Mommy, Where Do Ideas Come From?

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

-- Albert Einstein

The Mistaken Impression of Value

Some are under the impression that there is a limited amount of value in the world. This is epitomized by "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer", which assumes that the availability of wealth is limited. But like knowledge, wealth is something that is created.

Silicon was literally as abundant as sand on the seashore -- and considered valueless -- until someone conceived of the microchip. Humans develop, discover, and create opportunity.

Value is a created thing. It comes from delivering solutions to problems. The better solutions or bigger the problem, the greater the value. So value is also a matter of perspective. A glass of water would be much more valuable to someone lost in the desert than to a person on the street of any major city.

Ideas Are the Source of Value

Innovation is first about having ideas to solve problems. This is the basis of entrepreneurial endeavor.

"Problem" May Be A Supercharged Word

Now, some folks have a problem with the word problem. Having a problem indicates you don't have a solution, or that you have a solution but are incapable of implementing it. Having a solution to everything is a common (and irrational) expectation for executive management. So problems create vulnerability, especially for leadership.

(We see this all the time in our consulting practice. Needing help is acknowledging that you're facing an intractable problem. Why should the organization pay a consultant to help solve the problem when it's your job to have the answer?)

It may be helpful to re-frame a problem as something that isn't a failure of leadership or management.

Problems as Value Blockers

In service management, a problem may be the cause of an incident, and an incident may be defined as an unplanned interruption or degradation of service. (Note that this is an interruption or degradation of the value derived from that service.)

Value that is blocked by an underlying problem is a matter of process and not the failure of an individual person. A good Problem Management process helps find solutions and liberate value.

Problem Management can be tricky; effort may be high and progress may be slow. As with an entrepreneur looking to start a new business, you want to make sure you are working on a problem worth solving. That is: Is the value worth the effort of unblocking it?

We solve problems through a complex synthesis of creativity (ideas), experience, data, and some times the luck of the draw.

Problems as Unrealized Value

Another way to look at problems is value that is unrealized. In entrepreneurial terms, this is value created by fulfilling the needs of an under served market. In terms of service management, this is at the heart of service strategy and design.

Needs may sometimes be viewed as problems you don't know you have. A better tool, or better use of an existing tool. The Lean movement's concept of waste applies here.

The key is observation and listening. Processes and procedures for Business Relationship Management (internal) and Customer Relationship Management (external) help feed the design of products and services that fulfill needs, reduce waste, and capture unrealized value.

People Have Ideas

Today, we take for granted the innovations of companies such as Apple, Google, or Microsoft. We see them rolling out some new thing, and we accept that, they've done it again, progress has been made.

But who are they? People have ideas, not companies, yet most organizations are geared toward stifling innovation rather than encouraging it.

How do you encourage people to have ideas, then?

Diversity Multiplies

Assembling a team of people with the same background, skill, and experience does not engender different opinions or ideas. More often than not, the opposite is true -- they will all come to the same conclusion by supporting and reinforcing what they believe to be correct. This is hardly a fertile ground for ideas or innovation.

Build your teams from cross-sections of your organizational structure, and don't forget to mix gender and ethnicity when possible. You are looking to break provincialism and create safe conflict (see below) in order to create the best possible opportunity for good ideas.

Ideas Must Be Protected

All ideas are of equal value. See Ideas Need Execution. We have a natural tendency to reject and even attack ideas before they can even be discussed. This might be the normalcy bias, or cognitive dissonance or group think.

Whatever the reason, you must establish an environment where all ideas are valued, and idea killers are not allowed.

Safe Conflict

The best teams have a strong bond among the members. Some call this a good working relationship, but it is more than that. Members need to empathize, exercise patience, have compassion, and focus on collaboration. In order to have safe and healthy conflict, you need a high-trust environment.

This is foreign to most organizations, and may take some effort to set up. But the pay-off is considerable. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team apply here (and elsewhere):

1. Absence of Trust: Unwilling to be vulnerable within the group.
2. Fear of Conflict: Seeking artificial harmony over constructive, passionate debate.
3. Lack of Commitment: Feigning buy-in for group decisions creates ambiguity throughout the organization.
4. Avoidance of Accountability: Ducking the responsibility to call peers on counterproductive behavior which sets low standards.
5. Inattention to Results: Focusing on personal success, status and ego before team success.

Ideas Must Be Implemented

Ideas, by themselves, are not valuable. This statement hurts. Yet in competitive environments, it is often a race to see who will finish first, and not who first had the idea.

Patents and trademarks notwithstanding¹, an idea must be developed before it can produce value. (Actually, it must be developed and delivered.)

In some cases, the implementation bears little resemblance to the original idea; it was just a teeny, tiny little spark that someone else turned in to a fire.

A Demand Management process helps capture and develop ideas before resources are committed to a full-fledged project.

Once formed and establish, ideas need to be executed before value may be realized. Execution is the domain of Change or Project Management processes.

Discovery

Some sort of discovery is always prudent. Oft times, this need not be a long and formal process. The team could spend an hour or less brainstorming and a few minutes Googling for additional info. During this stage, you want to answer two basic questions:

1. What are we trying to accomplished?
2. What will it take to achieve?

For the first question, a very basic result might be:

1. A descriptive title for the idea.
2. A brief summary. Focus on the problem, solution, and end result.
3. Some links, questions, or related info.

For the second question, you may wish to start with some basic estimates:

• Effort: The energy required to sustain the idea to completion.
• Time: The calendar time that is likely required to complete the project.
• Urgency: Assuming it can be implemented in time, this is an overall measure of the timeliness of the end result. A practical urgency of "yesterday" probably means you're too late.
• Impact: The overall impact of a successful implementation.
• Risk: The risk involved. You may choose to evaluate the implementation risks (those issues that would jeopardize the project) as well as the risk of doing nothing.
• Maintenance: This is the effort to maintain the end result after it is completed and operationalized.
• Cost: This is the guestimated amount of money required.

With the exception of cost, you could provide all of these an estimated level: very low, low, normal, high, and very high. (You could do this with cost as well, but may not provide enough detail to make a decision.)

Ideas that have gone through Discovery may be approved for planning through a process of Demand Management or Change Management.

Planning

The depth of planning depends upon the idea, but the general goal is to refine the estimates from Discovery. This may be done through more business case analysis, detailed specifications, work breakdown structures, and so on.

When Planning is complete, the project may be reasonably compared with other projects. What are the conflicts? What are the synergies?

Next Steps

The next steps depend upon the result of Planning. Should the project be approved for Staging, placed On Hold, or Withdrawn from consideration?

A Change Advisory Board might decide on the recommending the project for additional consideration as well as its relative priority. Or a Project Portfolio Management process might queue the project according to policies and procedures established by the board or executive management.

Conclusion

Society and literature like to place emphasis on the heroic effort or stunning genius of the individual. Modern management practices, human resources, and renumeration strategies are broken; they tend to focus on competition rather than collaboration, and succeed only in producing a system of organizational dysfunction.

If you want to create a value engine, you must ...

1. understand the source of ideas,
2. create an environment that encourages and protects innovation, and
3. maintain processes that facilitate the implementation of the best ideas.