Supporting and Resourcing for Innovation

Definitions of Innovation

When someone was asked what innovation is, we typically would hear people describing it as something unique, breaking through, and valuable.

However, there are over 60 different ways of defining innovation, and together, they share six broad themes. 

Innovation:

·  Could occur anywhere in our society, in any part of our organisations, and even in our daily lives. As long as there is a problem that does not go away, an unusual approach will be needed to change the situation

·  May come in different shapes and sizes to bridge different expectation and performance gaps so that stakeholders could receive greater returns in the things they want accomplished with what they have

·      Requires different types of social actors who would use personal techniques, methods and processes to navigate the innovation through the systems

·    Demands repeated and differentiated quantities and qualities of tangible and intangible resources and support to empower and enable these social actors into bringing movement in the work they attempt to accomplish

·       May spends indefinite amount of time traversing sequentially and laterally through the many stages of its creative and innovation life-cycle

·   Delivers different types of value to meet different aims of individuals, communities and societies 

Given these attributes, a more integrated definition [1] of innovation has been proposed, which describes innovation as ‘the multi-stage process whereby organisations transform ideas into new or improved products, service or processes, in order to differentiate, compete and advance themselves successfully in their marketplace’.

The definition implies that organisations should not rely on a single innovation or keep innovating on a single entity to stay competitive. It means they need to move away from managing an innovation or a number of innovations to managing the pipeline, and the engine that lies within, that creates these innovations. 

Innovation Pipeline and Its Kinks

However, to manage innovation at this level, Organisation leaders need to recognise the kinks in the pipeline; the seven choke points of the engine. These
kinks are the products of organisations reacting to things which they see as agents that upset the organisations’ existing social order.

Briefly, these kinks are the:

·         Challenge of Exchange Deficiencies

There are many individuals in organisations that are producing and owning ideas and solutions. Equally, are many who look for these to close their performance gaps. However, it is the need to account for the performance, which gaps these innovations could close, that is the reason few opportunities for sharing of information on the whereabouts, needs and offerings between these two sets of social actors - the fund managers, entrepreneurs, protectors, advocators and promoter, exist. These create deficiencies in the exchange of ideas and innovations within these organisations.

·         Projectisation Challenges

Often, the organisations' aversion to uncertainty, unforgiving nature towards failures, and overly myopic focus on short-termism, turn the most motivated and innovative individuals off.

Many ideas with breakthrough potentials are given up because very few individuals are willing to stick their heads out to turn these into projects to draw value out of them.

As the project moves through its life-cycle, this phenomenal prevails. It continues to prevent people, who may have specific competencies to bring best out of the project, thereby reducing the propensity of the project truly reaching its innovation success.

·         Challenges of Time and Space

There is inertia to start innovating; getting the right problem definitions, finding their right scope and range, and locating the right social actors.

In a world where we have to struggle with doing things that provide for us today, and having things that may not even pay tomorrow, the going of moving ideas beyond their drawing boards could be tough.

These conditions create tendencies for social actors to fall back on their routine work methods and proven solutioning approaches to avoid spending precious resources on the fundamentally more challenging issues just to get things by.

·         Kinks of Social Constraints

The innovation success of organisations is positively related on the quantity and quality of ‘intrapreneurs’ that they possess.

However, social actors have known to introduce policies or encourage practices that, while well-meant and intended, restrict and constraint the ways ‘intraprenuer’ may use to organise their workplace.

Besides introducing these cultural norms, social actors reinforce them. In the world of measurements and accountability, they formally and informally sanction behaviours that are deemed unacceptable, thereby reducing the space in which diversity could work and where quality could really matter at the workplace. What has started as expected control, has unexpectedly reduced the willingness of ‘intrapreneurs’ wanting to fill pipeline with ideas and innovations, and their number wanting to remain behind to operate it.

·         Challenges of Participation 

At the heart of creation are the interactions social actors have with each other on matters relating to its vision, intention and direction. Without their willingness to come together to make meanings that touch, inspire and move others into working for and with the venture, the innovation is dead.

Therefore, the quality and frequency of these interactions matters and cannot be taken lightly. These could be cultivated, but they require the acumen and skills of pipeline architects to recognise the social actors and understand the importance of their conversations to lead them into playing their most important function in the creation process - managing the affairs of today so that tomorrow has a chance begin now. However, in a space where today is awarded a premium over tomorrow, this chance for breakthroughs is narrower. 

·         Challenges of Scarcity 

Usually, we would conclude that money is the panacea for innovation. While this is essential in buying us the material to build the innovation, it does not always buy us the approval, protection, and support necessary to introduce and sustain the innovation in the organisations.

Innovation is about change, and change demands, firstly, shifts in mind-sets, and secondly, modifications in behaviours. These are challenging endeavours, which require the act of leadership.

Intangible resources are capable of influencing the make-up, motivation, and dynamics of social actors coming together and working in the pipeline. Often, actors feel frustrated and become jaded when they have difficulties accessing these ingredients for success. Jaded actors could impact the pipeline negatively as their very existence will always put into question the credibility and authenticity of management in wanting to build a more innovative organisation. 

·         Challenges of Withholding Value 

In a knowledge-based society, creativity and innovation is not constraint by the boundaries that divide space and time. Individuals and teams could choose not to contribute since they are capable of withholding the value of the innovation from the organisation and passing it someone whom they find worthy of receiving it. Individuals could start translating a conceptualised idea that has taken place at one organisation in another.

There is very little the organisation could do in terms of the policies that it could use to prevent the leakage of value from the organisation. 

Organisation that does not use a humane and inclusive approach to managing its human resource practice that build rapport, trust and relationships, these are the investments that 

Means

Organisation members are unlikely to use their own pocket money to create innovations for their organisations. Highly innovative organisations recognise this and provide the means – resources and the support, for their members to innovate.

By laying the common themes found in the definitions of innovation on the kinks that are found in the innovation pipeline, we could discern the nuances of a meaningful framework for resourcing innovation. The goal is to stave the kinks by resourcing and supporting the alternatives.

Presented below is one of the Innovation Pipeline Performance Metric and Intervention Rubrics -

Challenge of Exchange Deficiencies

Please contact ThinkInnovation, the People Behind Your Breakthroughs, at thinkinnovation@ymail.com for the full version of the Innovation Pipeline Performance Metric and Intervention Rubrics.

Reflection and Discussion

After reading this case - 'The Specialty Group', reflect on the following questions:

1.  What are the broad themes of innovation for The Specialty Group?

2.  What are the kinks in the company’s innovation Pipeline?

3.  How does the company manage these kinks?

This article was 1st written on 8 Nov 2012.

Copyright 2012. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

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[1]   Baregheh, A. Rowley, J., and Sambrook, S. (2009). “Towards a multidisciplinary definition of innovation”, Management Decision, Vol. 47(8), pp. 1323-1339.

Fully Appreciating the True Meaning of an Innovative Team

Critical Factor of Innovative Organisations No. 10

Innovation is not a product of sterile amalgamation of ideas. Instead, it involves a number of people, who are propelled by different motivations, driving forward the belief that their solution will produce the benefits that the public wants, and they will go about amassing the resources to make it happen for all who wants to enjoy these benefits.

The birth of an innovation begins when a new opportunity calls for ideas to be connected in ways that were never been done before. The people, who had identified the opportunity and created the original idea, may continue to expand different amount of effort to prove and translate it from mere concept into real device that unorthodoxly solve problems and truly bring value to their stakeholders. Therefore, innovation is about the unique way the device creates and delivers value to those who needs it rather than the device itself that makes this happens for these stakeholders.

Metaphorically, it is as if that the innovation flows through a pipeline greased by the ideas that its sponsors have to offer. Since organisations cannot depend on a single innovation, this pipeline will consist the flows of differing threads of innovations with varying degrees of penetration championed by a multitude of different players.

The unit of innovation is the team, and to tactically manage innovation, we need to manage the people behind these innovations. More specifically, it is about managing the dynamics of a team of people, empowered by different talents and skills, who are envisioning, creating and influencing extraordinarily for its cause - bringing the innovation to market. In other words, we cannot leave the evolution of innovative teams to chance. They have to exist by design and be developed through aggressive nurturing.

So, what sort of teams should we cultivate? I called these 'Tag Teams'.

Tag teams are different from ordinary work teams in many ways. First, their members have highly diverse work preferences. Some would love to challenge existing norms by creating new ways of doing things. Others would prefer to plan and organise resources to support the task at hand. Still, a couple would really enjoy directing work and producing outcomes, while the rest would never give up the opportunity of connecting with thier counterparts to promote their ideas.

Also, collectively, members of tag teams are more likely to see beyond their difficulties and problems, and appreciate these as challenges for doing better or as opportunities to access their breakthroughs. They tend to be more resilient and hardy as they see these more as avenues for greater effectiveness and efficiency than obstacles that derail them from their main focus; that is to bring their innovation to market.

Finally, tag teams possess a set of skills that they inherent from their members. There are a total of thirteen skills, and they range from skills that keep them operationally effective and efficient, to skills that spiritually bond the teams to their cause and to their organisations, and to skills that provide greater clarity into the strategies of getting their intended outcome and strengthen the drive for their cause. They use these skills to navigate through the dynamics of working together as a collection of differentiated people. They also apply them to negotiate through the myriad of organisational red-tapes. There is nothing unique about these skills except that no one in the team monopolises any of them, which is unusually unique for tag teams. This means the skills and their competencies are widely distributed, and every member is responsible for their application and accountable for their outcomes for the overall common good of the tag team.

Just like in football teams, tag teams are constraint by their own temperament arising from the interplay of these diverse preferences, orientations, and competencies. Organisational leaders, like coaches, need to understand the working of these elements at their component level as well to appreciate their interactions when they come together to truly know the means of creating, developing and harnessing tag teams for innovation.

Here are the other critical success factors of Innovative Organisations:

• No 1. Purpose Driven Organisation

• No 2. Understanding the Demonic Nature of Vision

• No 3. Risks of Playing No Games & Being Off the Board

• No 4. Fearless Organisation Environment

• No 5. Openness is in the Eradication of Fantasies

• No 6. System of Authentic Sharing

• No 7. Human Resource Investment Is Not About Spending But Creating Opportunities for Learning

• No 8. Stun-gunning Your Organisation into Inventiveness

• No 9. Focus on the True Purpose of Celebrating Success and Contribution

This article was 1st written on 1 Feb 2011.

Copyright 2011. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

Focus on the True Purpose of Celebrating Success and Contribution

Critical Factor of Innovative Organisations No. 9

To see an idea transforms into an innovation, the innovator has to embark on a long and difficult personal journey. The trip will take him to many sceptics and naysayers who wish that he fails. It is also physically and psychologically demanding as he has to put in long hours and make sacrifices to brave the numerous risks and setbacks along the way, which at times causes him to wonder if it is all worth it.

Innovation is never an easy endeavour.

Organisations cannot ignore the ‘hardships’ of these innovators. The management needs to express its gratitude by appreciating them for passionately taking up this role of moving their organisations forward. Without the recognition, the efforts and contributions made by these individuals in their journey of innovation is a meaningless and unmemorable experience.

However, the celebration of an individual’s contribution to and success in innovation has often been ruined by formalities.

We tend to be stuck with the notion of limitations and fairness. Constrained by what is available for distribution in recognising efforts, we have forgotten about the true purpose of why it is there in the first place.

In the name of fairness, we have transformed innovation into a transaction. We have created hierarchies of rewards and imposed systems for fair dispensation of recognition and rewards. In the world of ‘what gets measured gets done’, people are compelled to do silly things to win prizes rather than looking passionately at implementing and delivering the value of the innovation itself. In doing the wrong things, we cultivated the best window dressers rather than recognising and rewarding innovators who have contributed and are successful in moving the organisation forward.

Innovative organisations recognise this flaw and aggressively position innovation as a relational enterprise.

In addition, celebrating an individual’s contribution in innovation cannot be mixed up with conducting a public relations or corporate communication event to signal and gesture a positional intent to the marketplace.

This is what I mean:

Inauthentic Recognition

Showcasing the innovations of the organisation, with the intent of signalling and gesturing a particular competitive position in the marketplace.

Here, the innovation is in the foreground and the innovator is in the background.

The objective is to make your competitors aware of the competitive gains you have made in the marketplace because of the innovations.

Authentic Recognition

Appreciating and celebrating the individual’s contribution and success that has moved the organisation forward.

Here, the innovator is in the foreground and the innovation is at the background.

The objective is to make one feels that he has contributed to the success of the organisation because of his efforts applied to the innovation.

We cannot mix these objectives in the name of cost efficiency, and send the wrong messages to the innovators.

Innovative organisations know that innovators are intelligent enough to detect the authenticity of their management when it is putting innovation ahead of the innovators in these celebrations. These managements know that innovators will stop contributing to the success of the organisation when the innovators know they are being made used of.

Here are the other critical success factors of Innovative Organisations:

• No 1. Purpose Driven Organisation

• No 2. Understanding the Demonic Nature of Vision

• No 3. Risks of Playing No Games & Being Off the Board

• No 4. Fearless Organisation Environment

• No 5. Openness is in the Eradication of Fantasies

• No 6. System of Authentic Sharing

• No 7. Human Resource Investment Is Not About Spending But Creating Opportunities for Learning

• No 8. Stun-gunning Your Organisation into Inventiveness

• No 10. Fully Appreciating the True Meaning of an Innovative Team

This article was 1st written on 14 Aug 2010.
Copyright 2010. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

Stun-gunning Your Organisation into Inventiveness

Critical Factor of Innovative Organisations No. 8

History has revealed many stories about organisations moving into long periods of stagnation and inertia after enjoying years of growth and prosperity. Many organisational scientists have attributed this condition to the organisations’ failure to innovate, adapt and transform to match the evolutionary and disruptive changes in the environment, markets and stakeholders’ expectations.

Organisations which have found a way to keeping their workforce stun-gunned against complacency are able to insure themselves against this malaise.

Humans always want to avoid conditions of atrophy by staying within or reaching for homeostasis environments. In a world full of uncertainties, the unknowns bring about great discomforts. These cause the person to tense up, which is negative and exhausting. He wants to reduce or remove this tension because he recognises that an environment in homeostasis brings about satisfaction and happiness. This motivates him to recognise that new solutions have to be found, and the old ways, which no longer work, have to be replaced.

However, not all stun-guns produce the intended effects. Some are not blunt enough to push the organisation out of its fixed ways. Others are too blunt that the over-stunned organisation implodes onto itself. Innovative organisations differentiate
themselves from the ordinary ones by being able to find the right mix of stun-guns that help grow the organisation continuously.

Innovative organisations fully understand this human phenomenon and use a number of unique stun-guns - policies, methods, processes, and systems, to keep their workforce in a challenging but supportive atrophied state so that these generate the needed forces and energies to keep their organisations innovative, adaptable and renewing.

Here are the links for the other critical factors of innovative organisations:

• No 1. Purpose Driven Organisation

• No 2. Understanding the Demonic Nature of Vision

• No 3. Risks of Playing No Games & Being Off the Board

• No 4. Fearless Organisation Environment

• No 5. Openness is in the Eradication of Fantasies

• No 6. System of Authentic Sharing

• No 7. Human Resource Investment Is Not About Spending But Creating Opportunities for Learning

• No 9. Focus on the True Purpose of Celebrating Success and Contribution

• No 10. Fully Appreciating the True Meaning of an Innovative Team

This article was 1st written on 7 July 2010.
Copyright 2010. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

Competencies of Effective Team Players

The leader has always been expected to play a pivotal role in making things work in the team. He does this by guiding its resources and creative potentials to deliver the outcomes expected from him to justly for the existence of the team.

To deliver these outcomes, it is always thought that one of the key roles and responsibilities of the leader is to develop his team so that its members acquire the skills and competencies necessary for its success.

However, as more Generation Y’s begin their careers in the workplace, this traditional perspective is fast becoming obsolete. Generation Y recognises the importance of being employable and trusted by their superiors, and is more likely to leave if these growth and independence factors are missing at the workplace.

Given these inclinations, it is no longer true that the success of the team is entirely dependent on the effectiveness of its leader. Each member in the team wants a say about the future of the team. They want to lead at the appropriate moment. They want to contribute as thinking value-adding entities rather than a mere factor of production.

Given this atmosphere of change, new competencies and practices of a team member begin to emerge and these are the ability to:

• Tap into the wisdom of the crowd


• Celebrate contributions authentically


• Understand ourselves


• Leverage on the diversity around us


• Being heedfully considerate


• Continuously acknowledge, accept, and inspire the Self


• Honour our words
  

Tap into the Wisdom of the Crowd

The democratisation of information and knowledge, and the freedom of labour to bring their talent to where knowledge could be created are changing the world. This is globalisation. These are the effects of the Internet and mindsets of Generation Y, who are beginning to dominate the workplace.

This means knowledge and talent no longer a privilege only available and accessible to a few. The power has shifted into the hands of the majority. This is community power in action and it means that information, knowledge and talent is freely available out there. We need to know the methods to tap into this wisdom to be successful.

We need to recognise this phenomenon. We need to acquire a mindset that is congruent with the world and skills to collect and expand knowledge. One of such skills is the facilitation of conversations with others.

There are two basic elements in facilitating a conversation - Questioning and Paraphrasing.

In questioning, we use a number of questioning techniques to draw our counterpart into a conversation and in the process we uncover his intensions and learn of his knowledge. In paraphrasing, we summarise pieces of the conversation in our words and present it back to the audience for verification, confirmation and expansion.

When we are able to do these effectively and do them regularly, we are more capable of uncovering the opportunities of creating breakthroughs in our endeavours.

Celebrate Contribution Authentically

When we celebrate success, we make an attempt to present a deserving individual on stage to an audience and to have him receive an award from someone senior in the organisation to recognise, honour and celebrate his deeds. We spend time, efforts and money to recognise and reward individuals who had done a really good job. However, this is not an authentic celebration and the awardees know it. They is not stupid. Why is this so?

This is because we celebrate his success in our perspective as organisers of the event. In doing so, the celebration is not about him. The event is actually meant for us to demonstrate to the world that we are an enlightened organisation. We are celebrating for our sake and not for anyone else. This is inauthentic.

To truly celebrate, we have to understand the awardees’ reasons for wanting to be honoured. To answer this question, we need to ask 'why do we want to be celebrated?'

We want to be celebrated because we crave for positive feedback and affirmation from others. We want to know if we are moving in the right direction. A positive feedback is a strong incentive for inspiring us to do better and an affirmation is enough to motivate us to commit further. We stay driven this way.

Feedback and affirmation that inspires and creates aspirations are usually expressed in language. However, many organisations choose not to feedback or affirm in the most powerful way. Instead, they create symbols in their place; in the forms of scrolls, plaques, trophies, medals, ceremonial events and photo opportunities. These have their own power as they are capable of visibly demonstrate the importance that the occasion and the organisation behind the event. However, the message is not one of feedback or affirmation. They are lost when the organisation asserts itself into the forefront and talk about itself at the expense of the awardees. This is when the true purpose of celebration is lost. This is where the awardees become aware that they are just mere instruments to enable the company to showcase the quality of its organisation.

When we see through the instrumentation in the celebration, it also spells the end of real celebration. It no longer holds the sacred purpose and meaning of feedback and affirmation, and therefore lost its effectiveness for creating inspirations and aspirations in the awardees. This means when we celebrate without thinking about the organisation and without all those instrumentation, we are then really and truly celebrating success in an authentic way.

Understanding Ourselves

Sun Tzu had said that to win any battle, we need to understand ourselves and our opponents. If we only know one and not the other, our chance of winning is fifty percentage. This chance is further reduced to zero when we do not know either.

There are many ways to know ourselves and one such ways is to understand the ways we interact with our colleagues. When we first join our organisation, we make a few observations about our surrounding and the people in it. Generally, we make two kinds of assessment - we evaluate the environment to determine it favourability and we assess for the amount of control we have over others.

By putting these two together, we can produce a two-by-two matrix, which informs us on the kinds of behaviour we should adopt at work to interact with others. This matrix provides us with four behavioural modes. These are found in the diagram below:

In dominance, we have the advantage of a favourable environment and control to dictate what could be accompanied. When our environment is positive and enabling but we lack of control over the things we want complete, we will have to change and adopt a more influencing and persuasive stance.

We become more stead fasten when we are constraint by having no control over what has to be done and the environment is not altogether supportive. In such a circumstance, being calm and steady may be the strategy to survive the situation. Finally, if the environment is negative but we have a say over what should be done, we could take on a more conscientious and calm approach in dealing with the interactions we have with our peers.

We must accept that we cannot change others but ourselves. If we are aware of ourselves and could change our behaviours with dexterity, we could increase our propensity of accomplishing our goals.

Leverage on the Diversity Around Us

New knowledge is created when existing information and knowledge is combined and recombined with other existing information and knowledge. However, because this information and knowledge resides in individuals and not within the systems, these combination and recombination activities will only happened when the people share with each other.

When we talk about diversity, we want to make use of the information and knowledge arising from many differing backgrounds, exposures and experiences as the source for generating new knowledge. This could only be afforded when there is diversity in the group and people in the group share honestly.

We rarely share honestly and usually there is not enough of diversity in the group to carry enough of information and knowledge to make the sharing and combining powerful enough. Therefore, it is not natural that the group would always have the mix of people we desired and they would share without reservation.

These have to be created by design and cultivated with time. We need skills to do these and there are six of these. These are communication, active listening, relationship building within the group and with other stakeholders, problem solving and counselling.

When we acquired these skills, we could build enough of trust with each other to share authentically and fully tap into the wisdom diversity has for the group.

Being Heedfully Considerate

When we say we will consider something, it means that we will make an effort to look at both the pros and cons of that thing and weigh them for their implications before deciding on the next course of action. This act is call considering and the evaluations produce a list of considerations. An informed decision is one made by choosing an decision option that produces the best outcomes but impact the stakeholders the least after examining these considerations.

When we are heedful to others, we make a promise to ourselves to take care of the feelings and emotions of others for each act that we are about to make. In doing so, we think not just about choosing, deciding and executing our action, we also look at whether our action will cause harm to others as well.

Therefore, heedful consideration could be seen as a game where each of us is constantly and consistently is mindful about the consequences of our actions on others, and diligently making calculations of the tradeoffs between outcomes and their impact.

If the cons is greater than the pros, the current decision choice is not workable. If the negative impact is greater than the positive outcome, this decision option may need tweaking. If the impact could not be significantly negated by other acts, another decision option must be made available.

The fundamental rule is not to carry out any course of action that we are unsure of its consequences and impact. There is always a better option in existence. We have to look for them. This is being heedfully considerate and the seed for harmonious relationships.

Continuously Acknowledge, Accept, and Inspire Ourselves

Language could present itself in many forms. Words, symbols and gestures could by themselves or in combination use as expressions of the language and we use these to express our world.

We use language to describe and perceive the world. We use language to appreciate and evaluate our environment. We also use language to interact with our surrounding. Our thoughts are created in language. This is the importance of language.

This is also the bane of language. If our thoughts are made up of negative language, our world, our choices and our behaviours become negative. This means who we are to ourselves and to others is determined by the language we use in our thoughts when we think about ourselves and of others. This calls for us to be fully aware of our thoughts and the quality of the language used in these thoughts.

No human is perfect and therefore we are fallible. We need to acknowledge and accept this true identity rather than to mask it or run away from it. However, not all of us are capable of forgiving ourselves for the errors and failures we had committed, and we beat ourselves up with the language we use on ourselves. We could call these guilt and self-blame but these are in a language we understand and we never hesitate to use it to beat ourselves up when we are unable to maintain our facade of perfection.

Life should not have to be like this. Like you, I am not unique. Like you, I fall too. Just like all creatures in the world, I have my own weaknesses and could fall. Like you, I may be able to 'cover' my tracks but there is no embarrassment and shame for not doing so and be honest about it.

By accepting ourselves for who we are, we are capable of forgiving ourselves and continuing to be inspired by the true intent we want with our lives. We are not obstructed by the ghosts of our past because we know that we are never better than anyone else. So, where is the fear when all human are equal? This awareness makes us unstoppable from being great.

When we could look beyond this need to constantly look good to ourselves and in front of others, we unlock ourselves from our constraints so that we are able to attain a higher realm of experiences and self-awareness, and these are the recipes of self-efficacy and self-fulfilment.

Honour Our Word

In our life, one way or another and no matter how hard we had tried, we will break some of the promises that we had made. These could be promises we had made to ourselves or to others.

The pain is not in breaking these promises. Breaking our promises is easy. We just do not carry out the promised act. The source of the pain is really from the guilt of knowing someone is going to be disappointed and knowing how untrue the excuses we had used to explain away these lapses.

Humans are incredible creatures. We like to avoid pain and in these instances, we deal with it by pretending that the promises never ever existed or we took the escapist route by avoiding the person we had given our promises to. Over time we forget, even for those promises we made to ourselves.

However, we do not have to live like this. We can get out of this vicious cycle of guilt and flight instinct by recognising that there is a difference between keeping to our promise and honouring our word.

In keeping to our promise, we are prone to lapses and the feeling of guilt arising from our inability to forgive ourselves. In honouring our word, we acknowledge our occasional failures of not able to deliver our promises. We are capable of articulating authentically the lapses and sought forgiveness from those we had promised.

We can restart life again because we know it is useless to bash ourselves with our guilt or run away from the people we had made promises. We know we are committed to stay on course and recognise that lapses are just transient occurrences that are part and parcel of staying committed. People who honour their words do not dwell on meaningless self-criticisms but keep looking forward and moving ahead to find opportunities to realise the word.

People who practises honouring his word stays honest to himself and remains powerful throughout his life.

This article was 1st written on 19 May 2009.
Copyright 2009. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

The Natural Laws that Govern Our World

How Breakthroughs are Different From Continuous Improvements

When we do improvements to a product, service or any other things, we are making an attempt to increase or reduce something related to it. This could be an increase in terms of the product or service's performance or its consistency in delivering its desired outcomes or the value the creation process brings to the consumers. Improvement could also come in the form of a decrease in the externalities the product or service brings to the environment or society, or a reduction in the complexities of moving it through its value chain or in lowering of prices the consumers have to bear for these products and services.

Diminishing Returns of Continuous Improvements

There will be costs in bringing about these benefits and the organisation will continue commit to doing improvement up to the point where the costs of the improvement equals to the benefits derived from it. This means that there are diminishing returns in all kinds of continuous improvement.

However, what is the driver for this and what could we do given this reality? To appreciating these, we have to first understand the natural laws that govern the technologies that create and operate the product and service, bring the product and service to the consumers, and deliver the value in the product and service to them. Let's go through this thought experiment to let me illustrate this driver to you.

Let's assume that there is a big rectangular field near our house. Surrounding this field are barbed-wired fences, and there are two gates facing each other diagonally across. These gates are linked by a L-shaped cement-paved pedestrian walkway. We have to use this walkway everyday because this is the only way to get to the train station from our house. The diagram of the houses, field, gates, walkway and train station is presented below.

Several years later, the local government had decided to improve the walkway by tearing it up and repaving it. The new walkway has shortened the distance one has to travel between the two gates. Since then, there have been no further changes except repaving works because of its wear and tear. You have written to the authorities about the needs for further improvements and they have always told you that this is the best they could come up with. Why is this so?

Constraining Effects of the Governing Laws

This comes about because there are no more ideas capable of shortening the distance. Further changes could only be motivated by a fundamental shift in the natural laws that govern the whole scheme of things. Look at our walkway again and we could see Pythagoras' Theorem (a2 + b2 = c2) as the natural law that is now defining the distance between the two gates. According to the theorem, the shortest distance between two opposing corners is directly across. The construction of all other point-to-point walkways are frivolous and a waste of public funds because nothing is shorter than this. If we could shift this natural law that governs the field, we can find new avenues for new improvements. In this thought experiment, the theorem is capable of being re-expressed to focus the equation at different perspectives but in its simplest form it is incapable of being reconfigured. This explains why the current layout is the best solution given the constraints imposed by the current law.

So, how could we identify new avenues for improvements when we are unable to instrument the natural laws? We do this by examining the variables in the natural laws. In the thought experiment, the law that dictates the length of the diagonals is the Pythagoras' Theorem and the equation is:

a2 + b2 = c2

In this equation, we know that the sum of the length and breathe of the field will always be longer than the route that cuts diagonally across the field. We also know that there is a positive relationship between its length and breathe, and its diagonal. This means, the shortening of the diagonal requires a proportionate reduction in the dimensions in either or both the length and breathe of the field, which will cause the reorientation of the opposing gates. If this is feasible, this wlll become a new source for improvement up to the point where these movements no longer have meaning.

Motivation for Breakthrough Thinking

When these dimensional entities are invariable, the diagonal is constraint and nothing could change this. Now, we need to innovate to find a breakthrough in the way we think about shortening the route. We question not about how to reduce the distance to reach the station fast. We ask about how we could reach the station quickly, and we may consider using the travellator, which allows us to expend less energy to perform the task and arrives at half the time. We have leave behind distance and adopted speed as the new mode of thinking for breakthroughs. This means, in breakthroughs, we need to become aware of and avoid being influenced by the current natural laws.

Why is this so important to the innovation practitioners? This is so because the true defining difference between do continuous improvements and creating breakthroughs rests in recognising whether we are working within the confines of a current natural law or transiting out of it to be into another. Without this awareness, we will forever be confined by the current laws and only capable of doing improvements.

This article was 1st written on 19 May 2009.

Copyright 2009. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

Human Resource Investment Is Not About Spending But Creating Opportunities for Learning

Critical Facotors of Innovative Organisations No. 7

Usually, when we think about investing in people, our immediate thoughts are about training and development. While these are essential, they cannot be seen as the ends to a cause. Often, it is this misplaced emphasis that is the source of frustration for many Human Resource practitioners.

Ends Versus Means

In the 'ends' mentality, people are just sent for training and development, and it is expected that results will follow without considering what could have happened after the learning interventions. When this section of the value creation process has been truncated, Human Resource practitioners lost the mechanism to translate the learning individuals may have gained at these training and development events into human productivity at the workplace. In this space, lt is a challenge to separate the benefits of these investments from the financial results of the overall performance of the organisation. There are consequences with such a difficulty. It includes management assigning lower priorities to people development and seeking avenues with seemingly less dubious and more direct impact to productivity, like outsourcing or reconfiguration of the labour-machine mix, to improve the organisation. These will severely constraint the roles human will play in creativity and innovation in the organisation, which could lead to the decline of a nation.

Unlike the 'ends' mentality, the 'means' perspective recognises that the true value of training and development is in their transference at the workplace. There are follow-throughs that practitioners recognise as important and they put these into practice and build them into their corporate policies and governance structure to facilitate the actual transference of knowledge, skills and attitudes into creative ideas, innovations and entrepreneurial activities at the workplace. These are the financially accountable results of training and development.

Creating Opportunities for Learning

Some follow-throughs include:

• Creating opportunities for people to interact with those who have successfully used the skills, practice what they have learnt, give them a sense of contribution, and make the skill become second nature to them.


• Exposing the people to different roles so that they experience innovation from different perspectives. In doing so, they obtain a better appreciation of the roles and functions of innovation.


• Taking the routine and mundane work out of people so that this could translated into spare time for them to look at the future instead of overly focus in dealing with the past in the 'now' space.


• Giving people the freedom to experiment and space make errors and mistakes so that true learning could happen.

Innovative Organisations See the Larger Picture

Highly innovative organisations are capable of differentiating the larger picture of creating opportunities for the transference of learning from spending money mindlessly. They appreciate the full extent of the value creation process for investing in people and the amount of work involved, many which is beyond the scope of training and development, and the responsibilities of the trainers. They have avoided the zero-sum game of making the trainers the scapegoats for learning failures and went beyond managing the superficial aurora of learning successes.

Here is an interesting video that talk about giving people the opportunities to use their learned abilities:

Here are the links for the other critical factors of innovative organisations:

• No 1. Purpose Driven Organisation

• No 2. Understanding the Demonic Nature of Vision

• No 3. Risks of Playing No Games & Being Off the Board

• No 4. Fearless Organisation Environment

• No 5. Openness is in the Eradication of Fantasies

• No 6. System of Authentic Sharing

• No 8. Stun-gunning Your Organisation into Inventiveness

• No 9. Focus on the True Purpose of Celebrating Success and Contribution

• No 10. Fully Appreciating the True Meaning of an Innovative Team

This article was 1st written on 19 May 2009 and 7 July 2010.
Copyright 2009 and 2010. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

Space and Innovation, and their Relationship

Divisive Nature of Space on Wisdom

I have begun investigating into space and innovation, and their relationship in 2005. I believe that the way a space is configured at the workplace impacts the quantity and quality of creative ideas and commercially viable innovations produced by the organisation.

By dividing the space into smaller parcels and allocating these to different organisational stakeholders to facilitate labour division, specialisation and scaled economisation, people get divided and their collective institutional memory and tacit knowledge is also disaggregated, distributed and stove-piped within these pockets of space. While technology may support the retrieval, transmission, sharing and storage of information from and at different venues, the reintegration of these elements into their original whole and relaying it as wisdom between organisational members remains a challenging and costly affair for many practitioners of organisation development.

Politics are Built into the Space

The call for keeping wisdom centralised and intact comes from the recognition that innovation is a product of creativity that combines and recombines current wisdom into new forms of representation that transcend traditional arrangements and structures. This propensity to create is heightened when innovators gain access to a wider array of wisdom that exists in the various communities in the organisation. In a divided organisation, the dispensation of this wisdom is obstructed by the rights, influences and power one has over the wisdom in a broken-up space vis-à-vis some other spaces. While these are intangible, their physical representations like social boundaries, physical structures, and geographical time zones are. These barriers constraint the movement of people and the knowledge they carry. These undermine their chances of creating breakthrough ideas and innovations.

Channelling Causes the Creation of Dark Spaces

Inductively, one can conclude that there is an explicit and positive relationship between the configuration of space and the prospect of the organisation in producing innovations. The layout affects the movement of its occupants, who are the carriers of knowledge and wisdom in the organisation. This channelling effect determines the preferences of the occupants over the use of a certain passageway, corridor or access route. This means it is more by design than coincidence that the foci of a network and its social order is skewed towards those destinations where channelling plays a defining role in the given space.

Unlike explicit knowledge, which is observable, recordable and storable, tacit ones are more likely to be effectively transferred from one individual to another through interactions like conversation, discourse and collaborative work. The effects of channelling create pockets of vacuum in certain parts of the organisation where such interactions are disabled. These dark spaces lack the drawing power to bring in enough of people to generate the diversity necessary for wisdom to be created. They also provide little attraction to stem the flow of these resources out of the space. This makes the stay in the dark spaces short and this disables meaningful and fruitful interactions, which is essential in the creation of breakthrough ideas.

Limiting Factors - Scientific Management Principles

Nevertheless, the way businesses are structured today informs us that the artefacts of scientific management will continue to be the cornerstones of organisatíons. Productivity with labour division, controlled decentralisation, and scale economisation will remain the dominant forces in influencing the organisation of resources for competition. In the face of such an arrangement, innovation practitioners need to find creative solutions that allow them to leverage on the current sciences of organisation to cultivate ideas and harness them as commercially viable innovations. They need to create white clearings in the dark spaces.

A Toothless Elephants are Forever White

In the course of my work, I have worked with organisations keen in creating spaces for creativity and innovation. The experience has been mixed. I have come across organisations which had funded the building of innovation rooms for the sake of meeting some business excellence requirements without wanting to understand how the rooms were to be subsequently used. Many of their investments ended in waste and further development in this area was shelved given the rooms' low utilisation rates. Eventually, these white elephants were converted for other uses when new priorities surface.

The main reason for these failed experiments is not because of the shortage of space or people with knowledge and wisdom. It is the lack of sharewares that enable meaningful and fruitful conversations, discourses and discussions to take place in these spaces. When the interactions are not meaningful, participants cannot find the purpose and motivation for attending and participating in these wisdom engagement gatherings. Spaces provided for these gathering are eventually unused. With proper channelling and availability of sharewares, we have the ingredients to build white space, as opposed to dark spaces.

Wiring Up the Space

As early as 2006, experiments to hardwire sharewares into the organisation's white spaces had begun.

Plan-Do-Check-Act or PDCA is the mother of all problem solving sharewares. What does it actually do and why is it so important? A process is a mechanism that times the release of a number of problem solving or consensus building sharewares to the participants at the most appropriate moment. It is important to time their release because there is a need to account for the pace of the conversation and learning during participation and overcome the forming, storming, norming and performing stages of a team as it grows it knowledge and experience.

My early attempts were confined to incorporating accelerated solutioning processes into spaces like meeting and work rooms. Several approaches were contemplated at that time and the more concrete ones are presented below:

• Hardwiring – This is the kind of wiring found in the iStudio of the Ministry of Education, where the innovation process described by John Kao was hardwired into the space. Here, the designer believes that breakthroughs could happen when participants experience total immersion in and strict in adhering to the prescribed process and hardwiring the process into the space guarantees such results. His process could be found scripted onto the walls and the fixtures are built and acquired to allow the participants to follow the given script.

• Soft Wiring – This is the type of wiring that was adapted by the Ministry of Defence for its innovation rooms. The layout and fixtures are designed and acquired to create an environment that is suitable for a finite array of processes. We were able to accommodate a range of layouts within these definitions:

• Very Soft Wiring – where the layout of the room could be copied from some where without the need to understand the influences and nuances of the process and environment on the team's performance.
• Semi-Soft Wiring – where the layout of the room is configured around a generic team work methodology and could be used for a finite array of processes. Here the influences and nuances of the process and environment on the team's performance are broadly accounted for during design.
• Softwiring – where the layout of the room is laid out around a particular category of team processes and could only be applied for a particular category of team work. Thus, if the room is fitted for prototyping, it could support all kinds of prototyping activities and nothing else. Here, the influences and environmental impact on team's performance are narrowly considered.

• Flexible Wiring. This kind of wiring combines the benefits of both hardwiring and softwiring but uses different technologies to overcome the challenges experienced when switching between these two kinds of wiring. Technologies are used to make the switch seamless. Taking this a step further, flexibility wiring includes the ability to strip down a team process into specific components and to have these combined and recombined with other strip down components of other team-based processes to form new processes. Thus, the idea of creating self-contain modules from pieces taken from different team work methodologies and supporting their execution within the space is the main thrust in its design.

I have left the public service in February of 2007 and is unable to follow-up and learn more about the outcomes of these experimentation with spaces. However, I have heard of initial successes during the early day of their implementation.

This article was 1st written on 17 April 2009.
Copyright 2009. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.