The naughty kid in your class may be the innovator!

Do innovators have certain attributes or characteristics? What makes them move beyond creative ideas to actually innovating? What is it that drives them?

I’ve taught thousands of students and some are memorable for the wrong reasons.  Let me introduce you to Justin who I taught some years ago. He is in his 20’s and is currently living in San Francisco. Justin left school and went to work at a Nature Based school in South Africa. There he fell in love with wild animals and teaching. He came back to Australia to complete a teaching degree in Maths and Science. This is all rather ironic as Justin was never a great fit for school. He really should have been expelled but I miscalculated how many times he had been suspended. However, Justin had was an inquiring mind and great energy. Unfortunately, this meant he was often kicked out of class because the teachers couldn’t handle him. He was never malicious; he just always challenged the status quo.

In his first few weeks of teaching Justin became frustrated at being unable to assess exactly where his students’ understanding was as the class progressed. He wanted instant feedback and not have to wait for tests, exams or for kids to put their hands up to ask questions. He tried various methods to elicit better and quicker feedback but was not satisfied. He wanted real time feedback so that he could adapt his teaching minute by minute, student by student.

This hunger for better information on his students resulted in him designing an app. Justin has no particular advanced IT skills but worked out a basic design. He tested it in class and realised that it was giving him better insights into his students’ understanding. He then made contact with an old school friend living in Berlin where there is a small hub of IT start ups.

Within a few months the app, Geddit, had developed enough for venture capitalists in the USA to take an interest. Justin and his small team where offered a ‘scholarship’ to live and work in San Francisco to develop the app. Justin quit his job as a teacher and headed off to the US where he has been for several months. (See Justin in a 3 minute video http://www.letsgeddit.com/).

Now he is working at AltSchool, the most innovative edtech start up I believe the world has seen. (More on that another time). Justin speaks with much excitement about the new world he is discovering and the fascinating people he is working with.

When I look back at him and others like Justin who challenge the status quo, it is interesting to reflect on what kind of students they were:

They were academically very strong scoring in the top 10% of the State. They were not ‘ideal’ students in the sense they did not always conform and didn’t give themselves 100% towards their studies. Why? Because they were directing their energies towards goals they were caring about. Justin was helping to start a basketball club and numerous other school initiatives (as well as playing cricket and football in classrooms and being responsible for numerous broken windows). They were always looking for new and better ways of doings things and were happy to give multiple things a go without much fear of failure. They had a broad friendship circle, curious and eager to embark on new experiences. (For example spending a few weeks living and working with underprivileged communities in South Africa).

They were very positive about life, resourceful and had the confidence to self-promote themselves and their ideas.

They were seen as ‘creative’ students but creativity alone is not sufficient for innovation. Innovation requires developing, producing, and implementing an idea. This is what sets Justin and others apart from “latent” innovators. (We have all a number of great ideas that have never been implemented).

It is also worth considering what has driven them to innovate.

1.       Frustration with the status quo.

2.       A deep desire to want to do things better.

3.       A sense of purpose seen in the desire to make life easier for others.

4.       Not driven by financial outcomes but by the desire to radically improve the way things are done. For Justin it was immediate feedback that could revolutionize the way we teach in schools.

Besides realising that the naughty kid in the class might be the next great innovator, we can start to consider that innovators do have certain characteristics and drives that push them to innovating.

Do you have any ‘naughty kids’ in your team? Before you try to get them to conform, you may consider what they could be bringing to the organisation.

By Peter Dry

2015

Have a burger - It may inspire you!

I was on the road in California last week. My mission was to visit some dynamic thinkers and schools that were re-imagining education for our young people. My colleague insisted we eat at In-N-Out Burger and that the experience would be worthwhile. Admittedly I was not too keen. Fast food after all, is fast food. Surprisingly, the taste was fresher, the service friendlier and the restaurant cleaner. The menu was not complicated (basically three choices), nor was the décor (red, white and yellow). This got me wondering why. I had to find out the story behind the success of this family owned business.

Harry Snyder, founder of In-N-Out Burger had a very simple plan: “Give customers the freshest, highest quality foods you can buy and provide them with friendly service in a sparkling clean environment.” This is what his business has done for over 60 years, and now they have over 250 stores across the western United States.

Think Jobs and Apple - ‘Make a dent in the Universe’, or Walt Disney - ‘Make people happy’. Or even IBM’s ‘Think’. Simple, clear, easily remembered, understood and acted on.

Once people understand your core purpose (who you are), and you communicate this clearly, you can make decisions quicker and with more ease. Kelleher, CEO of Southwest Airlines until 2008 said, “I can teach you the secret to running this airline in thirty seconds. This is it: We are the low-fare airline. Once you understand that fact, you can make any decision about this company’s future as well as I can.”

Keeping the message simple makes it

1.       Easier to communicate.

2.       Easier to remember.

3.       Easier to understand.

Having ‘laser like focus’ ensures the team or institution remains committed to the cause. This doesn’t mean being closed to new ideas or approaches. It means being committed to the fundamental roots of who you are. “Simple ideas,” said Blake Mycoskie of TOMS, “are also easily adaptable to changing times – and sometimes they never have to be adapted at all.”

Furthermore, knowing the ‘why’ of your institution’s existence taps into the needs of your people and customers. It builds trust, motivates and inspires. Simon Sinek writes that, “We live in times of high stress. Messages that are simple, messages that are inspiring, messages that are life-affirming are a welcome break from our real lives.”

One afternoon while working for a well-known brand, I walked the open plan office asking people to tell me what they thought our purpose was. I asked, “Who are we and what do we stand for?” Of all the answers I received no two were the same. This indicated a real issue. If the people did not know who we were and what we stood for, how could they serve the needs of the customer? How could they make decisions for the good of the company? How could leadership be devolved?

Communicating your purpose is key to success. It has to be done clearly and consistently. Yes, coffee cups, mouse pads and posters are fun, but when it comes from the leader, is intentionally lived by the leader and decisions are obviously made with the core purpose in mind, the message gets through loud and clear. Simplicity of purpose is crucial to progress. Imagine if our schools had laser-like focus on improving teaching and learning. Simple.  Any decision that needs to be made whether it be buildings, budget, students or faculty, gets put through the lens of - “Does it improve teaching and learning?” Decisions are quicker and more transparent and results are more potent.

And one final point, researchers Patrick Spenner and Karen Freeman recently found that a customer’s biggest reason to stick with a brand was “decision simplicity”. This is “the ease with which consumers can gather trustworthy information about a product and confidently and efficiently weigh their purchase options”.

Simplicity of message is important. Think simple, keep it simple and communicate it through words and actions.  And, next time you’re in the western States of America grab a burger from In-N-Out Burger. You may be inspired!

By Peter Dry 2015

What’s cooking: What are the key ingredients for innovation?

My wife and I hate cooking. I know that is a strong statement but it’s true. We cook but only because we need to survive and we have 3 kids and we figured not feeding them would amount to child abuse. To solve the issue of cooking bland meals we bought a book called 4 Ingredients. This enables busy families to make fairly decent meals quickly and with only 4 ingredients.

What about busy leaders wanting the delicious results of successful innovation? Are there only a few key ingredients or is it more like a complex meal of surprising and at times delightful tastes and aromas that amount to value added innovation? Can we whittle the key ingredients down to a small number and ensure we have those at ready supply in our organisation for a delicious meal? Through his research, Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic has identified key characteristics or ingredients of successful innovators.

Ingredient 1:  Innovators seem to have an opportunistic mindset that helps them identify gaps in the market. Some people are more alert to others when it comes to opportunities. These opportunists according to Chamorro-Premuzic “are genetically pre-wired for novelty: they crave new and complex experiences and seek variety in all aspects of life.”

Ingredient 2: We tend to think that most innovators have dropped out of school and have little formal training. This is not the case. They tend to be experts in their field and well-trained. Because of this, they are able to “distinguish between relevant and irrelevant information; between noise and signals.”

Ingredient 3: Innovators show high levels of resilience, persistence and drive. They have the energy and passion to enable them to take advantage of the opportunities they identify.

Ingredient 4: Innovators understand that connections and networks are vital to their success. Through these channels they build alliance as and relationships that will help them bring their ideas to light. Typically, innovators have been portrayed as individual geniuses but in reality innovation comes through the work of teams. Innovators tend to have higher EQ which enables them to sell and communicate their ideas to others and the team.

Back to our kitchen. Unfortunately, we continued to cook fairly bland meals. So order to have a tasty meal, now and then we would invite a friend over who was a chef. His mission was to cook a meal with the ingredients we had in our kitchen. That was quite a challenge since there weren’t very many (especially when you only need 4 per meal!) The genius of our chef friend was that he could combine the various foods we had into a beautiful, rich and flavorsome meal. This highlighted the most important ingredient of all for a great meal; a great chef. A leader in the kitchen.

True innovation tends to only occur when leadership is present. By this I mean the ability to ingrain innovation into the organizational culture. Furthermore, it is the ability to create a long-term and meaningful vision that is inspirational and purpose-driven. It propels people to action and excites them. The ability to move people towards a (meaningful) mission is a key feature of leadership and an innovative culture.

I emailed a connection at Google to why it was that they innovated so much. He answered that it was “expected. It’s just the way we are supposed to think when we walk through those doors in the morning.” This moves beyond slogans on walls, coffee cups T-shirts. It is ‘the way we do things around here.” The leader with the ability to create an innovative and forward thinking culture can attract the “right talent, build and empower teams” and they can, “ensure that you remain innovative even after attaining success”.

While you need some core ingredients to make a decent meal, what you really need is a great chef who has the ability to put it all together into a delicious meal.

For more information: http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/10/the-five-characteristics-of-successful-innovators/