Innovation as Usual

Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg: If you look at the innovation industry in general there are hundreds of different ways of going about it. We like to use a very simple definition, namely, it's about creating results by doing new things. There are two core components to that. First of all, it's not enough to be creative, you actually have to make an impact on the bottom line, there has to be results in some shape or form at the end of the day. Secondly, and that's where the tricky bit comes in, it's about doing something new, something different from what you did yesterday. What you did yesterday, the business as usual, can work very well for a while, but if you're looking to create either extraordinary results, or if you're forced to start thinking about finding different ways of creating results, well that's where innovation comes into the picture.

Rachel Salaman: Innovation is one of those words that we've been hearing a lot more of in recent years. In your experience, how is it viewed in the world of business, is it something to think about mainly when a company is in trouble? Is it something that never gets talked about in some businesses? What does the landscape look like?

Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg: There is a difference between talking about it and doing something about it, and I think that's where you're hitting upon something. Clearly there's a spectrum of companies, some are very proactive around it, a lot of companies may talk about it, they may not necessarily be doing a lot about it. What I think is really interesting about the way that companies think about innovation is, actually, they have this isolated view of it. When you talk about innovation it's seen as something different from what you do every day, it's something we do on a two-day trip somewhere, something they do in the R&D department, or something that the creative rock stars that we have one or two of, that's their domain. One of our arguments is that's not really the way to go about it; it's much better to try to see if you can integrate it into what you do in daily life.

Rachel Salaman: So does that mean that everybody in the organizational hierarchy should be innovating?

Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg: It depends. I wouldn't say that they should all be innovating at the same time, because that could, of course, get messy. In reality what you're maybe looking for is to get five percent or ten percent of your workforce to start innovating. Once you reach that level you will actually see a lot, and that's important because you still need a lot of people who are good at keeping the daily business running, it's not as if we're only an innovation factory, in a sense. In terms of the personal capabilities, it's a very relevant question and we know from research that there are personal differences in your ability to innovate, you have, at one end of the spectrum, the Richard Branson's of this world, they will do it no matter what. If you throw Richard Branson in jail, before long you will see a chain of Virgin correctional facilities out there. At the other end of the scale you have people who may not really have it in them, and that's not necessarily a bad thing because, again, they can be really fantastic at getting other things done, or they're like pure productivity, which you really need. What I think a lot of managers miss is the big group in the middle that, while not necessarily the Steve Jobs, Richard Branson-esque level of talent, they can be innovative, and the thing about them is they won't necessarily do it if it's too punishing, or if it's too hard, but they definitely have the capability to go out and do something new in their job and find a way of creating results.

Rachel Salaman: Obviously leaders have a big role to play in bringing out that innovation among that middle group that you just described. You say in the book that leaders should be innovation architects rather than innovators themselves, why do you say that?

Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg: It's a role that we feel has been overlooked, in a sense. Some companies may have a chief innovation officer or similar whose primary job is to do it, but when you look at the role of the leader further down the organization, often we run into people where they had one or two reactions to the idea of how you should innovate more. One is that they will delve into it themselves; they read the autobiography of Steve Jobs and they think, "How can I become more like that guy?" That's a worthy ambition, but really that misses out on the primary job of the leader, namely to create results through other people. So, instead of focusing on yourself only, how can you enable the 20 people you are working with, the 60 people in your department, to unleash their potential in terms of creativity, and that's really what we're saying, that this is important. The second aspect of that is really the other reaction you get from people, is kind of a 1,000-meter stare in their eyes, because this idea of, "Hey, you should be creative." Well, if you're one of those people who aren't necessarily, that's not your strongest skillset, that's fine, that's one of our core messages, you don't necessarily have to be the Steve Jobs of this world, it's actually fine even if that's not your core strength, to go in and help other people become more creative.

Rachel Salaman: And that's what your book is all about?

Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg: That's really what we're talking about. How can you, as a leader, help the people you work with become more innovative?

Rachel Salaman: In your book you are actually quite scathing about what you might call "traditional" methods of getting creativity out of your team, like brainstorming sessions. What's wrong with those kinds of things?

Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg: I think what we've seen, and this comes back to the point about creativity being isolated, is that this is a method or an approach we've had almost since the late fifties, that there is a tendency for companies to again isolate creativity. Where there's, say, an event, you go two days off to an off-site and they can be great, only it's not really the two days that matter, it's the other 363 days a year, and that's where you need to make innovation happen. And the problem with a lot of these methods is because we isolate them, then we have a tendency to make them super flamboyant and very different from what we do every day, and that's counterproductive. The question is not really, "How do we squeeze in another brainstorming meeting every second month?" The question is, "How do we take our daily meetings and make them a little bit more creative, or a little bit better at fostering or developing new ideas?"

Rachel Salaman: In your book you outline what you call the "five plus one keystone behaviors of innovation," which are designed to do just that. The first of these is "focus." Why does innovation need focus, and what exactly do you mean by that?

Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg: What we found is that we are really fighting almost a bad philosophy of what innovation is, because a lot of people have the perception that if you are to innovate you should give people freedom. The reality is that there's a trade-off involved: if you give people freedom that does increase the chances of finding a really unusual idea, it also increases the risk tremendously that people will start running in wildly different directions, that they won't start doing anything because that can be rather intimidating in terms of anything goes, and really that even if they succeed with something they may not have chosen a project or an idea that actually adds value to the business or what you are trying to do. We found that if you are working inside an organization, it is typically much better to give people direction and say, "This is a problem we'd really like you to focus on and try to solve, because if we can solve that problem we will really help our business." So that's one of the simple tools we give in terms of focusing people's search for innovation.

Rachel Salaman: Do freedom and focus have to be mutually exclusive? Can you have focus and also freedom?

Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg: I think you can to an extent. We sometimes talk about "focused freedom," meaning that you are very clear about the goals you want to achieve but you leave the means up to people themselves to figure out how to do it. In a sense, you can also do it on a bigger level, in terms of if you are high up in an organization you can leave it to the individual countries to decide their focus. The only thing you want to avoid is this realm of anything goes, that's where you'll see a lot of ideas coming in about improving the salad bar selection or the parking conditions or whatever, which can be fine if your objective is to increase employee happiness or satisfaction, but if you're struggling with a different issue that is really threatening your business, well that's where you need to direct people to focus. So it is a trade-off and it is within the sandbox that you give people. In there you should give them a lot of freedom.

Rachel Salaman: You think of companies like Google who famously give their employees a lot of freedom and seemingly come up with a lot of innovation. Isn't that an argument for freedom?

Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg: What's really interesting about Google and 3M, who are the two companies that people bring out, I think 3M does 15 percent of their time, is that I run into very few companies that actually innovate. This is one of those things, the shining beacons of industry where here's a fantastic inspiring example, but try to go back into your workplace and say, "Hey, we're going to give people Fridays off so they can focus on innovation." That's just an overall observation, I think. Secondly, if you look at Google, I think that's really part of a bigger ecosystem what they are doing, it's not everybody they give it to, it's primarily their engineers. I think it's something that has worked for them, but it's also not only about innovation. This, initially, I believe started as a recruiting tool, literally as, "How do we attract the top talent from Silicon Valley? Well, we offer them this as part of the package." On top of that there's a really big question, which is, "Did it pay?" Because, when you think about the massive cost in terms of opportunities here, I think that you should probably ask Google that, but I do wonder if it really paid off.

Rachel Salaman: So, as I mentioned, we are talking about your "five plus one keystone behaviors" that you outline in your book, and the next of these after "focus" is "connect." And you divide this into three: connecting with customers, with colleagues, and with what you call "new worlds." Your take on internet-based connection is very interesting, I thought. Could you just share with us the story about Starbucks crowd sourcing website, and what you conclude about that?

Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg: I think it's an extremely interesting example. Starbucks created what they called, "My Starbucks Idea," website where customers from across the world could submit ideas to Starbucks. It was launched in 2008, and by now it has more than 100,000 ideas globally, and, on that level, it's been a big success, they really managed to engage a lot of their clients. When you look at the number of ideas implemented, an interesting conclusion comes up: they have implemented currently 202 ideas, meaning that for every 500 ideas that came in, 499 were put on hold. Now that's not necessarily an incrimination of Starbucks, in my view it's really just a reflection of the fact that most ideas are bad ideas, so first of all you have to realize that, and, secondly, when you look at where good ideas come from, it's very rare to see that customers just submit them to you and they are brilliant. In reality, very often, the people that get the best ideas are your own employees in the context of being in touch with the customers. Interestingly, of the 202 ideas, I think it was a full fifth that actually came from employees inside Starbucks. So, very clearly, I think that the Starbucks case is an example, and, again, I like to talk about the philosophy of innovation, this notion that you just open the doors wide and all the good ideas will come in, well, in reality it works differently. I do like the fact that they created it, but I also think it really highlights the dangers of thinking that this is how innovation works. You actually have to be a little bit more deliberate about the way you search out innovation, it's not enough to just sit back and wait for the ideas to roll in after you've put up your idea collection website. I think that's really the gist of that story to me.

Rachel Salaman: What's the most useful way that businesses can connect with their customers?

Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg: I think the first thing to realize is that there are already people in your organization that are in touch with your customers. And can you find a way of helping them gather more insights, instead of interacting with the customers in the exact same way we did yesterday? Can they spend a little bit more time with them? Can they ask them different questions? Can they try to observe what's actually going on, even maybe follow a customer if that's possible? Or can we invite them inside the company on occasion? We worked with one company that started hosting customer events inside the company, literally just to create more exposure, more interfaces between the employees and the customers. One of the second observations, I think, is the realization that there are people in your company that just aren't in touch with your customers. So, instead of trying to organize a once a year, now we will go out and study the customers, that could be helpful. But more often what is helpful is to focus on who they do understand, so, in a sense, looking at customers inside the company, and saying, "Well, if we're in the regulatory department, can we make life a little bit easier for the sales force who we interact with as our customers, in a sense?" So really focusing on the people you are already partially immersed in, and how can we create more innovation in that area?

Rachel Salaman: Which leads to the second part of "connect," which is connecting with colleagues. What are some of the tips in that area?

Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg: I think this is one of my favorite examples, but just working around the lunch break. It's so basic it doesn't quite count as innovation almost, but when you think about it, people are creatures of habit and they do tend to, for instance, have lunch with the same people, sitting at the same table every day. A very simple way to foster more interaction, and it could be a volunteer thing, is to make, say, every Monday a day where you eat with somebody different, just sitting down, there is no agenda, it's just purely getting to know them and understanding them, what are they doing, "So you are in that department, what's going on over there?" Very simple tools and really keeping it simple in terms of not dreaming of major new initiatives, tends to be the key to actually getting it done, because the second it gets too big it tends to fall by the wayside.

Rachel Salaman: Is the idea that if you talk to someone new it might lead to an idea?

Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg: We've seen this in several companies where just the connection between two different silos or departments can suddenly start to spin off new ideas. We had a broadcaster who, in the programming department, somebody started talking to the techies and they realized that they could do a new type of interface around people, and this is some time back, so people texting in live messages that could appear during live broadcasts. Very simple things but that tends not to happen if you sit isolated in your own office and you only engage with the colleagues that are sitting immediately around you.

Rachel Salaman: The third part of "connect" is "connecting with new worlds." So, what do you mean by new worlds, and how do you do it or as a leader, how do you get your people to do it?

Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg: The new world thing, it really comes from something we realized through roughly 50 years of research in the research community, namely that good ideas tend to come when new worlds meet. The second you start learning something that's different from your own world, that's when you start to get inspired. And that would suggest in terms of how can you work with that, one very simple tip I give to people if they haven't yet discovered ted.com, I think most people have by now, start using that on your daily commute. Watch a 20-minute talk by somebody who works in the marine field or whatever it is, as long as it is really about something very different from your world, and then the exercise is a little bit to try to see is there something here? Is there a nugget of an idea that perhaps could be relevant to me in some way? And try to bring in inspiration on that level. We also recommend a different tip, simply, if you have your weekly Monday meetings, could you start these off with a two-minute session by somebody getting up and explaining a new trend from outside the industry. Just a very simple thing and easy to integrate into the routine, and just a way to get a little bit of new knowledge into the organization every week.

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Rachel Salaman: The third behavior you talk about in your book is "tweak," and this is because you say that first ideas are always flawed. You mentioned earlier you thought that most ideas are bad, but beyond that first ideas are always flawed. What are you basing that on, is that always the case?

Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg: A lot of this really comes from if you follow the world of entrepreneurship, the whole lean start up philosophy where consistently we've found that ideas need to be developed, even though you might have the general direction right, there is always more tweaking to be done. Interestingly, I would argue that's the case even for the most minor of ideas and my favorite example of that, and we write about it in the book, is the rolling suitcase, the day we had the brilliant idea on behalf of humanity of taking our oldest technology and putting it onto a suitcase, well that happened in 1972. What's interesting though is that the first iteration of that wasn't really a good product, it was an old battered leather suitcase, four squeaky metal wheels and a leash to drag it in line, like a dog that wants to go the other direction. It actually took more than a decade before we arrived at a suitcase that works really well, that simple, even the simplest of ideas, when you delve into it, when you develop them, they actually tend to need to get changed or tweaked in some sense, or in some order of magnitude. There are differences of course, the more complex ideas tend to need to be tweaked more, but it is a very important thing to remember, to always challenge the idea and to see if you can take it in a different direction.

Rachel Salaman: And you offer some great ways of doing that, one of them is you suggest people should try to reframe the problem to tweak their ideas, and I really liked your example about double-sided printing. Could you just tell us about that in the context of reframing?

Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg: This was a personal observation we made at the IESE Business School where I work, where some of our students were trying to increase the number of double-sided printing for ecological reasons, saving paper and so on, and they started out trying to do campaigns around how to be ecologically minded, "Please do double-sided printing," on the assumption that the problem was that people didn't really have the right values, or they didn't know how important it was. It didn't really change the behavior a lot doing those campaigns, what did change the behavior was simply to go in and change the setting on the printer, because if you try to look at a problem like this you have to focus on what's the actual specific problem and you will find out, and in this case it wasn't about mindsets at all, it was literally just the second when you are getting something printed, you are almost always busy, you are trying to make a deadline and you just hit the print button. So it's not a question of morals or values at all, it's a question of whatever the default setting is. This is where reframing comes into the picture. If you just go with your initial understanding of what the problem is, well, you can run as far as you like down that path but it may not solve your problem at all because you are maybe focusing at an entirely wrong understanding of what the problem really is.

Rachel Salaman: The other tip in the book for tweaking is to "test innovations," which makes sense, but it does take a lot of time. How can a manager justify diverting business time when it may come to nothing?

Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg: I think first of all there is a question of making the testing itself simple, and this is not necessarily about starting off with a global survey, it can be really simple talking to a few people about it, even just colleagues, just exposing your ideas to reality as fast as possible. But in terms of this question of, "Hey, is it worth it, should we dedicate resources to it?" I put that in another way, I would say, "Let's say that the idea you have, well, there is something wrong with it, there's a part of your idea that's wrong." Do you want to find out about that idea initially, quickly, or do you want to find out about it after you've spent 80 percent of your budget building a huge thing? That's really the question you are facing, and again and again we see people, they skip the early testing and they very often regret it.

Rachel Salaman: Let's move onto the fourth behavior now, which is "select," and this is about sifting the good ideas from the bad ideas. What are your key points here?

Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg: When we talk about a leader, we like to talk about the role of being an innovation architect. This comes into play because, when you look at the decision making around filtering ideas, it's not really about trying to optimize an individual decision, it's about looking at the decision environment and trying to engineer that so people make better decisions. Specifically, for instance, we often see that ideas are really only aired to one person; if you have an idea you throw it up to your immediate boss. The problem is there is that the second you only deal with one person, well, biases will come into play, personal biases, structural biases, whatever it is, so one of the simple things we go in and tell people is to say, "Can you find a way of exposing ideas to more people?" It doesn't necessarily mean there should be a democracy around making the decision, it's fine to have a unilateral decision making because it needs to be fast and it needs to work in daily life, but just by exposing the idea to other people, well, even if it's killed by your boss for some reason, there are other people that might pick it up and that might run with it later. In the same sense, we say as a leader, "You should study this decision environment around how we filter ideas and consider: are we doing it the right way? Are we involving the right people? Are we using the right criteria? Are the criteria aligned with what we are trying to do overall and is it working?" You might have a beautiful list of criteria that is perfectly aligned, but do the gatekeepers actually use them or are ideas shut down that are in fact aligned with what you are trying to do, only they're not really doing it right. So that's really the key role of the leader, it's to study the way we make decisions around ideas and try to see if there's something that's not working.

Rachel Salaman: You include some useful advice in this section about how to kill existing projects that aren't working, which is sometimes a hard thing to do. What do you suggest?

Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg: So, the key question is here, instead of trying to dodge the pain, you have to realize that all you are doing by deferring the decision is to distribute the pain across more time and more people. So, the first realization is just you have to kill projects, it's not pleasant but it has to get done. And then in terms of how you do it, well, we offer some different tips and one of them is to try to compare projects against each other. It's very difficult to judge a project in isolation, to try to bring your strands eraser, meaning it looks like a good project. Is it actually aligned with what we're trying to do, or are we just calling it strategic because it's not yet making money? And finally really just realizing that you can involve people in it, it's often a good idea to help them, cast them as project saviors, meaning help us decide which projects to keep investing in, instead of executioners for ideas, people are more comfortable with that. And in order to do that it's often a good idea to launch projects with a deadline, instead of saying we will kick this off and it will go on forever, then always start projects with a stop button, and say, "Well, we will kick this off and we will evaluate it after one year, and we'll make a go, no go decision after a year and a half." Once you've got that framing right it becomes a little bit easier to stop these projects that are lumbering through your organization.

Rachel Salaman: Now, in your book you introduce what was a new word for me, "stealth storming," and it's your fifth behavior. What is stealth storming and how does it work?

Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg: It's a method of approaching innovation that's much more politically aware, so focused on the organizational environment and realizing that that is a critical component to get right to get ideas through the pipeline and impact the bottom line. So, instead of what many people who are creatively inclined do, they ignore politics, you actually have to embrace it and you have to learn to play by the rules, or you have to find allies that can help you do it if it's not your own personal strength. On another level stealth storming is really a different philosophy because what we see, if you contrast it to brainstorming, brainstorming is about putting on a Hawaiian shirt, I like to call it a flamboyant method, it's almost a counter-cultural kind of down with the organization and the old way of doing things. First of all the old way of doing things, they are working for us to a large extent, so maybe we shouldn't tear down everything. Secondly, a lot of companies aren't really in the advertising space where it's a good idea to wear a Hawaiian shirt on occasion, a lot of companies are more traditional in the best sense of the word, and if you go into such a company and you put on a Hawaiian shirt and you are the crazy guy in the meeting with the multicolored post-it notes and the fun and games, that may not be the best thing for your career or for getting projects done. What we are really talking about is also a mentality of saying you can actually be innovative without necessarily embracing all the trappings of creativity, all the multicolored fun and games that we often associate with it.

Rachel Salaman: And then we come to the "plus one" of your "five plus one keystone behaviors," and that is "persist." And presumably it's plus one because it applies to all five of the behaviors. How can a leader foster persistence in his or her team?

Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg: We like to focus on two different areas in trying to increase people's persistence. One is, of course, looking at the incentive systems that are at work in your everyday life. What actually happens to people when they start getting good ideas? If they start working on them are they rewarded? Are they left alone? Are they sometimes penalized to actually work on ideas? That's of course an important component, and it's what we call a hygiene factor, it's can't hurt too much to be an innovator or you will see most people not do it. The second aspect, and I think that's really one of the important things, is when you look at how we talk about innovation in companies, it's very often a fear-based argument. CEOs get up and talk about innovating, or dying, and the dinosaurs and all these things, and that may be true from a business perspective but what we found is consistently what motivates people to persist with an idea isn't so much fear, it's much more often a personal passion for what they are doing. So, instead of tapping into the whole horror stories of things that fail, can we shine more light on innovation as something that can add value to your life and to your personal work situation? Can you ask people within the overall focus area of what matters to the business? Can we get people to focus on things that they are personally passionate about, something that matters to them? Are there pain points they encounter that bother them in everyday life that they would like to make better? Once you manage to tap into people's positive motivations they tend to be a lot more persistent and overcome the inevitable road blocks, rather than wielding a big stick and say "innovate or die."

Rachel Salaman: You finish the book with a call to action: "What is the Monday morning problem, and what are some ways to overcome it?"

Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg: The Monday morning problem is a realization we made when we were working with managers, that we would spend some time on innovation and this question of "how can you drive it?" but then when they come back to the workplace it is very easy to drop that ball because you are inundated by the emails, the meetings you've been ignoring, or whatever it is, so one of the things we talk about at the end of the book, we say in the next 10 to 20 minutes, take the next step, set up a meeting with one of your colleagues or somebody who can help you keep the focus, and avoid being overwhelmed by the Monday morning problem. So, apart from the realization that willpower alone is not going to do it, can you architect your own environment, getting one other colleague or friend involved who can help you drive this and take the next step in making it happen.

Rachel Salaman: Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg talking to me in London. The name of Thomas's book again is "Innovation as Usual: How to Help Your People Bring Great Ideas to Life," and it's co-authored with Paddy Miller. There is more information about it and the authors at www.iasusual.com.

I'll be back in a few weeks with another Expert Interview, until then goodbye.