Isolating teh awesome
A reaction of many forward-thinking organisations in times of big change is to create an R&D department, a ‘lab’ or some kind of Skunk Works.
That way, the risk is isolated away where it can’t harm the rest of the organisation.
It makes sense. All the awesome ideas created or discovered by the privileged bright minds can bring them back to the colleagues they’ve left behind like it’s some kind of precious life-preserving root vegetable from a new land.
When you introduce new concepts and new ways of working to people who are quite happy working in the way they have always worked, there’s a culture clash. No matter how awesome the idea is, it will be met with distain simple because it’s foreign and unfamiliar. Simply put, it suffers from the Not Invented Here syndrome.
Plus, the organisation is shielded from failure yet isn’t likely to benefit from that failure, which is the really important bit.
Instead, a culture that somehow fosters awesomeness at any level needs to be slow-baked into the organisation itself not just isolated off.
Of course, many organisations might maintain they are simply too large to instill such change effectively. Look no further than Google’s 20% time to see how to overcome NIH.
6 comments
Mike, provocative post. Good stuff.
Unsurprisingly, at BBH / BBH Labs, we’re fans of somewhat of a skunkworks approach to change.
For us a number of things are important:
- that the skunkworks group must not be the only change-focused group in the organization (in fact, innovation needs to be everyone’s responsibility)
- that success or failure of that group to a great degree depends upon how quickly new processes, practices and approaches can be applied or embedded within the larger organization.
Many people misuse and oversimplify ‘Skunkworks’. At Lockheed it was deliberately and consistently structured so that (for decades) people in the main organization had absolutely no idea it existed, and to a great extent felt few of the benefits in any way. If that’s how today’s corporate ‘skunkworks’ are set-up then they are destined to become costly vanity projects. If innovation can’t be applied and scaled very quickly, it’s not worth investing in.
As for Google, interesting example, possibly somewhat unique. The entire company is a skunkworks. Never mind just the 20%.
Thanks Ben, I’d certainly agree with the principles you’ve described. It’s great to hear some first-hand experience.
Stuart also pointed out about Google being that way right from the start and how the culture of change management itself is something from “hard to impossible”. So I could probably do with a better example than Google’s 20%
I guess it depends very highly on what it is that you’re doing. I don’t know a great deal about P&G but I believe they’ve changed their innovation model so that it happens outside of the organisation. With product innovation it’s easier to do that because they can continue with the same structures and principles, it’s the product they sell that changes. It’s the same with Intel. Whereas perhaps I guess I’m thinking more about change in corporate culture, strategy, attitudes etc. I’ll try to find some better examples.
So, how about Zappos?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/business/10corner.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/business/10corner.html
“I think of myself less as a leader, and more of being almost an architect of an environment that enables employees to come up with their own ideas”
Again though, Tony had the luxury of starting a company in that way.
Nice post Mike.
I’m reminded of a previous post (Pulling Off The Optimal Platform Job http://tinyurl.com/yzjx5uv) and see a connection with your post, namely; infusing digital into traditional agencies (or probably any organisation).
Unless you do it in, and as part of, the agency itself you end up with NIH.
However the challenge is that without incubating the effort in some way you risk a still-born initiative.
These two opposing issues are possibly the reason why big (network) agencies with global clients are struggling.
http://tinyurl.com/yzjx5uv)
And yes, learning from failure, falling forward, is critical.
Another Google idea is that when they were first scaling up the business they looked at how much management oversight they would need to cope with the size of the organisation. Then they subtracted 20% in the belief that innovation and change happens more often at the edge of chaos.
Finally, it’s ten years old now but ‘Hot Groups’ by Jean Lipman-Bluman is still a good read.
Thanks David.The Hot Groups book sounds good, will certainly add it to my list.
I think the incubation point is really interesting. Providing the incubation is fairly open and accessible and can be influenced by the ‘doers’, I would totally agree.
Just came across this quote by Marshall McLuhan and thought it needed to live by this post:
“In big industry new ideas are invited to rear their heads so they can be clobbered at once. The idea department of a big firm is a sort of lab for isolating dangerous viruses.”