Perhaps the most extreme example is IBM's InnovationJam in 2006. The event brought together over 100,000 IBM employees in a moderated series of online discussions over seventy-two hours, where they brainstormed potential new products. Nothing was out of bounds for discussion. Such is their commitment to the project that chief executive Sam Palmisano has committed US$100 million to develop ideas with the most social and economic potential.13
IBM's first jam took place in 1998 and was a single, fullday collaboration between R&D labs. It was so successful that it was turned into a three-day extravaganza and eventually put online. An enormously detailed website for the 2007 jam includes 'tips for successful jammers' that lead off with, 'Don't be shy – you're the expert'. This encapsulates the philosophy of 'To Get Control, Give It Up'.
Also, the jam has now gone way beyond just innovating in products (traditional R&D).Now every one of the 330,000 IBM employees has been explicitly given licence to offer suggestions and 'riff ' on everything from new products and services ideas to new business processes and business models. It really is an innovation free-for-all.
I feel like I am overdoing the Toyota examples, but here I go again. The truth is the company is a flipstar in more ways than one. Toyota became admired first and foremost for its quality manufacturing system. Ford, GM and Chrysler have all sent high-level staff to observe Toyota's assembly lines, and in recent years the Detroit Three have greatly improved the quality of their own vehicles, in large part by copying the Japanese companies that once copied them.
But one feature of the Toyota manufacturing system seems to be too tough for Detroit to emulate. On Toyota's assembly lines, the lowest level worker can shut down the line for any reason, even if it's just the suspicion of a problem. In fact, Toyota's managers start to worry if the line doesn't shut down frequently, because it probably means quality problems are slipping through without being fixed. Yet despite all these stops and starts Toyota produces vehicles in a shorter time than any other car manufacturer in the world.
What a flip! Empowering the lowest level worker to shut down an entire assembly line lifts the entire workforce's dedication, performance and morale. Meanwhile, the Detroit Three, trapped in the bunker of a command-and-control mentality, recoil from distributing such power down to the factory floor, even as their market shares erode and their losses mount. With Ford reporting its biggest ever loss of US$12.7 billion in 2006, it's no wonder CEO Alan Mulally went to Japan in December of that year to discuss a possible partnership with Toyota. Mulally assured everyone that Ford will return to profitability: 'We know where we are. We are dealing with it, and we are on plan.'
I would like to give you some simple day-to-day examples of managers trying to hold onto power, and it having a potentially adverse impact on results. Even though these examples seem quite insignificant, they are the tip of the iceberg and represent a much deeper challenge in businesses today. I confessed earlier to not being a fan of YouTube, and mentioned how I can't understand why people spend so much time downloading what I consider garbage from this and other sites – but remember, regardless of whether you or I do it, millions of others do it every day. And they are both your customers and your staff. It is this kind of attitude that leads to companies trying to ban sites like YouTube from being viewed by their staff at work. And herein lies one of the lessons of 'To Get Control, Give It Up'. If your staff are so bored they are spending hours downloading junk from the internet, you should look at your staff selection processes, and more importantly at the work you are engaging in and the culture that exists. Build a more exciting place to work!
Or consider the insurance company who do not give the majority of their call centre staff access to the internet or even email. Imagine not having email at work. I know for some of you this sounds more like heaven, but seriously email is a ubiquitous business tool and one way that we keep in touch. Oh, and they also banned mobile phones. Imagine doing this in a workplace filled with young people, who can't go to the toilet without phoning five of their friends. The result was that the staff continued to use their phones, they just had to hide it.And staff attrition rose to very expensive levels. This is when I was called in.
My favourite example comes from the airline industry. A senior safety engineer at a leading airline had a problem with his trainee safety inspection officers (or whatever their official title was). They were listening to their iPods while doing routine safety checks on the planes. On first hearing this, being someone who boards literally hundreds of planes each year, this even disturbed me.
When I said I could see why this was a problem, citing customer reaction as my primary concern, the manager looked at me blankly. 'I had not thought of that.'
'What are you worried about then?'
'Customer perception is not my area, I was simply worried that mistakes would be made.'
Fair enough I thought, and asked, 'So what did you do?'
'I banned iPods.'
I asked him how that went. Badly was the answer. The young trainees started to put their iPods in their pockets and run the headphones under their uniforms, up and out of their collars and into their noise-protection ear muffs, leaving only a small indication of the recognisable white iPod headphones.
'What did you do next?' I asked, grinning.
He employed an independent consultant to come in and do random accuracy checks on the trainees. This is not an uncommon activity, as the airline does things like this to benchmark its safety performance anyway, and has been doing so for a long time.What he found was that there was no correlation between listening to the iPods, albeit hidden, and inaccuracy.
'What happened next?' I asked.
'They bought me an iPod for Christmas.'
I laughed. Just because he couldn't work effectively while listening to music, it doesn't mean someone else couldn't. In life we perceive the world through the lens of our own experience. Then anything that does not match our personal experience we think is wrong, and then attempt to bring that person or thing back into alignment. The problem with this is that we usually attempt to do it by 'controlling' it and using our positional authority. Are you married or in a relationship? If so, let me ask you, have you ever tried to change your partner by controlling them? How did that go for you?
I thought so.
This experience reminded me of the financial adviser I met in Brisbane who was struggling with some of his staff, again younger staff, who refused to wear ties. He asked that they do, but they simply ignored him. Over time it got worse, to the point where some stopped wearing suits altogether.When one of his team came to work in jeans and thongs, he completely lost it.
He conducted a survey of his key customers about staff dress and the impact it had on their experience. He had expected to see a compelling response demanding that the staff wore more formal attire. He found the opposite to be true.
Almost 75 per cent of the respondents had not even noticed the more casual attire of these advisers and para- planners. A further 20 per cent actually said they preferred it because they felt more relaxed, and only 5 per cent said they preferred more formal attire. He has since changed his 'rules'.
These examples are superficial, but are evidence of a much deeper problem in workplaces around the world: a failure on the part of managers to give space and resources and, most importantly, trust to their staff to do their job. They micromanage everything, from whether they wear a tie, to what time they arrive, down to what they say in their emails. This is all leading to frustration for the staff, and lost productivity and profitability as a result.
According to Gallup, there are twelve questions – each of which relates to a specific need – that indicate whether someone is fully engaged. Of the twelve, the first two relate directly to the idea of letting go of control:
Do you have the materials and equipment you need to do your work right?
At work, do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?
Akio Morita, the found
er and former chairman of Sony, has this to say about listening to staff: 'A company will get nowhere if all the thinking is left to management. Everybody in the company must contribute and for the lower level employees their contribution must be more than just manual labour.We insist that all our employees contribute their minds.'
START HERE
The old mantra of a job for life and the 'loyalty' companies want so desperately from their employees also bespeak trying to keep control. Now don't get me wrong, retention is extremely important. Crunching some numbers recently with a law firm client of mine, the net return per person more than triples between the second year and the third year for professional legal staff.
However, expecting them to stay for very long periods these days is probably unrealistic. Some will, but most will not. This is why Ernst & Young have adopted a 'start here' approach to their graduate recruitment. Instead of sweating bullets trying to keep the best and brightest from leaving, the company wishes them well and gives them every support in moving out to move up. They have built their graduate-based employment brand on the tag line 'start here'. They do this for a few reasons. One is they might come back, assuming of course they had a pleasant exit experience. Secondly, they may move into non–accounting firm employment and later become a client. But most of all because they believe that if they want to leave, let them. There is no point having someone unhappy at work.
Rather than try to keep the employees, the company strives to keep a relationship with them as they move to other companies and advance in their careers. When the best and brightest of these young workers have become senior executives and CEOs, they'll remember Ernst & Young as the great place where they got their start and they'll be inclined to send their consulting work to their old friends rather than to one of Ernst & Young's competitors.
More to the essence of 'To Get Control, Give It Up' is the example of a 'tailored taste' being implemented by the Australian Defence Force. In research I helped conduct for the ADF we found that the younger generation shied away from the forces not just because of the work, the risk of war, or even some ideological opposition, but because they would be 'locked in' for a set period of time. They were not at all keen on being controlled in this way. One of the recommendations made to combat this was the gap-year program. A 'gap year' is becoming a sort of rite of passage for young Australians after they finish high school. They head to the UK, the States or somewhere else in the world for twelve months as a gap between high school and university. Some, however, don't have the cash to head overseas, and would love to take a year off but want to grow and learn at the same time. Enter the ADF gap year.
Defence believe they have a superb product. They believe that if people at least try it they will enjoy their time in Defence and join longer term. Defence are putting in place a two-year program as a gap-year option. It's 'try before you buy'. That is, students finishing year twelve can enrol in one of the forces for two years only, get trained, develop some leadership skills, stay fit and travel overseas on at least one operation while there. They can then leave and pursue their other interests, and at worst the army or navy or air force had a committed soldier for a couple of years. Or in the best case they could leave and spread the word on how awesome their time was in the forces. Some of these gappers will love the experience so much that they will enrol for full service, attend ADFA or Duntroon or something similar, and become fully fledged members of the ADF. This is at least the theory.Markets call this a tailored taste.
The way I look at it, particularly the Ernst & Young 'start here' positioning, is that if your staff know you have no illusions about them staying for life, they will converse with you actively about their plans because they don't feel threatened. This helps you better prepare, better retain knowledge and better orient their replacement.
Empowering your staff works when you have hired good staff. Once you have them, you really need to use them. Get out of their way and let smart people do what smart people do.
Five Things To Do Now
1. Ask yourself if your current business model is under threat, or if it could be if technology continues to develop rapidly. Start now: consider how you would exploit such forced change so you are not on the defensive when it happens.
2. Come up with ten ways you could tap into a broader population to stimulate ideas for you and your business.
3. Start a structured program within your company that brings your best and brightest people together regularly to work on new ideas or existing problems. Give it a cool name and start using it to attract and retain talented people.
4. Come up with five ways you could collaborate with your existing competitors to bring a product to market, enhance an existing product or service or even crack open an entirely new market.
5. Does your business have IP that is very valuable to the market place that you are not benefiting from because it is hidden or over-protected? How could you better exploit this asset? In other words, how could you win through losing control?
7 ACTION PRECEDES CLARITY
As I was struggling to gain traction with this book, a mentor asked me, 'Pete, how's Flip coming along?'
'Great,' I replied.
'How many words have you written?'
'None. I am still doing research.'
'How long has it been since you started talking about this book, two years? More, I think. Isn't one of the chapters about how action precedes strategy, or something like that?'
'What's your point?' I said.
'Nothing really . . .?'
It is always more than a little aggravating when someone gives you your own advice. We teach what we need to know the most, the saying goes. I have taken two years to get to this point. Thorough and well researched perhaps, slow and delayed, yes! I have employed a full-time researcher, and engaged dozens more around the world through freelancing sites such as elance.com. I even sponsored a PhD project on related themes. Despite all of this work, until now I had nothing to show for it.
Perhaps this sounds like the logical way to approach writing a book or accomplishing any major task. Given that this is my fifth book, I would like to suggest that it is not. It is in fact the opposite. Your best work does not happen when you are planning. Your best work happens when you are in the flow. On a plane, in a coffee shop or locked in your office late at night. It happens when you are taking action. Sure you need planning time but at some point you have to stop thinking, stop planning, and just do something. Anything!
Counter-intuitively, the clarity I was so desperately trying to find before I started writing only came after I started writing. The point is, of course, that only through taking action, and the more the better I say, will your strategy reveal itself (and rarely in one fell swoop) and the clarity you seek will be gained. Not only is the potential upside of this action orientation great, the downside of over-planning and overanalysing can be worse than merely being confused. In a market being squeezed by constantly rising expectations, less client and customer loyalty and a compression of time, distance and required effort, inaction means you will likely miss the opportunity you were planning to exploit.
What action are you procrastinating about, as you plan and plan and plan?
It is like the young couple (or singles nowadays) saving for their first house during a property price boom. The price of houses increases faster than their ability to put together a sizeable deposit to get a loan. They effectively 'save' themselves out of the market. The longer they 'save' the further they are from their goal. A flip, no less. It can be the same in business. When we delay our action we deny ourselves the intensely valuable feedback that comes from putting the product to the test in front of a real consumer (or employee), who spent real money and is using it in real-life situations. Life and business move and change so fast that we put ourselves at a competitive disadvantage the longer we procrastinate.
It is small wonder that David Vice, CEO of Northern Telecom, says, 'In the future, there will be two k
inds of companies: the quick, and the dead.'
What about you? Have you ever had an idea that someone else made a squillion on? You know, you had it in the back of your mind, shared it with friends, even made some preliminary notes about it, only to mess around thinking about it for so long that one day you read a two-page profile in a magazine about someone half your age who did what you wanted to do and made millions doing it.
Or worse, have you ever knocked on its head an idea that someone in your team came up with, saying it 'was a good idea, but the market would never want it or be prepared to pay for it', only to see your competitor nail you to the wall with it the following year?
You get the drift, I am sure. If you want to develop a better business strategy, and a more compelling and achievable vision, then act first and plan later. Action precedes clarity! If you want a successful career, do the same. Stop trying to find the perfect answer, the perfect job or the perfect product or business idea.Move! Do something! Anything! The action you take will generate clarity. From the clarity you will gain clearer vision on what you want to achieve, and the feedback you will receive will let you rejig your strategy to focus on the activities that are actually working as opposed to what you think might work. I call this 'strategy on the go'.
STRATEGY ON THE GO!
Strategy on the go is not the same as having no strategy at all. Dispensing with strategy altogether would be outright foolish, and even though some pundits have declared the end of strategy, this is not what I think nor is it what I am suggesting. I am, however, suggesting that we need a newer, more modern approach to strategy, an approach built on the fundamentals of behavioural flexibility and rapid decision-making. It is time we let go of our obsession with detailed strategy, built on timeframes of five, ten or even twenty years. It is no longer possible to begin with point B in mind and reverse-engineer the result until you get back to point A with a detailed, stepby- step plan for achieving what you want.
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