The Evolution of Super-Doers

Life is full of transitions. One that seems to be particularly common in the technology realm is that of super-doer to super-manager. Unless you were born with a super-rich daddy, most of us started our careers with a whole lot of heavy lifting. Our success was measured by the quality and quantity of work we could individually produce. Sure, we were part of teams but the team stars were those whose Herculean feats were greater than the others. But a strange thing started to happen. Those Herculean feats of strength became a calling card, and as your success grew so too did the number of people seeking your advice and support when they were up against a challenge. One moment you were the student and the next you were the teacher.

For each of us that make the transition from doer to leader, there is a point time when you realize the task(s) at hand exceeds your Herculean strength. It is no longer about what you can do, but rather what the team can do. It is a concept that you read about and study but until it actually happens, it is all rather academic. And so it is that the transition can be a little intimidating. The super-doer likely grew up always knowing that when push came to shove, they could simply overcome whatever challenge lay in their way through pure grit and dogged determination. Suddenly you are a manager, and your success is no longer in your own two hands. You cannot just pick up the ball and carry it across the goal line. Somebody else has to do it, and if you are any sort of leader, they are looking to you for how to do it. Most people think of managers as having more power and control, but for a super-doer it can feel quite the opposite. Control of their destiny has been dispersed among a broader group of people. It isn’t more control, it’s less and frankly it is a scary transition. Not everyone makes it, or should even try.

Entrepreneurs are by their very nature super-doers and they take justified pride in being the chief cook and bottle washer of their start up enterprises. In the early days, everything depends upon them. But over time with some success and luck, the team grows from one to many, and the business becomes more than any one person can handle. Suddenly the business no longer needs a Herculean do-it-all entrepreneur, but rather a super-leader entrepreneur. It is a scary time for everyone involved with the company. In the best-case scenario, the entrepreneur makes the transition to super-leader. In the second best-case scenario, the entrepreneur realizes their limits and hands the reins to a new leader. And in the worst-case scenario, the entrepreneur fights the transition and drives the business into failure. Unfortunately, the third scenario is the most common. It is as if the same pure grit and dogged determination that created their early success becomes their Achilles’ Heel.

Cowboys, Bureaucrats & Pirates

One of the biggest challenges of any startup is dealing with the cultural battles that arise when a company starts to implement structure and process into its operations. Communication and coordination are easy when the entire company can sit around a single lunch table, but once you have a lunchroom life becomes a little more complicated. Increased size and scope of business operations drive the necessity for formality and process. I have always thought of organizations as having two archetypes: the cowboy and the bureaucrat. The cowboy is the lone wolf nomad who operates best with total freedom away from the formalities of society. The cowboy’s credo is just get’er done. That is a great credo until customers start having an opinion on how things should be done (e.g., in accordance with ISO registration), or God forbid they want two of their products to be the same. That’s when the nomadic cowboy shows his limits. Once the ‘wild west’ [phase of your business] has been won, the cowboy’s role must be complimented with somebody with an eye for structure and repeatability. Enter the bureaucrat - the kind of person that understands the power and necessity of administration and process. To a bureaucrat, true beauty lies in efficiency and effectiveness, and so the bureaucrat is driven to tame the wild and bring order to things by building structures.

Unfortunately, cowboys and bureaucrats hate each other with a passion. The cowboy sees the bureaucrat as wanting to stifle innovation and creativity, and the bureaucrat sees the cowboy as a petulant child that cannot do anything without leaving a mess for somebody else to cleanup. It is an all-out cultural war that constantly shifts as the ratio of cowboys to bureaucrats changes along with the maturity of the company.

The truth is that companies need both cowboys and bureaucrats. The normal management strategy is to keep the warring parties apart, and just hope their cages (i.e., cubicle walls) are enough to keep them from fighting. I have come to think however that there is a third archetype out there – somebody that can cowboy when it is necessary but also build organizational capability along the way. It needs to be somebody that understands the value of process and infrastructure, but not in a dogmatic way. I struggled with the appropriate name and description for this archetype until my friend Ken Cook suggested the notion of the Pirate.

Pirates are masters of their craft. Yes, they are driven by the quest for the bounty, but more fundamentally they are sailors – great damn sailors. Sailing is one of those activities where coordination is an absolute necessity and each crewmember must master their role to perfection. Mastery in any field is achieved through discipline. It is this combination of superb skill and discipline that makes them masters. Seeking challenge (i.e., great bounties) in their work often places them in the role of pirates.

Most masters have a simultaneous distain and understanding of the need for rules and process. Their own personal discipline means that they do not need process or rules - control comes from within. Masters are given the tough jobs (i.e., sent into "no mans land") so they often run into situations where everyday rules, processes and standing orders are not relevant to the situation at hand, and stand in the way of getting the job done. At the same time, the master knows where his mastery starts and ends, and realizes that where there is not mastery, one needs processes or rules to follow to prevent harm to themselves or others.

The cowboy and the bureaucrat share a common attribute in that they are not masters nor do they understand mastery. The bureaucrat values blind adherence to procedure without insight or skill in a subject, and the cowboy values his personal insight and skill without appreciating the power of procedure. The bureaucrat will smother peak performance in the name of consistency. The cowboy will have occasional moments of glory punctuated by spectacular failures that take forever to clean up.

So, small startups can tolerate the cowboy because the organization needs their brilliance, and are nimble enough to contain the inevitable failures. However the small startup, when successful, quickly outgrows its ability to tolerate the downside of the cowboy. It usually takes a long time before the organization is large enough to tolerate the inflexibility of bureaucrats, but once they take root they tend to be a force to be reckoned with.

Overcoming the inevitable cultural battles that arise by trying to maintain some sort of détente between cowboys and bureaucrats is a losing proposition. Neither has the right answer and they will never agree to a ‘reasonable balance’ between their views. But there is a way forward: the relentless quest for mastery and the associated discipline it entails. Strive to build an organization whose culture values mastery toward the corporate mission above all else. Like the pirate sailor, set sail for blue oceans, endeavor to be a master of your crew position (be it captain or seaman), respect and coordinate your actions with the other crewmembers, and never lose sight of the bounty. It's the perfect cultural archetype and many thanks must go to Ken. The pirate culture - bounty-obsessed sailors with a healthy disrespect for the law.

To Build or Grow?

Seed capital. Incubate. Grow. Harvest. The innovation and entrepreneurism industry is full of farming and gardening analogies. The implied concept is that success is about finding a single idea (seed) that has the potential to grow into a profitable business (crop) that we can then harvest. As farmers, our strategy is to provide resources (sunshine, water, fertilizer) to a seed that already has the DNA of success. We are not adding to the DNA of the seed, but rather promoting and facilitating its germination and growth.

It is an interesting analogy, but I can think of no examples where it actually worked that way. In business, I have never seen a single idea go from seed to magnificent oak. Companies are not grown. Businesses are built piece by piece, brick by brick, idea by idea, and employee by employee. And each addition brings its own DNA which it turn changes the very fabric of the whole. That novel new ‘seed’ idea may be the cornerstone of a new business concept, but ultimately it is only one piece of the puzzle.

Our task as designers and builders of businesses is much like the child building a lego figure. Something sparks an idea (often a new lego piece that we imagine will allow us to build something totally new) and we develop an image in our mind of what we want to build and how we might play with it once built. We usually go right from idea to the building process by laying out all the lego pieces in front of us, searching for the necessary blocks to build. We pick out the first pieces and then starting building. We pick more pieces and build a little more. Inevitably we get to a point where the piece we really want isn’t there or it doesn’t quite work, and so we disassemble things a bit and try again. Eventually we get to a point where we have a figure. It looks kinda like what we imagined but never exactly.

Building businesses follow a similar pattern. It always starts with a ‘fuzzy’ idea about a product or a business, and we image how the product or business might create value. We think about what pieces we would need to put it together: technologies, channels, partners, expertise, financing, etc. Which pieces do we have, which can we develop ourselves, and which pieces can we acquire or partner for? And then, assuming we have most of the foundational pieces in our grasp, we begin the building process. As we start to build, we inevitably discover the pieces don’t fit together quite like we imagined and so we step back a bit and rejig the design accordingly. Eventually we get to a point where we have a product and a business. It looks kinda like what we imagined but never exactly.

Hypothesis Testing

NEWS FLASH: Every business plan is wrong. Not to worry. As Dwight Eisenhower once said, “plans are useless but planning is essential.” This is certainly true for business plans. The actual documents aren’t worth the paper they are written on but the process of creating them … priceless.

The value of a company is inversely proportional to the uncertainty surrounding the assumptions that make up its business plan. We must therefore systematically and iteratively drive out the uncertainty in our business plans. Here’s the shocker: the place do this is not the boardroom, but rather the marketplace.

It is all too easy to treat assumptions as knowns. The danger is that we lose sight of the uncertainty of the assumptions as we build a complicated spreadsheet business model around those assumptions. Never forget that no matter how fancy your model, it is worthless if the underlying assumptions are not true. That is why I no longer use assumptions in my planning. They are just too dangerous. They tend to lie hidden in the details and then blow up at the most inopportune times. Instead of assumptions, I insist our business models are built around a set of hypotheses. It is a subtle but important difference because it emphasizes the ‘unknowns’ in the business model. The business priority therefore becomes validation (or testing) of the hypothesis rather than building upon it as you would do with an assumption. If the hypothesis is validated, the uncertainty is reduced and it is far easier justify investing into the next stage. If the hypothesis turns out to be wrong (something that happens quite a bit), we’ve hopefully learned early enough in the process to try a different approach.

Director of Opinions

Please be advised that I’ll no longer be accepting applications for the role of Director of Opinions. I wish to thank all the pundits, armchair quarterbacks, and self-proclaimed experts out there that have shared their opinions about how we can all do better. Your energy and passion for finding flaws in others is really quite something. However, after much contemplation I have decided to go in a different direction. Henceforth, I will be exclusively seeking solution-oriented people to work with.

I appreciate that this decision will be controversial and that I will no doubt be accused of not being open to diverse opinions. I actually think that I am pretty open to differing approaches. It’s just that I have found that 20-20 hindsight and efforts to assign blame after the fact are … well … not all that helpful. I am not debating your superior intelligence or that you would have done way better had you tried. It would have been great had you applied your greatness to making things better. But you didn’t and so I have decided it preferable to work with those that try to solve problems rather than those that just pontificate about them. I know. I know. I am being overly pragmatic and too narrow-minded.

Thanks again for your interest in the role of Director of Opinions. I am sure that there is an organization out there somewhere (perhaps a consulting firm or an opposition party) that will value your passion for pointing out the flaws in those trying to accomplish something.

Best of luck,

Passion and Perseverance Trumps Experience

Carl Jung once said that in the first chapter of a man’s life, he foolishly tries to change the world to suit his purposes. And in the second chapter, he comes to realize that that the world is not about to change for the likes of him and so he comes to terms with his limitations. Jung concluded that the people that actually change the world are those that live in the first chapter.

Experience is great when we learn from it but not so good when we are jaded by it. I think the secret to success is having the determination and perseverance to never give up on the goal, combined with an ability to learn from and adapt to the challenges along the way. It is somewhat of a paradox in that you have to be steadfast in where you are going, but flexible about how you get there. The trouble with experience is that it can lull us into thinking we already know the ‘how’ part of the equation. And just as so many military generals have gone down to defeat by just reusing the plans of a previous war (e.g., Maginot Line), experienced managers tend to rely too heavily on past strategies.

When I consider what I value in leaders and team members, I realize that experience is not always at the top of the list. I like people from Jung’s first chapter – competent and determined folks that embody a willingness to try and learn. And yes, sometimes that means trying things that didn’t work before or won’t work this time. But failure is the price of progress, and so it is that we need leaders that are not terrified of failure.

To Hell with Chicken Littles

While we justly celebrate creativity and intelligence, I am strong believer that perseverance is the base ingredient of success. The world is not nearly as friendly or fair as we imagine in our Peter Pan dreams. The reality is that business, like life itself, is a contact sport - brutally hard, bumpy and exhausting. We fight and struggle to overcome challenges only to find new ones quickly replace them. We certainly need ingenuity to solve any given problem, but before that we must have the tenacity and intestinal fortitude to rise each morning emboldened enough to fight the good fight for another day. As Walter Eliot once said, “Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after another.”

We must have our eyes wide open to the challenges that stand in our way, but the moment we become overwhelmed the game is up. Perseverance is not about being oblivious to the challenges, but rather being able to see the goal beyond them. And like any other skill, the ability to persevere is something that must be constantly practiced, honed and perfected. As leaders, perseverance is absolutely essential because regardless of our genius or planning, shit happens. For me personally, it is not the next problem that I fear as much as my old nemesis - the Chicken Little. I get that people get down, tired and frustrated. It happens to us all, but the Chicken Little is different. The Chicken Little is not content to simply lose faith and rant a bit. No, the Chicken Little must drag down and frustrate everyone around them with their proclamations that the sky is falling and that the end is near. As a team tries to muster the energy for the next fight, the Chicken Little will arrive on the scene to highlight and exaggerate every challenge and every failing. It is exhausting and demoralizing.

We all know the Chicken Littles of the world. They are hideous and horrible beasts, but alas I suppose they are part life. Indeed they are just one of the many hurdles we must overcome along the way to success. Rationally I get it, but damn I wish the Chicken Littles would just go to hell so we can get on with taking the next hill.

Jackass Leadership Model

I recently read the biography about Steve Jobs. He was obviously an extremely talented individual and his passion for making truly great products is awe-inspiring. Jobs led the way in so many ways and his legacy will stir us for years to come. But it wasn’t all good. In fact, I have a pet theory that the recent increase in wanna-be entrepreneurs out there that prance around like arrogant and insolent children is because they are inspired by Jobs’ jackassian behaviour.

It is only natural that we study and dissect the personas of the great such as Jobs. We should study and learn from them, but we should also be mindful about emulating their every behavior in hopes that their success will somehow rub off on us. It doesn’t work like that. Jobs was not great because he was a jackass, but rather he got away with being a jackass because he was great in so many other ways.

The Dark Side of Innovation

I am always amazed at the distain many researchers and techies have for business people and investors. I was once at a university innovation conference when a panel of business types (including me) was introduced as ‘sharks’ that would steal researchers’ ideas. I get it. To a researcher whose passion and dream is an idea, the concept of having to sell that idea is distasteful. And so to many, the business side of innovation is a necessary evil. Pass the black cape because I guess that puts me in the camp of the dark forces.

Fundamentally every business is an investment product, and as such its objective is to provide a return to its owners. The reason Toyota exists is not to produce and sell cars, but rather to provide a return to its owners. It just so happens that Toyota has decided the best way to provide a good return to its owners is to sell cars. When you look at the business as an investment product, you realize the product and operations are the means, and the return is the end. You also realize that your business is competing with companies selling everything from derivatives and mutual funds to cars and mp3 players.

We spend a lot of time and energy talking and strategizing about technology and product development. But the truth is that it is not enough for a company to have a great product. A company needs to BE a great investment product. A company has to transform its products into economic value for its owners through its business model. And more than that, the company needs to sell itself as an investment product. Distasteful or not, this is the reality.

When most folks think of the sales function within an organization, they usually think of selling the products or services of that company. Toyota sells cars, Apple sells electronics, Hilton sells rooms, and Deloitte sells audit services. But investors don’t buy the company’s products. Their interest is in buying ownership/equity in the business itself, and like any product they have choices. They can buy a mutual fund, shares in Apple, or shares in your company. Knowing how to sell your company’s products versus selling your company as an investment product is vital. Technology innovators often forget this important subtly. They become so focused on how the product will change the world, that they forget put equal thought into how the business will create value for its owners.

So here is the point where I get on my dark soapbox and preach. I’m sorry, but this just cannot be said enough: for every technical innovation, there must be a corresponding business model innovation to realize the value of the technology. Business design is just as important as product design. You must put time and energy into developing, testing, refining and selling your business model. If you find this concept distasteful, go find another career.

Rudderless in a Sea of Apathy

Anyone who has sailed knows that without forward motion, the rudder cannot steer the boat. A becalmed sailboat will drift around aimlessly no matter what you do at the helm. The same is true for organizations: you cannot steer an organization that is not moving. Certainly there are times when it is okay - even necessary - for an organization to pause, rest, regroup, tread water, etc. for a while but such a tactic is not sustainable. Once momentum has been lost, you are doomed. In the wise words of Albert Einstein, “life is like a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.”

Movement is an essential element of leadership for you cannot follow somebody that is standing still. Well-meaning wannabe leaders and wishful thinkers often get consumed with grand visions and ideas. They will talk at length about what could and ought to be but then fail to achieve tangible steps. Don’t get me wrong - great ideas and inspirational visions are hugely compelling, but without action such words are little more than poverty-stricken poetry. Organizations and teams are inherently restless and impatient. This is especially true for high performance teams. They need action to bind them. This is why peacetime armies keep their soldiers busy with endless exercises, drills and seemingly meaningless activities such as inspections and polishing. It’s not just about practice. It is about maintaining cohesion. An organization that ceases to be “on the move” will quickly atrophy, drift and eventually fracture.

In times of challenge and uncertainty it is tempting to “hunker down” and wait for better times. Hunker down too long however and opportunity will pass you by and you’ll find yourself drifting about like a becalmed sailboat. Surviving to fight another day is a tactic, not a strategy. Leaders who engage such an approach must be wary of the risks for trading momentum for refuge is rarely a bargain. History is replete of examples where exhausted armies on the move defeated better-rested adversaries that had “hunkered down.” The same is true for companies. While business cycles are part of the game, a company that fails to advance towards its mission in tangible ways will quickly find itself on the ropes. The antidote for this scenario isn’t rocket science but does mean hard work. Management and the board must agree upon a goal (hopefully a compelling one) … and then execute toward it, one step at the time. If for whatever reasons those tangible steps are not taken, the corporate sails will luff and even the most compelling dream will begin to feel like a lie to the crew.

Anyway, that is enough babbling for today. I am restless and if the sails aren’t raised soon, I’m sure I’ll end up paddling.

Danger: Engineer Talking

This may seem strange coming from an Engineer, but it turns out that definitions are important after all. Who would have thunk? Anyway, one set of definitions that I think are particularly important to understand is that of technology and product. We sometimes blur the two, perhaps, because technology is so pervasive in modern products. But they are very different beasts and it is worth understanding the difference.

Products are things that we use for some function or another. I use my computer to create documents and I use my car to travel. Computers and cars are products that we use to solve some specific need (real or imagined) that we have. Technology is the more generic underlying intellectual property (idea, concept, model, etc.) that enables one or more products to function. Internal combustion technology enables the engine in my car and Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) technology enables the CPU in my computer. Typically, one technology can enable multiple products. For example, the VLSI technology that enables my computer’s CPU also enables my mobile phone, the graphic processor in my PS3, and my stopwatch. And internal combustion technology enables a diverse set of products from lawn mowers to compressors, cars, and boats.

The key here is that technology enables products, whereas products use technology to solve specific and practical problems. More importantly from a business perspective, customers buy products, not technologies. When is that last time you bought a VLSI chip or a combustion engine? I’m going to guess that unless you are a techie building a product yourself, the answer is never.

Rock Stars and Transformers

Of all the ingredients of a successful company, I believe that good leadership is the most critical and also the most scarce. That said, leadership is situational and can take many forms. One organization’s visionary leader may very well be another’s jackass.

One of the challenges organizations inevitably face is type of leader(s) they want within their organization. There is enormous research to suggest that transformational leaders (I am using the academic definition here) are the most successful in the long run. The key tenant of transformational leadership is that the focus should be on the team rather than the leader. The leader’s job is to build a team, support, coach, and mentor it and ultimately unlock the potential of the team. It sounds great and it works wonderfully, but there is a problem. Companies, especially early-stage ones, must attract the attention of investors, politicians, reporters, and other outside parties. We live in a world fascinated by tabloids and fame, and unfortunately companies must operate in this celebrity-obsessed environment. Organizations with transformational leadership models are often challenged in this respect. With leadership and capability diffused across a team, no one individual stands out and as a result it is often difficult for such organizations to garner critical outside attention. Enter the Rock Star leader – somebody whose star is so bright that it draws the attention. It is not surprising that attention-seeking companies will recruit a ‘rock star’ persona to head their organization. But as with anything, there is a price for such fame. Rock stars often have ego issues, and so while they draw the gaze and attention of outsiders, that attention is often on the individual rather than where it ought to be - the company, its products and its business model. This focus on the one key individual tends to slowly erode the team cohesiveness, and hence the price of a rock star leader is a less effective broader team. We are thus left with a dilemma: we need transformational leaders to build effective organizations, but the outside attention we seek often necessitates a rock star leader.

There are a few commonly employed of solutions to the dilemma. The ideal is to find a transformational rock star. My experience however is that such a combination in a single individual is rare to the extreme. The more common approach is to surround the rock star with one or more transformational leaders. You will often see this in a CEO-COO or Co-CEO partnership (think Jobs & Wozniak in the early days of Apple, or Basillie & Lazaridis at RIM), where one is the outside symbol of the company and the other is the person that actually makes things happen. Sustainability of this model is however a challenge. It takes a special kind of partnership for this to work – a partnership where both understand and respect the strengths, weaknesses and ego needs of each other. The internal leader(s) must be comfortable living in the shadow of the rock star’s fame, and the rock star must be comfortable staying out of the kitchen. The issue of recognition and compensation must also be managed carefully. The rock star may be the face of the organization, but they are likely not the heart and soul of it and so making sure there is fairness with respect to compensation is essential.

The daunting task of getting the right leadership model in place is the purview of the board. The board must own the business strategy and that includes deciding what the leadership must look like to execute that strategy. Some say on the topic of leadership that role of the board should be limited to hiring and firing the CEO. I disagree. Ultimately leadership is not about the leader, but rather about the organization. A board that decides they want/need a rock star must go in with eyes wide open about the costs of such an approach.

The Elusive Happy Place

I’ve had the honour of working with some truly talented and creative people in my career. That honour has allowed me to observe that extreme talent often comes with extreme passion. Where there is passion, there is very often conflict, drama and frustration. Despite my ‘no drama’ policy, I seem to be endlessly drawn into situations where passions have boiled over and I’ve had to intervene. Historically, my goal has been to find a common ground where all the parties are satisfied with the result. I’ve put tremendous energy into getting everybody to a ‘happy place’, but alas I’ve rarely succeeded. And even when I have, dissatisfaction seems to rear its ugly head again in no time at all. For the longest time, I considered my inability to develop a harmonious work environment to be one of my great failures.

Like most people I drank the coolaid espoused by management gurus who talk eloquently about great work environments where collaboration, teamwork and consensus reign supreme. Oh, wouldn’t it be nice? It all sounds so wonderful. I can close my eyes and almost feel what it would be like. But when I open my eyes, the tranquility disappears and tension, debate and endless dissatisfaction flood my reality. I wonder if those gurus ever sat in meeting where real designers – real engineers – real leaders debated and discussed new products, new processes or new business concepts. If they had, I suspect the experience would have crushed their ‘happy place’ dreams too.

I have shared in past blog postings that I believe that passion is the secret ingredient of success. I stand by that position, but I have learned that passion has a price. Passion results from having a strong sense that things could and should be “better” in some way, whether on a technical, business or social front. In other words, passion is a byproduct of dissatisfaction with the status quo. Take away the dissatisfaction, and there is nothing feeding the passion for a better tomorrow.

Obviously not all debate is positive, but ‘healthy’ dissatisfaction is a necessary condition for creativity and innovation. A harmonious and stress-free work environment may sound nice but it is really code for complacency. I see now that my effort to make a ‘happy place’ for everyone was a fool’s folly. The tortured artist that produces great wonders can never really be satisfied, and neither can a truly innovative organization.

The Perils of Genius Ideas

There is a famous thought experiment that asks: “if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" I have come to think there is a similar themed question along the lines of “if a genius idea is put forward but nobody understands it, is it a good idea?”

It seems to me that history is replete with unsuccessful savants – gifted thinkers whose ideas had the potential to shape the world, but never did. True genius is rare, beautiful and something extraordinary to behold … if indeed one has the capacity to behold it. Often however, such ideas are beyond the grasp of us mere mortals and are perceived as puzzling and incomprehensible. Such ingredients do not a good recipe make. As with beauty, genius apparently is in the eye of the beholder.

I suggest that the ‘goodness’ of an idea is measured; not by its raw genius, but rather by the effect it has on the world. I contend that a simple idea brought to life is superior to a grand idea that is never realized. An idea that is not understood, not used and not enjoyed is not really a good idea at all. It may be a genius idea, but it is not a good idea.

I contend all of these things, yet at the same time it seems very limiting and even unjust. Measuring the goodness of ideas by how well they are comprehended and adopted by others means that we are forever relegated to ‘tinkering around the edges.’ Concepts too far beyond the sight of common comprehension will be dismissed as strange or bizarre. Unjust as it may be, this is the nature of evolution. Minor mutations can survive, replicate and accumulate over generations while major deviations are quickly isolated and disappear. Such is life.

Trekking Off the Map

Lots of folks talk about having an innovation strategy and it seems all the rage with the media and the politicians. But as the old saying goes talk is cheap. Pursuing a strategy of innovation can be hugely rewarding on a number of fronts, but it takes more than words. Innovation is hard, expensive, and requires a willingness to travel off the map.

Innovation is about the application of new concepts, be it a technology, process, technique, or strategy toward some meaningful end. With this definition in mind, think briefly about your and your organization’s innovation strategy. Are the objectives clear? Do you know why you are trying to innovate? Do you know what you are going to innovate and how you will do it? Do you know what success looks like? Do you have a good understanding of what the investments are required in both time and dollars necessary to achieve those objectives? Are those objectives and tactics documented and measureable? Have you got a ‘real plan’ that you can actually communicate and share?

These are critical questions. How you answer them tells much about your understanding of innovation and how capable you are of leading such a strategy. There are two fundamental principles that I use to judge the efficacy of an organization’s innovation strategy.

First Tenet of Innovation Leadership: If your strategy has no meaningful end in mind, no purpose beyond exploring for curiosity sake, you are NOT innovating. Innovation is fundamentally practical in nature. It is about the application of new ideas to real problems. People often confuse innovation for invention. They are very different beasts. Invention is about conceiving new ideas. Innovation is about applying them.

So why does all this matter in a business context? Well, when most organizations speak to their innovation strategy, they speak to their R&D efforts - the new technologies, products or processes they are developing. But this misses the point. It is not about what you are inventing. It is about the problem you are solving. Without a real problem, there can be no innovation. I don’t care how big your R&D budget is, without it aimed toward a real and practical problem it isn’t innovation. Consider these great innovation of yesteryear.

• The number zero was adopted by the because simple addition and subtraction was insanely painful without it
• The steam ship was adopted because ocean going sailing ships were too large and cumbersome for the Mississippi river
• Computers created to break encryption codes during WWII because it was going to take a bizillion years to do it with slide rules
• The internet was created so the department of defense could share and distribute information in the event of war
• And the smart phone was invented because people grew tired of actually talking to each other

All of these innovations came about because there was a real and pressing need. There was a reward for solving the problem. Often (actually always) the reward and problems ultimately solved were far greater than originally envisioned, but the key is that the problem came before the solution. Therefore, I would argue that first tenant of innovation is that it must have a practical purpose.

Second Tenet of Innovation Leadership: Think again about your organization’s innovation strategy. Do you have a clear and executable plan? Assuming you have a meaningful end in mind, do you know how you’re going to get there?

Here is the thing: If your strategy and plan is clear, you are not leading. It’s only clear because somebody has gone before you. And if somebody has gone before, you are following, not leading. That's not necessarily a bad thing. There are times to follow. But we are talking about innovation. The implication is that all or part of the path ahead must be forged rather than followed. There is no recipe. No guidebook.

Innovation necessitates breaking new ground. It requires going into uncharted areas. Certainly, there are degrees of newness. Is it new to you? New to your organization? New to your market? New to the world? But fundamentally there is something new involved. And that newness means that the path to success is fuzzy. And with that fuzziness comes our old friend risk.

• Statistics show that about 95% of new products are commercial failures
• It took Edison a thousand tries before his light bulb worked
• When the first atomic bomb was exploded, scientists were not sure if it would ignite a chain reaction that would destroy the universe
• For every 10 investments, the typical venture fund only makes a return on 1 to 2 of them
• And Apple had to take a loan from Microsoft to avoid bankruptcy in the 90s

Risk is an essential and inescapable element of innovation. Different organizations have different appetites for risk. And there is a big difference between risk management and risk avoidance. If your organizational bias is toward risk avoidance, an innovation strategy is likely not for you. You can manage it. You can mitigate it. But you cannot avoid it.

So here we have it: the two sides of the innovation coin – The REWARD of achieving something new measured against the RISK of going down an unknown path. Risk and Reward. What could be simpler than this age-old business equation? Well, there is nothing simple about it. Risk and reward are simple when you can see the opportunity, and ideally quantify the two sides of the equation. The problem with innovation is that both sides of the risk-reward equation are vague and fuzzy. In fact, some component is simply unknowable because you are breaking new ground with new processes, new products or new business models in search of new and emerging markets. Before you can measure, quantify, access or penetrate emerging markets, you must discover them.

That’s right, discover. If there is one word that best describes an innovation strategy it is DISCOVERY. There is no map to where you are going - no GPS system that will direct you to you objectives. You need to forge your own path.