Corporate America has been going on about out-of-the-box thinking for decades—but the thing is, we still seem to love the box. Anything outside of it is irrelevant, or a fanciful “cartoon.” The GE team’s inability to see how a seemingly unrelated example could inform what GE does is the result of a common cognitive bias that psychologists call functional fixedness.
The German psychologist Karl Duncker defined functional fixedness as a “mental block against using an object in a new way that is required to solve a problem.” In a famous study, Duncker created something called the Candle Problem: subjects are given a box of tacks, a candle, and a match and told to affix the candle to the wall so that it doesn’t drip wax on the floor. Most people try to stick the candle to the wall with wax or tacks and fail, instead of rethinking the problem, which is to dump out the tacks, connect the box to the wall, and put the candle in the box—because they cannot see the box as anything but a container for tacks.
The good news is that this bias can be overcome. Repeated exposure to different views and novel experiences can prime us to question our assumptions and consider alternatives—that is, to see the box holding the tacks as a candleholder. The repeated exposure does something else that’s critical: it creates discomfort—the discomfort that comes from being stuck on a problem. Studies in creativity show that it is an important early stage in the process of people generating an insight, creating those aha moments. It’s a subconscious signal to the brain that a problem exists and a solution must be found.
Our brain tends to grasp for easy answers to solve the problem and end the tension. And organizations behave similarly. At first, they deny a problem exists. Then they admit that a problem exists—but it’s not theirs. Then they say that it’s their problem, but it can be solved by the tried and tested pathways.
In advocating for change, the change-maker’s job is to maintain the discomfort. Necessity may be the mother of invention, but I’ve found irritation works pretty well, too. Yours and theirs. They call your idea a cartoon? Become a cartoon artist, making it clearer and clearer until it makes sense. (As a sketch artist, Michelangelo gave his figures extra-dark outlines, a defining characteristic of his work.) Keep coming back. That persistence ultimately triggers new ways of thinking as people get exposed to the notion and interpret it in a new context. You have to keep communicating these examples and finding translators and sparks to get attention.
One key to giving these constant provocations organizational weight is to insinuate them into the organizational events at which the company’s future is decided. At GE, these took two major forms: Growth Days and the Commercial Council.
Growth Days, which I set up with Jeff, grew out of the Imagination Breakthrough reviews we held, in which we would spend one Friday a month looking at growth ideas and new technologies. These get-togethers are important for any company, as they inculcate a disciplined approach to seeking out new ideas for growth, forcing leadership to focus forward in an organized way.
These were often debate-filled meetings, especially between our good-natured CTO Mark Little and me. In tech-based companies, the battle between marketing and tech can be described as Should versus Can. The technology folks often want the most advanced, sophisticated features, no matter how overengineered or expensive they might be—they are pushing the limits of what’s possible. Marketing helps interpret what is valuable in the market—not what could be made but what should be made. Jeff’s job was to navigate the tension and make the tough calls based on input from both areas.
While Mark and I (and Jeff) had good debates about the future of health care, we had especially tense battles over the future of solar energy. And the tension usually arose around changing or improving the technology versus changing the business model.
Mark was focused on the solar PV panel. “The photovoltaic panel is the gateway into the building. We’re engineering dramatically improved efficiency, and in time, it will be cheaper. Why would someone want an inferior PV panel?” he asked.
“Because the PV panel is good enough. There is a different way into the market,” I would argue. “That’s what we’re seeing in start-up companies like Solar City and Sunrun. Basically, they offer the consumer less-costly electricity, they finance the solution for its lifetime, and they take over the pain of installation and upgrades. And they are able to knit the system together with software, making it easier for consumers to sign up, easier for installers to be part of the network, and are capturing customer data along the way. As the panels commoditize and get better, their cost of the system decreases. It’s a different way to solve the problem, by controlling the whole system.”
Solar continued to be a point of violent debate and various attempts and stops. Because we were functionally fixed, GE teams didn’t confront the most existential questions of all: What happens when someone figures out how to make money with solar? What happens when fuel is essentially free from the sun? What happens when our turbines are replaced by electronics and digital tech, and no longer the power behind the power system?
I debated the issues at our monthly Growth Days, and again at our quarterly Commercial Council meetings, when we focused on how to sell in new ways. This was the meeting at which we operationalized the growth ideas we cultivated on Growth Days. That meant getting salespeople comfortable with new products and new ways to generate revenue.
Commercial Council had become increasingly frustrating to me. Jeff seemed less patient with the marketing side; he felt he needed to focus more attention on global deals and big customer wins as we scaled global growth. And because Jeff felt comfortable working with me, he’d often bring his freewheeling style of discussion—the “cartoon-shaming”—to the council.
I remember one meeting in particular: We met in the Lyceum, a tiered lecture hall in Crotonville styled like a gladiator pit. I sat up front, next to Jeff, with Jean-Michel and my colleagues behind us. When it was my turn to present, I squeezed behind Jeff’s chair to go into the “pit” to be challenged. I stared up into the crowd, gathered my breath, and explained how a new focus on harnessing consumer interest in health care, via the Internet, could be helpful in getting us closer to our customers—to doctors and hospitals. Health, I said, could be the new “green” for GE.
Jeff scrunched up his face and shook his head.
“Digital consumer health care? That sounds like a cartoon, Beth,” he said. “What you’ve painted is too far off to talk about. You’re at step 40. What do we need to do to focus on step 5? How about EMR [electronic medical record] financing, how’s that going?”
Jeff wanted to know how to sell something now.
One of the sales leaders, Jim, was even more combative. “What are they supposed to do with this, really?” he said, waving me off. “Consumer health? Beth, we don’t sell directly to consumers.”
“No, not now,” I said. “But imagine it forward.” Your customers have customers. Your customers are doctors and hospital administrators. They serve patients. Our utilities serve home and business owners. At the end point, these are consumer businesses.
Then other GMs piled on, and the point of the conversation was lost and we moved on to the next thing.
Once the interrogation was over, I squeezed back behind Jeff’s seat to mine and held my chair arm with an iron grip. It was only when I got back to my room at the Crotonville guesthouse that I allowed myself a cry of frustration. This happened often after meetings in this forum. I wasn’t able to get through to those guys. I felt I had been too surprised and intimidated to fight back.
“They don’t want to listen,” I complained to Jean-Michel in frustration.
After pushing digital without success at a few Commercial Council meetings, I decided I needed to bring in an expert—a spark, a translator—who had been validated by the market. That’s when we happened upon Aaron Dignan. Linda Boff had hired Aaron to help develop ideas with the digital brand team. Aaron h
ad cofounded a consultancy called Undercurrent that billed itself as the McKinsey of digital and that came recommended by a former colleague who was now at Pepsi. Aaron’s work expertise had been validated by people we knew on the team at American Express, and he helped us create a digital advisory board, which continues to this day. Our goal was to convene a group of digital makers who could inspire us with their insights and advise us on our strategy, especially in marketing and community building. The advisors have included Chris Poole, aka moot of 4chan (who himself became a valued spark to Linda and me), Scott Heffernan of Meetup, Bennett Foddy of the NYU Game Center, and Amanda Kelso of Facebook. They helped create confidence about the digital strategies we were building and gave us early insights and access to emerging platforms. This kind of advisory board can be effective in any change initiative a company is leading.
Lost in Translation
“They just don’t get it, do they?!” Watch out for those moments when you are frustrated enough to think this way, or worse, say it. We’ve all been there; it’s so tempting to dismiss those who don’t get it as thick-headed or worse. Even if you don’t explicitly say it, remember that your tone and body language speak much louder than words. I have a bad habit of looking at a teammate and rolling my eyes when the conversation becomes frustrating. It’s the sort of thing that makes everyone look bad.
Avoid phrases like “It’s really simple” or “As most people know.” For one thing, maybe they don’t know. Most people don’t want to admit when they don’t know something, especially in a group setting. It’s helpful to send a simple overview in advance and offer digital links for people to explore further. I once asked what I thought was a reasonable question in an investor-relations meeting. One person retorted, “Well, anyone who knows how investing works wouldn’t need to ask that question.” And he never answered my question. I felt like an idiot for the rest of the meeting. Most industries have specific terms and acronyms, and knowing them proves your insider status. Sometimes, industry language is wielded as a barrier to keep away neophytes. Good leadership focuses on making concepts easy to understand, and inviting people to engage.
Challenge yourself to truly engage others:
First, don’t assume everyone has the same level of understanding that you have.
Ask questions. I’ll often start a meeting in which we’re introducing a new concept by asking questions to engage the room. What do you know about this subject? What kinds of questions do you have?
Don’t get lost in translation. We may use the same words but interpret them differently. I’ve learned to focus on a few words, stating something like “Here’s what I mean by this,” and then ask, “Does this mesh with your interpretation?”
Linda and I decided that Aaron’s work on the digital brand deserved to be promoted to the Commercial Council. So we threw him to the lions and asked him to appear at the next council. Outsiders are usually greeted with some skepticism.
But Aaron dived in, using the most consumer focused of all technology products: Google search. We take it for granted now, but in 2010, this was still surprisingly difficult for industry to engage with. After explaining the various algorithms on which Google search worked, with plenty of bored shifting in the tiered seats, Aaron pivoted.
“Now, Google search isn’t just about finding cake recipes and cat food,” he said. “Large companies are using customer data gleaned from Google search to generate targeted leads that turn into real sales—with 10, 20 percent conversion. And they are uploading videos about products to YouTube, creating an earlier moment of discovery for customers. Maybe you don’t need as many salespeople if customers know about your product before you show up.”
“Wait, wait a minute,” one GE executive said. “More leads, fewer salespeople? I don’t get it.”
“They can find your products and information themselves—in fact, you can steer them to it by buying keywords in Google search. Look, your industrial competitors are already doing it.” He pulled up a video of a small power-generation unit from a competitor. “See, customers can see your competitor’s product in action. And there are hundreds more like this. Do you think they are asking ‘Where’s GE?’ Look at how Caterpillar is using mobile technology so their distributors can order inventory and monitor the status of shipments via applications.”
Yep, consumer-modeled applications were being used in enterprise businesses. Aaron, the spark, had broken through. GE’s leadership continued to challenge him, but they did it with better manners, and they listened, or at least pretended to.
Behind all of the various tools I use to create the “rolling thunder”—the gradual announcement of the arrival of something new, until it is too loud to ignore—there is a scaffolding of psychological theory. You need to create an emotional pull and push; you need to balance paranoia and possibility.
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Here is my rolling thunder rollout:
1. GET PEOPLE EXCITED
In the early days, as I continued to push digital, Jeff kept saying, “I know it’s important, but what is it for us?”
We kept putting ourselves in Jeff’s shoes and asking, “What does digital and software look like at GE? Data from our machines? Wind turbines that chat? What does that look like?” This iterative process helps to hone the story, making it more believable, relevant, and saleable. Eventually, your audience will start to interpret the digital future in their own ways and add to the narrative.
2. LOOK FORWARD; STRESS FUTURE UTILITY
I invited Marc Benioff, the head of the groundbreaking (at the time) cloud software company Salesforce, in to talk to us. Marc was a few stanzas ahead of GE, and his vision of a cloud-based world was infectious. I had him talk to GE’s business leaders about how he managed his entire business using data in the cloud.
Marc’s marketing strategy was to hit constantly on the idea of a world without installed software on its computers—hence the “No Software” stickers he took everywhere. He knew that people would only gravitate to his products once they accepted the utility of the concept.
3. TEST THE SCARY STUFF AWAY FROM HOME
You can create proof points that convince leadership by trying riskier stuff far from headquarters.
We brought in one of our marketers, Ipsita Dasgupta, who was leading growth for GE in India and had been hired from Cisco and IBM, to speak at the Commercial Council. Working with our GE Energy teams, she had mapped out a way to incorporate digital services into our power generation and wind offerings in India. She could explain how software was working in energy, what we could do with more data, and how to monetize it. Having worked for software firms, she could translate how data could be used in examples GE’s leadership could relate to.
4. LOOK, WE’RE ALREADY DOING IT!
As with Ecomagination, we looked first to those parts of GE where digital was already a part of our business. The big aha: GE’s revenue from its existing software products—largely in manufacturing automation—qualified us as one of the world’s top twenty software firms.
With this insight, people inside GE almost became less afraid of digital. In fact, employees began to go around bragging about our ranking (number fourteen at that time). It helped turn the mind-set inside GE. We could now concentrate on the fact that we needed scale, alignment, and momentum to compete.
5. PARANOIA WORKS
A good part of the innovator’s job is to scare people. Tell them what might happen to them if they don’t jump on the train. To instill in my team a fear of inaction during the early days of Healthymagination, I took them to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which I attended every year to keep my thumb on the market. I walked Jean-Michel and the other key members to one of the exhibition halls and pointed.
“What do you see?” I asked.
“Booths and booths of hea
lth industry start-ups,” Jean-Michel said.
“And do you know how many booths were here last year?” I asked. “Four.”
By the time I’d finished my sentence, Jean-Michel was dragging his colleagues over to the closest booth.
“Oh my god, there’s somebody here with a heart monitor tethered to a smartphone. That’s so great…” he said. “Wait a minute. That’s going to disrupt our ECG business.”
6. CREATE COMPANY-WIDE FEAR OF MISSING OUT
As your change-making initiative begins to gain momentum, shout your successes far and wide. No one wants to fall behind their peers inside the company.
During the early years of our digital discovery, I sent out repeated e-mails to our sales and marketing leaders to incite them to jump on the train. “We’re getting our digital groove going at GE, and it’s good to see,” I wrote in one e-mail. Then I launched into a laundry list of digital successes, from examples of finding new value for customers to a mention of GE Genius, an iPad app that delivered real-time data to sales teams.
Proof point, proof point, proof point. The e-mail pep rallies went on to create a din of positivity. We flooded the zone with so much data and storytelling that we made people paranoid that they would miss the future.
Eventually, things started to click. Those who doubted us, even the most negative voices on the Commercial Council, began to doubt themselves. As several digital-related Imagination Breakthroughs (such as Dose Watch, a digital gauge for hospitals; Fuel Tracker for airlines; Grid IQ digital monitoring for electricity grids; and Rail Network Optimization) began to show results, more people in the company began to shift from neutral to positive.
Jeff agreed that the future was digital. What GE needed was a more concentrated effort, he said. So he established a digital initiative that would put it on the level with our past initiatives, like new growth and our global expansion. In other words, the “cartoon” was real. Now we had to make the rest of the world believe it.
Imagine It Forward Page 23