The Eye For Innovation

Leading Innovation - Part 2

In my blog, “Leading Innovation,” (see August 12 post), I described some characteristics of successful leaders. With this new entry I will continue that thought but from a different perspective: To be a successful leader or executive you need to know, and carefully articulate for yourself, the beliefs and values that guide your management decisions and actions. It is fascinating how much the mosaic of management action seems to reflect knee jerk reaction rather than action that proactively reflects an underpinning set of values.

It is by now simply boring to listen to yet one more talk about how we live in a world that is characterized by explosive change. Yeah? So what? It is much more insightful and meaningful to understand that we live in a world of ever increasing “interdependent independence” and that this change creates leadership and management challenges that are tougher than ever. The world is interdependent in terms of technology, energy, and environmental sustainability—to name just a few of the basics. And yet as interdependence has escalated over the past century, the clamor for political, ethnic and individual independence has equally escalated. For example, less than fifty years ago our globe comprised 79 political entities that we label “nations.” Today it is more than 200. That fact is not necessarily good nor bad, but it is clear evidence of the emotional search for and demand for individuality in a world that is crushingly interdependent. And that is the crux of the leadership challenge in the 21st century.

This, however, is not a note on interdependent independence, as interesting a topic as that is. What concerns us is the topic of management and leadership in such a world, and that demands that we have something of permanence to guide that task. Otherwise we lead by expediency or greed or solipsism, the viewing of all reality in terms of “self,” and that is simply a contradiction in terms. Years ago, I articulated for myself five beliefs – management principles – and they have served me well in times of trauma as well as in times of exhilaration. I won’t try to cover all five in this note, but I will write about one of them.

This first principle arose because my working career began as a technical person – a programmer- and like many such people sort of drifted into management. So the question I finally had to ask was: “Hey! Wait a minute. In the first place, why do you even want to be in management? What is the reward?” If you want money there are many other ways to do that than going through all the emotional turmoil involved in managing other people. In the financial world, in technical work and certainly in sports (such as Tiger Woods), for those with talent and skills there is opportunity not only for great financial reward but recognition as well – all of that based on your individual accomplishments. Why not be a Wall Street analyst, or a world class computer designer like Seymour or a sports hero like Yogi, who is certainly more frequently quoted than most business “leaders” of the 20th century! So what is the reward of being a manager, an executive leader, a CEO? The answer is this:

The true reward of management is accomplishing complex tasks through the success of others.

Once you have experienced that feeling, nothing else in business will ever bring you the same satisfaction. I’ll pick up on this thought and the other four beliefs and values that go with it in another posting. Meanwhile maybe you would share your thoughts with me. Do you think this is the reward sought by  business leaders today? Certainly there are some who look at it a different way! But is that the general case? If you have examples of those who do have this view of their reward, please share them.

Technorati Tags: Innovation, Leadership, Leaders, Control Data Corporation

Control Data Alumni-WE NEED YOUR MEMORIES!

For our 50 Year Celebration those of us on the Technology & Innovation panel have been collecting and compiling a list of technical innovations. These have come primarily from techies who were active in the earlier years.

If you by chance know of any Control Data technical innovations that caught your attention, we'd like to know. This is particularly so if you were not technical: You will have no vested interest in any particular one of them and can be more objective. And of course you don’t care “how it works” (yaaaawn) - just what it does for you!

Maybe you don’t know of any such, but might recall a Control Data person that did that kind of work and came up with some neat tricks or thingies that were useful. We may have missed him or her.

YES, you say, I think I can remember something or another or someone, now what?

For each neat trick or thingies (OK, not necessarily that neat) we techies would like to know some boring things. As importantly, civilians in the audience want to know more of the "so what" aspects.

Here are the attributes we've been using for the stuff we've already gathered. I’m show three examples below where we’ve been able to fill in each of the attributes. We do not expect you (or anyone) to have all the detail, nor to make up a matrix, nor polish your prose.

Please post a comment on this blog posting if you can think of anything. Here are some examples:

First, a biggie product...

Innovation:                              Disk drives
Division/Who:                          Peripheral Equipment Division / many people
When:                                      1960s-1970s
Importance at the Time:         Huge, controversial bet on expansion into an allied field
Impact, CDC Progress:            Gamble paid off, big time. A Major Milestone   
Impact – Markets:                    CDC became a major market supplier
Impact – Technical:                 Invention City!
21st Century Usage:               All disks

Next, an intricate process...         

Innovation:                             Automated QA Process
Division/Who:                         Palo Alto
When:                                     1970s-1980s
Importance at the Time:       Cut testing time in half!
Impact, CDC Progress:           Less test time, faster inventory turns, better cash flow
Impact –Markets:                    Stronger competitive advantage
Impact – Technical:                Raised the industry bar for more reliable software
21st Century Usage:              Newcomers standing on CDC’s shoulders

And here’s a detailed product feature...

Innovation:                              Customer can modify the computer’s instructions
Division/Who:                          Computer Division / 3600 team
When:                                      1960s
Importance at the Time:         Let the professors and Labs design their own “instructions”
Impact, CDC Progress:            A plus in some markets
Impact – Markets:                    Stronger competitive advantage, feature clinched some sales
Impact – Technical:                 Modest
21st Century Usage:               It still lives in various microprogramming forms

Please post items in a blog comment or email to: consult808@charter.net

Leading Innovation

In a recent impromptu interview the first question I was asked was: “What is most important in order to be an effective leader?” My response was (and is): “A genuine interest in and concern for the success of those who work for you.” The ability to engender innovation and follow through execution by those who work for you is the only way an executive can hope to be a success. So “Success Through the Success of Followers” must be the mantra of great leaders.

It also requires tenacity and persistence in pursuit of your goal. (note that I do not use the word “vision” something best left to those of a more theological bent and to business writers and consultants.) Successful leadership also requires an ability to simultaneously absorb and ignore vitriolic criticism. Never have I known a person who exhibited that ability better than Bill Norris the founder of Control Data Corporation.

Jim Collins expresses thoughts along these lines in his book "Good to Great"  and in an obverse way so does Lee Iaccoca in his recent book "Where Have All the Leaders Gone?" Much of what helps make innovation a way of life in an organization is captured by the phrase “There’s gotta be a better way!” I explore that thought in my book “The Eye For Innovation”.

The interest in making those who work for you successful as opposed to being obsessed by personal success is more prevalent in those who lead businesses that design and deliver products or services that meet human needs than those that are purely transactional in nature – that is those that simply facilitate the transference of something from one party to another such as traders.

I recently read a book on the life of John Jacob Astor, “Furs By Astor." Astor, a teenage immigrant to the U S from the village of Waldorf in Germany was a butcher’s son who had higher dreams than just succeeding to his father’s meat shop. His dreams were about money and power. And he had skills to match his dreams. Those skills were strictly transactional in nature, the ability to see trends and to fashion deals to capitalize on those trends. He became the wealthiest man in America in the early 19th century, He was certainly a “success,” and he didn’t achieve that success by nurturing the success of others! But his world was a transactional world; one that concerned itself with realizing wealth rather than creating wealth. That story provides food for thought relative to our world today; unless there is a strong underpinning of wealth creation through innovation, realizing wealth will surely atrophy – just as surely as the beavers and the buffaloes ceased to provide a source of wealth for the traders of the 19th century. “There has got to be a better way.” 

Technorati Tags: Innovation, Leadership, Leaders, Control Data Corporation

A Vibrant Entrepreneurial Sector

The basic ideas in my book The Eye for Innovation received a lot of reinforcement in another recent book, The Entrepreneurial Imperative by Carl J. Schramm, President of the Kauffman Foundation.

The book’s theme is that more than just economic growth depends on a vibrant entrepreneurial sector of the economy.  Rather, he contends that political freedom and democracy depend on it as well.  At the core of the matter, of course, are people. 

With regard to people, the author focuses on the matter of risk,  “Are entrepreneurs born or made?” he asks and then adds, “That is the wrong question.  The right question involves understanding how someone perceives risk.  This is the central matter of 'motivation'” (which is one of the four key attributes of an innovative organization as described in The Eye for Innovation).  Or, rather, it is the fear of failure inherent in large bureaucratic organizations that squelch the impulse for innovation, that inhibits people from taking on the risk inherent in innovation and entrepreneurship.

Schramm describes the entrepreneurial economy as comprising four interrelated institutions:  start-ups, established large-scale firms, government and universities.  He notes that while each of these groups of organizations pursues its own purpose, in an entrepreneurial economy they work together in an economically “virtuous” manner and illustrate what he means for each of the four.

For example, he notes that government in its roles as “arbitrator” of conflicting interests (see Chapter 11, pages 191-193 in The Eye for Innovation) can easily slide down the slippery slope of regulation and help induce a state of “bureaucratic capitalism” and toward a “state-directed economy.”  Such over-regulation is frequently induced by corporate scandals such as Enron and WorldCom that resulted in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. 

He goes on to point out the fallacy upon which SOX is based:  “That bureaucracy is the font of superior performance...My argument certainly is not that government should never act to address shortcomings in the legal system.  But, as in everything else, there is a balance to be struck.” 

He then concludes this section as follows, "...small, discrete events can steadily accumulate and, when aggregated, precipitate paradigmatic change…it is not so much the specific provisions of SOX that are a cause for worry, but the combination and interaction with heightened federal regulatory enforcement …that could presage a turning point for American capitalism.”

He offers similar advice for education institutions, large corporations and entrepreneurs.  With regard to business organizations he lays out three key variables that must be mastered effectively:  “Capital Markets seek size as a proxy for predictable returns...technology requires capital for its development and/or adoption...and in the end, the human factor is not only responsible for the turns and surprises that technology development presents but also for [the required] financing and commercialization.”  He then sets forth one of the most compelling statements in the book:  “But in the end, the size and creativity of the innovative population is the most significant determining factor of what the life cycle of firms will be.”

Amen!  And the essentials of doing just that are found in The Eye for Innovation.

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Technorati Tags: Innovation, Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, Carl Schramm, The Entrepreneurial Imperative, Sarbanes-Oxley Act, Capitalism, Economics, Bureaucracy