It is one thing to have a novel idea, but it is a completely different task to convince decision makers to implement these ideas. You might be surprised to know how many people ask for innovation, but are not willing to try something new. Most people, and rightfully so, cherish or guard their reputation carefully. Others make decisions based on that inside voice that asks, would this cause me to lose my job? Would this make me look stupid? Or what if this doesn’t work? As a result, safe and guaranteed options become the default. This can be a problem especially on projects that are supposed to be novel or innovative.
Presume you were running a clothing store that also intended to be a social enterprise. The goal of this company was to demonstrate to the clothing industry that it is possible to provide products whose supply chains were are sustainable, safe, fair, legal and provide humane working conditions. What if, your strategy team came to you and said; “let’s grow the business by asking consumers to pay higher prices for our products? Let us also ask customers to buy less of our products? Especially since our products will last our customers a lifetime.” Alternatively, what if you gave away your R&D to our competitors?
Any business minded person would think that you had lost the plot. In the traditional business paradigm, those ideas are thought of as being guaranteed to send any clothing company to the startup graveyard. The problem here is that your social enterprise isn’t just trying to be a profitable business. It is also trying to convince the market, or the systems, to operate more ethically. In this case, your companies decisions are not solely financial. Patagonia, a high-end outdoor clothing company, has been driving a considerable amount of business – approximately $US 500 million a year – using these counterintuitive strategies. Yvon Chouinard, CEO, and founder of the company, when faced with financial trouble was advised by a consultant to sell the company. Instead, he opted to stick to the core mission and adopt the above counter-intuitive strategies. How was he able to find the courage to make a decision that goes so much against conventional wisdom?
What if he was wrong?
How do we convince decision makers like board members, middle-level managers, senior managers, funders and designers to adopt these counterintuitive strategies? A recent documentary titled, “Too tough to teach” tells the story of “The Ian Mirkado High school,” which is a school for boys who are considered unteachable. The school has no rules, no rewards, and no punishments. It has managed to achieve graduate rates and post-school employment outcomes that exceed the average.
The big question is, who makes the decision to have a school with no rules? How do you risk the potential legal backlash if something were to go wrong? How do you convince a public school boards to make a similar kind of decision? Who will be to blame if it doesn’t work? These are the kinds of questions that frame the way we manage organizations, and they can often stifle innovation.
Herb Hyman owner and founder of Hyman Coffee a favorite Seattle-based coffee shop was initially worried when he heard Starbucks was opening a location near to his coffee shop. What he did know was that when Starbucks moves into a location, it creates such a buzz that it converts non-coffee drinkers into latte lovers. Eventually, when the lines at Starbucks are too long, people walk out the door and look around for a coffee shop nearby with shorter lines and more reasonable prices. So much so, that Hyman coffee has been known to buy properties next to a Starbucks location. We do not often think about the person who has to make the counter-intuitive decision to move next to Starbucks. What might that decision mean for that individual? What if the bet does not pay off? What if you are the person in the company who has to make the decision?
It is very romantic for us to think of these counter-intuitive ideas in hindsight, and use them as examples of innovation. When we do this, we ignore the tough process of finding the counter-intuitive idea and then having the courage to implement it. For example, take a less risky case like training for your first 10-kilometer race. There are very different kinds of risks involved when someone makes the counter-intuitive decision to train for a 10-kilometer race by running intervals, versus training by running long distances. Interval training tends to give you better results than just trying to work your way slowly up to from running 3km to 5km and eventually running 10km. The risk of making the wrong decision here is not that great, it involves only you, you may take longer to prepare for the race, and you are likely to finish the race with either option. Neither option has the risk of you getting fired.
If on the other hand you are managing a hospital clinic, whose Alzheimer’s patients regularly wander off. What might you do to try and decrease the number of patients that walk off? One German hospital decided to build a fake bus stop just outside their clinic. Alzheimer’s patients frequently wander out of clinic’s trying to get home, because they forget where they are, think it was ten years ago and believe that they need to be somewhere else, etc. Caregivers at Germany clinic noticed that patients were usually headed straight for the exit sign, or for public transit. So to them it made sense to construct a fake bus stop, that offered staff a neutral place to coax patients back inside. Their strategy worked, and patients tend to walk to the bus stop and would eventually forget they wanted to leave, or caregivers would be able to convince them to stay in the clinic without using force or punitive approaches.
What if it didn’t work? This clinic and the person whose idea it was would have this physical reminder of their failed idea. One of the biggest challenges in organizations trying new ideas is convincing decision makers to try things that seem counter-intuitive. Novel ideas are often out of our comfort zones, and some people are more comfortable with being in this space of ‘uncomfort’ than others. Many organizations get caught in old habits.
You hear statements like “our organization does not do that”, or “we have never done that.” “It is too risky” or “that is out of the scope of things we do.” There is no silver bullet to getting decision makers to step out of their comfort zones, but one of the things I have found to be helpful has been using evidence were possible. Usually, the idea is coming from data or information, so use it. Another option could be to plant the seeds early. Mention it in passing in meetings. Slowly introduce the idea, so people get used to the new idea.
Design thinking is excellent at overcoming this challenge. It frames things as being small learning experiments or prototypes. It is often easier to convince decision makers to try a prototype instead of the full version of an idea. A prototype provides a way of seeing what we could learn. One caveat is to try to stay away from the word pilot. Too often pilot projects focus too much on getting it perfect and looking for someone to blame, versus an emphasis on the learning. What you want are low-cost imperfect first attempts at the novel idea to test to see what you can learn and if it can be scaled.
Finally, be measured in how we allocate blame. It is more commendable to have tried the counter-intuitive project than to stick with the old habits and routines that are not working. Being able to generate counterintuitive solutions is a major part of the innovation puzzle, but the bigger challenge is convincing gatekeepers that these strange ideas just might work. If you have other strategies you have used, feel free to share. These are just a few of mine that I have chosen to share.
Photo by: Andi Jetaime retrieved from Flickr.