Happiness, Ownership and the Art of Innovation

There's no big secret to keeping your organisation or ministry from making significant strides towards the objectives set out or from being on the cutting edge. Just make sure your employees feel engaged

In the course of my work and past experiences, the question I come across most frequently is, "How can I get the people in my organization to be more innovative and take ownership?"

It's an easy question to answer, but a difficult one to answer in a way that leads to meaningful change. It's easy because there are lots of highly touted prescriptions for being more innovative and empowered. From putting beanbags in the lobby to using Six Sigma to keeping teams nimble and lean, you know there are myriad options, many of them legitimate, but more than enough to make one's head spin.

In my experience, few solutions actually address what I believe to be a fundamental enabler of innovative behavior in organizations. Now, I'm no psychologist. Nor am I an expert in organizational behavior. But I've been playing the innovation game since first leading projects and organisations a few years ago, and as I look back on what made for peoples ownership behavior and what didn't, there's one thing I would point to: personal happiness.

Piano Solo.
When it comes to creating innovative organizations, the key question is not "What superstar creative people do I need?" or "What highly-touted process can I put in place?" No, the key to unleashing ownership behavior is asking the question "how can I help each person in my organization achieve a state of happiness on a daily basis?" In other words, help happiness bloom, and ownership as well as innovative behavior will follow.

You already know how. Think back to your formative years. What made your heart sing? When did you feel intrinsically motivated to get out and makes things happen?

In the case of a friend, it was her developing her skill as a classical painist. She never grooved with violin lessons, but at a very young age she sat oown at a piano, and over the next decade, she spent thousands of hours noodling on her paino with an intensity bordering on the obsessive, always trying to crack the code on some innovative classical or movie lick.

In The Zone
She says " I could play for hours and feel like only 10 minutes had passed. Though in the moment my practice was difficult and often frustrating, in retrospect I was in a state of bliss, and developed a deep self-awareness of how happy -- even joyful -- it could feel to engage in innovative behavior."

You likely have experienced this kind of happiness, too. If you enjoy any kind of sporting activity, you know what I'm talking about. Or if you relish the art of producing a well-cooked meal. Good video games -- much to the chagrin of parents and significant others -- routinely take users to a state of mind where time disappears and mind and body meld into one seamless, focused whole. It's no surprise that some of the above activities are considered more work than play, or least as serious play. We're happy after we do them, intrinsically motivated to pursue them as an integral part of our life.

The psychologists in the crowd already know that I'm talking about the concept of flow, as originated by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Here's a brief summary of the concept, so that you don't have to read Csikszentmihalyi's book (though you should if you can): Flow occurs when the complexity of the thing you're doing just outstrips your ability to get it done. In other words, it's challenging, but not overwhelmingly so.

The Middle Way.
For my friend, it was mastering the next film track on the album. For a dedicated cook, it's a wild Mario Batali dish built around unusual porcine lipids. For my friend Laurie, who as an ex-commando used to camp without a fire or tent on the border of places that have been forgotten in time, it means climbing a gnarly iced-over waterfall 2,000 feet up a rock face deep in Patagonia.

Too much complexity and challenge leads to despair, frustration, and paralysis. Too little, leads to boredom. Just right, and it's easy to become fully engaged, and as you stretch and overcome the challenge, you experience flow, and are primed for innovative behavior. Happiness follows. It's basic human wiring.

This is why you already know what to shoot for when it comes to innovation. Getting individuals to experience this same state of flow -- a state of happiness --is the key to fostering innovative behavior across your entire organization.

The Case for Flow and Innovation
So why are happy people -- people in a state of flow -- likely to innovate?

Think about a new work assignment. How complex and challenging is it relative to what you've done before? Are the goals clear? If it's too complex and too fuzzy, and if you're at all like me, you'll end up sitting around scared out of your wits, your IQ will drop by 100 points, paralysis will set in, and not much will get done.

On the other hand, if you've done it a dozen times before, you're likely to do it in a bored, rote way. Either scenario leads us away from ownership, innovative behaviors and outcomes.

The perfect work assignment for someone who needs to be innovative is one that balances clear, achievable goals with just enough task challenge to ignite the fires of creativity that lie within us all. These are the conditions for flow, and they enable a state of serious play.

Work for Fun.
Ask me to dig deep, and I'll be forced to act entrepreneurially and to wrack my brain and my network for creative insights. This combination of entrepreneurial action and creative insight is the basis of innovative behavior. And while I may curse my boss while I'm navigating through the choppy waters of a challenging assignment, I'll look back and say I never felt more engaged and happy and -- oh, by the way, look at all the killer, innovative stuff I did. Cool!

But don't take my word for it. Listen to the words of arch-innovator Sochiro Honda, father of an organization that manages to create category-pacing (even disruptive) innovations year after year: Each individual should work for himself. People will not sacrifice themselves for the company. They come to work at the company to enjoy themselves.

The proof is in the pudding. We can all agree that Honda (HMC) innovates on a routine basis, and it's very likely due to a happy workforce (see Business Week Online, 10/23/05, "Hot Honda Hybrid"). What Honda recognizes is that people who are led with an eye toward flow really don't need to be "managed" at all, as you're setting them up to live in a place where intrinsic motivation is the norm, rather than the exception to the rule.

Personal Day.
Doesn't that sound like a more believable way to encourage innovative behavior than an "up or out" HR policy, cheesy mandatory-fun organisation picnics, or a lobby full of beanbags?

Google (GOOG ) is another good example of solving for happiness to help make innovation bloom (see Business Week, 10/3/05, "Managing Google's Idea Factory"). Each engineer at the company gets a day a week to work on a project of their choice -- that is, something that's intrinsically motivating, something that leads to flow.

There has to be a happiness ripple effect which influences the overall innovation quotient of the Google workforce, and ultimately, all of Google's market offerings. Other innovative organizations, such as 3M, have practiced this for years.

So -- What Should You Do?
First, make it your goal to enable other people to be happy. So that this isn't an overwhelming proposition, get started by focusing on just a few of your key innovators. Your goal is to design individual experiences that put task complexity just beyond the individual's current comfort zone.

Remember, freaked-out people aren't innovative, but neither are bored people. It's a difficult balance to reach, but try to be a leader who inspires others to try new things, acknowledging that there will be failures along the path to success.

Be sure to check in frequently to make sure your initial assessment of challenge vs. ability was on target. How do you know? Day to day, a flow-inducing assignment will feel more like a climb up El Capitan than a stroll through Central Park. It should induce moments of breathlessness balanced by episodes of sheer delight, even rapture. If temporary setbacks and moments of personal crisis aren't encountered along the way, you've aimed too low.

Human Interest.
A person should finish the process excited, more confident, and highly motivated to do the next cool thing. Can you apply metrics to measure this stuff? Yes. But that's the stuff of a future column. For now, let me say that I think the best gauge of success in achieving flow is the work itself, and the tone of the workplace in which it happens.

So the next time someone says, "We need a strategy to become more innovative," respond with this question: "How can we make individuals happy in their work?"

Let me know how it goes with the flow.

Leaders Are Made, Not Born

There is and has been a lot of debate as to whether leadership can be effectively taught. However at the end of the day your ability to negotiate, communicate, influence, and persuade others to do things is absolutely indispensable to everything you accomplish in life. The most effective men and women in every area are those who can quite competently organize the cooperation and assistance of other people toward the accomplishment of important goals and objectives.

Everyone is Different
Of course, everyone you meet has different values, opinions, attitudes, beliefs, cultural values, work habits, goals, ambitions, and dreams. Because of this incredible diversity of human resources, it has never been more difficult and yet more necessary for diplomatic, spirit filled and led leaders to emerge and form these people into high-performing teams.

Do What Other Leaders Do
Fortunately, leaders are made, not born. You can learn to become a leader by doing what other excellent leaders have done before you. You become proficient in your job or skill, and then you become proficient at understanding the motivations and behaviors of other people. As a leader, you combine your personal competencies with the competencies of a variety of others into a smoothly functioning team that can out-distinguish and out-perform itself from its competitors. When you become a team leader, even if your team only consists of one other person, you must immediately develop a whole new set of leadership skills.

How to Craft a Winning Speech

Professional speechwriter Andrew Wilson offers some tips for crafting a winning speech.

First, three cardinal rules:
1. Speak from the heart. Talk about the things you really know and care about.
2. Don’t shy away from conflict. Conflict, and the resolution of conflict, are the central elements in storytelling and all forms of dramatic expression—including speeches.
3. Get inside the minds of the audience. Speak to their needs and concerns or their shortcomings or failings. People will accept criticism but they don’t want to be finessed.

Next are some techniques that are useful in thinking through a speech from start to finish:
1. Open with a bang. Don’t waste time with niceties. Aim to capture your audience with your first words.
2. Tell stories and look for ways to build suspense. You build suspense by creating a potential disaster and delaying the moment of truth.
3. Write for the eye, the ear, the nose, and all the senses. In other words, be as vivid as you can.
4. Create a plot just as you would if you were writing a short story. Most plots have a protagonist and an antagonist—or a good guy and a bad guy.
5. Show first, then tell, using examples and stories that lead (through various twists and turns) to a few easily stated and readily understood conclusions.
6. In ending a speech, it is usually a good idea to hark back to the beginning—giving the audience a satisfying sense of coming full circle.

The World Is A Better Place Today

To view cartoon strip click on image. Enjoy.

Management and Tapping Into Knowledge

Management can be defined as "getting things done through others." To be an effective manager you must be an expert at persuading and influencing others to work in a common direction. This is why all excellent managers are also excellent low-pressure salespeople. They do not order people to do things; instead, they persuade them to accept certain responsibilities, with specific deadlines and agreed-upon standards of performance. When a person has been persuaded that he or she has a vested interest in doing a job well, he or she accepts ownership of the job and the result. Once a person accepts ownership and responsibility, the manager can step aside confidently, knowing the job will be done on schedule.

You Have Two Choices
With most tasks, you have a choice of either doing it yourself or delegating it to others. Your ability to get someone else to take on the job with the same enthusiasm that you would have is an exercise in personal persuasion. It may seem to take a little longer at the beginning, but it saves you an enormous amount of time in the completion of the task.

Key Leverage Point
A key form of leverage that you must develop for success is other using other people's knowledge. You must be able to tap into the brain power of many other people if you want to accomplish worthwhile goals. Successful people are not those who know everything needed to accomplish a particular task, but more often than not, they are people who know how to find the knowledge they need.

What Knowledge Do You Need?
What is the knowledge that you need to achieve your most important goals? Of the knowledge required, what knowledge must you have personally in order to control your situation, and what knowledge can you borrow, buy, or rent from others?

Two Calls Away
It has been said that, in our increasingly information-based society, you are never more than one book or two phone calls away from any piece of knowledge. With computer services that are capable of accessing huge data bases including online databases all over the world, you can usually get the precise information you require in a few minutes by using a personal computer. Whenever you need information and expertise from another person in order to achieve your goals, the very best way to persuade them to help you is to ask them for their assistance.

Don't Be Afraid to Ask
Almost everyone who is knowledgeable in a particular area is proud of their accomplishments. By asking a person for their expert advice, you compliment them and motivate them to want to help you. So don't be afraid to ask, even if you don't know the individual personally.

Action Exercises
Here are three things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, multiply your output and rewards by persuading other people to do the job for you and do it well. Delegation is the key to personal leverage.

Second, identify the most important knowledge you need to do an excellent job and then concentrate on finding and using that knowledge.

Third, sign up for the next LMC to determine how good you are and to perfect the skill through the course's learning and practise sessions.

The person who can find the knowledge in others is often more valuable than the person who possesses it.