Seven powerful lessons for building thriving teams of innovators — Part 2

Link to my original blog post

Building internal teams of innovators is not for the faint of heart. If it were easy, we wouldn’t need them, right? What I mean by that is the fact that organizations need focused efforts to grow these capabilities is a tale-tale sign that working in this way is not the status quo or the cultural norm.

This pursuit is akin to a fish swimming upstream; you are swimming against the prevailing current. It’s a predictable phenomenon because organizational structures are built to “protect the core” and to do what made them successful in the first place. The challenge is what made our organizations successful in the past is not likely what will continue to make them successful in the future. Navigating this friction becomes the role of the internal teams of innovators.

In Part 1 of this series, I covered three of the hard-learned lessons I’ve taken in over the last two decades. I reflected on how to build creative confidence, the importance of supporting our first followers, and showcasing the heroes of the work.

In this post, lesson 4 will pull in solid research and practical experience around initiating a step-wise capacity-building approach for your teams and workforce, and lesson 5 will discuss the mindset shift from all of your work occurring through your “teams” to the more inclusive “teaming.” I wish that I would have learned these lessons earlier in my own organizational leadership journey. Let’s pick up with lesson four…

#4 Create a staged approach to learning

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither is workforce capacity

A few years ago I was diving into the research about skill-building and I realized that the way in which most of us are taught HCD in a one-size-fits all kind of way, meaning that you either attend the same intro boot-camps, or you are already a seasoned expert with a network of peers and resources that others would drool over... Now I see that not only was that dichotomy wrong, it wasn’t serving our ability to build up our internal teams well at all.

The Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition (Dreyfus and Dreyfus, 1980, 1986, 1988) was created in response to the US Air Force’s desire to better understand how fighter pilots become expert fighter pilots. What came from their research was the insights to learning in a step-wise process, and if people were not supported with what was needed to get to the next stage, they would likely stall out and not have a chance to ever make it to that expert level. You don't just get there by shear will.

Framing up learning in stages will help you create programs that support the learner and their growth. L&D professionals know this well, but often those of us who are practitioners of HCD/innovation/creativity... do not. We teach what we know without a lot of thought to a viable plan of development. Think of segments of your workforce and their knowledge of these new methods in one of 5 stages of learning:

1. Novice

2. Advanced Beginner

3. Competent

4. Proficient

5. Expert

For now, we are going to focus on new learners, the novices. Novices need rules and simplicity, even if that simplicity doesn’t explain all that is possible. It’s the simplicity and the rules that allow new learners to clearly practice approaches over and over again. They need ways of making the leap from being exposed to a new tool to actually applying it in “real life.” While novices will conduct their practice the limited range of tools and approaches, this is how they will learn and get better. It’s also how they will bump into some settings where it works, and some settings where it doesn’t. These experiences will shape novice’s move to the next level of learning…and so it begins.

Learners may also excel in some parts of the methodology over others, such as progressing more quickly in their techniques for gaining insights over techniques used to prototype their ideas. I captured this phenomenon in my research on the topic and will unpack that more later. For now, just know that skills are built from the ground up in stages and that it is done in a way that the learner may not develop those skills equally across method types such as trying to gather insights vs prototype development.

This way of developing and learning is normal and it really is a fundamental way to learn that needs dynamic coaching and teaching. When you learned how to swim, did you become a master swimmer right out of the gate? Did you build your skills in the Backstroke at the same pace as you did the Butterfly stroke? Probably not. We build brick by brick, stroke by stroke and project by project.

The key take-away for now is to try to make the capability-building approach simple, accessible and right-sized for your target audience. Be thoughtful about how you build the infrastructure and programs to support this skill development appropriately. The diverse talents and passion areas will begin to show across your team and they will be able to accomplish things together they they couldn't apart. The topic of "team" leads me to my next point.

#5 Create a team of teams

You don’t need to (and shouldn’t want to) own it all in your organization

Amy Edmondson wrote a great deal on teams and what makes for a good team. She’s also written a great deal about “teaming” in a number of books that began in 2012. What’s the difference between a team and teaming? A team is a group of people who work together for a while, basically, they get to practice being a team, perhaps it’s from being a part of the same department, organization or supported by some other ongoing structure.

Teaming, on the other hand, is teamwork on-the-fly. It may involve people from very different functions, organizations, roles, etc., coming together temporarily for a shared purpose.

A great example of teaming is the diverse group of individuals who came together from around the globe in 2011 to aid in helping the 33 miners in Chile trapped deep underground for 69 days. Yes, 69 days!

NASA was one of the unusual collaborating organizations that was called upon to assist in rescuing the Chilean miners. While typically focusing on space-bound journeys, they turned their focus to the men trapped nearly half a mile underground. Why call NASA? They had been included for their expertise in many areas. One, in particular, was their decades of learning about the psychology and physiology of groups of people in confined spaces.

Once the team from NASA arrived and began working with the others at the site in their teaming effort, they found that a shared professional experience cemented their bonds and helped overcome differences in language and culture. NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC) Engineer Clint Cragg discovered that, like him, his Chilean counterpart had been a submariner, which gave them a lived experience in what it meant to share a confined space. As the work went on, the connections continued among others at the site and their minds expanded as they worked on the rescue effort. Through teaming, their creative thinking about the complex problem at hand, as well as their personal bonds and ability to work together, grew.

“We went down representing our government; we left as friends.” -Dr. J. D. Polk, chief of NASA’s space medicine division

This story resonates with me as I reflect on the work we each lead inside of our organizations and communities, often initiated through project teams or cohorts that come together temporarily. Our own reporting structure can only stretch so far to staff these project efforts and achieve the goals we have in front of us. At some point, we reach the boundary of our reporting structure and we need to lean on other mechanisms to move the work forward and create the desired change.

Teaming is a way of framing up the work outside of an org chart. While we logically know that not everything happens within the confines of an org chart, emotionally we can sometimes get so caught up on the size of our own department or span of control that we miss the two most powerful levers… our personal networks and creating a shared purpose.

Creating it, articulating it, and allowing it to evolve when and where needed in our organization will build a magical team of teams that can go much further than any one person’s “span of control” could ever reach.

These lessons in teaming and the thoughtfulness behind how you develop and support professional growth in your organization will go a long way. Have you experienced stages of learning with your internal team of innovators and/or designers? What helps or hinders their growth? How might teaming unlock how we broaden our work efforts and our relationships? I’d love to hear your feedback.

Knowing that this all occurs in context, in my next post I’ll be covering ways to navigate the reality of the organizational culture we all swim in. Follow me and I’ll keep you updated.

Be colorful, stand tall, and stay connected. -Christi