Project 52: Week 40
Gerald Doyle
Human Centered Design and Innovation: "You know, I believe it's sometimes even good to be ridiculous. Yes, much better. People forgive each other more readily and become more humble, ..." Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot
Our reflection and invitation ... (and why you need to Build a Team)
“One, state a hypothesis. Two, predict what will happen. Three, measure results. Four, assess lessons learned by comparing your predictions to actual outcomes.”
“The innovation leader’s job is to execute a disciplined experiment.”
“Organizations are not designed for innovation. Quite the contrary, they are designed for ongoing operations.”
― Vijay Govindarajan, How Stella Saved the Farm: A Tale About Making Innovation Happen
“The aspiring leader has been set up to fail. He just doesn’t recognize it yet. The first few months go well, but reality soon sets in. It is not easy for one person to create change in a large corporation. After one year, the leader feels as though he is trying to make innovation happen inside an organization that is, in every way, determined to fight his every move. The general manager of the company’s largest product line is anxious about the possibility that the innovation will cannibalize him. Marketing is uncooperative, worried about possible damage to the company’s brand if the new product fails. Manufacturing is upset that it has to schedule small, inefficient runs for the new product. Salespeople are reluctant to push a product without a track record. Human resources is unwilling to waive compensation rules to hire a few experts that the project badly needs. Finance is concerned about margin dilution. Information technology claims that the project is too small to warrant exceptions to standard systems and processes.”
“the innovator’s job cannot be to deliver a proven result; it must be to discover what is possible, that is, to learn, by converting assumptions into knowledge as quickly and inexpensively as possible.”
― Vijay Govindarajan, The Other Side of Innovation: Solving the Execution Challenge
Project 52: Week 40
WELCOME to Evans and Burnett: Build a Team
Readers of this series will know how much we value the work of Dave Evans and Bill Burnett in their teaching and writing about Designing Your Life. One of their most evocative chapters is called Build a Team.
Evans and Burnett (E&B for short) cover much ground in that chapter, resonant with articles on mentorship and MasterMind groups, among others. They touch on the many roles different kinds of people can play for us in what they call “life design.”? Through it all, they focus on the importance of interacting profoundly with others as we develop our lives and careers.
They write,
“Every great design was made great because there was a design team that brought that project, product, or building to life. Designers believe in radical collaboration because true genius is a collaborative process. We design our lives in collaboration and connection with others, because we is always stronger than I—it’s as simple as that.
“When you design your life, you are engaging in an act of co-creation. When you use design thinking, the mindset is completely different from “career development,” “strategic planning,” or even “life coaching.”
“One key difference is the role of community. If you’re the sole architect of your brilliant future, then you think the whole thing up and you heroically bring it into being—it’s all about you. Life design is about your life, but it’s not all about you—it’s all about us. When we say we can’t do this alone, we don’t just mean that we’d like to do it ourselves but we’re insufficient, so we have to go get some helpers.
What we mean is that life design is intrinsically a communal effort. When you are wayfinding a step or two at a time to build (not solve) your way forward, the process has to rely on the contribution and participation of others.
The ideas and opportunities you design are not just presented to you or fetched for you by others on your behalf—they are co-created with you in collaboration with the whole community of players you engage with in life. Whether they think of it this way or not, all the people you meet, engage, prototype, or converse with along the way are in your design community. A few particularly important people will become your core collaborators and play a crucial and ongoing part in your life design, but everyone matters. Everyone.
“Co-creation is an integral aspect of a design point of view, and it’s a key reason that design thinking works. Your life design isn’t in you; it’s in the world, where you will discover and co-create it with others. The ideas, possibilities, roles, and forms you will end up living do not exist anywhere in the universe right now as you read this. They are all waiting to be invented, and the raw material to invent them is found in the world and, most importantly, lying in wait in the hearts and minds and actions of others—many of whom you’ve not met yet.”
E&B touch on several roles that people can play in our lives, and we recommend reading their whole chapter, the whole book. One invitation in particular that they offer is to call forward a core team of co-participants in life design.? They suggest a group of 3-5 people, which they hope will gel into what they call a “community.”
For them, a community means “more than just sharing resources or hanging out now and then. It’s showing up and investing in the ongoing creation of one another’s lives. Being in that community is a great way to live, and we highly recommend it as an ongoing practice, not just when making big plans or starting new things.”
E&B say that communities are “groups of people who share most of the following attributes.”
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“What makes an effective community is not having people with the right expertise or information. What makes it work is people with the right intention and presence. It is most helpful to be with people who are trying to connect the dots and live in coherence with themselves and the world in an honest way.
“Here’s a way to test what we mean. Think of the different groups you’ve participated in over the years. You can probably think of groups in which the people were talking about ideas about their lives, and groups in which the people were actually talking about their lives. It’s the difference between commentators and participants. It’s a community of participants that you’re looking for.”
It may seem a tall order to find or call forward a group of people like one of E&B’s “communities.” However, our experience is that it is worth holding the aspiration. Suppose we find a few fellow travelers who can mutually accompany us on the creative journey of designing life and career. In that case, the benefits in insight and richness of experience can be profound.
As ever, I'm ready to be one of your fellow travelers -- and to accompany you -- on your journeys of inspiration and learning toward your career in ministry. In particular, he is keen to support you in creating your team of co-designers for life and career.
Monday, 26 August 2024
Gerald Doyle
An Additional Resource:
Vijay Govindarajan (VG) , professor of International Business at The Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth T, discusses the importance of companies designing teams to tackle innovation and the execution challenge.
Tri Cosain materials are developed with my colleague and friend of 40+ years, Scott Downs.
Copyright Scott Downs and Gerald Doyle, 2023-25
Residing in Chicago, Gerald Doyle provides ministry placement research and consulting for Career Services at the Catholic Theological Union ( Herbert Quinde and Christina Zaker ), as well as career services and job search coaching to students, families, and community members at Wolcott College Preparatory High School ( Miriam Pike, Kelly Ramos, and through the The Tyree Institute.
He advises several tech companies, including Upkey ( Amir Badr ) and GetSet Learning (Eva Prokop); he has also joined TSI - Transforming Solutions, Inc. (Dan Feely) as a consultant in their Higher Education and Career Services practice.
Connect with me on LinkedIn to learn more about:
Scott? Downs, a former investment banker, management consultant, and entrepreneur, now works as an Agile coach, seeking to call forward great leaders and organizations based on great cultures. He is a consultant with Expleo Group and is an associate of the TrustTemenos Leadership Academy.
Scott and Gerald are co-founders of Tri Cosain, a practice that weaves inspiration, learning, and career for leadership in life and work. Gerald and Scott co-authored 9 Questions for Leadership in Life and Work, Conversations of Inquiry, and several other volumes in the Tri Cosain series. Their work embraces equity, inclusion, diversity, and well-being as foundations for personal leadership.