Innovation, Diversity, and Future-Fit Mindsets
Innovation, Diversity, and Future-Fit Mindsets
Three videos totalling 11 minutes - with transcripts
“He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.” Sir Francis Bacon 1
Why is diversity of perspectives crucial for innovation — but also risks fragmentation into fiefdoms, factions, and silos?
Why do most organisations end up held back by this kind of fragmentation, and what can you do about it?
What specific mindsets must you cultivate in yourself and others if you want to create a future-fit culture of innovation, agility, and adaptiveness?
The above topics are addressed below in three short videos, total runtime 11 minutes:
For Innovation and Agility Encourage Diversity but Avoid Fragmentation (1 min 33s):
Transcript:
Innovative, agile organisations thrive on rich interactions between people with different perspectives. That’s why diversity is the lifeblood of innovation. But diversity significantly increases the risk of misunderstandings.
Where there are misunderstandings, people get frustrated. And when people get frustrated, their unique talents and strengths don’t simply go to waste, they turn in on themselves in dysfunctional ways, leading to organisational misalignments and fragmentation.
The way we’ve traditionally structured, managed and measured our organisations actively encourages fragmentation, into fiefdoms, factions and silos — as local perspectives become increasingly entrenched in various parts of the organisation.
That’s why instead of developing cultures of innovation, most organisations end up bogged down due to “us” and “them” attitudes and behaviours.
Organisations develop cultures of innovation when people adopt an innovative mindset.
With an innovative mindset people don’t just respect the different perspectives of others, they actively seek them out to enrich their own understanding — and this naturally and automatically unleashes the cooperation and collaboration that’s essential to innovation.
So if you want to build a future-fit innovative, agile, adaptive organisation you need to encourage diversity, but must avoid fragmentation.
And, the focused, pragmatic way to do this is to systemically cultivate innovative mindsets throughout the organisation.
Fiefdoms, Factions and Silos are the #1 Organisational Barrier to Future-Fit Cultures (3 mins 47s):
Transcript
Over the past 35 (now) years I’ve worked with dozens of organisations, across various sectors, markets and geographies, helping them to become more innovative and agile.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of the most innovative organisations I’ve worked with have been in high-tech.
But even here, firms suffer from the tendency to fragment into fiefdoms, factions and silos due to entrenched local perspectives.
Here’s how Marketing, R&D and Manufacturing – three key functions in most high-tech firms – generally see themselves and each other.
“Sophisticated business builders” — that’s the way Marketing like to see themselves.
But in the eyes of their R&D colleagues, they’re the people who’ll promise customers anything – even if it’s highly impractical or even scientifically impossible – just to win their business.
Manufacturing often only see Marketing from afar — where they appear to be living the high life on a company expense account.
When it comes to R&D – Marketing usually see them as spending far too much time tinkering with their technology toys – activity that R&D think of as pushing back the boundaries of technology to secure the organisation’s future.
Manufacturing – who are the ones who’ll end up having to produce whatever new whiz-bang ideas eventually get dreamt up, tend to regard R&D as impractical boffins.
Finally, Manufacturing are seen by Marketing as ‘order fillers’ who keep customers waiting far too long, far too often.
R&D look on Manufacturing’s dislike of unproven new technologies as evidence that they’re risk-averse Luddites.
But Manufacturing see themselves as ‘The Champions of Quality’ — ensuring that the organisation’s customers get what they ordered, that it works in the real world, and that it keeps on working.
It’s not hard to see how entrenched perspectives like these end up stifling innovation and agility.
This tendency to fragment into fiefdoms, factions and silos happens in all organisations — and not just along departmental lines.
It might be, for example, that in your organisation some people think of themselves as creatives, some as action orientated, and others as customer-focused.
All the experience of the creatives has taught them that the key to success is to think “out of the box” — coming up with as many ideas as possible, no matter how wacky, before choosing between them.
Meanwhile, the action-oriented are absolutely certain that the way to get results is to stop all the pontificating and messing about and just get things done.
And the customer focused are certain that the best way to proceed is by going out and surveying the market before doing anything else.
You can see how easily people with these different perspectives regard others as mistaken, misinformed and misguided.
The creatives will probably assert – maybe quoting Steve Jobs at Apple – that there’s little point going out and asking customers what they want because they won’t know what they want until we give it to them.
Meanwhile, the action-oriented want to “Just Do It”. They see the creatives as wasting far too much time sitting around all day on their bean-bags, dreaming up crazy impractical ideas.
And, in the eyes of their customer-focused colleagues, the action-oriented spend all their time running around like headless chickens, making themselves look busy, doing lots of things that customers won’t want, value or pay for.
The bottom line is that innovation and agility can only flourish when people who see things differently learn to respect, value and integrate their perspectives to co-create new value.
This is why the fragmentation into fiefdoms, factions and silos is the number one organisational barrier that you must overcome — by systemically cultivating innovative 2D3D mindsets throughout the organisation.
2D3D Mindsets are the Cultural Foundation of Future-Fit Organisations (5 mins 24s):
Transcript:
Back in December 1998, The Financial Times wrote a feature article about a thinking tool I’d developed based on the previous ten years’ experience helping senior executive clients build innovative, agile organisations.
In brief, here’s what the feature said: “This exciting new gadget will help you unlock your innovative mindset and allow you to pull different perspectives together and lift thinking to a higher out-of-the-box-level”.
So, what is this “gadget” – as the FT calls it? Here it is. It’s called 2D3D – and it continues to play a major part in unlocking innovative mindsets twenty years on.
So, how does the 2D3D thinking tool help unlock an innovative mindset?
Notice how, when you come at it from this side, you see a circle. Viewed from this angle it looks like a square. And look at it this way and it’s a triangle. Each viewpoint yields a very different perspective on the same object.
What you see depends on the angle you’re coming from.
2D3D highlights a fundamental human characteristic – the fact that we each form our own unique, individual perspective on the same reality.
Each of our perspectives is inherently incomplete, biased and one-sided.
Like the circle, triangle and square facets of 2D3D, our perspectives are two dimensional or 2D takes on the bigger picture three dimensional or 3D reality.
It’s very important to recognise that the inability to see the whole picture is simply a natural and inevitable part of being human. It’s not a personal failing.
But what is a personal failing – and a major barrier to innovation and agility – is to make the mistake of taking our personal perspective to be the whole reality.
So, 2D3D embodies the key realisation that gives birth to an innovative mindset –that none of us ever sees the whole of any situation.
Innovation is essentially about combining multiple different perspectives to create new value, because despite the myth of the lone genius, in reality, innovation is very much a team effort.
This is why systemically cultivating innovative mindsets throughout the organisation is what unleashes the innovation magic — as people value, explore and integrate different perspectives as part of their normal, everyday activity.
The big challenge in all of this is that it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that what we see is the whole picture.
Then we find ourselves aligning ourselves only with those who see things the same way — and alienating everyone else.
This why so many organisations end up fragmenting into the fiefdoms, factions and silos that are the number one organisational barrier to innovation and agility (see the video above).
In 2D3D terms, what happens is the “circlists” – people who mistake the 2D circle for the whole 3D reality – see “triangolans” as mistaken, misinformed or misguided.
And, the “triangolans” – those who mistake the 2D triangle for reality, hold similarly dim views of “circlists”.
And neither of them sees eye-to-eye with the “squarians”.
Organisations fragment into multiple parts as local 2D perspectives become entrenched.
What start out as simple misunderstandings end up as institutionalised misalignments — with associated “us & them” attitudes and behaviours.
These lead to mistakes – where time, energy and money get wasted doing things that don’t add value; missed opportunities – where things that would add significant value don’t get done; and the friction and inertia that’s symptomatic of an inflexible, fragmented organisation.
Contrast this highly dysfunctional, but sadly all too common scenario with what happens when people cultivate innovative mindsets instead.
As we’ve seen, the foundation of an innovative 2D3D mindset is recognising and accepting that all perspectives – including our own – are inevitably incomplete, biased and one-sided.
This frees us from the trap of a 2D perspective that says: “We can’t both be right. And I know I am – so you must be wrong”.
We also escape the deeply dysfunctional notion that “If you were in any way right, I’d have to be wrong”.
As we increasingly regard the perspectives of others as a way to enrich our own understanding, the very same people we previously saw as mistaken, misinformed and misguided now automagically appear to be interesting, insightful and inventive.
In this way, 2D3D mindsets naturally and automatically unleash cooperation and collaboration – and new insights that spark off new ideas, experiments and initiatives – unleashing the collective ability to co-create new value and bringing the innovative, agile organisation to life.
Innovative mindsets are the cultural foundation for building an innovative agile organisation.
The trick is to create conditions in which a systemic, organisation-wide shift takes place – away from entrenched 2D perspectives to innovative mindsets.
That’s why, twenty years on, the 2D3D shape featured in the FT article is still right at the heart of my professional practice – and at the centre of my logo.
From essay, 'Of Innovations' (1625). As collected and translated in The Works of Francis Bacon (1765), Vol. 1, 479.