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Being Successfully Controversial

Posted by John Foster on March 7th, 2012

In a recent social media frenzy, I stumbled upon a great insight: the link between controversy and innovation. I had just finished my post about how innovation is a natural result of being human, and Lisa Kaye tweeted a quote from actress Eva Le Gallienne, stating that “Innovators are inevitably controversial.” When I think of controversy, I immediately think of courage.

That same day, innovation guru Diego Rodriguez posted a TED talk by Bryan Stevenson encouraging us all to be courageous. In his talk, Bryan touches on how we are all inspired by people who are the first to stand up, speak up, lead the way, draw a line, or refuse to budge on principle. Rosa Parks was an icon of courage for civic innovation and equal rights. John F. Kennedy was an icon of courage that spurred innovation in science and technology. Ronald Reagan was an icon of courage for global unity.

Kennedy Space Center (Photo from Smalling Studios)

To make change, it is essential that we stand up for what we believe is right. Courage is one part vision of what could be and one part frustration with what is. Courage is the spark that ignites change and inspires others to join the process and tip from old to new.

Linking controversy and innovation makes it sound like innovation is a struggle against resistance. Which gets me thinking about resistance as a strengthener. People do push-ups, lift weights, carry medicine balls, or use elastic bands to build muscle. You push against gravity to improve yourself. So it makes sense that pushing against normal is a great way to improve the world.

Courage is only half of the equation

I’ve learned through many, many, many failed attempts, that courage is necessary, but not sufficient in successful innovation. Courage is only half of the equation. With only courage, you can come off as righteous, contrarian, or antagonistic. A thorn in the side. You face immediate rejection by the established way. Succeeding only at creating more resistance. It’s really something to speak up, but not enough to leave it at that. Controversy can end with polarization and gridlock (take the U.S. Congress… please!). Or controversy can be the beginning of a better world.

The other half of the innovation equation is creativity. By creativity, I’m not talking about the Crayola-artsy-black-turtle-neck type of creativity. I’m talking about the well-that-didn’t-work-so-let’s-try-this type of creativity. Lateral thinking that produces a never-ending stream of ideas and alternatives to test and explore until the right thing happens. The way Thomas Edison tried hundreds of filament-gas-tube combinations to get the light bulb. The way Abraham Lincoln tried running for office multiple times before finding his way to the Presidency. They were successful innovators because they had both courage and creativity.

Against means together?

For most big problems, there is no silver bullet. No single invention. Innovation is an unfolding, iterative, extended effort that takes place against the normal way of doing things. So innovation is inevitably controversial, requiring us to act with both courage and creativity to achieve success.

As you may already know, “contra” is a Latin root meaning against. And “verse” means turn. Literally, “turning against.” Being interested in linguistics and natural human behavior, I poked around the origins of contra and found that the prefix con- is a variant of com- which means together. This makes sense if you consider against in this usage: The ball is resting against the wall (they are sharing the same space together).

So perhaps controversial really means, “turning together.” And we humans are designed to work together and constantly improve our condition.

Bottom line: to be successfully controversial, consider your mission as a strengthening exercise you do with a bunch of other people, not a war against the other side you must win (or else!).

Popularity: 8% [?]

Tags: controversy, courage, creativity, innovation, leadership

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Confessions of a good father

Posted by John Foster on June 28th, 2011

It’s time for a revolution in my house. I determined this recently on Father’s Day, which to me is largely a Hallmark holiday, so I have no real expectations for special treatment. Nonetheless, I woke to my two daughters arguing over something like, “Who’s better Justin Bieber or Taylor Swift?” And it got me thinking about our life and what it means to be a father. First, let me say that my kids are great. They are mostly kind and generous to each other, well mannered and respectful, and they pitch in to do their part to keep our family on track. So let me be clear that I’m not in any way implicating them in this idea.

I think by most standards, my wife and I would be judged as a good parents. Our kids behave as well or better than other kids we know (most of the time). We know about sibling rivalry and we have some pretty good coping skills in place. We’ve seen Babies and know that kids will fight over rocks and sticks even if they don’t have the abundant array of things we have. Our kids get plenty of sleep and have a well balanced diet full of super foods (but ice cream is more a rule than an exception). We’re not as strict as the Tiger Mom, but we’re pretty tough with our family rules and deliver consequences at least as well as Mike and Carol Brady. We certainly don’t have parenting all figured out, but our family journey has brought my wife and I closer together, as we are totally outnumbered by the kids.

That’s so seductive. Really seductive. I can pat myself on the back and feel great because I do so much for my kids. But you know the old joke about how fast you have to run to get away from a bear? (Faster than the other guy!). This is an absolute problem, not a relative one.

How fast do you have to run to escape the bear?

My wife and I have worked diligently to provide a safe, stable, and stimulating environment for our kids. But in doing so, I fear we’ve removed too much adversity and created a bubble in reality. I worry that my kids are not sufficiently aware of how things work for the overwhelming majority of people in the world. I hear constantly that great people are made by overcoming difficulties in their lives, yet when I look around our lives I don’t see any real difficulties. That said, I certainly can’t say I grew up under tough circumstances. My first 20 years were spent in a place akin to the town in Caddyshack,where I was more of a Danny than a Spaulding, but certainly not wanting for much.

My next 10 years were spent largely working in non-profit organizations, providing leadership and social skill building programs to “at risk” kids. These kids were “at risk” of things like teenage pregnancy, drug and alcohol abuse and not finishing school. During that time, I learned to see the world through their eyes and I came to understand how lucky I was to have the privilege of a safe comfortable home with resourceful parents taking care of me. When I met my wife we both agreed it was our top priority to create a happy home where our children could thrive, but now I’m struggling to make sense of the competing commitments of stability and adversity.

We can fabricate adversity. I played sports and went on outdoor adventures to test my limits. I recently watched Lucky Ducks, where wealthy New York City mom Tracey Jackson feels much as I’ve described above, and decides to make amends. She decides to create a film of her intervention, which consists of sending her daughter to India to teach street children instead of going to the beach for Spring Break. Great premise, but in my opinion, she gets lost in her desire to create a hit indie film and comes off looking worse than when she started. My least favorite scene is when she jets off to Montana to gather advice from a self described “Kid Whisperer” psychologist about how to help her daughter. Ugh.

You can’t use the same thinking or resources that got you into the mess to get you out of it. What got you here won’t get you there. Etc. etc. This is not about fixing the kids or the family. This revolution is about me. What am I willing to change about my life to help my children get more grounded in reality?

The afternoon of Father’s Day, my daughter was sent to her room for somethingoranother and yelled back, “What am I supposed to do for food?” I replied that she could go to bed without dinner. Her response: “Fine, I’ll just starve to death!” (insert door slam here). That was the last straw for me. We waste more food at one meal in our house (and we’re pretty good at cleaning plates and managing portions) than some kids get in a whole day.

So this is my question… how can I create experiences where my kids will grow to see themselves in the context of the world and know better how to respect and appreciate their circumstances?

I don’t want drive-by, tourist observation experiences, I want something natural, reciprocal, and sustainable. I don’t want this to be the kid’s problem (it’s mine). I know this will be uncomfortable for me and my wife. We have to adjust our own lives to make this happen. It will mean we have to miss out on other things we’ve got built into our lives… perhaps sports, or Brownies, or a family vacation. What a luxurious problem to have.

Your advice is welcome, I’ll keep you posted on our journey.

Popularity: 10% [?]

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Is that innovation or invention?

Posted by John Foster on May 5th, 2011

While closely related, invention and innovation are distinct concepts. Invention is a technology driven breakthrough, bringing something new to the world, that acts like a doorway for innovation to occur. Innovation is an iterative process of improvement that either sustains or disrupts a consumer market.

Wright brothers first flight at Kittyhawk

A great example of this distinction is the invention of flight allowing for the innovation of air transport into a major industry. The Wright brothers are largely credited with inventing the airplane, but what they really invented was a steering device, which allowed them to make the first “controlled, powered and sustained, heavier-than-air human flight.”

Among the early innovators of air transport were Donald Douglas, who created the DC-3, a robust aircraft capable of carrying things and people, and Henry Ford who was instrumental in the development of paved runways, passenger terminals, hangars, and radio navigation. Without these innovations, airplanes were an interesting novelty, but they didn’t fulfill a real customer need (like traveling or shipping packages over long distances).

The Ford Trimotor is an example of innovation

Simply put: Invention is driven by technology and innovation is driven by consumer need.

Another example:

At Hulu we are focused on the consumer experience of video entertainment, and innovation is one of our primary goals as a business. What drives our forward progress is an obsession over our customer’s needs, and a commitment to delivering better and better services to meet their demands.

Innovation in digital media requires deep expertise in software and communications technologies, and along the way Hulu has been awarded many patents for inventions that push the consumer experience to even higher levels. But we didn’t invent most of the technology we use, or create most of the content viewed on the service; rather we are assembling existing components in new ways that are transforming the media business for users, advertisers, and content owners.

Is that innovation or invention?

Many popular web-based services are breaking ground in the way people communicate, connect, and work with each other. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if these things are novel inventions or early stages of innovation that will shift markets or generate new ones.

I wonder if Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are inventions or innovations. They are all valued with great potential to disrupt and transform, but to me they appear more like inventions in their current forms. They are very cool, novel ways to interact, but that is by definition, invention. What consumer markets have they created or disrupted?

I think it’s going to be very exciting to walk through the doorways they have created and see what innovation on the other side will produce!

Popularity: 18% [?]

Tags: change, innovation, invention

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Goals are a natural part of work

Posted by John Foster on April 28th, 2011

You can’t score without a goal. But, compared to other high performance environments (like sports), typical work environments don’t provide enough clarity or focus. This ambiguity causes people to conserve effort and/or waste energy on the wrong things, leading to lower engagement and lower performance.

GOAL! (from wikimedia commons)

Psychologists have discovered much about how our brain handles goals. One of the defining traits of the human species is our ability to choose what we will do and how we will do it… that is, to create goals. Goals are central to grit, which leads to greater happiness, which in turn is a source of high performance.

Goals are simply a way to clarify expectations and keep track of agreements about your work, and can help answer these critical performance questions:

Am I doing the right work?
Is the work I’m doing good enough?

You should use goals to discuss the potential of your work and the progress you are making (or not) towards them. In their best form, goals are not administrative or bureaucratic processes. Rather, they are vehicles that help you carry work forward. An individual or a leader may initiate a goal, but in either case, both people should be invited into the discussion. In fact, goals can serve as a “boundary object” to engage several people with different perspectives as your advisors, creating the basis for a continual 360 degree dialog.

You can increase transparency and efficiency in your organization by sharing goals, and you might gather them together for a “roll-up” to create a big picture of how everyone is working together. But keep them lightweight and flexible, as they are most useful in the form of a natural conversation about what you are doing and how you are doing it.

Don’t let goal processes and templates (like SMART goals) overcome the natural simplicity of goals. They can be written on post-its, scribbled on a napkin, or entered into a web service like Rypple. The key is that you think about and discuss what’s important in your work and capture it in a very simple statement that has meaning to you.

Key questions for generating goals:

What is needed by the business/client?
What am I prepared (ready and able) to do?
What will I need to accomplish this work properly?
Who is impacted by this work and what are their needs?
How will I know it is complete?

Goals make it easier to gather feedback:

Think of goals as a “prototype” of the future you can use to gather feedback. You can ask three kinds of questions about a goal to help you deliver high quality work that others value:

1. Focus- use one or more goals to ask your boss, client, and colleagues if they think you are working on the right things. Compare them to expectations set out for you by company level mission/vision statements and job level requirements like a job description.

2. Advice- use a goal to ask others for input on how they would approach the task. When you do this before you act, you make it easier for others to give their full opinion about the “right way” to do something.

2. Critique- use a goal to ask others their opinion on your results. It’s easier to get feedback if you show what you were hoping to accomplish (with a goal), as it allows people to focus their opinions on the gaps between your intent and the actual results.

For more on this topic see my post Set homerun goals.

Popularity: 27% [?]

Tags: Feedback, goals, high performance

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It’s a thin line

Posted by John Foster on March 9th, 2011

It’s a thin line between love and hate. This is a great quote to underscore the inherent challenge of delivering excellence or managing to very high quality standards. Recall this great song by Annie Lennox in case you need a soundtrack in your head while reading this. It’s easy to point out what’s wrong with something, but a much bigger challenge to make it better.

Walking the Tightrope, source: unknown

It’s like walking a tight rope… if you believe high quality is essential to achieving your goal. On the one hand, you can take the demanding boss or snooty patron approach and simply demand better/more. This might get you an immediate response, but often elicits such a negative reaction from the people around you that you lose their authentic trust, loyalty, and commitment.

One the other hand, if you tip towards forgiveness and understanding, you actually get less in the moment and hope that next time things will be better. This might engender fonder feelings from those around you, but fails to set a higher bar, push the envelope, surprise and delight. It is simply fine (given the circumstances). Unfortunately, over time, “simply fine” leads to mediocrity. Eeew.

It’s a difficult competing commitment: be a kind generous human being (like Jesus Christ) or be an innovative bearer of high standards (like Steve Jobs). Can’t you be both? Sure, and to do so, vision, vigilance, and veracity come to mind. Introducing the V-3 method of leading for quality! It helps you walk the line of pushing for mo’ betta, while accepting the inevitable influence of variables, unexpected interruptions, and, well reality taking things back to the lowest common denominator.

Vision: paint a compelling picture of what could be, so others are inspired to act. In fact, paint is insufficient, you must craft it in Technicolor, no THX. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Powerful imagery has proven impact on individual motivation by “priming” people with impressions about what is possible and how it will make a difference. More importantly, a great vision helps clarify a choice and “allows” others to achieve versus forcing them to respond to a command. A clear and compelling vision attracts people who desire the same things as you, making achievement at very high levels of quality more sustainable.
Vigilance: don’t let there be exceptions and don’t let there be distractions from the highest priority aspects of your quality mission. Allowing exceptions and distractions lets people off the hook before they achieve mastery, and may negatively effect their desire to try next time. See more on this concept in Why Chinese Mothers are Superior by Amy Chua.
Veracity: use facts and present them in ways that inspire continued efforts to try harder. Providing feedback on progress is essential in support of persistance and high achievement. But the facts must be relevant and presented in appropriate scales. One study on goal achievement compared weight loss on a wide scale of 25 pounds versus a narrow scale of 5 pounds and found that participants needing to lose 4 pounds were more likely to slack off in the wide scale (because 4 is small compared to 25 while it’s huge compared to 5).

It’s a thin line between engagement and overwhelm. One last tip: if you tell someone something is “not good enough” the next action on your part is to pitch in and help make the situation better. This is a doubly-good thing because mimicry is a powerful social motivator and it’s energizing to have fresh legs in the face of a difficult challenge!

Popularity: 14% [?]

Tags: competitive advantage, grit, innovation, leadership, Service Excellence

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Bring game day to your work

Posted by John Foster on October 14th, 2010

Pre-game focus and energy. Image from LA Times

There’s nothing like getting up for a big game. This is true as a fan, but even better as a player or coach. Game Day is a source of inspirational and motivational energy you can tap into for super powers and unbridled passion. Things happen on Game Day that you never thought were possible in practice. Players who prepare carefully and focus their energy on an upcoming game tend to have a sharper physical, mental and emotional state than they do on a practice or rest day.

This is all true for regular working folks too. People who put a red circle on the calendar around events like a proposal meeting, or a sales call, or a product launch, and prepare for those events as a Big Game, show up far more ready to do their best than those who see every day as the same old grind.

The key here is to make sure everyone around you knows about your upcoming Big Game and are involved in getting you prepared, building enthusiasm, and holding you accountable for your results. Wouldn’t it be great if people working around you cheered and gave you high fives when you walked into the office on Game Day? And what if people stuck microphones in your face afterwards for a quick download on how the game went? Now that’s effective performance management!

There is more risk involved in this transparency (that’s the whole point). If nobody else knows about your Big Game, how will they cheer you on? More importantly, if nobody else knows about your game, you can simply write it off as “no big deal” if you don’t win. If there’s no risk, you won’t have the same intensity and focus.

Winning: Very few teams win every game. Even Michael Phelps doesn’t win every race. But every team or individual athlete competing in an elite category is expecting to win every time. The desire to win and keeping track of your record are essential elements of high performance. If you don’t keep score and you don’t know your W-L record, you won’t achieve the intensity and focus of Game Day.

Losing: I saw a great interview with USC Quarterback Matt Barkley after they lost their second game in a row in the last second of the game. This kind of loss can devastate a team and ruin their season. Or, it can be seen as a step in the process of getting better. His response was to compare the losses to a dropped pass or getting tackled. It’s part of the game, and you have to overcome adversity and use each experience to grow stronger and get better.

Pacing: I had a game day experience putting on a big event at Hulu this week, and it was emotionally and physically draining for our team. I remember driving to work that day with U2, Led Zeppelin, and The Who blasting the whole way in. You can’t get pumped like this every day, it’s got to come in cycles and leave room for recovery. The Olympics come every four years… the NBA and NHL play over 80 games in their seasons. You have to design a game strategy that fits your business and keeps you at your best. But beware, there is no off-season!

Popularity: 13% [?]

Tags: Behavior, high performance, preparation, winning

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Simple rules of good feedback

Posted by John Foster on October 8th, 2010

Signal to others you are open to feedback by asking for it.

Based on 3 years of close observation at IDEO and Hulu; and with perspective from my friends at other companies like Rypple, Facebook, Pixar, Mozilla, and Lucas Film; I have distilled these simple rules of good feedback.

1. Ask, don’t tell. Feedback works best when it is delivered to someone who asks for it. Being invited reduces the social risk of the giver being viewed as too critical or harsh. And reduces the challenge of finding the right time to deliver it. Asking for feedback is like putting out a welcome mat that signals you are open to input from others.

2. Focus on the work not the person. People are complex and very difficult (and resistant!) to label with statements like “high performer” or “lags peers.” Add in specifics about a work product/outcome and the context surrounding it, and it’s much more valuable.

3. Cast a wide net. Successful people manage a broad and diverse set of perspectives to discover patterns and develop insights about their own behavior. If you ask a small set of people who know you well, you will probably get a biased and less trustworthy answer.

4. Don’t believe the first answer. Even with an invitation, remember that good feedback requires the giver to think deeply, and work a bit to provide something useful. Press the first response, with further invitations like, “Can you tell me more about that?” or similar open ended probes. If you receive generic responses like, “fine” or “I love working with you” don’t be satisfied.

5. Synthesize and iterate. Once you gather broad and diverse perspective, look at the set of opinions and find patterns across the set. Then share the whole set with a close advisor and discuss it together. It may prompt you to ask a more targeted question to get more actionable or focused feedback.

6. Tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. This works both ways for the giver and the receiver. You are simply wasting time if you don’t share your whole perspective as a giver or disclose that you know there are areas to explore as a receiver. Being open and honest is what divides successful players from posers and wannabes.

Remember the whole point of feedback is personal growth, higher performance, and living a more fulfilling life! Have fun with it.

Popularity: 27% [?]

Tags: communication, Feedback

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Make better decisions

Posted by John Foster on August 3rd, 2010

There are some people who are naturally gifted at understanding a group vibe. These folks always seem to know the “right thing to do” and are often rewarded well for their savvy. And, kind of like the old LIFE cereal commercial, other people begin to depend on the few that have a sense of right and wrong for decisions. When pondering a difficult decision they say, “Let’s get Mikey!” and run off to seek direction as if that one person really knows the answer by some divine right.

In this manner, many people rely on their boss for direction. ”We’d better get Jim’s input on this before we proceed!” While Supervisor Jim may have a good sense of what won’t work, it’s doubtful that he will be able to provide much insight on some new idea or direction. Of course his opinion matters and his experience helps, but he probably has no more perspective on a new situation than you (sometimes less). This is a huge threat to innovation, because most controversial decisions are “kicked upstairs” and new ideas are almost always killed.

In reality, great decisions come from being connected to an appropriate set of stakeholders who provide diverse and independent input on a situation.

The magic 8-ball says...

A great boss should say, “Well, I’m not sure about this… who else have you asked?” This attitude leads people to check things out more broadly before coming to a conclusion. You’re probably thinking, sure I can ask a lot of people and get 20 different opinions, but I’ll still have 20 opinions… there’s no way to please everyone. That might be true, but it’s no reason not to proceed. Since we already know that deciding in a vacuum leads to bad decisions, how might we overcome the problem of having too many opinions?

Ask the Magic 8-ball! (this is a very retro post) Not that Magic 8-Ball… create a new kind of organization chart that helps you magically determine who to ask and what to ask in order to get better decisions. It works like this:

1. Clarify your question (anything can be decided this way, from small to large issues).

2. Determine who cares about this issue (think broadly) or will be impacted by your decision (commonly known as stakeholders).

3. Gather their thoughts on the issue via a series of short 1-1 discussions (build an evolving, proposed solution as you move from person to person, and share it as you go). This approach is better than a group meeting because it avoids group think or an information cascade that bias the outcome.

4. Test your proposal as you gather input (i.e. ask what they like/don’t like, how they would change it and assure them that you’ll share the “final” proposal before you move forward).

There are two valuable benefits of this approach:

1. You get better insight based on the various perspectives and independent reactions.

2. You build support for your issue as the stakeholders get better context and understand your constraints more deeply by participating in the process.

Here’s one way to chart your stakeholders. Each “orbit” around you is an existing group (e.g. “sales team” or “senior leaders” or “women in our company”). Use the orbit to help you identify specific individuals in each stakeholder group and test your breadth and diversity of input. Tap the wisdom of this crowd by sampling a small set (2-3) of people from each orbit, for a total stakeholder group of 12-20 people.