Innovation Doesn't Trickle Down (It Bubbles Up)

"Why don't we get some saw teeth and put them on the front of the tank and cut through these hedges?" said the soldier to the laughter of his comrades.

It was a preposterous idea said in jest and in response to the frustration the allied soldiers felt about the dreaded bocage or hedgerows that had trapped the allied invasion of Normandy. It was a huge intelligence failure: the Allies had thought these small farm fields were bordered by thin lines of trees that could easily be passed through. In reality, the parapet like walls of the bocage were up to 12 feet high and 4 feet thick. It was perfect defensive position for the German soldiers. When the allied troops entered a field, they faced 3 sides where German machine gun teams could hide and pin down a whole platoon. Tanks were useless because, as the tank climbed the walls of the bocage it would expose its weak underbelly to enemy fire. Tank commanders don’t like doing that. ?

The Allied invasion of Europe had ground to a halt.

When Sergeant Curtis Grubb Culin III heard his colleague's joke, about the saw teeth, despite the laughter of his unit, he got curious. He pulled together a few guys from his unit and they started experimenting, welding scrap metal to the front of the tank with different saw teeth designs until they settled on the "rhino horn" four sharpened prongs in a pyramid configuration that exploded the walls of earth on contact. When General Omar Bradley, desperate for a solution to the hedgerow problem, saw how effective it was, he ordered hundreds built and installed immediately. The innovation saved countless allied lives end allowed the allies to finally escape the dreaded bocage and get the invasion of Europe back on schedule.

I have always been fascinated by this story and it had made me wonder: What would happen if Sergeant Cullin's idea had never made it to the brass? Would the allies have lost the war? The idea that a simple idea by a lowly Sergeant could turn the tide of the war fascinated me. But what I found most alarming, that idea was heard by General Bradley only because it solved an immediate and urgent problem; but what ideas get passed over or never see the light of day because there isn't a pressing need?

In fact, there were other versions of the "rhino horn" that arose from the experiments of other tank crews wrestling with the hedgerow problem, it was just that General Bradley saw Sergeant Cullin's invention first. But this story illustrates something important for leaders:

- The solutions to the problems that our companies face are obvious to our employees.

We just don't know how to get at it.

Unfortunately, this dynamic has been unearthed and unaddressed for the past 40 years: In 1980's a researcher named Sidney Yoshida, came up with a concept called the "Iceberg of Ignorance." Sidney hypothesized that senior leadership are only aware of about 4% of the problems that the organization faces where front-line employees, on the other hand, are aware of 100% of the problems. This statistic is often thrown around, heck, I throw it around quite a bit myself. But what is on the other side of that statistic is that those front-line employees are also coming up with solutions to those problems.

Innovation is a human characteristic; it is just something we do. All. The. Time.

Yet in a command-and-control organization, people are not expected to innovate, rather they are expected to conform to the innovations and ideas of those who are more senior. Often ideas that emerge from lower in the command-and-control structure, are viewed as disruptive for in command-and-control, people need to be "managed" and corralled.

Yet there are innovative organizations who have found ways to buck this trend. Take Haier, the company that owns GE Appliances, for example. They set up a system to foster innovation called the RenDanHeYi" (人单合一) Philosophy. RenDanheYi can be loosely translated as "integration of people and goals" or "the win-win model of individual-goal combination." One of the tenants of the philosophy is to provide a specific process to unearth and develop employee innovations. Haier doesn't operate like most companies with $36.1 billion in revenue, they are comprised of over 4,000 self-managing "microenterprises" each one comprised of about 20 employees and with their own P&L as well as independent decision-making power, personnel selection, and profit distribution rights. The very structure of Haier bucks the typical behemoth like command-and-control structure of companies of similar size. Secondly, they have support and process for idea generation, testing, funding, and implementation. The folks who come up with the idea, share in the compensation that results. This way, the command-and-control structures that hinder ideas are not as present at Haier. More importantly, Haier has created structures that support ideas at each step.

But the transformation to this type of structure requires a fundamental shift in thinking. As we transition away from command-and-control to what is next, the natural assumption will be that we can do so using the same tools that command-and-control has provided. Command-and-control leaders who recognize that leadership is an emergent property that "bubbles up" will be tempted to look for or identify emergent leadership in action and propagate the good ideas they recognize.

This will fail.

Our experience as command-and-control leaders teaches us the false understanding that we as leaders know best and are bestowed with the responsibility to decide which is valuable and which is not.

The reality is that leadership, like culture, is an emergent property and is constantly bubbling up.

This raises an important question about the Iceberg of Ignorance: Does the C-suite actually need to know about 100% of the problems? That's impossible for a large organization, heck, it is impossible for a small organization. The gap between the 4% of problems that leadership is aware of and the 100% that front employees see isn't actually the core issue. The Iceberg of Ignorance is only a problem when senior leadership tries to control or set rigid strategic goals without accounting for that which they cannot see and understand.

In fact, freeing the emergent nature of leadership and innovation is the key to addressing the Iceberg of Ignorance.

This was particularly evident with one organization I worked with; they had an outrageously high turnover rate with their most junior technicians and were convinced that it was because they were not paying them enough. Leadership was planning an expensive compensation increase to solve the problem. In actuality, the standards for the entry level technicians to be promoted, was confusing and arduous. People were leaving because there were limited opportunities for advancement. Yet a few managers I encountered had recognized this dynamic and had instituted their own training programs that broke down the steps necessary for promotion into bite sized lessons delivered over the course of several months. This process of continuous learning provided a clear path to promotion and was a demonstration of the firms core values. Those groups had no turnover issues. In this case, the managers who understood the problem and developed workable solutions made up of around 2% of managers firmwide. What the organization needed wasn't a costly compensation fix, but rather systems to identify and spread these kinds of innovative solutions throughout the organization.

Adaptive leaders looking to escape the dictates of command-and-control will need to experiment and iterate. I recommend Strategic Doing, an action-oriented approach to collaborative strategy and project management, designed for complex environments where traditional planning methods may fall short. It emphasizes rapid prototyping, continuous learning, and adaptive execution through short, iterative cycles of identifying opportunities, aligning resources, and taking concrete actions. More importantly teams deploying Strategic Doing will learn the game by playing it and will experience leadership in an altogether different manner.

This will not be an easy transition, but make no mistake, the status quo is not a viable option. Humanity has entered a new age of rapid technological development, opportunity, disruption and peril. The efficacy of command-and-control structures has been eroding for decades. The leadership methods we have grown up with are no longer serving us. Leaders who will win the game in the years ahead are the ones who can harness the greatness hidden in plain sight that resides throughout all organizations.

The truth is that we all have 'saw teeth' solutions that are sitting unnoticed within our organizations. Despite our urgent need for innovation, they are ignored, simply because we haven't created the space for them to emerge.

There is a bright future ahead for those who have the courage, insight, and introspection to make this shift and a world of pain for those who continue on the same path. ?

Which will you choose?

I am sure that y'all have seen innovations bubble up from unexpected places in your organization? I'd be curious to hear your stories in the comments.