Want to be innovative but have a fear of failure? You need to dare to be the fool if you have any chance of being innovative.
Often the most innovative and profitable products and services are those which meet a real and unmet need. These products and services are often so obvious once they are created, resulting in a “why didn’t I think of that?!” moment for entrepreneurs and business owners alike. I know I’ve personally had a few of these myself over recent years.
The Australian community services sector is currently experiencing significant change and disruption, stemming from Government reform and funding model changes. Now your customer is not the Government department who provided the funding, but the individual client as a consumer in a competitive marketplace. The good news is competition and disruption is a breeding ground for innovation. The bad news is people are generally not good at predicting the direction of dramatic change. And it gets worse. Experts are particularly not good at predicting innovation either. What we are really good at however is retrospective rationalisation of innovation. Which explains the phenomenon I mentioned previously, the ““why didn’t I think of that?!” effect.
As human beings we like to work within the average or ‘mean’ when it comes to making decisions. We know the bell curve will satisfy most people and we don’t think too much about the variance, which sits either side of the mean. For this reason, organisation’s management systems work for the mean, not variance. Within variance sits both foolishness and genius. We know all ideas are not great ideas; however you won’t have great ideas without bad ones too.
Producing lots of foolishness and failure is the price you pay to get greatness and genius. The best predictor of innovative genius is having a system which allows for failure – a high variance system. In this new world, community based organisations need to start thinking about organising their systems for innovation, in effect, organising for variance.
Does your organisation’s structure (reporting lines, incentives and routines) encourage new ideas and thinking? How do you make it safe for people to fail in your organisation? If it is unsafe for people to fail, you are only going to capitalise on existing opportunities. However if it safe for people to be the fool you start moving in a direction likely to be disruptive. In that case, how will you reward people for trying, even when it leads to failure?
Charles O’Reilly refers to the ‘ambidextrous organisation’. I think all community service providers can see the relevance of his work in the current situation. Ambidextrous and innovative organisations separate people who have to make the numbers, the ‘business as usual’ people, with the people who explore possibilities and experiment with new ideas. Innovative organisations also have incentive systems which focus on desired behaviour, not outcomes.
Innovation and genius requires agile development processes and iterative improvement. The secret here is not about getting it right first time, but rather establishing an environment and process of learning. William Barnett from Stanford Graduate School of business suggests a simple three step process of innovation:
Step One: Try something new/different/variance
Step Two: Find out why it didn’t work
Step Three: Update/Iterate
“The fear of being a fool is much stronger than the hope of being a genius.”
The table below explains the difference between a great idea, a bad idea, and whether people agree with you or not (consensus). As the table illustrates, if you have a great idea, and everyone else agrees, it’s probably not that innovative. It will work, but won’t be as successful as an idea which is a ‘game changer’. If your idea doesn’t work, when everyone thought it would, then you’re all wrong.
However, if your idea is that innovative and will result in transformative change, you’re likely to come up against the ‘haters’, the ‘nay-sayers’ and people who will tell you all the reasons why it won’t work. But if you’re right and the idea is truly a great idea, that’s when you hit the jackpot. The genius zone is the only place in the table where you can claim IP for ideas produced. The flip side of this of course is being the fool. You thought you were right, no-one agreed, and you were wrong. Nobody wants to be the fool. The fear of being the fool is much stronger than the hope of being a genius.
I don’t think I can write an article about innovation without bringing up the topic of risk. So often I hear good ideas squashed by the knee-jerk reaction of “yes, but what about the risk of…” When it comes to innovation, risk is unavoidable. There is always a risk of being the ‘fool’.
If the innovation is significant, you won’t have the data. What you will need is strong leadership to communicate the logic and a strategy to endure the change.
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