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To order reprints of any article in its original format, visit Scoopreprintsource.com FeatureInnovation Personified ASSOCIATIONS NOW, February 2006 Caregiver? Hurdler? Experience architect? Sounds like the guest list for your eccentric aunt's birthday party. But, no, they are three of the 10 faces of innovation that may be just the serious fun needed to spark meaningful change within your association. By: Tom Kelley General Manager Tom Kelley of IDEO, one of the world's most recognized innovation companies, identifies 10 personae of innovation to look for in your association staff. Developing and leveraging these various assets can result in a team that not only conceives great new ideas but executes them as well.
Not long ago, innovation within an organization--the creation of those special products and services that provide real value to customers--was done primarily by "people who do that innovation stuff." Although they wore no obvious I for Innovator stamped on their foreheads, these "supercreatives" were seen as a particularly special lot. Well, not anymore. Although those folks do indeed have a place in the process of internal innovation, organizations are seriously losing out if they're hanging their futures (i.e., the rabid loyalty of their members and customers) on just a few creative types. Millions of people are living lives of quiet desperation, pigeonholed by their job descriptions or their boss's view of them. I and others here at IDEO, which built its global reputation on speedy innovation, believe that a great latency exists in many organizations, a large reservoir of untapped energy that, given the slightest nurturing and encouragement, can inspire employees to contribute in much larger, more creative, and more rewarding ways. Employees not only will have more fun and feel better about themselves, but they also will move your organization forward more rapidly, meaningfully, and efficiently. Throughout the years, IDEO has evolved an internal process in which employees can adopt roles aimed at boosting innovation and free-flow idea exchange while diminishing the wet-blanket effect of naysayers. In my new book, I've called these roles the 10 faces of innovation, which can be grouped into learning roles, organizing roles, or building roles within the overall innovation process. Each of the faces represents distinct roles that employees can turn to, switch among, and embrace, according to the context needed. The first category is composed of the learning roles: the anthropologist, who learns mainly by observing human behavior such as that of members, customers, or competitors; the experimenter, who learns by intellectual trial and error, and tries to do faster, cheaper, and better experiments than the competition does; and the cross-pollinator, who thinks in metaphors and learns by observing far afield--different industries, cultures, or countries--and then tries to translate what he or she sees into something of value for their organization and industry. The next category includes three organizing roles. These are the people who get things done inside of your association. Frankly, IDEO was not especially savvy about the organizing roles in the old days, because we thought everything should be a meritocracy--that good ideas should float to the top, and bad ideas should get killed. But that's not a realistic view of large organizations. All kinds of rules and politics exist by which resources are allocated, decisions are made, and ideas are moved forward. Thus, rather than constantly fight the system, people in an organizing role embrace such processes, acknowledge both unspoken and written rules, and decide that they're going to either win by those rules, or they're going to find a way to bend them a bit. The three organizing faces are the hurdler, who spots and strategically overcomes obstacles; the collaborator, who basically co-opts people from other places (i.e., various departments in the organization, outside groups, folks in their professional and personal networks) and convinces them to partner; and the director, who takes a leadership role most similar to that of a coach in terms of bringing out the talents of others. Steve Jobs of Apple Computer and Pixar Animation Studios is a great example of a director; he attracts very bright people and figures out how to get the best work from them. The four remaining roles are the building roles. The experience architect is driven by delivering great customer experiences in a way that creates buzz, brand loyalty, and customer loyalty (i.e., not just coffee, but a Starbucks experience). The set designer embraces a specific approach to nurturing the team, one that uses the physical environment as a way to influence each member and the group as a whole. This is a seriously underused persona in many organizations, but one we use a lot here at IDEO. Meanwhile, the caregiver is dedicated to client nurturing and care. Whereas an experience architect might develop an exciting or stimulating experience, the caregiver focuses on creating a caring experience for an entire group of customers or members. The last face is that of the storyteller, who goes beyond the facts to use meaningful, memorable stories in a way that, externally, charms and engages people's hearts and minds while, internally, serving as a strong motivator to the team. The storyteller turns facts and statistics, which people tend to forget, into tales that people can easily recall, relate to, and understand. These personae are about being innovation rather than merely doing innovation. In other words, your employees--regardless of job description--each need to own the roles while telling themselves, "It's not just that I have these innovation tools and use them once in a while, but that I am an innovator. When confronted with a tricky challenge, I'll ask myself, 'What role can I engage in? What would an experience architect or another persona ask and consider in this situation?'" Even leaders of small associations can apply these personae; in fact, in some ways, it's easier for them, because they have a more intimate knowledge of the talents and capabilities of each staff member. What Do 10 Faces Look Like? IDEO talks about what we've termed design thinking, a whole-brained, holistic, empathic look at problem solving that applies to all types of organizations. The 10-faces approach is an important part of that thinking, one we have used successfully with for-profits as well as nonprofits, such as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. In addition, the process does not require lots of money or specialized training. Rather than ascribe to a specific how-to training session about the various roles, we find that the 10-faces approach works best as an organizational process when managers do not necessarily assign individuals the specific roles (i.e., "Scott, you be the anthropologist. Karen, you be the hurdler."). Instead, the approach invites people to examine the list of 10 faces, see what's available to them, and then nurture the related skills in themselves and others. For instance, you can pull someone aside and say, "Joanne, you're quite a collaborator. Why don't you focus a little extra energy on that? That's a talent you have, maybe more so than others on the team, so you could make a larger contribution if you develop it." Success is more a matter of nurturing by a leader or mentor, an invitation to individual contributors to develop the personas in themselves. People also could keep a list of the 10 faces posted in front of them or tucked in their meeting binders simply to remind themselves to think and ask questions from another perspective. Aside from day-to-day interactions related to innovation, let's examine what the 10-faces approach might look like in, say, a staff-retreat setting. In that case, when the event is in a brainstorming setting, leaders could indeed assign people roles to play, although those personae are not necessarily limited to these 10 faces. Such short-term assignments can allow employees to filter the world through the lens of that role and contribute in a larger, more strategic way to the process. At IDEO, the 10-face approach adds to the fluidity of our work; people switch in and out of roles and actively recognize the role that a colleague might be playing in a meeting or on a project. Again, the manager's role is to create such an innovative culture that latent talent can be spotted, and individual team members can blossom into these different capabilities. The cross-pollinator, a half-teacher/ half-student role, is one of my favorites. As a supervisor, you could say to your employee, "Jonathan, when you go to the upcoming conference, you're going to have a great experience. Keep in mind the whole time you're gone that I want you to do a 60-minute sharing session when you return about what you learned and what could be translated back to our world." If Jonathan knows that he's the cross-pollinator, he's going to pay much better attention during his learning experience and will learn more, because he knows he has to report back. When he does, he will engage his teaching side, and you will have turned Jonathan into a more visible cross-pollinator. He had the ability already, but you were simply bringing it to the front, like you do when you click on part of a multilayered software document. Best of all, thanks to a great learning experience, Jonathan may take it on himself at his next event to repeat the exercise. Now you have cross-pollinator momentum in that person, and he wants to further develop his role. If he's good at it (and only if he is good at it), others will seek him out, because his briefings are interesting and relevant to their work. Others might even aspire to such a role themselves. Thus, the process goes beyond the individual to develop momentum within the organization as a whole. Note, too, that personae are not related to inherent personality traits that an individual adopts forever. Nor does age or seniority matter. People do, and absolutely should, switch among the personae. And once you start looking around with the lens of the 10 faces, you'll spot the personae all the time--"Wow, she is a great storyteller. Gee, he could be a terrific hurdler." You start realizing with surprise just how much undeveloped talent your organization could access, and that can get you and everyone else jazzed to tap into it. Tale of Two Ditties I'll tell you a story about one of our clients who sings the praises of such an inclusive innovation process. I was talking casually to a client's employee, a regular "company guy" in his 50s who has a design background. "With all the energy around design and innovation at Procter & Gamble," I said to him, "this must be a good time for a guy like you." He leans toward me with an intense look in his eyes and says, "Tom, guys like me have waited our whole lives for a moment like this." And I'm thinking, "Wow! If a culture of innovation can get this middle-age, middle-everything guy inspired with this much energy and passion about his work, that is fantastic." So this fellow has become an experimenter now; he's trying all kinds of things that five years ago he would not have felt empowered to do because the culture was one of toe the line. But he's not toeing the line now. He's a creative guy who's gotten the chance, the permission, to exercise his creativity--and, by the way, make a bigger contribution to the organization. Now multiply that by the thousands of employees the company has, and you see creativity--in the rate at which the organization is introducing products, in its stock price, in the tremendous loyalty of its customers, and especially in the mood of the company when you spend time with its people. They are so energized and optimistic that I'd bet the culture affects employee recruitment, too. People with this kind of enthusiasm become contagious, so smart people are more inclined to want to work or stay there. And it's all driven by this culture of internal innovation, of people playing these roles on a regular basis. I have another story that actually occurred at the ASAE annual meeting in Philadelphia some years ago. I was scheduled to speak to a group of certified association executives on Sunday morning, so I arrived early at the Ritz-Carlton to set up. Before the event I saw a staff crew chief give a great pep talk to the three dozen employees preparing to serve everyone breakfast. "This is a really important group," he said, "and we want them to have a very good experience with us today, so do your best, pay close attention to their needs, and don't forget to smile. It puts them in a better mood; it puts you in a better mood; and it is part of our signature service." That manager was being an experience architect for attendees and then switching to a caregiver role to his staff, the guests, and the Ritz-Carlton organization. And everyone did a great job. I thought right away, "I want to hire that guy." He was just so good. Hurdling the Hesitation In considering the 10-face approach, a common misconception is that all of the personae should be present at one time in an innovation culture, but that's not necessary. The most productive roles depend in part on where the project or problem is in the planning and development stage. Say that your group is organizing a major event. In the early stages, you want the learning roles most engaged, since the people in those roles will ask good beginning questions: What are the best events that you have seen recently, and how can we adapt those ideas to apply to our activities? Have you noticed in our past events times when participants appeared bored, confused, or displeased by a lack of perceived value? As your event nears, however, you don't necessarily want to learn more or create more; you are now in the experience-architect and hurdler modes of making things happen. Then, after the event, you want to learn again, so the next event will be even better. Thus, the need for specific innovation roles to come to the forefront varies with the project timing and situation. Another concern is whether your organization needs to be great at using every persona to be optimally innovative. No, you will witness a significant difference in your organization's innovative abilities merely by perfecting the team skills in a few of them. However, you as leader, and even as a group, need to choose among the roles, acknowledging where you need remedial help or have untapped ability. Perhaps you know you need to pick up the pace of your innovation process to stay competitive. In that case, you might focus on the first three learning roles, so you can discover how to learn faster than others in your industry and thus get a leg up. The 10-faces technique for innovation is not always easy, and a common barrier to adoption is a lacking sense of permission to try new things. Take the experimenter role. IDEO has done a lot of work in healthcare, where professionals often tell us, "We can't experiment here. This is healthcare!" Eventually, we get everyone to understand that we're not there to direct surgical procedures but to help them examine the overall delivery of care--and indeed such experiments can be, and have been, successfully accomplished using internal innovators. In fact, the head of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston said he thought that one of our biggest contributions to his organization was giving permission to experiment with different methods of care delivery. And at the Mayo Clinic, we helped set up a space dedicated to experimentation called the "SPARC Space," in which they are trying different care-delivery models to determine what works and what patients seem to like. Meanwhile, here on the West Coast, at one of Kaiser Permanente's hospitals, even a patient can go see a big, white board that lists all of the experiments currently being conducted in the hospital. Clearly, that industry has started moving past the "we-can't" phase of innovation into the much more innovative "try-it" stage. Reorganizing the innovation process internally is an opportunity at the individual level to give people more interesting work lives, but the big payoff is at the enterprise levels. Adoption of the 10 faces of innovation can serve as an important step in driving creativity throughout your association--and beyond. Tom Kelley is general manager of IDEO, Palo Alto, California, and bestselling author of The Art of Innovation (Currency, 2001) and, most recently, The Ten Faces of Innovation: IDEO's Strategies for Beating the Devil's Advocate & Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization (Doubleday, 2005). E-mail: tkelley@ideo.com
More Articles From Associations Now, February 2006
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