Changing behavior is the new killer app

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fingerInnovation is implementing something new, which is realized by another as having value. This isn’t creativity. People can be wonderfully creative over and over until they finally produce an innovation recognized by another person, or a whole community of people, as indeed valuable.

Lytro has introduced a real game-changer in the camera market by creating a consumer-priced camera that captures the entire depth of field, allowing you, the viewer, to choose the point of focus. Try it – it’s pretty neat. Cars become faster, more efficient, or more intuitive. Smartphones, smarter. But the real innovative in innovation these days may be going on in the consumer-collaborations between online community curators and architects, and their users.

Change is hard. Facebook knows you are not going to like their latest attempt to inspire and streamline your experience. But they are provoking you intentionally to change your behavior, improve their ability to harvest data from you, or make you a more accessible target to potential online vendors. Consider, each time Facebook adds a graph search feature or changes your user profile display you freak out. Then you post about how annoying the new interface is. Then you get familiar with it. And then you use it. You change your behavior to adapt to this new innovative environment or feature set introduced and you change your behavior.

Who decided your were going to adopt the new profile banner, or categorize your friends as “Close” or “Acquaintances” – you or Facebook?

What it really takes

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Imagine a race in which you don’t know what you will have to do, where or how long the course is, or even when it will end. Imagine that once you sign up for this race, you are immediately told, repeatedly, to quit before you even start. You are warned you might die, and even if you don’t, you don’t have what it takes anyway to finish so you shouldn’t even bother showing up.

During the course of the “race” which has no finish line, you may be asked to dig up a tree stump with your bare hands and then drag it 10 miles to the top of a mountain, where you will be greeted by someone who asks you to memorize passages of the bible. You then drag the tree stump back down the mountain 6 miles somewhere else and recite the lines. If you get it wrong you hike six miles back to memorize it until you get it right. After 36 hours of no sleep, you may be asked to count out exactly 5000 pennies, only to have them thrown in an icy pond. Your next task is to retrieve them.

During the race you are constantly berated by race organizers who tell you to quit. And you have no idea where the finish line is until they tell you it’s over. It’s called The Spartan Death Race (www.youmaydie.com). The 2012 version lasted three days. Less than 15% finished. Intelligence may be the least of the discerning factors in finishing. Grit may be the biggest.

Why do some people accomplish more than others of equal intelligence? This was the question Angela Duckworth and her colleagues posed when embarking on a study in 2004 to measure people’s level of “grit.” Surveying the available research regarding traits beyond intelligence that contribute to success, Duckworth and her colleagues found it lacking in the specific area regarding the influence of possessing this quality, which they defined as follows:

We define grit as perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Grit entails working strenuously toward challenges, maintaining effort and interest over years despite failure, adversity, and plateaus in progress. The gritty individual approaches achievement as a marathon; his or her advantage is stamina.

Basically, Duckworth identified grit as the combination of two distinct characteristics: consistency of task, and perseverance through adversity.

The researchers initiated their own study to develop something they call the “Grit Scale.” After generating a series of questions intended to measure “grittiness,” (for example, “I have overcome setbacks to conquer an important challenge,” “I finish whatever I begin”), the researchers set up a questionnaire on their website, www.authentichappiness.com. Their results reveal higher levels of grit correlate with higher levels of education. The results also showed that grit tends to increase with age. Those individuals with high levels of grit also tend to have fewer career changes. Yet more surprisingly, those identified as possessing high levels of grit often had high grades in school yet scored more poorly on Standard Achievement Tests, suggesting that, despite lower scholastic aptitude, their perseverance and tenacity yielded stronger overall academic results.

The study gets even more interesting when the researchers decided to apply their Grit Scale to the 2004 incoming class of the United States Military Academy at West Point. Just getting into West Point is famously difficult. Entrance requires a nomination from a member of Congress or from the Department of Army. Once accepted, each entering cadet is evaluated on the Whole Candidate Score, which takes into consideration school grade-point average, Scholastic Aptitude Test results, physical fitness, class rank, and evidence of demonstrated leadership ability.

This comprehensive evaluation process for those applying to the academy is necessary to help the academy predict not only the graduation rate, but also the likelihood that entering freshman will finish an arduous summer entrance session known as “Beast Barracks,” or more simply “Beast.” Nearly 100 percent of the freshman cadets also took the Grit Scale test in 2004, and its results proved to be a better predictor of whether or not a cadet would survive Beast Barracks than the military’s own sophisticated and complexly designed evaluation tests.

It is grit—perserverence and passion for long-term goals, plus a willingness to remain tenacious in the face of adversity—that leads to deep expertise and mastery necessary to propel innovation

Insourcing Innovation

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GE is in the process of overhauling design of their signature appliances. And starting to manufacture them in Kentucky instead of Mexico and China.

“So a funny thing happened to the GeoSpring (water heater) on the way from the cheap Chinese factory to the expensive Kentucky factory: The material cost went down. The labor required to make it went down. The quality went up. Even the energy efficiency went up.”

– Charles Fishman

In 1951 GE began construction on what would become the largest domestic appliance manufacturing plant in the United States, aptly named Appliance Park, zip code 40225. Housing the appliance division of GE, and featuring the first-ever use of a computer (a gigantic UNIVAC) in a manufacturing setting, appliance park became the centerpiece of GE’s appliance production division and within just a couple years employed 16,000 people. By 1973, twenty years after opening its doors, the immense plant, with its mile-long parking lot, and its own fire department, employed over 23,000 people and turned out washing machines, dryers, refrigerators, and other appliances to Americans eager to embrace the conveniences of technology.

Within another just ten years, by 1984 the plant had been nicknamed Strike City for the constant divisive and productivity-killing strikes that were pervasive, and the working population had dropped back to 16,000 workers, then fell steadily through the 1990s as GE continued to outsource manufacturing to Mexico and China, until finally a mere 1,863 manufacturing employees remained at Appliance Park, KY in 2011.

Then, an interesting thing happened in February, 2012. GE fired up a manufacturing line in Building 2 of Appliance Park to build high tech, low energy, water heaters than had been made in China for over a decade. And then, a month later, in Building 5, another assembly line opened up to begin assembling fancy refrigerators, previously assembled in Mexico.

The GeoSpring was re-engineered to have 20% fewer parts, and is now produced in Kentucky in 80% less time than it was made in China. Partly because of the device design, but also because they have redesigned the workplace and assembly lines themselves. For example, their revamped dishwasher assembly line requires only 20% of the physical space previously required and reduces production time by 68%

By the end of 2012, GE expects to have over 3,600 professionals employed at Appliance Park, KY including salaried designers, engineers, and IT professionals. These product designers work hand-in-hand with the assembly line employees to ensure the design conveys efficiently to the actual construction process. As Jeff Immelt writes in the March, 2012 edition of Harvard Business Review, “At Appliance Park we have torn down functional silos and replaced them with a “one team” mentality. Designers, engineers, and assembly-line workers together determine the best way to meet their goals; they own the metrics.”

Meanwhile, on December 6, 2012 CEO Tim Cook announced to NBC that Apple intends to invest $100 million dollars to begin producing a line of Apple products within in the United States in 2013 for similar reasons.

Adequate Performance Gets a Generous Severance Package

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“There is no policy requiring clothing, but no one comes to work naked.
Lesson: You don’t need policies for everything”

Be the market surprise instead of being surprised by the market. Increase the density of talent in your organization faster than the complexity increases around you. In the same way you can’t control the forces that affect your company, to attract the best and the brightest you may not want to try to control your top talent either. Certainly companies should support them, grow them, challenge them, and reward them. But increasingly companies are finding deeper talent and bigger results by relinquishing control over them.

This trend in giving employees autonomy puts the focus on results rather than on punching a time clock. Netflix has recognized that as a business which never sleeps, they in fact have no standard working hours for the company, and therefore should extend that analogy to respect the discretionary decision-making of their employees. So Netflix treats them like adults. As a slide presentation on their website describes, Netflix pays above-average in the industry, provides generous benefits and works to “attract and retain stunning colleagues.” How and when you get your work done is up to you, but they expect results.

“Adequate performance gets a generous severance package” reads their website. Clearly they create an environment intended to gain the best and brightest people but as they advertise, they function more like a high performance professional sports team, not like a family which forgives every fault. Managers have a test they perform when evaluating performance. They ask themselves this question, “Which of my people, if they told me they were leaving, would I work hard to keep at Netflix?” If someone doesn’t satisfy that question, they are offered the generous severance package to open up that position for a star performer.

To punctuate their focus on results, not hours, their presentation goes on to say, “Sustained A-level performance with minimal effort, is rewarded with greater responsibility, and great pay.” By focusing on results rather than mere presence or compliance, employees are more likely to feel accountable and less likely to waste the company’s time or money.

Only Do What Only You Can Do

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Your focus needs more focus – Mr. Han

Part of what makes us feel valuable, important and useful is getting things done. We fill the quiet spaces with activity and busyness, and it makes us feel like we’re getting things accomplished. And maybe we are, and maybe sometimes we’re just running the same gerbil wheel to give ourselves the sense that we’re making progress. Yet our own growth often comes from attempting what is difficult, and letting go of what has become merely habitual or routine, which others can do better.

I had a conversation with Lisa Vos of Melbourne Business School recently who teaches managers to “only do what only you can do.” That is to say, managers and leaders should focus on those particular tasks and activities which they are truly the best at in their organization, and let others do those tasks and projects which best suit their skills.

As you might imagine, in practice this is terribly difficult to do because managers want to feel important and valuable by getting things done, but have lost sight that it’s the people around them that are likely more capable at handling the specific tasks.

As a leader, by honing your skills and talents on what you are indeed most expert at in the organization, you are not only providing unique and signature value, but also giving control and autonomy to those around you to perform the tasks that they are better suited to. Refraining from jumping in to save the day will create internal tension and anxiety. Vos’ advice is to acknowledge that internal tension and remind yourself that there are people in the organization who are more skilled than you, and that’s a good thing. By curtailing your urge to leap in, you are also strengthening another by letting them lead on a task or project they are better suited to.

Focus, and let go.

Integrate the Human Factor in Your Work

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The profession of radiology has been progressing over the past fifty years in terms of how people are trained, equipment and technology used, and immediacy of feedback. Yet despite these advances, error rates often remain statistically significant and frustratingly high depending on the type of reading performed – bone density, chest radiographs, mammograms, gastrointestinal, and beyond. According to Imaging Economics, the reading error rate can vary from 2% to as high as 20%, depending on the scan, the clinician, the environment, and even the time of day. And up to eighty percent of the errors are perceptual errors. That is, the information was present and shown on the film or scan, but not identified and seen by the radiologist.

Yehonatan Turner, M.D., was a radiology resident at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem in 2008 when he decided to experiment with humanizing the process of reading radiology scans, to learn what affect it might have on the quality of the reading and the error rate of the clinicians. He and his colleagues performed an experiment in which they asked 267 patients for their permission to be photographed before their CT scans. A Computed Tomography scan is a more detailed X-Ray exam that focuses on a specific part of the body and yields a more detailed image of what’s inside the body.

Those 267 patient photos were submitted within a total of 1,137 CT examinations and would automatically be presented to the radiologist when evaluating the scan. Seventeen radiologists performed the readings and the results were quite surprising:
   • 80% of incidental findings were not reported when the photo was omitted with the scan
   • Radiologists reported a greater sense of empathy and care when evaluating the scan
   • Duration of scan evaluation did not increase

Anecdotal comments included, “The patient photograph prompted me to relate in more detail to the CT” and “It enabled me to feel more of a physician.”

In other words, accuracy went up, empathy went up, sense of connection with the patient went up, and there was no additional time required. This is an example of innovation by connecting with the end result – with the purpose of the work.

Create Value Before You Create Risk

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It can be an exciting time when we decide to initiate a project, build an application, or design a compelling solution. The idea may look brilliant and compelling in our minds and we may feel the urge to tell the world about our latest endeavor. Hang on a minute. Telling people we intend to do something is different than having something to show them. And it’s a long way from having actually done something. Telling others of our intent may be valuable to us by creating an external motivation. That is, if we tell others of our intent, we may feel compelled to follow through on our stated promise. But that expressed intention has little value to those we told and can create a false expectation. Plus, it’s hard for anyone to spread the good news if there’s nothing to show.

Start by creating value. Instead of telling someone what you are considering, or committing to, show them what you’ve already started. Show them the work in progress. Give them something to anchor on. For two reasons:
– What you say you will do, will likely change once you start doing it – for market reasons, design reasons, budget reasons, etc.
– Others understand and respond better to hard evidence, than words.

In other words, speak with action not words. Your action, your prototype, your first cut at it makes for a much more vivid and interesting discussion and collaboration once people have something to anchor the discussion on.

The other powerful and compelling reason to start with action, instead of talk, is that once you get in motion and actually produce something of value, other people will recognize and respond to that creation. In the best circumstances those people you show your work to will contribute, collaborate and spread the word about what you or your team is working on and it will drive energy and awareness to your project. It’s much more difficult and less inspiring to spread the word about what someone intends to do, as opposed to share what you and your team have actually started to work on.

You vs. Your Awesomeness

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Trying is the first step toward failure
– Homer Simpson

Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.
– Garrison Keillor

86% of Harvard students believe they are more attractive than their classmates. 82% of drivers say they are in the top 30% of safe drivers. Most employees claim to have greater knowledge of industry facts and of their own company’s business than they actually do. Most managers overstate their understanding of these same questions by an even greater margin. Physicians overstate their confidence of accurate pneumonia diagnosis, and lawyers claim their likelihood of winning cases at better than 50% – a statistical impossibility. Salespeople are not immune either. Salespeople claim their likelihood of winning a final proposal at better than 70% which, considering there are often at least one other bidder, is a statistical impossibility.

I recently sat down with Jill Klein, Professor of Marketing at Melbourne Business School, to discuss her work, and her particular interest in some of the cognitive bias tendencies that we, humans, have when interpreting circumstances and events, and then choosing decisions based on our understandings and instincts. She pointed out that we all often suffer from an overconfidence of our abilities and knowledge on a wide range of subjects. In other words, we believe that we will be correct more often than we usually are.

There are a variety of psychological explanations for our overconfidence bias, but the most compelling reason may stem from our need to believe in our own sense of self-importance and optimism. If we recognized the statistical truth, we might be a little more pessimistic and grumpy getting out of bed in the morning.

This overconfidence bias can be a useful motivator toward driving action and initiative, and might even further our own careers and success socially, but if unchecked can lead to action in the wrong direction. Unchecked by organizational culture, managerial oversight and self-reflection, overconfidence can lead to failed endeavors and poor decisions for us and for our work.

Dr. Klein has a few actions and behaviors to help overcome decision overconfidence:

Solicit the opinion of more people. As James Surowiecki, author The Wisdom of Crowds, argued in his book, and as the game show “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” demonstrates on prime time television, when we ask a larger group their opinion on a question, their collective judgment is almost always better than our own.

Solicit your own second opinion. When we average our own second opinion with own our first opinion we are almost always headed in the right direction.

Consider the extremes. If we place our own odds of success, or effort, or time required, at X, we should also ask ourselves what we consider the extreme positive and negative boundaries of these outcomes. That consideration will likely lead toward moderation – one way or other – of how we should proceed.

Separate our “deciding” self from our “doing” self. When we acknowledge that the estimate we make, however fact-based and analytical, is not actual but hypothetical, we can temper our own judgement by visualizing what will be entailed in the “doing” of our endeavor.

After reflection and consultation, remember ultimately the doing matters. WD-40 is named for the 40th chemical concoction which worked, and according to Sir James Dyson it took him over 5000 prototypes to build the world-renowned Dyson vacuum cleaner.

Do, or do not. There is no try.
– Yoda

It’s About the Impact, not the App

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If we are software coders, we can get hypnotized by the killer hack. If sales professionals, we can be entranced by the nuance of well-run client meetings, and if project managers, it’s easy to be seduced by the latest task management app. But remember, while the devil is in the details, the beauty is in the result, the impact, the difference.

Don Tapscott has a marvelous illustration of the power and importance of connecting people with ideas, without being encumbered and distracted by the mechanism itself.

A few years ago he was in his house when down the hall he hears his son calling out, “Dad! Dad! Come here – you’ve got to check this out!” So Don walks down the hall to his son’s room and finds him at the computer looking at images of space and his son is saying, “Look Dad, that’s a quasar, and that could be a black hole, and over here are stars being born, and this light we’re looking at is millions of years old! Isn’t that amazing!”

Don is pleased with his son’s interest in the cosmos, and says “That’s very cool son, where did you get these images?” And his son says, “Oh, they’re not pictures I’m streaming live from Hubble.” At this point Don’s jaw drops, and he says to his son, “What?! Do you understand you are harnessing the most powerful telescopic instrument on earth? And it’s not even on earth?” To which his son replies, “Yeah whatever Dad, but look that’s the Orion Nebula!”

Ultimately our purpose here together is about connecting people with ideas. Ideas that translate to service, and valuable innovation. Ideas that can change both our beliefs and behaviors, which then can cascade out and change whole ecosystems within an organization. Providing people with the confidence of ideas and knowledge allows others to reach through our fears, find our passion and display it through purpose.

Our passion is what we love to do, but our purpose is why the world loves you.

Two surprising motivators

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Over five years ago my cycling partner and friend Erich contacted me and suggested we should ride in the three-day, 180 mile Trek Across Maine. It seemed like a reasonable and fun challenge, and all for a good cause to fight lung cancer. I was in. Then he added, “We’re taking the boys.”

He had two boys just about the same age as our two boys (five and seven years old at the time) and I realized immediately this whole expedition had multiplied in complexity. Understand, Erich is a friend whose intensity and drive is higher than most people I know. When invited to ride with him I learned early on a “ride” often meant about twice as far and twice as intense as I was envisioning. I learned to calibrate expectations to Erich’s world, but this audacious challenge was something new.

We rigged up bicycle contraptions featuring a tandem bicycle, plus a “tag-along” (pictured) to accommodate the three of us. The machine, plus the bicycle bags, known as panniers – loaded with rain gear, snacks, water, and probably a few miscellaneous things the kids claimed to need, all weighed in at over 400 pounds with us on board. This was our “triple-bike.”

My mental orientation going into this venture was that it was my job to do the work, and make sure the kids were safe, fed, dry, and hopefully having fun on this expedition. But over sixty miles per day throughout the hills across Maine it became quickly clear that their effort was valuable indeed. While small, when they chose to work and push the pedals over, from my seat I could definitely feel a difference. So while in my mind the journey started on the strength of my efforts alone, It quickly became clear that the difference in not only speed and energy conservation, but also camaraderie and real teamwork, came down to how well we worked as a team to push through hill after hill on these three days.

For example, if approaching a hill, as my son Will was back there throwing water on his brother and generally goofing off, I could say sternly, “If you don’t pedal now, then at the top of this hill I’m going to put you in the Sag wagon and you can ride the rest of the say in the wagon of shame!” (“Sag” is as in “sagging behind”.  In events with lots of non-professionals, the sag wagon picks up people who have fallen behind or are dropping out.) And this terse warning might get him to pedal harder for perhaps thirty or sixty seconds. Or inversely, I could urge my son Charlie on by saying, “Buddy, if you pedal really hard we’ll get to the top quicker and I think they are serving ice cream at the next rest stop.” And this might bring about an energetic minute or so of focused pedaling.

Neither negative or positive immediate encouragement yielded any long term motivation. It became clear as the hours went by and the ride went on that there were a number of much more powerful motivators that were much more effective, and fun.

Engaged with other cycling teams
It turned out what I had vastly underestimated – completely overlooked actually – was the importance of doing this journey with Erich and his boys, their friends. They would constantly be aware of where our friends were on the road – either ahead or behind – and we would create ways to interact by riding along side and chatting, or goading each other up the hills. And often we would encounter, and ride, with other participants in the event, which fostered a great sense of communal participation in the event.

Connecting with the Why
After the first year we participated in the Trek Across Maine when the boys were then five and seven years old, I decided they needed a greater and more direct understanding of why we were doing the event. In advance of the next year’s event we rode the triple bike around the neighborhood, and the boys would knock on doors, tell the story about what we were doing, and ask for donations to help fight lung cancer. That active participation in gathering donations for the event connected the boys, and our family, with the deeper reason of why we were participating.

These two small and simple changes in mental orientation – collaborating with others and connecting with purpose – created a powerful sense of engagement in the event, and translated into big pedal power (read: team performance gains).