Innovation drives the sacred P’s—productivity and profit.

For the smartest companies in this economy innovation didn’t stop with the economic crash; it’s still a hot topic and not just for products and business processes, but through every nook and cranny across the organization.

Innovation isn’t always earth-shaking or about the next big thing, but large or small, the outcome is always focused on better. Many companies spend big bucks on innovation assistance, hiring top consultants, going on special retreats, etc.

Aside from the fact that spending is more difficult these days, consultants and retreats typically tap only the higher levels of the company ignoring one of the best sources of innovation you have—your own people, all of them.

Assuming you’d like to turn on this innovation faucet, what do you do?

Set up an innovation wiki. Just be sure that the CEO (or top person in the department, group, whatever) support the effort or it’s unlikely to go anywhere.

You want to involve all your people because at all levels they’re the ones who are constantly dealing with your products, processes and customers; who know them intimately and frequently have innovative ideas or are in a position to ask creativity-provoking questions that are just as valuable. What they usually don’t have is a way to get their ideas noticed.

Here’s what to do.

• Create an innovation wiki either on your intranet or at a free host (there are dozens).

• Write a brief description of the wiki’s purpose: That you want to create a “field of dreams and innovation” for all your people to play in to take the organization to the next level.

• Add some basic ground rules tailored to your own organization:

• • All ideas are welcome, no matter how outrageous or revolutionary they seem.
  • No idea is too small; no subject too minor.
  • Good ideas have nothing to do with position in the company hierarchy.

• Recruit “early adopters,” those people who love to be on the bleeding edge of what ever is going on. Then create a major internal PR effort encouraging everybody’s participation. Keep the topic high in the company’s consciousness with constant references.

Finally, the most important ingredient to making your innovation wiki a success is to use the ideas!

If you don’t use them people will know it’s a scam and quickly lose interest.

Whether you use them directly or as the springboard to something else, it’s crucial to publicly credit them to the originator.

If you’re in a position to add some kind of incentive or award for each one used (even if the use is indirect) that’s great, but it’s most important to offer major, public appreciation.

Do all this, and they will come.

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Last Monday I laid out a do-it-yourself plan for mangers to juice growth among their people. Beth Miller asked why I didn’t include coaching; I responded that I believed that line managers needed to take responsibility for professional development, especially in the current economic climate.

Beth asked,“So what holds back managers from coaching?”

My response is what I want to focus on today.

“I think it’s partly language. I know a number of managers who have implemented what I described in the post, do a terrific job developing their people, but don’t consider any of it coaching or even mentoring. One even scoffs at “coaching,” yet he’s known for building his people.

In working with my MAP coaching I’ve found that what holds many managers back is terminology. If they relate to the descriptive terms there’s no problem, but if they don’t relate they can’t implement what they’ve learned. I change the language and bingo, they take off like a rocket.”

People are far more word-sensitive than most realize. They’re more aware of it in politics, religion and advertising, but less so in general business, even less when talking to their team and it’s almost non-existent when it comes to their own ‘hearing’.

The nice thing, as I said, is that it’s an easy fix once you notice. Noticing is easy, too. Just keep an eye out for a blank look when you’re talking. It’s that look of incomprehension that is the key to repeating, but in different words. There’s nothing that drives people nuts faster than having the same thing repeated over and over; if it wasn’t understood the first time repeating it or saying louder isn’t going to help.

And don’t start the change with ‘what I mean is…’, because many people will tune out at that point focusing on figuring out what you already said.

Instead, wait a bit (depending on context) and then present your thought from a different angle or change the phrasing of the thought that accompanied the blank look.

This isn’t about dumbing down what you say (or write); it’s about presenting it in a wholy different way; a way that the other person can hear.

The manager mentioned above detested the word ‘coach’ as some touch-feely new-age notion, nor was he enthralled with the term ‘mentor’.

To him, he was just doing what any manager worth a damn did—make sure that his people developed new skills and used the ones they had fully to the benefit of both the company and themselves.

As he once said to me, “developing people is part of a manager’s job, not something extra“—and his employer paid him to manage.

Gee, if I could bottle his MAP I could probably retire.

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I’ve never been a lover of the MBA, its almost holy status, depending on the school, and especially its dominance on Wall Street,

In a recent post Justine Larbalestier said, “I was fascinated by Background Briefing’s recent documentary about the emergence of business schools and their effect on corporate culture and its relationship to the current crisis: MBA: Mostly Bloody Awful.”

I agree with Justine regarding the illogic of assuming that people can walk in and manage or advise a business of which they know little to nothing, especially with little to no experience.

It’s said that MBA can also stand for ‘Mediocre but Arrogant’ or ‘Management by Accident’; I would add Muddled by Ascendancy and Master Bull Artist.

The podcast by ABC Radio’s Stephen Crittenden is excellent. I hope you’ll take the time to listen and, hopefully, rethink some of your hiring assumptions.

MBA: Mostly bloody awful

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Podcast credit: ABCRadio

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As a boss (whether CEO, team leader or any level in-between) you need to accomplish many things within your organization (whether company or team) to be successful, especially in the current economic situation.

Near the top of the list is the need to

• motivate your people (without breaking the bank);
• strengthen and diversify your workforce (often without adding headcount); and
• innovate (products and processes; internally and externally; large and small)

Big order, but here’s how to make it happen.

Start by looking inwards to be sure your MAP supports the program.

Next, keep this mantra playing in your head

• Read it.
• Hear it.
• Do it.
• Teach it.

Then implement it by

• building a useful library, both hard copy (used books are very inexpensive) and online, that includes classic and current information and runs the gamut from traditional to controversial to off-the-wall. Encourage your people to read up on subjects that interest them, whether or not it directly applies to their expertise;

• choosing “topics of the month” based on both need and interest, then encourage free-wheeling discussions on a regular basis;

• modify assignments as much as possible, so people can start to use, and become proficient in, the new skills about which they are reading, learning and talking; and

• supporting brown-bag classes (buy lunch if possible) in which they may teach both their new and original skills to others. Add cross-working assignments to ensure cross-training.

Remember, it’s a long-term fix, because there are no short-term fixes and the only thing you have that’s even close to a silver bullet is your MAP!

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“The real character of the person can be known by what he does when nobody is watching. … Feudal culture is one where there is one set of rules for the king and another set of rules for the rest of the people. … What we are seeing is not the failure of entrepreneurship. It is the greed, ego and vanity of some super managers of some large corporations. That is not the essence of capitalism. Capitalism is all about creating an environment where individuals can leverage their innovation and their entrepreneurial abilities to create better and better opportunities.” –N.R. Narayana Murthy, Founder, Chairman and chief mentor, Infosys Technologies (Hindustan Times 4/19/09).

Satyam has shown that greed is a human condition, not just the province of the decadent West, reserved for various ‘leaders’ in developing countries or politicians in general.

Murthy’s thought that the real person surfaces when no one is watching are akin to the age old wisdom of Plato when he said, “In vino veritas” (In wine is truth).

And I think that in these two comments you find the real truth about anyone who aspires to positional or as-it-happens leadership.

Leadership isn’t about influence or vision; it’s not about how many follow you or heap kudos on your efforts. It isn’t even about honesty and authenticity—the leaders on Wall Street were both in their pursuit of profits.

It’s about what happens between you, yourself and your MAP at three o’clock in the morning when you’ve had too much to drink (real or metaphorical) and no one is looking.

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It’s great when VSI (vested self-interest) drives positive happenings anywhere, but when it happens in kid-focused media it’s definitely cause for cheering.

And so it has to the MTV—channel folks love to hate.

“After years of celebrating wealth, celebrity and the vapid excesses of youth, MTV is trying to gloss its escapist entertainment with a veneer of positive social messages.”

According to Stephen Friedman, MTV’s general manager, for Gen X “the humor was more cynical, the idea of community seemed earnest and not cool. It’s the opposite now.”

I don’t care that it’s driven by the bottom line, it’s also a recognition that the youth market is changing. And if MTV thinks that the Millennials have a different attitude they probably do—hopefully one strong enough to outweigh its entitled mindset and need for constant praise.

Viacom, MTV’s corporate parent, even has a new deal with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to make shows more supportive of education, which is truly amazing.

Jumping to the older part of that generation, the current economic downturn is taking many newly minted MBAs in new directions.

Historically, graduates from the top business schools headed for Wall Street. Now it seems that many didn’t really want that path.

“There was a real herd mentality to get into investment banking, noting that prestige, peer pressure and parents often channeled students to Wall Street. But because of the crisis, “there was suddenly permission to pursue something you were interested in that your parents three years ago would have said absolutely no to.” –Jessica Levy, Wharton senior.

“Some students now acknowledge that they were pursuing investment banking jobs largely to placate parents who, having invested nearly $200,000 in their children’s educations, were eager for them to earn top dollar — and some prestige too.”

I find it interesting that the supposed cream of the talent pool, highly (and expensively) educated, our future leaders with supposedly outstanding independent/critical thinking skills succumbed not out of personal desire, but from outside pressures. Nope, they didn’t really want to work on Wall Street with its gargantuan salaries and over-the-top, masters of the universe mentality. Who woulda thunk it.

All sarcasm aside, I do hope that this is a bit more of the silver lining the banking meltdown. It’s not that Wall Street is always bad, but that there are many ways and places to contribute.

“It’s always been about the brass ring and it’s always been about the brand recognition, and for a lot of students that meant jobs at Goldman Sachs,” Emanuel Sturman, director of career services at Dartmouth College. “It’s premature to say the bloom is off the rose totally, but I think students are starting to look at a wider array of brass rings.”

And who knows, maybe working in other industries will enable them to contribute to the common good in ways more meaningful than just writing a check.

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Shortly after I started writing Leadership Turn I did a post about diversity, ending with this—

“Another way to look at it is that any increased spending on diversity development is an investment and will be more than offset by the increases in innovation, productivity and revenues. If spending $100 results in a bottom line increase of $1000, did you really spend the $100, or did you gain $900? $900 that wouldn’t be there if you hadn’t invested the initial $100.”

How do you define diversity?

True diversity isn’t just diversity of race, gender, creed and country, but what I call the new diversity—all those plus diversity of thought.

Think about it, if a manager really works at it she can create a rainbow-colored group who all think the same way—George W. Bush’s initial Cabinet was ethnically diverse, but their MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) was homogeneous.

It’s far more difficult to put together a group of totally diverse thinkers. Managers tend to hire in their comfort zone, but more and more that refers to how people think, rather than how they look.

So what should you do to ensure that you’re building a truly diversified team?

Here are five key points to keep in mind when you’re both hiring people and managing/leading them.

1. Avoid assumptions. People aren’t better because they graduated from your (or your people’s) alma mater, come from your hometown/state or worked for a hot company.
2. Know your visual prejudices. Everybody has them (one of mine is dirty-looking, stringy hair), because you can’t hear past them if you’re not aware of them.
3. Listen. Not to what the words mean to you, but what the words mean to the person speaking.
4. Be open to the radical. Don’t shut down because an idea is off the wall at even the third look and never dismiss the whole if some part can be used.
5. Be open to alternative paths. If your people achieve what they should it doesn’t matter that they did it in a way that never would have crossed your mind.

Finally, remember that if you’re totally comfortable, with nary a twinge to ripple your mental lake, your group is probably lacking in diversity.

How do you hire and manage diversity?

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It doesn’t seem that the financial crisis is really changing things all that much.

The exodus of Wall Street bankers is mostly smoke and mirrors, not change, as many of the so-called disgraced leave for banks that didn’t accept bailout money, taking their clients and attitudes with them.

“Banks paid out some $18 billion in bonuses last year, down 44 percent compared with a year earlier, and many workers viewed them as paltry payouts… Sensing a shifting tide, talented bankers who fear a dimmer future at banks that have taken taxpayer money are migrating to brash boutique firms like Aladdin, which are intent on proving their critics wrong by chasing fast profits and growth in hopes of one day rising up as challengers to the old guard.”

Wall Street forces companies to focus on short-term profits, often at the expense of long-term corporate success and innovation, primarily  to add more zeros to their own paychecks.

State politicians solve their budget shortfalls by trashing those least likely to vote and completely incapable of donating to their campaigns—the poor, elderly and children.

According to Arizona’s Linda J. Blessing “There’s no question that we’re getting short-term savings that will result in greater long-term human and financial costs,” expressing the concerns of officials and community agencies around the country. “There are no good options, just less bad options.” Ohio’s proposed budget “will dramatically decrease our ability to investigate reports of abuse and neglect,” with some counties losing 75 percent of their investigators The Illinois governor’s budget proposal would scale back home visits to ill-equipped first-time mothers, who are given advice over 18 months that experts say is repaid many times over in reduced child abuse and better school preparation.”

Politicians implement short-term fixes at the cost of long-term social solutions, because (a) they have little negative impact on their re-election and (b) they won’t be around to deal with the mess anyway.

I have an acquaintance who isn’t wealthy, probably midway between middle and upper-middle class. She constantly talks about how she and her husband do everything they can to avoid taxes and would never vote in favor of them no matter what.

During the same conversations she gripes that the unincorporated county where she lives doesn’t plow the road near her house quickly enough when it snows; the ambulance didn’t arrive fast enough when her husband had trouble breathing; her grandchildren’s schools keep reducing enrichment programs and the classes are too large.

Their attitudes aren’t all that unusual.

Does anyone else see a dichotomy here?

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I’ve always thought of life as a corridor with dozens of doors opening, each one representing an opportunity.

You may open one or pass them by—it’s your choice.

Each time you do open one and enter that door closes forever and you move down a new corridor full of doors.

The door you entered is sealed because whatever lay behind it changed you, so you can’t go backwards, only forward.

Some people to through life opening as few doors as possible, changing as little as possible and staying as safe as possible.

Others launch themselves through the most interesting doors with gusto, taking advantage of whatever opportunities are concealed and then on to the next door.

In honor of all those who are, or lean to, the latter description I dedicate these two Rules. They are especially apropos today.

Watch for big problems—they disguise big opportunities.

Welcome the unexpected! Opportunities rarely come in neat, predictable packages.

You can’t open every door and you don’t have to stay long if you don’t like what you find, but if you pass straight through never opening any doors you’ll stay in pristine condition and you don’t really want to arrive at the end as untouched as you were when you started—do you?

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The world is full of acronyms and many are part of corporate culture, but all acronyms are not created equal.

Many are benign, as in executive titles,

• CEO – Chief Executive Officer, COO – Chief Operating Officer, CFO – Chief Financial Officer, CTO – Chief Technology Officer;

or defining the legal entity,

• DBA – Doing Business As, LLC – Limited Liability Company, LLP – Limited Liability Partnership;

or general business terms,

• COB – Close Of Business, COGS – Cost of Goods Sold, PL – Profit and Loss, PO – Purchase Order, QA – Quality Assurance, QC – Quality Control;

or oriented to customers,

• CRM – Client Relationship Management, CSR – Customer Service Rep.

And, of course, the hundreds that are used in the technology world.

Common acronyms or those used within a particular industry are relatively harmless, as long as they’re used sensibly and not to confuse—people who overuse acronyms are PIBs (pain in butt).

There are acronyms that identify dysfunctional people, the ones that aren’t pulling their weight because they’re using,

• OPT – Other People’s Time, OPR – Other People’s Resources, OPM – Other People’s Money.

Then there are the ones that identify actions and MAP that spell big trouble for any culture and need to be eradicated immediately.

• NIMBY – Not In My Back Yard
• NIH – Not Invented Here
• WAM – What About Me
• WIIFM –  What’s In It For Me

NIMBY thinking can stifle innovation when it causes discomfort to an individual, group or even division under the corporate umbrella.

NIH also stifles innovation by blinding people to events and new products produced by the competition or other changes in the marketplace.

WAM is different than WIIFM. WAM is usually in response to something good happening to another person; it may be as minor as a compliment from the boss or as substantial as a raise or promotion, whereas WIIFM is the desire to know what personal benefits accrue in return for doing what’s asked. WIIFM isn’t always bad; it can be put to good use by channeling it into positive VSI.

What about your workplace? What acronyms do you hear? Which do you use?

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