p.197
A strategy document might give direction but culture determines what people feel able to do and be at work. Specifically in a BBE the culture should encourage the liberation of individual minds, creative collaboration in teams and enterprise-level learnacy. When we experience cultures that liberate minds as a consumer of the enterprise, our experience is often via the inferred signs, signifiers, myths, stories and legends, in other words, what we think the enterprise stands for. For example, people see Virgin as a challenger of other businesses, a consumer champion and the stories that surround it are often related to adventure via the stories that exist about its leader Sir Richard Branson. When we actually work for the enterprise, the culture is usually about the more obvious behaviour, any explicit values and control systems. If the enterprise is truly authentic there is no gap between how people see the enterprise from afar and how it is experienced on the ground. In other words, the external brand is the same as the employee brand. Motivation and brand loyalty arise when there is a happy marriage between external and internal views of the culture.
What then do you have to do as a leader to establish a culture that encourages people to bring their brains to work and use them in pursuit of superlative performance? Leaders who encourage brainy people make positive assumptions about their capabilities:
• They focus their minds on the ‘destination’, while giving them ‘seven degrees of freedom’ in their self-determination of the ‘journey’, consistent with the costs of each option. Unlimited freedom in the intelligent management of brainy people can be very costly although the extent to which you offer a hands-off approach depends entirely on the stakes involved and the propensity of each individual to diverge constantly.
• They encourage openness, especially about obstacles and failures. Such things cost time and can ultimately ruin a project if not caught early and addressed. Sir Richard Branson is especially good at being open about the mistakes he has made amid his successes, and this is the hallmark of an emotionally intelligent leader.
p.198
• They assume that brainy people have all the sources they need to deal with the project or task they are working on, but they check in periodically to see if they are managing, connecting them to people and helpful resources as needed. They operate a light touch on coaching and supporting their people.
• They encourage some level of positive deviance while expecting sufficient adherence to the enterprise’s values and processes. In the words of Einstein, these processes must be kept as simple as possible but no simpler.
• All of the above is not at the expense of accountability. Leaders exhibit a kind of ‘tough love’, expecting their staff to deliver on promises, but being kind to them to encourage the delivery of results.
One aspect of a culture that encourages brains is the duality between order and freedom. Two examples shine the light on cultures that liberate minds through this duality.
Cultivating brains: Pivotal software
Employees at Pivotal’s 20 global offices are ready to start the day at exactly 9.06 a.m. At that precise time a bell rings, and all workers gather for a stand-up meeting that lasts for between five and ten minutes. Then the firm’s programmers hit their computers, with no other meetings or distractions for the rest of the day. Pivotal’s founder and chief executive Rob Mee says it is all about making the working day as efficient as possible. He says:
I realised that programmers, if left to their own devices, may roll in at 10 a.m., and if they haven’t eaten adequately they will be hungry by 11 a.m., so they’ll stop for food, which then makes the afternoon too long. It is not very efficient. So we thought, “Let’s provide breakfast for everyone”. It gives them a reason to get here.
Everyone must leave the office at 6 p.m. Staff aren’t allowed to work into the evening: “Programmers don’t programme well if they are too tired, so we don’t want them working late into the night.”
I also know some programmers that tell me they thrive on sleep deprivation, but I sense Pivotal’s application of structure is well founded if they are to avoid burnout in their programmers. In any case, the keen ones can obviously carry on programming into their leisure time! The micro case that follows is an old-school example of how one can bring these factors into play in a consistent manner. Kodak might well have lost their innovation mojo some years ago but that does not discount the value of relearning from their mastery when they had it.
p.199
Back to the future: Eastman Kodak
Eastman Kodak might be a bit old hat these days, having fallen from grace after failing to notice the advent of digital photography. Yet they did some amazing things so let us learn from their great achievements. They originated the idea of the ‘Office of Innovation’ (OI), which was copied by many of Fortune’s top 200 US companies, e.g. Amoco Chemicals, Northwestern Bell, Union Carbide, etc. The OI is a cultural programme that draws on ideas from all parts of a company. The OI approach encourages maverick contributions and provides a high return on investment. Eastman Kodak estimated that in one year alone the harvest was $300 million (over lifetime of idea) out of an OI network of 19 offices whose cost was only 0.3% of potential revenue. The model works on an implicit ‘formula’:
I = C + In + E
Innovation = Conception + Invention + Exploitation
The OI concept facilitates the reduction of time taken at each stage. The philosophy is perhaps the most important aspect of the OI concept.
1. Ideas and inventors are fragile and they need nurturing. All ideas must be listened to. Ideas that have been developed and demonstrate potential should be brought to attention of management. This reinforces the need for a culture of idea development and sensitive selection of ideas to avoid disenfranchising staff who originate ideas that are not market-ready for some reason.
2. Originators of ideas often need help to develop them and market them and should be involved in that development. Both marketing and technical issues need be addressed. This serves to increase the ROI (Return On Innovation).
3. Differences between people are strengths of a healthy innovation climate, not a weakness and might need effective mediation. Requisite diversity and the facilitation of diverse teams become business-critical issues for a culture of innovation.
4. The most effective way to proceed is not necessarily the most efficient. We have echoed this point several times in this book and sometimes the tortoise is more effective than the hare when innovation is concerned.
It is one thing to introduce tools, techniques and processes to encourage innovation within your enterprise, quite another to make them part of the practice of everyday life, through installing a Brain Based Culture that harmonises interactions between man, woman and machine. That said, there is a role for structure to improve the efficiency of your BBE and we turn to this next.