GE launched an intersting campaign site recently on "creative innovation" with short videos including an intervuew with Edward de Bono who talks innovation; namely:
Its a short video, so spare 2 minutes to check it out.
What is increasingly clear is that the terms ‘‘innovation’’ and ‘‘employee engagement’’ are inherently linked. Innovation is, at its core, a leadership responsibility, and therein lies the real opportunity. Harness people’s natural curiosity and capabilities and the race is half won.
Research published last year by Harvard professor Clayton Christensen and his colleagues found that organisations regarded as high-performing by industry peers and investors actively encourage the behaviours that produce innovation. The strategy is clear and widely communicated. Responsibility and accountability are pushed down to those with direct carriage, leaving executives clear to survey the horizon. Questioning is encouraged and experimentation is the norm. Reasonable failure is not a sackable offence.
As Australians, by default, we gravitate to our comfort zone. But we have the resourcefulness, pragmatism and resilience that come from living in a harsh land far from just about anywhere perceived to matter.
...
Innovation is often couched in sweeping national terms – “frameworks” – or technological jargon that intimidate and divert leaders from the real task, which is to motivate their people to improve things and try new approaches.
The most thoughtful leaders I’ve met rarely mention innovation; they accept change as part of the operating environment. They constantly scan for trends and future opportunities. Their management style provides clarity about big goals and autonomy for those under them. Their remuneration and reward structures encourage staff to collaborate, question, solve problems and strive to do well.
Today’s good leaders know that the only way to steer through uncertainty and ambiguity is to focus on the big questions – “What might the world look like in five or 25 years, and what are the implications for us?” – instead of adopting somebody else’s stock answer, or being diverted by short-term market or political sentiment.
Every so often an article appears in the newspaper citing the cost to business of dodgy sick days. What should be more concerning than the cost of sick days (apparently each one costs business $385, but isn't this the cost of business?) is lost productivity, low employee morale and lower customer satisfaction when staff are unhappy when at work.
Earlier this month, Toyota's chief executive in Australia admitted there are occasions - especially the day after a public holiday - when a third of his employees chuck a sickie. He blamed our industrial relations system for this epidemic and urged a change in the law. In reality, though, when an organisation has one-in-three employees calling in sick, no amount of tinkering with IR legislation is going to fix the issue.
That’s because changes in the law would only deal with the symptom. High rates of absenteeism are a signal there’s something very wrong with the way employees are engaged. An analysis by research firm Gallup, for example, revealed that disengaged employees have rates of absenteeism that are 27 per cent higher than their peers.
The article in today's SMH does however shed some new light on the subject. Canadian professor Gary Johns from Concordia University has found that absenteeism is contagious and that teams influence one another more than their managers. He also found that those doing menial and repetitive work are far more likely to call in sick.
According to Professor Johns, research indicates that “teams can often exert a lot more influence on attendance behaviour than managers". “There is some tendency to treat absence as a personal, individual performance issue and ignore the fact that it is under considerable social control. People imitate the attendance behaviour of their peers.”
The lessons:
Read the full article for more facts and figures about the estimated cost of absenteeism to businesses: http://www.smh.com.au/small-business/blogs/work-in-progress/sick-and-tired-of...
Read the rest of the article over at smh.com.au for a list of management speak doozies and some pretty entertaining readers' comments.A 2010 study conducted at New York and Basel Universities observed the effect linguistic influences had on judgments of truth. The research indicated that when a statement was expressed in concrete language, it rated as being more truthful and authentic than when it is was expressed in abstract language.
The study found that subtle linguistic modifications alone were sufficient to affect truth judgment.
So in layman's terms: speak normal English and people will believe you more than when you use ridiculous management speak.
The writers over at IT Pro at SMH have delivered another article to help us all manage our email inbox. They offer tips to effectively manage the stream of communication, many of which will be familiar to you (such as switching off auto alerts). Its worth a read to see if there are any new tips you can take on board.
What I like about this article is the advocacy for alternative tools for communication such as instant messaging and cloud based document storage. Here are some highlights to entice you to the story.
An overflowing inbox is the enemy of productivity, according to experts.
University of Queensland strategic communications lecturer Sean Ritnel said companies around the world were tackling inbox management, completely eliminating internal emails and using micro-blogging, scheduling and instant messaging platforms instead.
...“Email is used because it's convenient and everyone's got it, so it's the lowest common denominator, but there's so many more tools that are more appropriate for each given task."...
Atos chief executive Thierry Breton announced he was setting a goal of no internal emails, forcing the company's 74,000 employees to communicate with each other via instant messaging and a Facebook-style interface.
“I think the burden is on organisations to provide more centralised data searching for all those documents that we need to read - that shouldn't be sent via email, but should be stored in a cloud - and that can be accessed anywhere in the world so it's easily accessible,” Dr Ritnel said.
2. Defend Your Opinion, Then “Hit Play Quickly.”
The production process at Pixar is a lengthy one, with many groups participating and weighing in at various stages. A critical point in the process is called the Notes Session. It’s when several key individuals, such as the director and head writer, sit down to watch the full movie. They then capture changes that need to be made on notes and hand them back to the team (hence the name Notes Session).
These can be stressful times for everyone. Depending on the notes, a lot of rework could be ahead for the teams. Jacob explained that while you aren’t required to make the changes written on the notes, you better have a darn good explanation for why you didn’t. Yet spending too much time explaining why you didn’t make the changes can be suicide. “Keep your explanations brief, then hit play quickly,” Jacob said. Let the work speak for itself.
The same is true in creating new businesses. Avoid falling into a meta-discussion that derails the much needed momentum. Instead, let people experience firsthand what you are creating.
This is a short read so go check out the rest: http://www.fastcodesign.com/1665008/the-inside-story-5-secrets-to-pixar-s-suc...
Also interesting were notes on visual storyboards to communicate ideas and looking upstream for the source of the problem.
Another tool for performance management focused on providing feedback in real time.
From the product page:
Interactions on Rypple are designed to amplify what great business leaders have always done:
- provide one-on-one coaching to help people achieve their goals
- ensure public recognition for great work, whenever it happens
- encourage real-time, continuous feedback
The software product is also being complemented by interesting content efforts like this extensive webinar series. Nice marketing and holistic product approach.
Found via http://gigaom.com/collaboration/are-annual-performance-reviews-passe/.
I came across this tool via a set of very interesting comments on performance evaluation over at Bob Sutton's blog.
Must find out more about what view the employee gets of their profile and what dialogue this encourages between employee and manager.
In the previous post on this blog I pointed to an article which amongst other things was critical of brainstorming as an idea generation technique. This article was from the NY Times. It seems groupwork, derided by the moniker groupthink is under fire on other fronts with another article in the New Yorker. this came to my attention via Bob Sutton, a Professor of Management who wrote a response."Why the Sharp Distinction Between "Individual" and "Group" Brainstorming is False in Real Teams".
He writes:
I wrote a post earlier in the week about how the claim in The New Yorker that brainstorming "doesn't work" is an oversimplification. I gave various reasons: Most of this research is done with novices rather than skilled brainstormers, only looks at one measure (quantity), and ignores how brainstorming is done and the impact it has in real organizations. As I have been thinking about this research a bit more and of the brainstorming that Andy Hargadon and I studied at IDEO years ago, that I see at the Stanford d.school, and especially, that I've seen in recent weeks in some very skilled groups I have seen in action, something struck me:The comparison between group and individual brainstorming that underlines this research is false, or at least irrelevant, because both happen at once when skilled practioners do it.
When a skilled facilitator calls a brainstorm, he or she usually gives the topic in advance and asks members of the group to do some individual thinking about it before the gathering
So the lesson it seems is, set some homework for participants before the brainstorming session. Read the rest of Sutton's post, including an intriguing desciption of a group session on the itchless haircut at IDEO here: bobsutton.typepad.com
Some highlights from the article to encourage your further reading:
On privacy and productivity
Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption. ... introverts are comfortable working alone — and solitude is a catalyst to innovation. ... introversion fosters creativity by “concentrating the mind on the tasks in hand ... ... Privacy also makes us productive. In a fascinating study known as the Coding War Games, consultants Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister compared the work of more than 600 computer programmers at 92 companies. They found that people from the same companies performed at roughly the same level — but that there was an enormous performance gap between organizations. What distinguished programmers at the top-performing companies wasn’t greater experience or better pay. It was how much privacy, personal workspace and freedom from interruption they enjoyed. Sixty-two percent of the best performers said their workspace was sufficiently private compared with only 19 percent of the worst performers. Seventy-six percent of the worst programmers but only 38 percent of the best said that they were often interrupted needlessly.
On the open plan office
Studies show that open-plan offices make workers hostile, insecure and distracted. They’re also more likely to suffer from high blood pressure, stress, the flu and exhaustion. And people whose work is interrupted make 50 percent more mistakes and take twice as long to finish it.
On brainstorming and groupwork
... brainstorming sessions are one of the worst possible ways to stimulate creativity. The brainchild of a charismatic advertising executive named Alex Osborn who believed that groups produced better ideas than individuals, workplace brainstorming sessions came into vogue in the 1950s. “The quantitative results of group brainstorming are beyond question,” Mr. Osborn wrote. “One group produced 45 suggestions for a home-appliance promotion, 56 ideas for a money-raising campaign, 124 ideas on how to sell more blankets.” But decades of research show that individuals almost always perform better than groups in both quality and quantity, and group performance gets worse as group size increases.
... The reasons brainstorming fails are instructive for other forms of group work, too. People in groups tend to sit back and let others do the work; they instinctively mimic others’ opinions and lose sight of their own; and, often succumb to peer pressure. The Emory University neuroscientist Gregory Berns found that when we take a stance different from the group’s, we activate the amygdala, a small organ in the brain associated with the fear of rejection. Professor Berns calls this “the pain of independence.”
Some advice is offered at the conclusion of the article so it's not all doom and glom. Read it at the NYTimes.com The Rise of the New Groupthink