Tweak or Freak?

Every business faces challenges and opportunities. Sometimes it’s a question of tweaking — refining a system or product, sanding off its rough edges. Sometimes it’s a question of freaking — replacing the old with something completely new, like reinventing the way we listen to music, fuel our cars, or exchange information.

When you’re tweaking, your best bet is a continuous improvement strategy like Six Sigma. When you’re freaking, you need an innovation strategy like Productive Thinking.

But what about when you’re not sure — when your challenge doesn’t fall neatly into either the tweak or freak category? If you try to tackle an innovation challenge using continuous improvement, you may not address the real issues. And if you try to tackle a continuous improvement challenge using innovation, you may be throwing out the baby with the bath water. How do you decide?

My friend and colleague Jeffrey Phillips of OVO Innovation has developed a simple test that can help. It’s called STRIP — an acronym that stands for Scope, Timeframe, Risk, Investment, and Perspective. Test your challenge with STRIP and you'll have a pretty good idea whether you should be thinking about tweaking or freaking.

Here’s a short description of how it works:

Scope: If the scope of your challenge involves discrete, incremental changes that can be managed by relatively few people, it’s probably a Six Sigma project. If it involves significant changes with lots of impact, it’s more likely a Productive Thinking project.

Timeframe: If your challenge can be addressed in a relatively short time, you’re in Six Sigma territory. If it will take longer for implementation and payback, it’s probably best addressed through Productive Thinking.

Risk: If implementing the changes carries relatively low risk, it’s Six Sigma. If there are larger risks to manage, you’ll probably want to use Productive Thinking.

Investment: If the investment needed is relatively low, it’s likely a Six Sigma issue. If your investment is likely to be high because you’re changing not a just part of a process, but the whole game, you’ll want to use Productive Thinking.

Perspective: If the impact of the change is mainly internal, it probably belongs in the Six Sigma camp. If the idea will have an impact on customers, prospects, or market as a whole, you’re into innovation territory and will want to use a Productive Thinking approach.

STRIP is a useful way to help you choose the most appropriate methodology to address your challenges. Jeffrey also has many other useful ideas in his book, Make Us More Innovative. If you’re looking for a sound perspective on how to understand and implement innovation processes in your business, you won’t find a better resource. Learn more about Jeffery's book by clicking Make us More Innovative.

How to See What’s Not There

The other day I participated in an innovation day for the supply chain management division of a large company. The morning was spent on several presentations about how the group had innovated over the past year. One of the major innovations was a regular meeting in which suppliers and customers could talk with one another.

Now, I think this is a great idea, and I'm sure it made things more efficient for everyone. But as good an idea as it is, a regular communication meeting is not breakthrough innovation.

I see this kind of thing a lot — companies patting themselves on the back for breakthrough innovations that are really incremental improvements. Incremental improvement is powerful and positive, but it's not the same as breakthrough innovation. Incremental change results from Reproductive Thinking. But for game changing innovation, you need Productive Thinking. Here's the difference:

Reproductive Thinking is a way to refine what's known. Think of continuous improvement, Six Sigma, or positive incremental change. It's what you need for ferreting out inefficiencies, improving quality, and ensuring consistent outcomes. Reproductive Thinking is characterized by what the Japanese call kaizen, or good change.

Productive Thinking is a way to generate the new. Think of big AHAs, eureka moments, and breakthrough change. It's what you need for seeding innovation, disrupting the marketplace, and changing the rules of the game. Productive Thinking is characterized by what I call tenkaizen, or good revolution.

Both types of thinking are useful, but if you want to create something truly new, Reproductive Thinking is the wrong tool. You need Productive Thinking.

When you were a kid, you probably had a thaumatrope. A thaumatrope isn’t a childhood disease; it’s a toy, popularized in Victorian England. It consists of a small disk with a picture on either side, mounted on string that lets you spin it. If you get the disk spinning fast enough, the two pictures merge. A common thaumatrope shows a bird on one side and an empty birdcage on the other. When you twirl the disk, you see the bird in the cage. Although there is no actual picture of a bird in a cage, you see it as clear as can be. You see a picture of something that isn’t there.

Productive Thinking is like spinning a thaumatrope. It's a way of combining old ideas and insights to make something new.

Striving for reproductive efficiency is great. By all means, go for it. But don't think that's the same as game-changing innovation. You can't fool yourself into being innovative. You need to learn how to think productively.

The Right Stuff

Almost everyone would agree that athletes can learn skills and train themselves to perform better, but we rarely give credence to the notion that people can learn skills and train themselves to THINK better. I often hear corporate folks say, “If only we had the right environment and the right leadership, if only we celebrated and rewarded our people appropriately, then we could be more innovative.” That might feel nice, but it’s simply not true.No one would assume that you could transform a bunch of untrained, out-of-shape folks into international basketball champions just by cheering them on and rewarding them for their efforts. You don’t win gold medals with good intentions. You win with skills and training and discipline.

Just as in basketball, innovative skills are not homogeneous. There are guards and forwards, centers and free throw specialists. Each of them is critical to the team’s success. And each of them needs to learn, develop, and practice their skills in order to be the best they can be.

So the number one pre-requisite for stimulating innovation in an organization is people who know how to think creatively. There are specific skills required to do that. They’re not terribly difficult to learn, but it’s amazing how few of us have them naturally. Just telling someone to feel free to compose a musical score won’t produce the musical score, let alone a good one. First they have to understand the language of music.

“There is a vast difference between training and education. Training teaches skills and competencies. Education teaches insight and understanding. If you don’t see the difference, think about the difference between sex education and sex training. Which would you send your kids to? Which would you go to yourself?” - MICHAEL HAMMER