Entries by Engers Fernandez

The Innovation Code

March 16, 2018 /0 Comments/in , , /by

The hidden elements behind innovation are disharmony, disruption, disagreement and contrasting. That is what innovation is made of. Innovation is about constructive, creative, positive tension. A clash makes innovation possible in a team; agreement dissolves it. 

The Innovation code by Jeff DeGraff and Staney DeGraff introduces a framework that shows and explains how different kinds of leaders and thinkers can stir up constructive conflict in the organization. This positive, creative tension produces inventive solutions from both resources. DeGraff discovered the hidden inspiration in harnessing the creative energy that arises from opposing perspectives. The discovered force to sharpen creative innovations is through contrasting ideas.

DeGraff identified four contrasting styles of innovators:

  1. The Artist who loves radical innovation)
  2. The Sage who innovate through collaboration)
  3. The Engineer who continually improves on everything)
  4. The Athlete who competes to develop the best innovation). 

In addition, he included assessments and what to do to build, manage and embrace dynamic disagreement in a team that contains all four. You can discover which style best defines you and each of your team member as well.  Your dominant worldview makes you know how you sort and manage challenges. Your quality makes you outstand the crowd, and that is where the need to discover your biggest weakness comes in. 

Outside the interview room, take time to realize that secret about yourself without clouding your judgment with your world perspective. When the dominant worldview overpowers all other point of views, you tend to have a blind spot and become a prisoner of your ideology. Worldview is how we interpret and experience the world based on our belief and mindset. A worldview is more than a style; it is a collection of different opinions. We all have our dominant worldview, a particular conception of the world from a specific standpoint. This standpoint can be generated from personal experience, culture, and society at large.  DeGraff concluded that the most significant obstacle we face on the path of innovation is YOU, while the greatest solution is combining different perspectives and hybrids of ideas. So it is essential we learn to let go of our preconceptions and biases.

When you can identify your greatest weakness and strength, you get enough insight to select your team of superheroes, a band that can give you a significant push to create things you cannot work on your own. People who are unlike you are the kind of people you need to surround yourself with. But first, get to know the worst part of yourself and the right part of yourself. ​

Innovation code shows how to play to win the innovation game irrespective of your organization, team and associates. No one ever says innovation is easy; innovation code does not gloss over innovation like its simple and easy either, instead it tackles the hardest element which is how to create a constructive conflict and use it to innovate.  In this book, DeGraff shares his insight from his experience with many organizations to create a practical print for all innovators. 

The Big Three: Key Points

Key Point #1

You must know how to stir up constructive conflict in an organization and how to manage different innovation styles within an organization or team.

Key Point #2

There are four contrasting styles of innovators: The Artist, the Sage, the Engineer and the Athlete.

Key Point #3

People who are unlike you are the kind of people you need to surround yourself with. But first, get to know the worst part of yourself and the right part of yourself.

One Last Thing 

“The best teams are like a band of superheroes” – Jeff DeGraff

The Age of Agile

March 16, 2018 /0 Comments/in , , , , , /by

Stephen Denning, the former program director of knowledge management at World Bank, now works with various organizations in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and Australia on leadership innovation, Agile management, and organizational storytelling to discover the unfolding age of agile. This book focuses on how some organizations are learning to operate in a way that is much better for those doing the work, recipients of the work, the organization and the society.

The author discovered the default operating system for almost every medium-sized business and large-scale business to be bureaucracy (an organization system that discriminates between the managers-thinkers and the employees-doers). This system of management was designed to produce a consistently average performance to a set of internal rules. Its vertical chain of command was never designed nor is it capable of moving fast enough to respond to what is known as VUCA Markets. VUCA stands for Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous marketplace also referred to as ‘Agile.’

 

The agile movement began decades ago in the manufacturing arena but gained traction recently in an unexpected place; software development. It was published in Agile Manifesto in 2001. The unusual part is that no one would associate the Information Technology department with such a robust management system. The author affirms that organizations that operate as agile are capable of being highly innovative and pragmatic. Take, for instance, an organization like Morningstar. The world’s largest tomato processor has no manager and all the key decisions are made by the “Blue Collar” employees. The company has move competence down to the individuals who have information and the context to make the best decision instead of moving it upward.

The Age of Agile offers insight on how to get individuals to think and behave like owners and reap the financial benefits that flow from this. One of which is the organization must be transformed into small localized units, each with its profit and loss responsibility. Most importantly, traditional management practices such as manipulating staff and trying to manipulate the customer must be dumped and replaced with treating people like an adult. The Agile paradigms are neither easy to understand nor easy to implement for traditional managers. Agile has become widespread and popular over the past decades with tens of thousands of organizations around the world. The author explains that the new paradigm is a journey, not an event. It involves unending innovations regarding specific innovation generated by the organization for the customers and steady improvement to the practice of management itself. He further explains that Agile Management is based on three laws; the law of the small team, the law of customer and the law of network. The law of small team requires that work is done in small, autonomous, cross-functional teams, working in short cycles on relatively small tasks and getting continuous feedback from the ultimate customer or end user. When you work in such teams, situations can be analyzed, decisions can be made and action taken as a single uninterrupted motion. Work can be fun and everyone will flow with it.

 

The law of customer is that the highest priority is to satisfy the customer.  Many managers are aware of the common phrase “The customer is number one”! While continuing to be internally focused, bureaucratic and fixated on delivering shareholder value. In an Agile organization, everyone is passionately obsessed with delivering more value to customers.

The third law according to Stephen Denning is the Law of the Network where leaders are not fierce conquering warriors but rather like curators of gardens.  When an organization truly embraces Agile it is less like a giant warship and more like a flotilla of tiny speedboats. This law is the recognition that competence resides throughout the organization and outside the organization. A problem can be solved and innovation can emerge through networking inside and outside.

Age of Agile furthermore cites common mistakes leaders make when planning to implement and derive the benefits of Agile. These include introducing agile as just another business process with top management hedging their bets on its success by a less than fulsome commitment.

The author affirms that agile can continuously deliver more value to customers from less work and will result in terrific returns to the organization.

THE BIG THREE – KEY POINTS

Key point #1:  Agile helps organizations to be highly innovative and efficient as well as passion filled and pragmatic.

Key point #2: Agile management, when done right, can continuously deliver more value to customers from less work and yield a substantial result.

Key point #3: Agile organizations also have a hierarchy, but one of competence and not authority.