THE INNOVATING MIND

Anyone approaching the topic of innovation needs to do so with a strong dose of humility - with the realisation that the very act of trying to understand innovation is anything but innovative. Attempting a blueprint for innovation is a priori an antithetical position - to do thus is to immediately call upon the past and is therefore by derivation a reductive process. Steve Jobs made the point that you cannot 'connect the dots looking forward' but only 'backwards'. Innovation is what we might call a known unknown. We can all learn to copy best practices but the degree to which - if at all - innovation can be learned is altogether up for debate. Contending with our ineptitude our language and practice invariably changes from innovation to the realm of techniques - the stuff that has spawned entire industries. The inclination towards techniques is altogether a delusional (often deceitful) attempt at innovation. Unimaginative and misunderstanding innovation as an activity as opposed a life force - as practical as opposed transcendent.

Innovation is somewhat mystical - certainly adding to its allure and enigma - and most attempts at unravelling genius are premised on simple storytelling as opposed the inner workings of brain and the mind, separately. We can at best only approach the subject in a circuitous and proximate fashion - much description but little in the way of explanation. Books that deal with the innovative genius attributed to Jobs, Bezos, Musk et al, generally do so by anecdote and riveting narrative - ideas are after all spontaneous; even automatic. Valuably so, such books surface an innovator disposition and motivation, character traits and a thread of first-principles, codified ex post facto, as well as clarifying environmental influences and interplay. Things that may be modelled - in order to eventually reorder the way we think and contemplate the world. Innovation should be seen less as a binary construct but rather as a continuum. If so then progress is within all of our grasp. The brain (if not the mind) is often described in terms of its 'neuroplasticity' i.e. 'the ability of the nervous system to change its activity in response to intrinsic or extrinsic stimuli by reorganising its structure, functions or connections. Implicit is both a promise and a warning - the promise of progress but the warning of limitation. That said innovation needs to be viewed from both an individual and a communal (including organisational) perspective i.e. in order to improve the whole it is a requirement that the subsystems be optimised.

Humans are memetic and the minute ideas are transmitted to paper it is less innovation than mimicry that is encouraged. There is little harm in a dollop of inspiration and a few best practices - incrementalism can derive progress and progress is perhaps innovation in itself. What I do offer up is a motley aggregate of thoughts and ideas that I have attempted to live by over the years and that I think have served me well. Outside of the flash of brilliance typified by the startup i.e. innovation as a phenomenon, we must try and tackle innovation on an epiphenomenal basis i.e. innovation broadly as a function of business idea/ solution, operating environment and culture, leadership attitude, ambition/ vision, purpose and mission, connectedness and business practice and routine. We must remember that it is performance and then success that is sought - innovation is valuable to the extent that it can be commercialised and so feed such success, eventually. The ideas presented here whilst presenting as random will provide some framework within which to nurture ideas and creativity - a direction to which one should commit as opposed precise coordinates. Whilst presented as analogue, it is in their collectivity that a dynamism is achieved. Despite the hype, success is hardly the function of a silver bullet - rather it is circular in nature and accretive. What we need to do is work to make the circle bigger - to resist the smallness of mind. GK Chesterton noted: "A bullet is quite as round as the world, but it is not the world ... There is such a thing as a narrow universality; there is such a thing as a small cramped eternity".

Whilst the document is informed by some logic you will observe that I have not agonised about reordering the document to be perfectly logical in terms of the enumeration of individual 'points'. Such intentionality or linearity is far too antithetical for the liberality of thought and mind to which one needs submit in order to be freed from compensatory factors that retard any innovation orientation - life sapping 'organisation', cast-in-concrete meetings with strict agendas and the need to 'control' being three of such compensatory factors. We need to learn first and then seek to understand; and then copy. Not copy first, because then you will never learn - a hack good for temporal success only. You will observe that certain items may have been aggregated - you will have to trust my mental flow and the particularity that I do see in listing items separately.

Question: How do you know if you are not an innovative organisation? Chances are you a. compensate for incompetence with ‘organisation’ and cast-in-stone routines b. compensate for innovation by a focus on efficiency. You probably also talk about the 'basics' more than you should. PS: If the basics are your competitive advantage and speak to your core then I suppose I could tolerate the term.

“The best reason for the revival of philosophy is that unless a man has a philosophy certain horrible things will happen to him. He will be practical; he will be progressive; he will cultivate efficiency” – GK Chesterton

Rule number 1 (a priori): You may be the leader but this does not make you ‘The Man’ – the ideas person, the creative, the innovator; no amount of study (academia) will make you ‘The Man’. Disabuse yourself of this notion immediately. Find the ‘Michael Jordan’s’ within your ranks, step aside and let them go – this perhaps is your calling i.e. to be a collaborative witness and to design the context within which the real ‘superstars’ will shine. And in so doing becoming a superstar yourself. Absent the Michael Jordan celebrity, but having optimised/ powered the eco-system to derive a superposition – minus the competitiveness and rancour typical of organisation and hierarchy. The apogee of humility must be understanding of the greatness of others ahead of your ability. Depending on the game being played, vicariously, you must come to understand your role. The idea should always be for every individual to become their best - value is largely accretive and even the 'silver bullet' innovation is good for only a day or so. The silver bullet wrapped up in an innovation stack? Now that's altogether something else!

“Humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less” – CS Lewis

“Humility isn’t denying your strengths; it’s being honest about your weaknesses” – Rick Warren

1. Innovation (and invention) is about an attitude – it is not a programme i.e. innovation cannot be attained apart from the ‘way you do business’ everyday

• An attitude to life at large – a predisposition that embraces the upside of life; the possibilities
• About harnessing luck – more importantly a lucky attitude (humility, curiosity, optimism)
• ‘This is a time of renaissance’ - embrace such a spirit. Unless failure is inevitable of course
• The attitude of the leader very often is transmitted to the business – in a transubstantiation of sorts. If a leader is stressing ‘innovation’ in language but will not renovate at the personal level or in demonstration then all the remonstration is worthless. I am talking about and not your Line Manager

“If you are the sort of person who runs a small diner, then it’s incumbent on you to run the highest quality small diner that you possibly can … there’s way more to the space than meets the eye”. He went on: “ …. A rich microcosm; care and tending of the microcosm as a responsibility is also a great pathway to meaning; essential to human thriving” - Jordan Peterson

“The willingness to indulge in thinking that by definition is not one’s own, which is blind to experience and to the contradictions that arise when broader fields of knowledge are consulted - is a capitulation no one should ever make. It is a betrayal of our magnificent minds and of all the splendid resources our culture has prepared for their use” - Marilynne Robinson

2. Pareto is at play all of the time – it is not so much unfair as it is nature

• The 20% rule will prevail (and you may not be in the 20%) – face the truth
• You often need to defer to ‘others’ i.e. understand your role – you are perhaps or may need to be the ‘enabler’/ the collaborative witness/ the context designer/ the 'stage hand' and not the front man/ leading lady
• Stop drinking your own cool aid - be open to the idea that you may be wrong

"To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom" - Socrates

3. Your predisposition i.e. your biases and ego will stand in the way of innovation

•  Check your pride at the door – ‘pride’ being the most cardinal of sins
• The more you want to achieve the less you may want to fail. The less you will want to 'venture' out of the safe waters

“Pride is a poison so very poisonous that it not only poisons the virtues; it even poisons the other vices” – GK Chesterton

4. Leadership, management and ascension are prized but leadership is not the business – leadership is not what is commercialised

• Start seeing everyone in the ranks as a ‘hero’ i.e. people that can do something great at their level
• Everyone in the organisation must be seen as a ‘contributor’
• There is such a thing as levels of work in order to optimise structure and to get work done; level of think and idea generation should however be unencumbered
• Disabuse yourself of any hard and fast delineation between strategic roles and execution roles i.e. that innovation is the reserve of strategic roles only. There is immense opportunity to innovate at every level – gradations certainly. Even value capture (as opposed value creation) is strategically an innovation imperative

5. Look to create ‘community’ as opposed to simple ‘teams’ – worse as opposed to creating tribes

• Teams cannot be spoken into existence. Ensure a vision and a mission that ‘forces/ compels' synthesis within team and across teams – communities imbibe inclusion and dependency whereas tribes are premised upon exclusion
• Establish dependencies at the nucleus e.g. customer obsession, that drives cooperation through the organisation to a single end

 6. Go deep in terms of establishing value – establish a priori principles as innovation will be attained as a confluence of your larger business model. Innovation is not a programme. Must’s:

• Codify how value is delivered – define the value levers at each iteration of the customer interaction/ journey. Depth encompasses getting down to the individual connections in an effort to eke out value - depth is about precision. Every role should be able to succinctly (in less than 5 minutes) describe the end-to-end value eco-system and larger value platform and how specifically they (individually) interact with the value process – in the alternate catatonia or value destruction
• Specificity improves resolution i.e. what precisely are we doing and what does customer experience actually mean?
• Increase ‘reward’ and reduce ‘friction’ – understand pain points
• ‘Create value’ as well as ‘capture value’ i.e. embrace effectiveness as well as efficiency; be ambidextrous, keeping one hand on maximising utility of the current asset/ s and the other stretching to future value streams
• Depth and specificity enables ex post facto analysis i.e. analysis beyond the surface. In the absence of specificity and depth in the model, conversations will remain limited, crass and therefore spiritually sapping. ‘Prosaic’ environments – those that embrace hugely simplified monetisation models - are defined by backlash i.e. persecution and pillorying of the people and a blame culture when things are not going according to plan. Because conversations lack width as well as depth
• Specificity also allows for more finite problem solving. And every problem is an open goal begging to be solved - nature abhors a vacuum. A problem solved is an attempt at innovation.
• Specificity does not run counter to the 'big picture' - we have got to learn to move along the continuum depending upon the needs case

NB: You can only analyse (re-member) what you have synthesised upfront. It is once the synthesising is done (the act of bringing things together) that analysis (the act of pulling things apart) can take place. Synthesis requires imagination upfront.

"You don't really want to say "the tree," you want to say "the sycamore".... We seem to be able to relate to detail. We seem to have an appetite for it" - Leonard Cohen

“all the interesting people I know are people whose speech and thinking has a great deal of specificity to it” - Malcolm Gladwell

7. Embrace the Socratic method i.e. questioning with accountability

• Ask 'why' 5 times - in order to move from proximate discussions to causal discussions. Attempt to understand the opportunities that lie upstream of a problem
• Try to establish causal as opposed proximate associations - innovate at the causal level
• Be sceptical. The upside of dissent and a divergence in thinking and even in attitude is to be found in improved decision making. The activist Jane Jacobs was described in the documentary Citizen Jane: Battle for the City that paid homage to her efforts to save historic New York City during the 1960’s as someone who had ‘a willingness to be sceptical’; someone with ‘a willingness to doubt the received wisdom’
• Hold individuals accountable for ‘input’ factors as opposed just output – results/ outcomes must be designed for
• The aim is to arrive at a 'critical think' capacity/ capability - ask questions that provoke, explore, investigate, provoke, stimulate and engage

8. Inspire people through inclusion and the promotion of ‘new’ conversations

• Redefine meeting structures and content – look for inclusion from a range of domains – ensure storytelling and the use of metaphor (including visual) and analogy. See a discontinuous learning path as the lodging of ideas and concepts into peoples memory. When faced with a business the brain and mind will be immediately triggered to make connections - this is what innovation is ultimately about. "Distant analogies or distant information can facilitate creative conjunctions". When viewed in the context of the business problem or the business ambition (which should present as a challenge) storytelling can be an amazing trigger.
• Seek multiple opinions/ perspectives as opposed agreement - get out of selling/ convincing mode and start listening
• Embrace a discontinuity of learning – a discursive style i.e. outside of domain experiences; develop ‘range’
• New conversations will arise in themselves from a commitment to innovation i.e. a continuous stretching for the new as opposed only capitalising on the rote
• Listen attentively and hear what for responses, which will then give way to suggestions and new associative channels - this is dialogue and not monologue
• See these opportunities as the opportunity to create 'idea landscapes' (ref. Wilma Koutstaal/ Jonathan Binks)
• See the inclusion of associated data sets (industry articles, movies, biographies etc.) as 'fodder/ grist' for pre-emptive problem solving - the connections will form on using recollection when business problems/ opportunities present. To derive novel thought you've often got to embrace a circuitous path. A reminder that the true innovators (perhaps inventors also) of the past (Michelangelo, Da Vinci etc.) where polymaths i.e. having wide knowledge and interest in a wide range of subjects
• Don't hold conversations over to conferences and strategic conversations only i.e. to innovation techniques such as brainstorming and ideation sessions. This is often too little, too late, often gimmicky and therefore unbelievable. Such techniques need are valuable but only to the extent that they permeate the fabric of organisation - are the so-called lived experience. See every engagement as an opportunity to entrench the promise implicit in these techniques

“… the way to excel is by sampling widely, gaining a breadth of experiences, taking detours, experimenting relentlessly, juggling many interests” (ref. Range by David Epstein)

"We have vast amounts of information stored and potentially available in our memory that is not accessible until it is reactivated through an environmental, emotional, physiological or other triggers" - Wilma Koutstaal/ Jonathan Binks

"Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity" - Simone Weil

9. Ask ‘why are you coming to work today?’ – create a pressure for change whilst maintaining an ‘innovation’ disposition 

• Mantra - 'If things are going to change something is going to have to change'
• What is it that you are doing today that is different to yesterday? - why is it logical to expect a different/ improved outcome today?

"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organise and measure the best of our energies and skills ..." - John F Kennedy

10. Maintain an innovation dashboard i.e. a 'log' mechanism to separate out mere maintenance/ repetitive work from innovation – necessary work versus competitive work. Results do not qualify as innovative work, except to substantiate the outcome from innovation, including tweaks and enhancements at operational, tactical or strategic levels

• Review monthly to gain perspective
• Necessary work will always consume 50% - 90% of capacity depending on ‘level of work’/ nature of job but competitive work should always be expected of every role

11. Don’t copy yesterday’s playbook – it is by definition ‘old’

• Fight the urge to do what already has been done - that which is comfortable. Understand the need to be efficient in calling on experiences e.g. and old e-mail for inspiration as altogether and the need to vivify the business in starting a brand new conversation. Understand the trade-off
• Efficiency may be an enemy of innovation and invention
• Define whether you are enjoying a momentum or actually ‘performing’ i.e. are you still ‘peddling’ or is the bicycle merely freewheeling out of an energy source initiated in the past?
• Lean in to curiosity

PS: momentum e.g. ‘preferential attachment’ is a desirable outcome of strategy and is not to be undermined. Nature however teaches of entropy and regression to the mean, unless 'restarts' are initiated iteratively/ perennially. You are also only a part of a national/ international marketplace that is continuously shifting

12. Invite participation from throughout the Organisation

• You may be Captain America but to win this fight you need a team more akin to the Avengers – then the X-Men. “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so” - Mark Twain
• Have continuous variegated conversations across all levels of the organisation - don't isolate your 'mind or brain' from the environment i.e. from the opportunity to impact your 'thinking'. It is at the intersection of mind, brain and environment that innovation arrises
• Cooperation is our ‘superpower’- competition is often divisive. And there does not have to be a trade-off between cooperation and speed. Not where cooperation is 'in the blood', as opposed programmatic; not where cooperation is informally rooted in the organisation
• The word 'invite' suggests rhetoric or the use of language – invite is rather a practicable concept and derivative of a clarity of purpose and mission, a single mindedness of effort and behaviour

"Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man ... It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition is gone, pride is gone" - CS Lewis

"We generate creative ideas not only individually but also collectively - as teams or in group - based on our shared direct and indirect experiences. We elaborate on each other's ideas; one idea dovetails with another as we prompt and prod each other's thinking" -

 13. Encourage first-time failure - at least testing

• Create an environment where the best idea wins – encourage intellectual honesty and intellectual debate
• Adopt a 'lean mindset' of test, iterate, tweak/ pivot etc. - allows the opportunity (space) for and the endorsement of 'differential' thinking. Provides the opportunity for 'fliers' to find purpose and meaning thereby entrenching an innovative culture/ flywheel
• Remember that 'perfect is the enemy of good'. Strive for progress and not perfection - it is through iteration that performance will be achieved as opposed the 'silver bullet'
• Embrace spontaneity - as an element of culture but which is not antithetical to control and construct
• Separate between uncertainty and risk - uncertainties should be unpicked to obtain improved perspective - more data and intel to inform your decision; the level of risk needs to be estimated in deducing whether to proceed or not. Balance the unknown with the likely upside from moving faster than otherwise
• Don't excruciate about forecasts (and other fake work) for 'blue ocean' developments

PS: Real failure is ‘existential’ failure continuously deferred by timidity and modesty and indeed fear. Encourage all staff to be ‘watchers on the wall’ – to speak truth and to speak truth to power.

 14. Position yourself to glean the right insights – discernment perhaps i.e. the ability to see what is not there

• Learn more and learn wide. More data leads to more information and then knowledge and then insight and then an opportunity for discernment i.e. alongside intuition and humility - the chance at wisdom (NB: "knowledge is incremental, like a stairway: it naturally progresses" - Peter Kreeft) See information as grist - without information and insight the brain will have less to work with to activate the connections required to be effective - to problem solve
• Investigate outside of your domain – you want a range of learnings. Read deep in order to think deep – abandon ‘news reel’ type updates that may only explain proximate and not causal elements (NB: News/ being informed is not in itself valuable - you must be able to synthesise across domains to derive utility)
• Apprentice your mind to the great minds of the past. Befriend wonder and wisdom
• Position the organisation for spontaneity - for 'flow'. Encourage ongoing conversation, both formal and informal; create team around business problems. It is in conversation and engagement that we build on the ideas of others

15. Appreciate diversity – differently opinionated/ developed individuals both in terms of expression and intellect and outlook

• Protect the outliers and the skeptics – dissent may be your best friend but ease/ comfort your enemy
• Look for and appreciate the 'truth tellers'
• Invite participation to board meetings/ executive meetings / business unit meetings from a cross-section of staff and demographics – by invite basis and revolving 'x' number of seats periodically. These are hopefully the Michael Jordan’s in the ranks i.e. they don't hold the positions but are natural talents
• Ask yourself whether you have felt uncomfortable recently – why not? Are you surrounded by sycophants and acolyte. Don't misconstrue dissent for disloyalty
• Understand the requirement to move along the control: release continuum

Foxes “relied, for their predictions, on diverse sources of information”. Further “the best of them shared a self-deprecating style of thinking that elevated no thought above criticism”. Hedgehogs on the other hand, “shunned self-deprecation” and “became prisoners of their preconceptions, trapped in cycles of self-congratulation” - Isaiah Berlin

16. Invite originality

• Stop crediting conformity and conviviality and deference – understand your people on a ‘value-add’ paradigm
• Create a ‘safe zone’ for feedback and participation – simply improve the breadth and depth of conversations. Embrace informal conversations

PS: prodigies don’t generally go anywhere as their merely copycat the ‘master’ – don’t reward convention

17. Look to build 'power networks' and decentralise control – look to distribute power and responsibility

• Starfish versus Spider locus of control - the starfish has a decentralised locus of control and will 're-form' where other organisations will not survive mortal injury
• Give employees sufficient 'surface area' to feel that they jobs are meaningful and that they have some ambit of responsibility - and goals are not responsibilities. Where goals are somewhat directive responsibilities capture the notion of autonomy and the requirement to think independently in order to derive solutions

18. Innovation is a matter of culture and context i.e. it is not a programme, apart from the act/ demonstration of business

• Watch out (be sensitive to) for symbols/ rituals/ conventions/ practices that stifle innovation - “Decades later, an astronaut who flew on the space shuttle, both before and after Challenger, …. recounted what the “In God We Trust, All Others Bring Data” plaque had meant to him: “Between the lines it suggested that, ‘We’re not interested in your opinion on things. If you have data, we’ll listen, but your opinion is not required here’” - David Epstein
• "... our environments extend in both time and space, encompassing symbolic and social interactions in all their rich complexity. The things we choose to see and do, the places we go, the people we know and return to, the tools we use, what we listen and attend to, what we ignore and what we are drawn to - these all dynamically inform and form our environments" - Wilma Koutstaal/ Jonathan Binks
• Innovation activities are helpful but need to be become common cause as opposed a flash-in-the-pan once a year inclusion for the conference and strategy session - nobody is going to believe the gesture. Culture is strong to the extent that it is believable and can be trusted

19. Hire smarter than you – remembering that you may very well be the boss but perhaps are not a part of the 20%

• Then provide meaningful work and enable and empower everyone to become their best
• Place a premium on talent at every level of the organisation
• Release 'surface area' to talent to maintain engagement and meaning and impact on the outcomes of the business - depth and specificity below such 'area' is assumed

20. Timing is vital when trying to introduce something ‘new’

• Learn to “Drop in and step away” when you are looking to introduce a new concept to the business – allowing time to settle as opposed to forcing. Then drop in and step away again, allowing your concept to ‘marinate’ and your storytelling and knitting-in with the purpose to improve. Most ideas are rejected not so much that they are bad ideas but because the 'sponsor' does not quite understand the innovation. As your social cache improves so will your ability to get things moving faster and obviate the need to be as deliberate around change
• This time allows for the development of your own ideas and the checking of biases whilst allowing the organisation to contend with the idea as well as to ‘riff’ on your idea
• You would have done a good job when your sponsor eventually forgets whose idea it was in the first place – often thinking it was his

PS: I often ask interested individuals to ‘think with me’ when I am considering an idea – in so doing inviting them to contend with the challenge/ opportunity; also inviting participation. The positing of challenges/ problems is vital to stimulate solutions - let others share the load. They will call on their disparate experiences and mental models. It is after all the 'question' that precipitates thought and provides answers

21. Maintain the customer as central to innovation (the sine qua non – that which is essential) and look to create to create a fungible mechanism for both driving innovation as well as deducing innovation/ progress

• Embody empathy as core to this end - empathy is difficult because it is complex; so a commitment to empathy in everything that you do will be your competitive advantage; empathy is an animating force allowing 'permissions' for moments as well as serendipity in the process of developing products and experiences and in the delivery of service
• Create periodic checkpoints to establish developments (between checkpoints) on the following a priori principles/ paradigms namely, value creation and value capture, reward increase and friction reduction
• Maintain a score card in this respect e.g. if you had 10 excitement factors (per the KANO model) previously then you ask to what extent have you added additional excitement factors with certain of the previous 10 factors now having been reduced to only performance or even basic attributes; maintain a count of number of friction points versus rewards factors to derive a reward: friction index – suffice to say that you should not be in a deficit PS: the 'scorecard' is merely a way of being deliberate in terms of driving innovation on an iterative/ cyclical basis - a means to controlling the creative process - here opening up the space for informal communication may be a spontaneous means to innovation - a means of releasing creativity to the automatic
• Define the problems that you are trying to solve for. The problems become goals and problems that are unfulfilled become 'open goals'. Positing the problem (open goals) allows for 'connections' as more data and information is fed into the environment - automatically/ mystically

“The worst consequence of Imperialism or Colonialism, the Teacher comes to realise, is that subject people tend to copy their masters” - Malcolm Muggeridge

22. The hallmark of originality is rejecting the default and exploring whether a better option exists

• Beware the option that pleases, but may not satisfy
• Curiosity is a great starting point – as is ‘dissatisfaction’ with the status quo
• Put yourself in positions where you can be stressed and where there may be a price to be pay – embrace ‘creative desperation’ i.e. 'stick your neck out'
• Become more of a sceptic. Scepticism is not the anthesis of optimism. The upside of dissent and a divergence in thinking and even in attitude is to be found in improved decision making. The activist Jane Jacobs was described as someone who had ‘a willingness to be sceptical’; someone with ‘a willingness to doubt the received wisdom’

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man” – George Bernard Shaw

23. Innovate in good times as you do when the chips are down

• Remember that success is not a ‘great teacher’
• Always be able to articulate (give account) for why the going is 'good' - describe performance apart from market impetus/ momentum
• Separate out success from performance - these are separate issues. Performance is what you should look to measure and pertains to what you are actually doing. Success will be the entailment of such performance. If the performance is brilliant in-market, the success is very often outsized. See performance as personal; hold success more loosely

“Don’t aim at success – the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself ….” - Viktor Frankl

24. You (as separate from the organisation)

• Have got to have some passion or belief in what you are doing? – this is more than ascendancy e.g. a professor going into management; this is about more than accolades. “One of the huge mistakes that people make is that they try to force an interest upon themselves” – Jeff Bezos
• Adopt a learning mindset – do you stagnate if your company does not do ‘it’ for you? It’s not about the credential but the actual learning as the embodiment
• Be curios – books; podcasts etc. – “we do not learn in a straight line” – we assimilate and synthesise and innovate on the basis of association and innovation is about making connections. Learn wide and learn deep. News and social media does not qualify - submission and immersion is required. 'Knowing of something is not the same as knowing something'
• Be a lifelong learner – “beyond the paradox of expertise”- “stay humble and stay foolish” – “remain an amateur”
• Step away from the business perennially – allow yourself moments to get bored
• Slow down - time is your friend. “Now steady. You are missing this in your prosaic dash past experience, and it is worth not missing” - Thomas Howard
• Understand your skill set and role - establish complementary skills to optimise the organisation e.g. Mark Zuckerberg role versus Sheryl Sandberg differential roles
• It is your job to change and inspire the conversation – then find a language; then articulate – a. you must inspire people (be interesting but most of all interested) PS: inspired people are productive b. 7 x 7 rule i.e. to effect change something must be repeated 7 times – more importantly must be said in 7 different ways. Even this is a form of creative desperation, forcing you to constructively look for solutions c. Stop being boring and rote - be interesting but more importantly interested d. same old, same old won’t cut it – your life will change in a day
• Embrace luck – at least a lucky attitude i.e. humility, curiosity, optimism
• Make pease with ambiguity - "The test of first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing thoughts in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function" - F. Scott Fitzgerald
• “The problem with the world is that the smart are doubtful, while the stupid are confident” – embrace vulnerability
• “Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd” – be vulnerable
• Have I been uncomfortably surprised recently?
• Have I been asked a difficult or an interesting question recently?
• Be articulate and a master storyteller - as a means to opening minds and inspiring
• Aim to be a critical thinker - critical thinking is not intelligence; it is a collection of cognitive skills that allows one to think rationally in a goal-orientated fashion and a disposition to use the skills when appropriate; critical thinkers are amiable and skeptics; they are flexible thinkers who require evidence to support their beliefs and recognise fallacious attempts to persuade them; critical thinking means overcoming cognitive biases. This end ask questions that explore, investigate, probe, provoke, stimulate and engage

PS to self: is your environment really forward thinking/ innovative? Really?

25. The mindset is to move from 0 – 1; 1 + 1 = 3

• Move from horizontal to vertical
• Balance improving what we have versus thinking afresh/ leveraging, versus creating new value. Being ambidextrous i.e. holding on to the 'now' with one hand whilst reaching for the 'future' with the other
• Are we ‘value creators’ versus ‘value extractors’ versus ‘value distributors’?
• Look for multiple solutions to problems

26. Have a North Star disposition

• Embrace something grandiose or else you will be usurped by something as trivial as efficiencies and productivities and consistency – now consistency is important but only in the pursuit of some higher calling; some higher ambition; or else we are wasting the human capacity – your first activity is ensuring a “higher mindset; deep thinking and thoughtfulness”
• Your strategic ambitions are the launch pad for innovation – if you only mean to put a man in the tree then you only need stretch your faculties that far; if you need to get a man to the moon then that is an altogether different proposition perhaps requiring a complete restart or pivot; a renewal of skills and personal perhaps?
• In the absence of that ‘something’ grandiose what we will experience is a race to the bottom i.e. a political environment; clutter; ‘talking about people as opposed talking to people’ (ref. Brene Brown) as the default position. ‘Nature abhors a vacuum’ per Aristotle. The job of the leader is to create Organisational ‘content’ and ‘grist’, above the regular personality tropes
• Play the long game i.e. with an understanding of a future state - everyone in the business should understand that they are a part of a 'hero's journey'. Per Jeff Bezos it is 'still day 1'. We must celebrate but never 'make camp'
• There is no disjuncture in the infinite game i.e. between long term imperatives and shorter term objectives and activities. Every objective must immediately be configured and concretised to the extent to which it ties in with the vision, mission and purpose - failing which a discontinuity will be felt aka confusion. You need to develop 'storytelling' and narrative within such storytelling as a competitive advantage.
• Invest in accordance with your vision/ ambition - “But Xerxes failed, as is the habit of hedgehogs, to establish a proper relationship between his ends and his means. Because ends exist only in the imagination, they can be infinite: a throne on the moon, perhaps, with a great view. Means, though are stubbornly finite …. Ends and means have to connect if anything is to happen. They’re never however interchangeable” - John Lewis Geddes

“I strongly believe that missionaries make better products. They care more. For a missionary it’s not just about the business….that’s not why you do it. You do it because you have something meaningful that motivates you” – Jeff Bezos

PS: If there is at all any conflict/ tension between big picture thinking/ envisioning/ abstraction and specificity it would be of the positive type. We need to comfortably be able to move along the abstract: specificity continuum in order to optimise our creativity and problem-solving abilities - each should reinforce the other. Customers generally only appreciate value in the 'small data' points - they hardly ever engage in the vision except to the extent to which the small elucidates the vision

27. We work to “be less bad, than good” - lets work to be 'good'

• We look to keep pace with the competition as opposed to being optimal; we are not working to be disruptive but just to satisfy a minimum requirement – we follow the competition as opposed to preparing to be disruptive
• Imagine the upside from a 'good' disposition

"But to be less bad is to accept things as they are, to believe that poorly designed, dishonourable, destructive systems are the best humans can do. This is the ultimate failure of the "be less bad" approach: a failure of the imagination. From our perspective, this is a depressing vision of our species' role in the world" - Michael Braungart/ William McDonough

28. We like lies and good news – “we are more likely to grill a heretic than a fan”

• If you do not contend with the truth you find no pressure to find insights

PS: I have found in my experience that we are more likely than not to spend time picking apart the +2% revenue plan than we do the +20% revenue plan, albeit that the 20% is wholly unreasonable and unsubstantiated. A 'never let the truth get in the way of a good story' disposition (ref. Mark Twain)

 29. We like answers neatly packaged – we like models and ROI. Disabuse yourself of such an orientation/ the buttoned-up business case

• We should be crediting those who have questions because questions precipitate answers (the antecedent) – answers from others
• Jettison the ‘don’t give me problems, give me solutions’ approach – this is not a helpful disposition as it shuts down the conflict and the dissent that is necessary within business
• Don't agonise over forecasts for 'blue ocean' developments. This is often fake-work. Rather use 'prose' to describe the future state and to test proposition

30. Seek to understand problems fully i.e. don’t go straight into solution mode; in addition look for multiple alternatives

• Don’t only understand the proximate causes
• Ask why, one more time, to get to ‘causality’
• Jettison 'fake-work' post mortem's that only describe but do little in the way of explanation - reconcile with truth

 “A problem well stated is a problem half solved” – Charles Kettering

“A problem well stated is a chance to reveal a new opportunity”

"It isn't that they can't see the solution. It's that they can't see the problem" - GK Chesterton

31. What is your title really?

• The word manager does not capture the essence of the work before us! Does your title capture the ‘novelty’ or ‘nuance’ of your role as an innovation role?
• All jobs should be described by a suffix to describe the nature of the value add of your job – can you restate your role outside of your title in value adding terms e.g. 'happiness officer'

32. Establish ‘outside in’ as well as ‘inside out’ innovation

• A Customer innovation model that preempts and precipitates innovation ala Moore’s Law (for tech) is an example of an ‘inside out’ innovation flywheel/ momentum engine e.g. a count of rewards in your delivery model perennially should agitate for change as what were rewards some time back are not anymore appreciated by customers anymore
• Partnerships, media, industry surveys, experts, academia etc. may be example of ‘outside in’ innovation i.e. where the environment - including external to your expertise - to which you are plugged in forces change upon you
• Both 'inside out' and 'outside in' could be seen as both deliberate and spontaneous drivers of ideas/ thoughts and complementary - the aim is always to be deliberate first but then such intent to feed spontaneity in a closed value loop

33. Look to copy best-in-class within industry, sector, category - hopefully as a wellspring for inspiration and as a means to improve craft, modelling, storytelling etc. (NB: The truth is there is very little real innovation, including in Silicon Valley - mostly iteration)

• Walk through the experiences and assets often (online, digital and otherwise) of industry/ sector/ category leaders
• Become a customer i.e. get onto their mailing lists
• Plug-in to best-in-class/ next-gen media platforms/ aggregators including subscription options
• Take inspiration from adjacent industries, as well, for synthesis into your environment - understand sectors that generally lead change and how typically change is cascaded over time, remembering that technology 'leaps'. The idea is not to fret but to learn - not just the 'thing' but the first principles. “The man who begins to think without the proper first principles goes mad, the man who begins to think at the wrong end” - GK Chesterton
• Create time for such market scanning and benchmarking

“For we dare not class ourselves with those who commend themselves. But they, measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise” (2 Corinthians 10v12).

34. Establish the right partnerships/ connections

• Vertically integrate the best ‘minds’ into your business – at least notionally
• Their innovation will become your ‘test bed’/ utility
• Partnerships and then our human superpower, ‘cooperation’ (ref. Scott Galloway) will lead to a 1 + 1 = 3 return/ upside

“If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas” – George Bernard Shaw

35. Maintain an innovation dashboard as a mechanism for evaluating true innovation from simple maintenance

• For review monthly but encourage individuals to populate weekly

PS: If there is nothing to add then the reality is that you have not been innovative

36. Engage Coffee sessions to ‘drop’ the agenda and ‘listen’ – quarterly.

• The question to ask is: “Where have I been not listening and what would you like to tell me ?”

37. Communicate the organisational journey often

• Communicate across the organisation on an all-hands basis and directly from the top
• Communicate progress and the relationship between inputs at one end and outcomes at the other
• Communicate change initiatives
• Reiterate purpose and mission
• Show how activities align to the North Star – there is harmony that needs to be appreciated
• Don’t dumb things down or attempt to parse information – “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler” – Albert Einstein

38. Watch your language

• People automatically align their actions, belief systems to merge with the perception they have formulated of you e.g. a common mistake far too may leaders make? They talk about 'back to basics', which is fundamentality different an endeavour as 'return to the core'. Returning to the core is about reconnecting with your essence; to 'know thyself' and the reason for your existence; about reconnecting with your proposition.
• Words capture nuance and nuance attitude and mood, so we should work (excruciate) to be particular in describing the ambition accurately
• Become a master storyteller and master your company story/ purpose and mission - 'storytelling' is non-trivial but in fact is a competitive advantage in its power to animate and inspire
• Position yourself to observe innovation and those inclined to push the envelope - then recognise 'newness' publicly
• If you want to be innovative then your your investments/ resourcing should support the notion - there is a price to entry
• Watch out (be sensitive to) for symbols/ icons/ rituals practices that stifle innovation and that may be diametrically opposed to the innovation ideal - “Decades later, an astronaut who flew on the space shuttle, both before and after Challenger, …. recounted what the “In God We Trust, All Others Bring Data” plaque had meant to him: “Between the lines it suggested that, ‘We’re not interested in your opinion on things. If you have data, we’ll listen, but your opinion is not required here’” - David Epstein

"You are the instrument" - Fred Kofmann

"The abstractions of strategy and the and the emotion of strategists can never be separated" - John Lewis Geddes