Innovation Facilitation

I find that when you invite your coworkers to an innovation session you generally receive one of these responses:

1. Amazing! Can’t wait to have a day to meet with passionate like-minded people and really crack this topic.
2. If you can’t find anyone else…
3. Can’t make it.
4. (Radio silence).

The WSJ recently posted an article citing research that giving workers alone time could yield more innovation than getting everyone in a room.

For companies who really pride themselves on innovation (don’t we all?), why is there so much negativity to attend these sessions?

I think it boils down to what  happens inside the session room, what happens before people enter the room, and what happens after people leave the room. When a session is prepared, executed and packaged properly, I fully believe that two heads are still better than one.

And so, here are seven tips on how to make your sessions worth people’s while, where they feel they can truly contribute to be agents of change:

1. Define a clear goal and scope of the challenge, and make it clear to yourself, stakeholders and participants. If it’s too broad or large a topic, break it down into manageable nuggets otherwise people will be highly doubtful that anything can be accomplished in the timeframe (and annoyed if they were right).  If the topic is smaller scale, maybe you don’t need to bring in the cavalry just yet and you can grab 3-4 folks to think it out with you.
2. Plan and pick your time wisely and well: How much time do you really need for your session? Make sure your goals and deliverables match the time you have. If you have a full day, plan for it in a way that’s productive, and not dragged out. Everyone will always be happy to finish early. (In fact, I know an L&D professional who always plans innovation days to end an hour before the regular work day as a perk.) If you only have two hours, assess how your topic can be covered in this timeframe, and if not modify accordingly. Extra time you don’t need will make people feel resentful. Too little time on a big topic will make people feel like they haven’t scratched the surface and whatever time they did put in was for nought. Lastly, give some thought to the day of the week the session falls out on. A Thursday or Friday session could have people worrying about finishing other deadlines they have before the weekend, making them less than thrilled to participate.
3. Make your innovation session walk the talk: An innovation session by name and definition is different from a regular business status  meeting. The danger that lies in these sessions is when in an effort to stimulate creativity they become too gimmicky for anyone to take them seriously. Yet, if it is run in the same dry business-like manner as regular team meetings, it might not be terribly conducive to thinking in new unexplored directions. It’s a fine line to find the right methodologies that will give you the results you need, without making people in the room feel ridiculous, bored, or that they are oranges that need to be squeezed. Ask yourself – would I want to be doing this activity?
4. Have the right (and the right amount of) people in the room: People are your number one resource. You need their knowledge, expertise, experience, and gumption. But how do you choose who should participate? First, build a heterogenous team that is familiar with the topic from different angles so ideas can be initially evaluated on the spot (without having to keep marking them “ask the guys from engineering” or “ask John” and everyone  is frustrated why John isn’t here).  This will help keep you on target with what can and cannot be done. Second, be realistic about the number of people and personalities you need for this topic and that you can handle. Too few, you may not get a rounded picture; too many can overwhelm the room and no one gets a word in if not managed properly.  And last, mind the balance of the seniority level in the room. You don’t want people to be afraid of voicing their opinions in front of others and things are left unsaid.
5. Menu: It is well known that I would do anything for a donut. Get your people fed! At the end of the day it’s these little things that we look forward to and make us feel appreciated. It’s also hard to think straight if you’re hungry, so set people up for success.
6. Follow up and communicate – Set yourself a monthly reminder to update the participants how the project is doing. This will keep you accountable, all while showing your gratitude to the people who took time to participate. (You don’t want someone greeting you by the water cooler with  whatever happened…?) When the project is implemented you can celebrate it. Should it get shelved, you can provide an explanation and what you’ve learned from it. People will appreciate hearing directly from you and not  through the grapevine.
7. Do some internal reflection: After the session, give yourself feedback on how it went. What went according to plan and what went less well than expected. Were you happy with the participants? Was the timeline realistic? What would you do the same in the future and what would you change?

 Innovation sessions have so much riding on them to begin with. If you can get a group of fresh, eager, positive faces to participate, you’re halfway there already.

My colleague Hila Pelles wrote an intriguing internal post for our SIT team, citing two thought-provoking articles.

The first is from INC.:

Research Suggests We’re All Getting Less Creative and Scientists Think They Know Why, by Jessica Stillman

The gist:

• Scores on the Torrance Test, considered by many to be a reliable indicator of creativity, have been steadily declining since the 90’s.
• The reason, scientists claim (the article claims), is that we are all spending too much time on digital screens instead of acting in the world or engaging in leisurely thoughts.
• The solution: dedicate time to thinking, go on long walks, limit screen time and vary your routine.

The second article, published on LIT HUB (excerpted from: First Steps: How Upright Walking Made Us Human) expands on one of the first article’s recommendations:

On the Link Between Great Thinking and Obsessive Walking, by Jeremy DeSilva

I am doing a dis-service to this article by summarizing it, since it is more literary in spirit, but, using examples from Charles Darwin to Virginia Woolf, it convincingly makes the case for walking as a stimulus for creative thinking, supported by several experiments that found superior results and stronger brain connectivity in subjects who walked versus couch potatoes.

My pragmatic take on these articles, in two parts:

1) Caveat reader

a. In 25 years of experience working with diverse publics in dozens of countries I haven’t noticed any signs of decline in creativity. In fact, I believe there are many signs of a widespread increase in creativity and productive thinking – not always for the good of humankind, not even correlated with individuals’ happiness or wellbeing, but that is another issue. Instead, I believe that what the findings may be showing is the decreased relevance of the Torrance test itself, whose relevance I suspect was always less than its PR.

b. Although I resent the time my daughters spend on screens lately, I don’t think the blame for declining creativity, if real, should be placed on digital activities. Bertrand Russell famously wrote in praise of idleness in his homonymous book and article (“The idea that the poor should have leisure has always been shocking to the rich.”), showing that lack of idleness is not a new affliction and that it can equally affect both sides of the digital divide.

2) Practical facilitation tips:

a. In f2f sessions, move people around every now and again, sometimes ask them to stretch, and when possible – even to dance to music. Much more difficult in remote sessions, but very much worth the effort.

b. 2-3 times an hour, give participants the chance to chat with their neighbor(s) for 3-4 minutes on a task that doesn’t require too much concentration.

My 20-second summary, so you can go ramble: move around, take it easy, and you’ll be more creative (or, if not, I suspect, at least a bit happier).

I love movies and I love innovation. But even I was shocked when I learned that someone who shares my feelings was willing to pay USD 85,000 for a unique volleyball that appeared on the big screen.

A few weeks ago, Wilson, an off-white leather ball which is best known for co-starring alongside Tom Hanks in “Cast Away” was sold for that sum.

In the film, FedEx trouble shooter Chuck Noland, played by Hanks, is forced by extreme conditions to survive on a deserted island for 4 years, relying only on the limited resources found around him.

Wilson, in the movie context, is not just a ball. Chuck needs to find a solution to his solitude, sense of aloneness. Almost accidently, he “creates” a companion out of a simple blood-stained volleyball, by adding a face to it. This seemingly casual action changed the ball’s essence.

Wilson the volleyball from “Cast Away”

Source:

Why is this scene relevant for us? And what can we learn from it? I will use this Hollywood story to explain two principles of innovation that you can implement in your business, even if you are not completely surrounded by water.

How do we usually innovate?

All around us we can spot and specify needs and problems. We can usually identify and articulate our pains:  What do we lack? What action do we want to perform, or do we wish to be performed? Then, we tend to look for a tool, a product or a person that best suits our needs.

What if there is not even one object around that supports these needs? In such cases we may try to build or invent one.

We usually move from a perceived function to the object that can perform it. We practice this standard way of thinking not only in our private lives, but also as a part of organizational and business routines. We define “A job to be done” and look for the right tool to do the job!

The term “Form Follows Function”, which encapsulates this way of thinking, was coined by the architect Louis Sullivan at the end of the 19th century. Sullivan was known as the “Father of Modernism”, influencing generations of architects and designers. He referred to the fact that a building or an object should primarily relate to its intended function or purpose, even at the expense of its aesthetics…

A deserted island is actually a Closed World

But survivors on lost islands do not experience regular conditions. You can ask Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, the most famous fictional castaway who spent 28 years on a remote tropical island. Your resources are scarce, and you must make the best of what can be found in your immediate surroundings, your Closed World. This is the first principle of innovation to be learned from this story.

In the 2000 drama film Cast Away, Chuck Noland is on his way to Malaysia when his cargo plane gets caught in a violent storm and crashes into the Pacific Ocean. Noland is the only survivor of the crash, and he washes up on an uninhabited island.

In his new home Noland finds his standard way of thinking useless. He carefully examines the objects around him – the content of some FedEx packages washed up on the shore – only to find out that their original function is no longer needed. After all, what good can skating shoes bring when you’re the only resident of your wild sandy hot kingdom?

Think differently, embrace your constraints

 If you find yourself on such a deserted island, the first things you will probably look for are food, water, and shelter. Chuck Noland did just that, utilizing everything he could lay his hands on.

He began improvising. Not only did he find new functions for the objects he found on the island, but these new functions seem much more innovative than what he originally imagined.

For us it comes as no surprise since we believe in SIT that Constraints Foster Creativity. Nothing like a remote island to illustrate constraints. Noland learned this second principle of innovation quickly.

Got some dry branches? Great! Rubbing them can help start a fire. That’s easy.

How about the skating shoes blades? Looks like the perfect knife.

Some video cassettes that seemed of no value were the source of a strong rope, weaved from the tape inside them.

The plastic walls of portable toilets? They were turned into a sail and a shield for the raft Noland built.

And Wilson!

At first glance, the volleyball seemed redundant and was thrown aside. Only later a latent need was discovered. Noland, desperate to talk to someone, personified the volleyball, making him his closest friend. He drew a face on the bloodstained ball, enabling it to become much more than a sport appliance for years to come.

This innovative way of thinking might sound strange or even childish, but that is just the point. Most people use the standard way of innovating that I described before; Nevertheless, I would like to suggest a different approach: start with the form of the object, then look for new functionalities it may support.

This phenomenon was discovered by a group of psychologists led by Ronald Finke, and it spurred a new thinking approach.

In SIT terms, this is called Function Follows Form or FFF for short. This counterintuitive yet powerful process allows us to discover new benefits that we might miss by following our usual path of thinking.

We like improvising, creating new ideas out of imagined situations or objects, so why wait until we find ourselves on an island?

Come back next week to see how you can recognize outcomes of the FFF framework in surprising places.

I recently read an interesting article about presentation tips. The author, a “cognitive neuroscientist and chief science officer”, opens her article thus:

Which is the odd one out?

14

40

68

96

A paragraph later, she writes:

If you think about the mental calculations required to reach the right answer in the above exercise (as you probably discovered, it’s “40”)…

I felt a bit stupid, since I had not “discovered” that the answer was 40. In fact, even after giving it some thought, I’m not sure why it is obvious that “the right answer” is 40.

Before continuing, pause – do you have a good explanation why 40 is the right answer? Do you have another suggestion for a right answer?

Lacking a convincing argument in favor of 40, or any of the other numbers, I jotted down candidates for answers that came to mind:

1)     Sixty eight – only one with two “t”s

2)     14 –only one with a “1”; 40 –only one with a “0”; 68 – only one with a “6”; 96 – only one with a “9”

3)     14 – only one not divisible by 4

4)     96 – from 14 to 40 there is a gap of 26, from 40 to 68 the gap is 28, so the next number should be 68+30, therefore 98, but it’s 96, so that’s the odd one out

5)     40 – only round number, only one that has no units, only tens

6)     40 – all other numbers are composed of either only straight lines (1,4) or curves (6,8,9) and only 40 has both linear (1) and curvy (0) numerals.

7)     40 – only one that doesn’t have an “o” when written in Spanish, only one that can be written as a single word in Hebrew

8)     68 – only one that has a factor which is greater than 10 (17)

9)     96 – only one that stays the same when you turn the page on its head

10)  69 – only adjacent pair of numerals (vertical or horizontal) that creates an odd two-digit number

How, then, can one speak of “the right answer” in this case? What kind of minds are we creating in our children (and grownups) when we pose these questions and program them to seek a single “right answer”?

This reminded me of a small puzzle we often use in our workshops.

Which is the odd one out?

1)     15

2)     17

3)     19

An arithmetically correct answer is “15” – the only one which isn’t prime.

Another potential answer is “2”. This is the innovation facilitator’s favorite answer, highlighting the cognitive fixednesses that prevent one from recognizing this possibility. The answer “2” may, to some, feel inferior to “15”, an obviously correct reply. Others prefer “2”, as it requires a shift from the regular/intuitive/standard way of perceiving the problem. But, beware, for this strong preference often leads facilitators to now refer to “2” as “THE answer”. Why? Because just as the math teacher uses the question to check her students’ understanding of prime numbers, so do workshop facilitators want to drive home their anti-fixedness message. Both err in inculcating in their listeners the mindset that questions tend to have one single correct answer. Most don’t.

My mother liked to strike up conversations with strangers of all stripes, and it was one of my favorite childhood pastimes to listen in. But sometimes, when they babbled away uncontrollably, she would turn to my sister and me and mumble: “mental constipation, verbal diarrhea”. My professional life provides, alas, many occasions in which I am reminded of this indelicate quip. With a softer approach in mind, I have developed throughout the years a practical tool for managing the contributions of participants in a workshop that I would like to share with you.

First step: Mentally visualize the participants, each placed in one of four quadrants, defined by two axes:

• Quantity – the amount of air-time they tend to occupy (how often and how much they speak).
• Quality – your assessment of their potential contribution to achieving the goals of the session.

This segments your public into four groups: