Knowing How: The Silver Bullet of Innovation

Universally, the problem with innovation doesn’t seem to be a lack of ideas. Everyone has the next new thing they are sure to be a hit. Leaders don’t want the suggestion box because of the work it might create as it overflows, but culture is the most critical factor.

Sometimes, the success of an innovation hinges on finding someone who can produce the new thing, and we reach a manufacturing constraint. Crossing that bridge would require innovation or, at the very least, an investment for the next installment of the investigation. (The government is often happy to participate, so remember to inquire.)

Traditionally, winning at innovation was a matter of knowing how to take calculated risks.

Establish a Sense of Urgency

Instead, management wanted a silver bullet. The following new thing would blow all gambles out of the water.

With experience, I can now see that there is Innovation with a capital, and innovation without it, the latter of which merely blends into people facing and solving the everyday challenges that arise when you are doing your job on the leading edge.

If you are doing that job to a level of excellence, you can no longer ask your peers for solutions, as what they are doing is different, and while informative, it’s not relevant for you.

Far earlier, when you are on a learning curve, the problem isn’t finding advice and solutions; it is knowing how to filter and sort them. As you grow and develop, information falls away. It lacks precision and specificity or is outdated. Now, advice might be helpful, but it’s ultimately up to you.

Make it Inescapably Personal

Sometimes, you may not always know it until you are the one facing the gap between what you need and what exists.

As a woman who snowmobiled, I became envious of my boyfriend’s gloves and the built-in wiper blade. After an exhaustive search, I settled for Men’s Small. The same held for women’s boots, whose temperature ratings were perfect if you rode on the back of a snowmobile but not when you were up front, with one foot beside the exhaust and the other beside the motor. There was nothing in the women’s section that covered my needs anywhere. Perhaps the sea of men I think I’m passing are other women in men’s clothing.

The same mindset works when I evaluate business processes, customer service, and organizational efficiency. There is a need, and there is what exists, with a gap in between. Not all those gaps are priorities, and some can be addressed through procurement by purchasing the necessary items. There are ones that IT and their technology can fix for you. Furthermore, someone must think of something new.

Improvement is going to take two: someone who knows the work and someone who knows how to think creatively. It’s rare to find the same two skills in one person.

Ask Your Customers

One day, I received an email from Skidoo, asking me for my ideas. There was a web page with a form. I was so flattered that I spent a day happily submitting form after form.

I entered a dozen or so ideas. Accessories I wanted, from my days in automotive OEM and my inability to pack as I wished for my week-long vacations. I touched on quality standards from my internal auditor training and my inability to make my stuff last.

All of these ideas stemmed from having reached a limitation due to my gender, the conditions and situations in which I rode, and the company with which I kept.

The only ideas that were rejected were the ones related to my gender. “Women don’t ride,” they told me. Peril be me if I ever thought I was normal or that diversity boosts innovation.

In the end, I realized there was nothing wrong with my men’s gear. Creating, supplying, and inventorying a whole new line would be far too expensive for what it’s worth. After all, they might be right, and there might be an unserved demographic waiting for your snow machines, accessories and apparel.

If market and product mismatches are occurring everywhere, the problem with the silver bullet is its novelty and ego-driven nature. The quest for the silver bullet betrays our unconscious desire to avoid work and own shiny things. The mind is the brain in action, and your brain is wired to love the bright and shiny promise of future success that comes without effort.

Dopamine

Dopamine is a brain chemical. Part of its function is to motivate, and if you let motivation carry you away, it might take all your logic with it. If you stop and feel the emotion right before you pick up the phone that you said you would ignore, you will feel the effects of dopamine. That itchy, anxious, focused anticipation of something is the unsettling thing causing you to act.

As human beings, our brain’s primary function is survival. To do that efficiently, we are frugal energy users. We don’t get up and move unless there is a good reason to do so. Dopamine fuels that good reason until we are off our butts and moving. It gets us the fruit off the tree, and it leads us to keep looking for silver bullets.

Perhaps you’ve heard of technology hijacking dopamine. Dopamine gets us going with a promise of pleasure, not a guarantee of it. It leads us to smoke, drink, and check our phones. We are hoping for that first high, that first release, that first “You’ve got mail” notification.

Unfortunately, the brain continues to function while your mind can’t help but notice the disappointment. You might not be able to get in front of the chemistry, but you can outlast it. Ignore dopamine, and it dissipates. What you don’t mind stops mattering.

Ego

While ego often gets a bad reputation, it’s not about being overly confident and thinking yourself better than others. Ego is identification with form. Our minds become entangled in ego when we confuse our worth with the value of our possessions.

Children are excellent examples of this. They have a toy and hold it so tightly it almost becomes part of them. If you take it away, you might think it was, as there will be an emotional onslaught against the loss. Tomorrow, though, or earlier, it’s forgotten, and there’s a new thing that it’s all about.

When we realize we are more than what we own, our resumes, and material possessions, we become free from the ego. Fears of being less than others, or not worthy, or what it all might mean drop away, making space for appreciating what is true.

Ego may motivate you, and if it does, it might have been those who went before you who reported that it’s lonely at the top.

If it’s all about you, there might not be many people who want to be around you. Customers included.

Denial

Embracing uncomfortable truths is not something humans do well. Jack Nicholson knows we can’t handle the truth. We shoot the messenger when it’s information we don’t want to hear. Kids stick their fingers in their ears and sing loudly, but eventually, it becomes dysfunctional.

Being unwilling to face the facts about the customer’s experience will crush every attempt at innovation. If you don’t understand the customer, you can’t begin to resolve, as in re-solve, the problems they are facing.

Quality management systems function at their best when they help managers see and understand the truth about their processes as it affects the external customer, their internal customers, and their place in the overall market. To do that, insights must be gleaned from the data.

If, instead, data is used to defend the status quo and protect existing positions, innovation will not come to light, except as a means to serve that ego-driven agenda. It’s an outlet for creativity, but maybe not the one you’d choose.

The glare from the silver bullet in your eye can prevent you from seeing the unserved customer in front of you, who is ready, willing, and able to give you money. It’s not business on your mind but status and future promises rather than what’s real and present.

If you can get your mind off of the idea of the silver bullet, you might be startled by what the data about your customers might be trying to tell you, or what the focus groups have been saying, or what you’d say, if you had to part with your cash to be the customer of your business.

Having a silver bullet in your chamber might be precisely what you have when you can reconceive your customer base, their needs and wants and what they genuinely receive, either from you or elsewhere. Your brain might be wired for laziness, but your mind knows many ways to combat that old nemesis. Now you know that having the courage to face the facts about what is not working is one more way to master your mind.

Innovation naturally follows excellence; excellence, in turn, naturally follows a market-product fit. The entire process can become a repetitive cycle that is continually focused on meeting the wants and needs of markets, employees, and stakeholders.

Think of innovation as what’s required when you are doing your thing, your way, the best you can, and your silver bullet may become perfectly obvious to you. Just don’t shoot the messenger. I invite you to download your copy of Strategic Innovation now.