But last Monday, after two years of testing, the company shared that what was promising as a prototype isn’t possible at scale because the process required to produce PET-based bricks actually increases carbon emissions.

SHAME!

A LEGO Art World Map (i.e. massive) amount of praise for LEGO

LEGO is doing everything that innovation theorists, consultants, and practitioners recommend:

  • Setting a clear vision and measurable goals so that people know what the priorities are (reduce carbon emissions), why they’re important (“playing our part in building a sustainable future and creating a better world for our children to inherit”), and the magnitude of change required
  • Defining what is on and off the table in terms of innovation, specifically that they are not willing to compromise the quality, durability, or “clutch power” of bricks to improve sustainability
  • Developing a portfolio of bets that includes new materials for products and packaging, new services to keep bricks out of landfills and in kids’ hands, new building and production processes, and active partnerships with suppliers to reduce their climate footprint
  • Prototyping and learning before committing to scale because what is possible at a prototype level is different than what’s possible at pilot, which is different from what’s possible at scale.
  • Focusing on the big picture and the long-term by not going for the near-term myopic win of declaring “we’re making bricks from more sustainable materials” and instead deciding “not to progress” with something that, when taken as a whole process, moves the company further away from its 2032 goal.

Just one minifig’s opinion

If we want companies to innovate (and we do), shaming them for falling short of perfection is the absolute wrong way to do it.

Is it disappointing that something that seemed promising didn’t work out?  Of course.  But it’s just one of many avenues and experiments being pursued.  This project ended, but the pursuit of the goal hasn’t.

Is 2 years a long time to figure out that you can’t scale a prototype and still meet your goals?  Maybe.  But, then again, it took P&G 10 years to figure out how to develop and scale a perforation that improved one-handed toilet paper tearing.

Should LEGO have kept all its efforts and success a secret until everything was perfect and ready to launch?  Absolutely not.  Sharing its goals and priorities, experiments and results, learnings and decisions shows employees, partners, and other companies what it means to innovate and lead.

Is LEGO perfect? No.

Is it trying to be better? Yes.

Isn’t that what we want?

Image Credit: Pixabay

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Four Ways to Build Inclusive Teams

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Four Ways to Build Inclusive Teams

GUEST POST from David Burkus

At the core of teamwork is the need to solve problems. And when generating solutions, the more diverse a team you have, the more ideas you can generate. Sort of. The rationale behind diversity being a strength on teams is solid. When you’ve built a team of various perspectives, experiences, skills, and abilities, each person brings that variety into discussions and more diverse ideas get generated. More ideas mean a better chance of finding the perfect solution.

But that’s not always what happens.

It turns out that diversity alone is not enough to turn a team of very different individuals into a very effective one. In fact, research suggests diversity alone on a team can actually diminish performance. It’s diversity, paired with a feeling of that diversity being valued that matters. In other words, its diversity plus inclusion.

In this, article, we’ll outline four ways to build inclusive teams to turn diversity into the strength we know it can be.

1. Share Information

The first way to build inclusive teams is to share information. There is no easier way to make people feel excluded than to give them the impression that others on the team or in the organization are getting access to more information and opportunities than they are. Saying that a certain bit of intel is on a “need to know” basis immediately makes people question why they “don’t need to know.” But the opposite is also true, when people receive what they perceive to be privileged intel, they feel like they matter and that they’re included.

For leaders, this means the goal should be to share information as liberally as possible. It means the default reaction to receiving new information should be to share it with your team. Obviously, there will always be information you receive and aren’t permitted to share. But unless it’s expressly stated that something is off limits, seek to share it on your team. Likewise, encourage others to share, and even over-share, information they receive. This not only helps the team feel more inclusive, but it also helps everyone make better decisions as well.

2. Build Trust

The second way to build inclusive teams is to build trust. Without trust, a team isn’t really a team. It’s just a bunch of strangers who work alongside each other. And without trust, there’s no way to foster inclusivity because there’s no one willing to be vulnerable, share differing opinions, or admit mistakes. Inclusive teams bring out the best ideas because people feel that they can be themselves—and that requires some level of prior trust built up before the act of expression.

For leaders, building trust often requires you to go first in being vulnerable. When you’re willing to admit mistakes (or even just that you don’t know) and when you share unknown qualities about you, the people on your team recognize that you are trusting them with that information. And some of them will respond in kind—and then when they’re vulnerable, others will respond in kind as well. Eventually, through this cycle of vulnerability and acceptance—you’ll take the trust on your team to a whole new level.

3. Train Respect

The third way to build inclusive teams is to train respect. It’s not enough just to be vulnerable and step out in trust. That act of vulnerability needs to be met with acceptance. In other words, people need to feel their trusting moment was respect. They need to feel that their opinions are respected, that their ideas aren’t quickly judged, and that their self-expressions aren’t being ridiculed. Some on the team may unconsciously signal respect already, but some may unconsciously signal disrespect, judgment or worse. Many times, people don’t know the response they make is perceive as disrespectful to the person who was vulnerable.

For leaders, this means modeling the way by demonstrating what respectful responses look like. Research suggests the number one reason for incivility in the workplace is leaders NOT being enough of a positive role model to train others. When teammates are sharing opinions—model active listening. When people share differing ideas—ask them questions inside of making judgements. Recognize when someone is stepping out in trust and meet that trust with respect in a way that all can see. Because when they can see you respecting others, they learn how to respond themselves.

4. Create Safety

The fourth way to build inclusive teams is to create safety. Safety here doesn’t refer to creating a “safe space.” There are no safe spaces—only safe people. Safety refers to psychological safety—a climate where team members feel safe to express themselves and take risks. (You could almost say that inclusion and psychological safety are synonymous—almost.) And while trust and respect make up a lot of psychological safety—how teams and individuals respond to setbacks, mistakes, and failures is a third crucial element. For people to feel accepted and included, they must know that you include their occasional failures and mistakes. And more importantly, creating psychological safety helps teams adopt a growth mindset and share in lessons from those mistakes as well.

For leaders, responding to failures happens in two different ways. The first is how you admit mistakes to your team. Do you seek to blame someone on the team, organization, or environment? Or do you take ownership and also share what you learned? The second is how you respond to mistakes on your team. Do you ask questions to find the learning moments, or do you focus solely on how the team can “make up for it”? Creating safety requires re-framing failure as a learning moment—your failures and also the team’s failures.

Speaking of failures, there will be some failures along the way toward building a more inclusive team. It’s going to take time. But as these four methods become habits, the team will rise in trust and respect and so will the feeling of inclusion. And when they’re feeling included, the whole team will be able to do their best work ever.

Image credit: Unsplash

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Sometimes Too Much is Too Much

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Sometimes Too Much is Too Much

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

When you’re out of gas, you’re out of gas. And there are no two ways about it, the last year has emptied our tanks. And when your tank is empty, it’s empty. When there’s nothing left, there’s nothing left. But what if you’re asked for more?

What is the mechanism to communicate that the workload is too much? How do you tell your boss that you can’t produce as you did before the pandemic because, well, you’re emotionally exhausted? How do you tell company leadership that this is not the time to layer on more corporate initiatives and elevate the importance of accountability? And if you do deliver those messages, will there be ramifications to your career? No ramifications you say? Then why do most feel overwhelmed yet say nothing?

How might we conserve our emotional energy to focus on what’s important? And what if the company thinks business continuity is most important and you think your family’s continuity is most important? What’s a caring parent to do? How about a loving spouse? How about an exhausted employee who wants desperately to contribute to the cause? And what if you’re all three? And what about your mental health?

If you can help someone, help them. If you don’t have the energy for that, tell them you know they are suffering and sit with them. They don’t expect you to fix it, they just want you to sit with them.

If you’re part of a team, check in with your teammates. Again, no need to try and fix them, just listen to them. Really listen. Listen so you can repeat what you heard in your own words. There’s power in being heard.

If you’re in a position to tell company leadership that people are living on the edge, tell them. If you’re not in that position, find someone who might be and ask them to pass it along. Tell them it’s important. Tell them it’s dire.

And when you go home to your family, tell them you’re exhausted and tell them you love them. And you’re doing your best. And tell them you know they’re doing their best, too. And tell them you love them.

Image credit: Unsplash

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What Einstein Got Wrong

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Defining Design

What Einstein Got Wrong - Defining Design

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

“If you can’t explain something simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”Albert Einstein (supposedly)

This is one of my favorite quotes because it’s an absolute gut punch.  You think you know something, probably because you’ve been saying and doing it for years.  Then someone comes along and asks you to explain it, and suddenly, you’re just standing there, mouth agape, gesturing, hoping that this wacky game of charades produces an answer.

This happened to me last Monday.

While preparing to teach a course titled “Design Innovation Lab,” I thought it would be a good idea to define “design” and “innovation.”  I already had a slide with the definition of “innovation” – something new that creates value – but when I had to make one for “design,” my stomach sank.

My first definition was “pretty pictures,” which is both wrong and slightly demeaning because designers do that and so much more.  My second definition, I know it when I see it, was worse.

So, I Googled the definition.

Then I asked ChatGPT.

Then I asked some designer friends.

No one had a simple definition of Design.

As the clock ticked closer to 6:00 pm, I defaulted to a definition from the International Council of Design:

“Design is a discipline of study and practice focused on the interaction between a person – a “user” – and the man-made environment, taking into account aesthetic, functional, contextual, cultural, and societal considerations.  As a formalized discipline, design is a modern construct.”

Before unveiling this definition to a classroom full of degreed designers pursuing their Master’s in Design, I asked them to define “design.”

It went as well as all my previous attempts.  Lots of thoughts and ideas.  Lots of “it’s this but not that.”  Lots of debate about whether it needs to have a purpose for it to be distinct from art.

Absolutely no simple explanations or punchy definitions.

So, when I unveiled the definition from the very official-sounding International Council of Design, we all just stared at it.

“Yes, but it’s not quite right.”

“It is all those things, but it’s more than just those things.”

“I guess it is a ‘modern construct’ when you think of it as a job, but we’ve done it forever.”

As we squinted and puzzled, what was missing slowly dawned on us. 

There was nothing human in this definition. There was no mention of feelings or empathy, life or nature, connection or community, aspirations or dreams.

In this definition, designers consider multiple aspects of an unnatural environment in creating something to be used. Designers are simply the step before mass production begins.

Who wants to do that?

Who wants to be a stop, however necessary, on a conveyor belt of sameness?

Yet that’s what we become when we strip the humanness out of our work.

Humans are messy, emotional, unpredictable, irrational, challenging, and infuriating.

We’re also interesting, creative, imaginative, hopeful, kind, curious, hard-working, and resilient.

When we try to strip away human messiness to create MECE (mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive) target markets and customer personas, we strip away the human we’re creating for.

When we ignore unpredictable and irrational feedback on our ideas, we ignore the creative and imaginative answers that could improve our ideas.

When we give up on a challenge because it’s more difficult than expected and doesn’t produce immediate results, we give up hope, resiliency, and the opportunity to improve things.

I still don’t have a simple definition of design, but I know that one that doesn’t acknowledge all the aspects of a human beyond just being a “user” isn’t correct.

Even if you explain something simply, you may not understand it well enough.

Image Credit: Misterinnovation.com

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