| POCD Featured Column |
Creativity and innovation are hot topics these days. But what is the difference? For the sake of this discussion, let creativity be the process of generating something new, while innovation will be the result of creating something of value to an individual, organization, or society.
The relationship between creativity and innovation flows as a natural sequence: from the generation of a concept to the all-important step of implementing that concept in a way that adds value. We've long been aware that the human mind is capable of extraordinary creativity. Given a set of problems, humans working singly or together can come up with several viable new concepts to address the problem. But what then? Fast Company magazine suggests, "The issue is no longer about how to generate new ideas, rather the issue is how to get good ideas implemented quickly."
Many organizations now embrace innovation as a core competence, but few have concrete methodologies to implement innovation in their organizations, particularly when it comes to teams. So I went on a two-year journey to study the mysteries of innovation. I was curious about why some companies were more innovative than others. I sought answers to key questions. What is innovation? How is it different from creativity? How can we integrate the principles of innovation with systems thinking? What practical methodologies exist that support teams working on innovation projects?
This is when I came across Al Fahden and his warp-speed relay team process. He was not only entertaining (imagine Steve Martin on steroids) but I was struck by his approach to teams who work on innovation projects. Fahden's process helps each person do what they do best, and then hand off tasks to the next person, tripling what gets done. In other words, "Do your best; hand off the rest." I wanted to use his process and self-scoring profile immediately with my clients who struggled with their team process. Fahden led me to Carlson Learning, who owned the rights to his profile. So I became a distributor for Carlson Learning's products and started using the Team Dimensions® profile right away.
Here's what it looked like put to use in the Information Systems Division of one of the world's largest food and beverage companies. Direct reports of the CIO (Chief Information Officer) were required to design and implement IT (Information Technology) solutions for the CIO and the business. It was reported that the group generated sound ideas for business solutions, but members were slow in making decisions together. Additionally, they tended to focus on individual projects without linking them to business strategies and priorities. Since they lived in a culture that highly valued relationships and harmony, team members were reluctant to "rock the boat." So business items were continually tabled for a later discussion, rather than being rejected in favor of another solution. As a result, they rehashed old ideas without progressing. They seldom got beyond brainstorming and critiquing, which not only wasted much time, but with their aversion to conflict, left them with only traditional solutions. Overall, the CIO was not satisfied with the quality of the projects and the lack of strategic thinking.
Over the course of two off-site meetings, team members first developed their mission and determined interdependent priorities. They defined roles and responsibilities, then set out to determine effective communication mechanisms, setting the stage for what I call Team Innovation using the Team Dimensions® profile and process.
The Team Dimensions® profile opened the second session. This online tool, designed to help individuals identify their strengths, describes an individual as one of five roles: Creator, Advancer, Refiner, Executor, and Flexer. The profile also provides a specific methodology called the "Z" process. The "Z" process maps the flow of assigning roles, completion of tasks, and hand-offs of tasks to the other team members. In this relay process, tasks are passed from Creators to Advancers, from Advancers to Refiners, and from Refiners to Executors. Flexers keep the process moving by filling gaps in the team.
Creators focus on the big picture and prefer non-traditional approaches. They need little structure and they value creativity. Advancers recognize new ideas in the early stages and find ways to promote them. They trust their instincts and respect organizational norms while inspiring others around them. Refiners bring their practicality and methodical approach to challenge new ideas. They are the ones who most often play "devil's advocate." The Executors are just what their name says: they get things done. They value efficiency and they are good at follow-up and implementation. While they prefer proven ideas and methods, given a sound structure, they can take a new idea and implement it. Flexers are the jacks-of-all-trades. Their profile shows strengths evenly distributed over the four roles. This lets them fill in any gaps in a team. Since they are equipped to identify with each role, Flexers can be useful to facilitate or fill in where needed in the entire "Z" process.
The role identified through the profile, being based on that individual's responses, is the role most natural to an individual. This makes it a very powerful and personal tool. That people think and behave differently is a given. Understanding how the differences can be categorized opens a new pathway to being able to harness those differences. A linear thinker will not be as effective, nor as happy, generating new ideas and concepts as a thinker who uses intuitive methods to leapfrog from one idea to the next. Behaviorally, the intuitive thinker who is happiest playing with concepts will likely chafe when it is time to examine all possible obstacles. Administering the profile and looking at the results allowed the participants to see the team in an overview so that each member could be positioned in the role that made the best use of his/her strengths. The five roles cooperate within the "Z Process," a visual map of how idea generation can flow smoothly between each of the roles.
The Team Dimensions® profile not only helps people identify roles and provides a concrete methodology for handing off tasks, but it also helps the team move to action. The Action Plan provides a template for team members to describe their role, list the tasks assigned, and identify anticipated barriers, a sort of forewarned is forearmed approach.
Put into practice at the end of the second off-site, the teams came up with one core issue that everyone felt was a logjam for them. The pressing business issue they selected was whether or not to implement VPN (virtual personal network) to allow employees to work virtually and access the company's intranet. There were grave concerns about security.
The team was divided into groups according to their natural roles and began using the "Z" process. A lot of cross-germination took place as the team failed ideas faster and came up with a quality solution to the VPN business issue. Creators generated ideas. The Advancer took the ideas to the group of Refiners. The refiners did what they do best, poked holes in the Creators' ideas. But since the Creators were not in the room at the same time, no conflict erupted. Instead, the Refiners were praised for their work. The Advancer then moved back to the Creator group and presented the challenges the Refiners found. The Creators then did what they do best—they came up with ideas to address the situation at hand (in this case, they generated ideas about how to overcome the challenges presented by the Refiners). I served as the Flexer, overseeing the integrity of "Z" process and the roles people played within their groups. At the very end, after the Creators and Refiners were on the same page, they passed their solution to the implementation team, the Executors.
As you can see, not everyone worked on the same thing at the same time, which saved a lot of time. People were freed up to do other value-added work when not engaged in the task of their own group.
Here's how the team's Director summed up the Team Innovation experience:
Our team left energized and amazed that in one day we had made a decision about a business issue we had struggled with for over a year. We quickly learned a model for team innovation and decision-making and applied it to a perplexing business issue. We want our employees to get trained and begin using this approach right away.
Best were the comments from the team members, who proudly sent me a slide describing their experience:
…shows how we arrive at decisions.
…refreshing to see us using an orderly process.
…much less adversarial than I thought.
…we clarify roles and appreciate differences.
…we need to practice these skills and internalize them.
…look for innovation roles when hiring.
That last comment in particular illustrates how this process is open-ended, how it opens itself out to other applications. In this particular case, the Director reported that the quality of projects increased, and the team and business results were such that the Team Innovation process was immediately integrated into training programs and became a mainstay in the division's ongoing meetings.
Team Innovation has many applications beyond the obvious ones of problem solving and mapping out new projects. The nature of the Team Dimensions® profile illustrates an individual's strengths and allows others to appreciate the diversity seen within a team, while the process makes plain the interdependence of each of the different roles. As the last comment above shows, the process used in executive coaching can be a powerful tool because it is bi-directional in a sense. It not only helps an executive see himself, but it helps him look outward to develop the people he's responsible for developing.
This two-prong approach that uses interpersonal effectiveness (the individual's awareness and impact of his or her own behavior) coupled with team effectiveness (identifying the team roles and defining the team process from idea generation through to execution) offers a multi-dimensional, flexible tool whose applications are legion. It's a proven way to clarify roles, simplify processes, and maximize individual contributions for total team results.
Perhaps highest on the list of predictable results are:
Take a moment and imagine what your business could accomplish if you could cut the time it takes to implement creative new ideas by a whopping 70%. You'd be a fast company, indeed.
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