When the Quick Fix Won’t Do: Innovating around big challenges
It is a well-known phenomenon for meetings to perform at a collective IQ lower than the IQ of any of its members. Many kinds of
dumbing-down dynamics are at play, and here are a few that stand out: individual agendas not aligned with the task, the task is
not clear, and the group lacks the “vocabulary” to provoke and respect fresh thinking.
So, when it comes to any form of innovation, what does it take for a team to outperform the capacities of its members? Whether
creating a new product, fashioning better way to provide service, or tackling a problem no one has tackled before, successful
innovations generally have a few key phases.
The first, sensing or co-sensing, involves taking a fresh look at the situation. Two ways this is achieved are learning journeys
and interviews. When a team is involved in the innovation process, it is helpful for each person to visit a different place in the
“system” – preferably an unfamiliar place in which the environment gives information as much as the people in it. Interviews can
work in the same way; individuals or pairs can speak to various stakeholders, armed only with a few open-ended questions and plenty
of curiosity.
The assumption behind co-sensing is that the situation being sensed is too big and complex for any one individual to understand it
completely within a reasonable amount of time. Therefore various methods are available for each of the “co-sensers” to share and
cross-pollinate their new-found knowledge.
Sensing or co-sensing usually requires suspending cherished beliefs, which can be challenging. Here one asks “What assumptions are
we holding?” and “What are the vicious (and virtuous) circles that we might be part of?” Suspending beliefs is not necessarily
discarding them. For example, we might think that customers do not want to pay more, or that employees want more time off, or that
there aren’t enough resources to achieve a certain objective (all plausible assumptions). So this phase suggests that maybe we are
operating under a false premise. When one roots out one of those, the effect is organizationally liberating!
In the next phase, one simply stops to be present. Oddly, when we stop and sit amongst the various complexities and uncertainties
that we’ve unearthed, there is a rich environment for genuinely new insights. Experientially, stopping can feel awkward and
vulnerable. But experienced innovators have an intuitive sense about when it is the time to push and when it is the time to sit
in the discomfort of not knowing. One aspect of this stop-and-let-go phase, I suspect, is that our unconscious minds are working
overtime on the problem.
But we can’t wallow in uncertainty forever. The third phase is co-creating. Often a good idea emerges (crystallizes) from the
being-present phase. So the next thing to do is to build a prototype or a model, some kind of physical embodiment of the idea.
Prototyping, particularly rapid prototyping, generates lots of learning. Ultimately, one can move the final prototype into the
realm of institutionalization. Many processes can be involved here: marketing, finance, administration, human resources,
outsourcing, legal issues, and so on.
This is the quick summary of an innovation model put forth by C.O. Scharmer and others at MIT. To read more, see
www.ottoscharmer.com.
As you might guess, this style of innovation involves slowing down and working together, but the results have a far greater
chance of being the right solution and not a band-aid. So when it comes to innovation, slower can be faster in the long run.
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