Creative People Must Be Stopped (14 page)

Another hindrance to change is the belief that the current system works “well enough,” a stance captured by the expression “If it ain't broke, don't fix it.” An inefficiently functioning but predictable process may be considered a small price to pay as compared to undertaking the risk that will be introduced by changing it. Someone might ask, “What if taking away the turnaround space causes more accidents in the warehouse?” After all, the process under discussion is what led to the current success of the organization and the individuals within it. No wonder they ask, “How can you guarantee me that the changes required by your innovation will make the process work better for us and for me?” They are right to ask the question, but it sets a high hurdle for seriously considering, let alone adopting, a new way of doing things.

Overcoming Resource Constraints

Resources need not be a constraint to innovation in an organization. Key to improving your organization's ability to innovate is paying attention to the amount and types of resources in the organization and allocating them in ways that support innovation.

Feed and Starve Innovation

Some innovations require a massive investment of resources to make them happen. The Manhattan Project, which created the first atomic bomb, was awash in resources. The project was started in 1940 with wartime funding and a life-or-death mandate, and scientists working on the project could get virtually anything they asked for. By 1945, the project had employed thousands of scientists and spent over $2 billion, which would be over $30 billion in 2010 dollars (Schwartz, 1998). And in truth, nothing short of this massive commitment of resources could have gotten the job done in only a few years' time.

But not all cases of innovation are like the Manhattan Project. There are many familiar stories of individuals who were able to achieve amazing innovations with very few resources. For example, Steve Wozniak, the cofounder and technical brains behind Apple Computer, designed the company's first computer as a teenager, on the floor in his bedroom. His design was revolutionary in the way that he used integrated circuit chips in combinations that had never been considered before. Although he has been called the “Mozart of Digital Design,” as he tells it, his motivations were fairly mundane. He had wanted a computer that he could use to play games, but could not afford one. So he started out using only the chips that his allowance could buy. Precisely because he didn't have more capital to work with, he had to make a number of radical technical choices, such as using the same physical memory for data and for video. This was clearly a case where starving innovation actually helped make it happen.

What these stories suggest is that managers need to exercise judgment about the nature of the innovation and what will truly be required to achieve it. The leaders of the Manhattan Project harbored no illusions that what they did was going to be cheap or easy. Consider that plutonium, the critical ingredient, didn't even exist before 1940. In contrast, Woz, as he is affectionately known, didn't have a timeline and didn't have any more money. He would have used any amount of money he was given. What this suggests is that whereas budgets allow managers to “turn off their brains” while organizations are in a routine functioning mode, during innovation, an awareness of the goals and the current situation is paramount to avoid cases of overfunding or underfunding innovation initiatives because of ignorance about how the funds are actually being used.

Ignore the ROI

As discussed earlier, the larger an organization becomes, the more likely there is to be divergence of opinion about the desirability of a decision. Often organizations resolve these conflicts on the basis of political power. If powerful groups or individuals in the organization view a proposed innovation as too risky or as too inconsequential, they'll use their influence to stop the initiative.

One favored mechanism for doing this is to insist on a calculation of projected ROI for an early-stage project. Certainly this tool, used properly, can assist organizations in deciding whether a particular investment will help move it toward its goals, but insisting that early-stage innovations, particularly radical ones, show ROI is an easy way to kill them.

ROI is notoriously difficult if not impossible to prove in early-stage projects, especially when a market does not currently exist for the innovation. The late Ken Olson, the CEO of Digital Equipment Corporation, said that trying to calculate the potential market for a radically new product is “like deciding where to build a bridge by rowing to the middle of a river in a boat and counting the number of cars that drive by” (Victor, 2009). Although organizations must necessarily consider issues of strategy and ROI in the assessment of innovations, it matters a great deal when in the process such an assessment is made.

If It Ain't Broke, Give Them Something to Break

A good friend related the story of his early days at a well-known company in the diaper manufacturing industry. When he arrived at the manufacturing facility as a newly minted industrial engineer straight out of college, he was thinking of the amazing improvements he would be able to make with his newfound knowledge. As he entered the room where the giant machine was, an old-timer said, “Take a good look at that machine, 'cause it is the last time you are gonna see it. You are not to touch that machine or even to think about it! You mess that thing up, and not only will we miss production but we'll be cleaning up the mess for weeks. Go back to the engineering building and leave us alone!”

The old-timer was correct in thinking that tampering with a crucial piece of technology (or a crucial process or any other part of the value chain) can carry significant risk. Granted, but why bother hiring bright young engineers if you don't intend to take advantage of their knowledge and fresh perspectives?

One answer to this dilemma is to provide your innovators with a test rig or simulator to use in their “fail forward” work. Apple, for example, built a complete mock-up of an Apple Store inside a warehouse to try it out and tinker with it. Although it may seem hard to justify the expense of a rig that won't be used for production, it can be a small price to pay if you truly seek significant improvements in the way you do business.

Know the Value Chain

Knowing the value chain is key to meaningful innovation. Without an understanding of exactly how and where value is added in the process, individuals can waste time and resources in an effort to improve things that in the end create very little value. By the same token, they may miss significant opportunities by ignoring areas where the organization creates a great deal of value.

In an interview with
McKinsey Quarterly
, Bill Campbell, founder of Intuit Software Company, relates a relevant anecdote about working with software engineers to build
Quicken.com
(Mendonca and Sneader, 2007). During one meeting with the engineers, a product manager said, in the fashion of product managers everywhere, “I want these features.” To which Bill replied, “If you ever tell an engineer what features you want, I am going to throw you out on the street. You're going to tell them what problem the consumer has, and then the engineers figure out how to solve it.” Drawing this kind of distinction is possible only with a thorough knowledge of where—and how—value is created in the value chain.

Putting the Framework to Work: Organizational Constraints

To aid you in assessing the constraints at this level, use the following diagnostic survey. It is intended to help you assess the extent to which the constraints described in the chapter may be unintentional hindrances to innovation in your organization.

Using the Results

Note the total number of statements that you rated as “Highly Descriptive.” If you have rated more than six of them this way, then working on organizational constraints will be a productive effort. Now that you have identified the specific constraints, you can take action. You may wish to turn back and reread the description of the problem and of the specific strategies for addressing that constraint. You may also find that strategies are obvious given the symptom you have identified. For detailed instructions on working with your assessment results, use the steps outlined in Appendix A, Using the Assessment Results, to determine if these constraints are a significant impediment for you in your organization and to develop strategies for overcoming them.

Later, after completing assessment for the other chapters, you will be able to compare constraints and see if one of the other levels poses a greater challenge for you overall than do these organizational constraints. Of course you need to recognize that fixing these issues for an organization is going be difficult, especially because you will need to convince others of the potential value of the change.

Summary

Organizations are powerful primarily because of their ability to use large numbers of people to produce routine outcomes in an efficient way. In their normal functioning, these are the exact outputs we get. However, organizations can deliver innovative outputs if we remain aware of the basic constraints that organizing brings. It's not enough to have smart people working in creative groups, as Xerox did. Innovation also requires keeping people pointed in the right direction through awareness of a meaningful strategy, structuring and coordinating them on the basis of information processing and not simply a division of labor, and allocating resources in a way and in a form that enables people to apply them to the problems they face. The chart on page 123 offers a recap of the constraints discussed in this chapter, along with some strategies for overcoming or living with them.

Chapter Reflection: Organizational Constraints

It can be helpful to reflect on your insights about organization-level constraints and the process of diagnosing them in your organization. You may wish to consider these questions:

• What evidence is there for the existence of the constraints you named?
  
• How important are these organizational factors compared to the individual, group, industry, societal, and technological constraints you have identified?
  
• What constraints were overlooked because of your limited view into the organization?
  
• Would others agree that there is the need to fix these constraints in the organization?