Business as unusual

Creativity is a subversive process

Have you ever needed a nudge to get you out of a rut? When you find yourself going over the same variations of solutions?

The famed music producer Brian Eno (who worked with Bowie, and U2) came up with an ingenious solution to ‘stuckness’ in creative processes back in the 70s. With his recording partner Peter Schmidt, Eno developed a card deck with provocations, or tiny insights.

They called them ‘oblique strategies’ and each card contains a short aphorism that nudge you to solve problems tangentially, rather than head-on. Some examples:

• Emphasise the flaws
• Reverse
• Use unqualified people
• Define an area as ‘safe’ and use it as an anchor
• Don’t be frightened to display your talents

Now, I’m a consultant, not a music producer or artist, but I maintain that strategy, change and leadership are fundamentally creative acts. Furthermore, all creativity is fundamentally subversive, as it upends common assumptions, or disrupts habit.

Besides which, even if I wasn’t a huge Eno fan (he ‘invented’ the genre of ambient music to which I listen endlessly while working), I would enjoy having a simple tool to help me get unstuck, simply by prodding my mind in a different direction.

Question: What’s the smallest creative nudge you can make that has the biggest pay off?

Saying no

Steve Jobs once answered a question about how Apple picked a succession of winning products: the Mac, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad. Jobs told Nike CEO Mark Parker, “Focus means saying no to the hundred other good ideas.”

I’m working right now with two organisations — that each has hundreds of good ideas — on how they prioritise these. One is state-based, the other trans-national. They are both household names, both politically accountable, and both with budgets in the billions of dollars.

Each suffers from what I call the ‘missing middle’. At the top, their high-level strategy is sound (in one case, I wrote it), so they know what’s valuable. At the bottom, their thousands of people are busy. Very busy. But, when they have 100 options, which should their executives choose?

We’re working with three keys, in turn.

First, non-negotiability. It’s mostly easy to select the non-negotiables: those political masters have promised, or that are essential enablers of their strategy. The next two keys enable you to select in or out what remains.

The next key is reversibility. This means filtering IN those which are beyond a point of no return: for policy reasons, sunk costs, or because significant ROI is imminent.

The remainder is then subject to the third key: optionality. This is an assessment of “4Ds”, simultaneously conducted to allow trade-offs to be visible:

• Don’t do it: What would happen if we simply didn’t do this? Would our strategy be affected? (This is what Jobs was expert in, and following his example, Parker at Nike, too).
• Delay it: Where constraints exist (time, money, expertise), what time-shifting could occur?
• Do it differently: How could it be re-scoped to make it smaller, or more efficient? What innovations could enable us to design and deliver at twice the speed, or half the cost?
• Delegate it: Who else could do it? Or do parts of it?

What both organisations want — and what we’re building — is a disciplined way of prioritising that combines judgement with criteria, that can be replicated periodically to account for changes in the environment.

Question: How systematically are you prioritising effort? And, how willing are you to let go of great ideas?

Selling while you’re using

Have you noticed this too? When I spend 20 seconds using a Dyson hand dryer in a public bathroom, this is what I look down on.

Conspiracy theorists surmise those little images are spelling something out, but it’s way simpler. Dyson is simply taking advantage of your captured attention (without the ability to do anything else) to advertise the rest of their product range.

This is a little like restaurant menus (you order one dish, but the rest is there for you to see) and also like most retail outlets (I’m only there to buy one pair of shoes, honestly), but in Dyson’s case they don’t need you to buy the product, just use it.

(Bonus points if you knew that in the 1980s James Dyson tried to license his cyclonic vacuum technology to Hoover, who rejected it, as their vacuum bag market was worth $500m a year. Dyson now outsells Hoover 4:1 in the UK).

Question: What could you do to bring your range of services into the attention span of your customers, at the same time that they’re using your product?

Are you prepared, or under-prepared?

I facilitate a lot of meetings. And, I mean a LOT. People often ask me what my methods are, before and during a complex meeting.

So, here’s something as a little extra for 5MSM: a podcast interview I did a few weeks ago with the marvellous Leanne Hughes where for a change I answer the questions someone else asks.

You know that you’d like to click the heart below. So, please do, especially as it means a lot to me as I know you’re enjoying reading. Even better, let others know about 5MSM and spread the word about how to ask good strategic questions in your organisation - and beyond.

And, use an oblique strategy at least once this week and see you next Friday.

Andrew