Creativity Central [Marty Baker]

So you’re at Square One.

It’s the rarified place where projects are incubated and launched. Rarified? Why such a lofty word for a project? The American Heritage Dictionary offers some insight – belonging to or reserved for a small select group or to make thin, less compact, or less dense.

The goal of this Square One series is about opening up [less dense] the possibilities of how to make smarter starts. This series is beginning of my new book -- Square One: The Art of the Smart Start.
Nothing exerts a greater gravitational force or influence over a project than the human factor. Bias, politics, motivation, personal agendas, ego and myriad subconscious hobgoblins are the major elephants in the room.

That’s the good news.

It’s good news because railing against the human factor is like shaking your fist at the rain. One of my favorite writers, Sheldon Kopp wrote a wonderfully insightful book called And End to Innocence – Facing Life Without Illusions.

“In addition to the chance blows to which life subjects everyone else, we add the needless suffering that comes from impossible demands that we be special, and that the world be just and fair.”
So shake hands with the human factor – the joy and the pain of all beginnings.
Smarter beginnings don’t mean easier beginnings. The human factor will determine just how difficult a project will be.

There are two basic questions you can answer that will help you with the handshake with reality. 1) How much leverage do you really have to influence the course of a project? 2) How motivated are you to influence the course of a project?

I have learned the leverage question the hard way. I have had the responsibility of managing a project but with limited authoritity to make key decisions. The answer to this question is critical if you want to successfully handle the human factor.

Reinhold Niebuhr’s prayer is a good start “…accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.”

The second question is equally important. How motivated how are you? If you don’t have true leverage how much are you willing to invest in a project?

Here’s a true story about leverage and motivation. A friend of mine told me about an experience he had as a freelancer at a large advertising agency. He was standing next to the president of the agency, watching employees leave at 5 PM -- the official hours of the agency.
The president told my friend, “I wish they’d start acting as stakeholders in this agency.” My friend replied, “If you treated them like stakeholders maybe they would.” (Remember my friend was a freelancer – which means he enjoyed the privilege of not having or needing leverage or approval.)

Recap: You can’t successfully navigate Square One if you don’t know what you can control and what you can’t. Whether or not you’re comfortable (or engaged) in Square One depends on your level of motivation.

Are you ready to shake hands?

Square One is a lonely place.

It’s the uncomfortable sanctuary we return to after failed endeavors and other misadventures.  Like a busy highway rest stop, it’s not a place to linger. I may be in the minority, but I like square one.

The truth is most people don’t do square one very well. If they did, they wouldn't return to it so frequently. 

Yogi Berra supposedly said, “We’re lost, but at least we’re making good time.”  I think that sums up what most of us feel when we don’t stay at square one long enough. 
Recently, I asked a group of executives how they approached square one. 

10 executives, 10 different opinions on how to define square one.  But they all agreed who initiated the project set the framework for how a team proceeded.

Typically fewer questions were asked. Especially, the question “why?”  From minute one, people are in Yogi Berra mode – they are making good time and more importantly they’re not making waves.

A few years ago, I met a retired FBI agent.  I asked him if he ever met J. Edgar Hoover.  He said, “Yes, once.”  I walked into his office and shook his hand and left.  You didn't want do anything to get on his radar.”

Even the 9/11 Report can be summed up with two basic points, information was hoarded, not shared.  And nobody was asking the big questions.  Like “Why not?”

Try this experiment, next time you have Square One meeting – keep track of how many questions are asked.  Are you holding back your questions?  And if so, why? In the next entry, I will explore how many companies and individuals have used Square One thinking to achieve smarter and more successful outcomes.

And yes, you may get on the radar.  If that's a bad thing, we need to talk.  Any quetions?

A few weeks ago I had the good fortune of meeting some of the great people at The David Allen Company. I wanted to share a presentation that David gave to Google about how to succeed in a multi-tasking world by managing commitments and freeing your mind (or as David would say it, freeing up psychic ram) for productivity. If you haven't had the opportunity to read his book "Getting Things Done -- the Art of Stress Free Productivity," I recommend it highly.

It all began with two slightly overweight graduate economics students at MIT.  Using the profit motive as the basis of a contract -- Dean Karlin promised to pay John Romalis $10,000 if he didn't lose 38 lbs by a certain date.  The both succeed in shedding the agreed lbs.  That was six years ago. 

According to the Economist, "a slim Mr. Karlin now a professor at Yale, launched StickK.com, a company based on this contractual arpprach to achieving tough personal goals."

The site is based on Karlin's ideas in behavioral economics which combines insights from psychology and economics to explain how people make decisions.  Again, the Economist "The traditional rational economic model of decision making can't explain why people are tempted to do bad things in the short term  (smoke, eat too much, write blogs) that they know have long term consequences -- cancer, obesity, and carpel tunnel syndrome. "  The theory here.  (Please don't let your eyes glaze over).  Is that the "bad" short-term self doesn't give sufficient weight to the outcomes that the (good) long-term self values most. (Our own worst enemy is us). 

So StickK tries to change this by helping you design a COMMITMENT CONTRACT -- that will impose an immediate cost if you fail.   Amazing. Well, I visited the web site.  www.stickK.com and made an immediate contract. I will exercise four times a week for the next 12 weeks.  I ponied up a sum of $24 (writers are notoriously cheap) to give to charity if I don't reach my goals.  I have to report in once a week.  You can customize your commitment and there are various levels of incentives including have your failure published on their website.  

This is yet another great example of incremental innovation.  The Weight Watchers model to other economic based incentives (like NFL and NBA players who get more money based on reaching milestones).

The kicker?  An angel investor has helped Karlan (and two other co-founders Ian Ayres and Jordon Goldberg) raise 1.2 million dollars.  

I hope my long term self wins.  And I'm betting on it. 

I'm not happy with Dan and Chip Heath -- authors of "Made to Stick" and contributing writers for Fast Company.  I was about to publish a blog on how to use "pre-flight" checklists to accelerate innovation when my March Fast Company arrived and they beat me to the intellectual punch.

That's a good thing. Because it means the technique has lifted itself from the bottom floor of best practices and made it back into the board room.  Listen to Dan and Chip's take on checklist value, " The holy grail of checklists may be the one created by Dr. Peter Pronovost of the John Hopkins School of Medicine.  Intensive Care Unites (ICUs) often use IV lines to deliver medication and these lines can become infected, causing nasty health complications.  Pronovost frustrated by these preventable events, compiled a five-step checklist.

The checklist contained straightforward (i.e) common sense advice:  doctors should wash their hands before inserting an IV, a patient's skin should be cleaned with an antiseptic at the point of insertion and so forth." 

The results?  When Michigan's ICUs put the checklist into practice over an 18 month period -- line infections were virtually eliminated -- saving the hospital an estimated $175 million.  Yes, one hundred and seventy five million dollars  -- because they no longer needed to treat the associated complications.  And it saved nearly 1500 lives.

Now let's talk about the Hubble Trouble.  After its 1990 launch, it was found that the main mirror suffered from spherical aberration due to faulty quality control during its manufacturing, severely compromising the telescope's capabilities.  Here's where it gets even more interesting:

A design defect in a measuring device, probably compounded by human error in the device's assembly, caused the mirror flaw in the $1.5 billion Hubble Space Telescope, a federal panel said Thursday.

An investigation panel had previously reported that there was a 1.3-millimeter spacing error in the assembly of an optic instrument used to guide the machines that ground the surface of the telescope's main mirror. As a result, the mirror was deformed and it is unable to produce the precise images its designers hoped to achieve.

The key is that even when there is no ironclad "right" way, checklists can help people avoid blind spots in complex environments.   

Where could your business benefit from a checklist?  Well, if you listen to Gerald Haman of Solution People, virtually everywhere.  Haman is a big advocate and thought leader on questionating and question banks Qbanks.  It's a process that allows incremental innovation in nearly every area of your business. 

For example, the Pronovost IV checklist could have evolved by asking "In what ways could we reduce the number of infections with IV lines?"  One question -- and many answers. Wash hands, use antiseptic etc.  That one question led to millions in dollars in savings.   Haman has developed hundreds of question banks on a variety of subjects.  His successful meeting Qbank has over 150 questions.

Basically, checklists are insurance against over-confidence or under training.   "A checklist doesn't have to mean huge binders full of obsessive and likely counterproductive process documentation.  Checklists simply make screw ups less likely," say the Heath brothers.

One of the subjects I talk about in my Inotivity Seminars is how you (or your company) can leverage the knowledge you already have to develop Qbanks and checklists that evolve.  Isn't that worth $175 million?  Check out Solution People from the blog roll on the left side of this page.  Or link to http://www.fastcompany.com.

If you would like a free PDF book on questionating and Qbanks, please send a request to inotivity@gmail.com and use the subject line "request PDF."   

Like an earthquake, every eureka moment has a series of aftershocks.  One of the most fascinating of these after sights is discovering your blind spots.  Typically, you'll hear lines like "The answer was right in front of me and I couldn't see it."  "I was solving the wrong problem."  "I never challenged the conventional thinking."

Isn't fallibility great?

Years ago, Russell Ackoff, a teacher at the Wharton School wrote a great article called "Infallibility."  I am paraphrasing some of the highlights because it sheds some more light on our blind spots.  In an experiment conducted by Alex Bavelas at MIT, subjects were taken into a room where slides were projected.  The slides were produced by waving a flashlight in dark room over unexposed film.

The subjects sat at desks in front of two buttons.  They were told to press one of the buttons after each slide. Here's the twist.  If they pressed the "right" one they would be paid, if they pressed the wrong one, they would get nothing. 

There was nothing said about what parameters determined the "right" choice.  After a few slides, most subjects began to formulate theories to explain the rewards they received and soon they were quite sure that their theory was correct. 

When the experiment was completed the subjects were asked to reveal their theories.  Then Bavelas told them that they were rewarded at random.  They was absolutely no relationship between the buttons pushed and the rewards.   Most of the subjects were surprised, but insisted that they theories were correct.  They would not abandon their theories.

Story 2 from Ackoff.  C. West Churchman and Philburn Ratoosh at U.C. Berkeley developed a management game played by a team of four.  One acted as a CEO, the others as managers of manufacturing, marketing, and finance.

The teams were asked to improve the performance of a simulated firm.  The simulation was generated by a well-known mathematical model from which an optimal solution could be derived.  (Note:  all the students who were used as subjects had attended a class on this model and its solution had been presented.)

On each team was a student who served as the financial manager who was told the nature of the model and its solution.  They were asked not to reveal this information to their team until they received a signal from the experimenter.  "They were asked to pretend that they made they made the discovery on their own."

Only a small percentage of the teams adopted the optimal solution when it was proposed to them. 

Now, the follow up.  Churchman and Ratoosh described the experiment and the results at many meetings and seminars.  The explanations of the failure of the teams to implement the optimal solution was discussed and corrective actions suggested at these meetings. 

Churchman and Ratoosh recorded these suggestions and tested them in the same experimental situation but with new subjects. The probability of implementation was not significantly increased.  Ackoff's takeaway.

"Those who do not know but think they do are more dangerous advisors than those who do not know -- but know it."

Ask yourself "where are my blind spots?"  (Yes, very difficult.)  A better option is to keep an open mind to unconventional solutions.   I will give you an example I've used in seminars.  Let's say NASA is losing money. What if they collectively decided that they weren't in the space exploration business but in the trash business.

What if all the nuclear and garbage waste was transported into massive floating containment spheres?  What if that were a multi-billion dollar business.  (Enough to finance other space missions).  I give this freely to NASA with apologies to the Universe.  (Maybe hurtle these pods into the Sun).  

Take 30 minutes and list possible blind spots. What assumptions need to be challenged?  What processes are going to lead to better outcomes?  

 

 

 

 

The Google Lab continues to push the information envelope.  It's called Google Books (Search) and it allows you to instantly search the full text of over a million digitized books.  It was formally known as "Google Print" when it was introduced in October, 2004.

I've used it often and it's remarkable. Google has had to walk an incredibly thin line as it attempts to digitize books under copyright law.  So, often you will get access to books with chapters missing or just summaries but that doesn't diminish the ability to get a sense of the style and content of a book.  

You can enter key words or a subject and Google Books will deliver a book you can add to your digitized library.  I recently researched books on quantum mechanics and astrophysics and created a library of over 20 books to reference.  Everything from Walter Isaacson's Einstein: His Life and Universe to The First Three Minutes:  A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe by Steven Weinberg.

I also downloaded Lewis Black and George Carlin as a mental sorbet from the mind-numbing theories of the cosmos.

Browsing and creativity?  The most creative people I know are serial browsers.  It's opening your mind to random ideas that have the opportunity to mingle and dance with other thoughts.  It's all fuel for your imagination. 

Here's the URL:  http://books.google.com/