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Nothing Will Be Impossible

They to , , let us and them .” And they for , and they 2 for . , let us for ourselves a , and a whose 3will reach into , and let us for ourselves 4a , we 5will be abroad the of the e.” The L came to the and the the of had .  The LORD , , they are , and they have d7the . And is what they to , and they to will be e for them. – Genesis 11

 

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In this story the Lord intentionally separated this large, united group of men from one another, his reasoning seems to be that they were united in making a name for themselves and he observed and stated the fact that “nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them”.   God did not want this to be, he wanted to limit them, as they were a people estranged and hostile to God.
Now imagine mankind united with God, in submission and in step with His purpose? What could be possible, what change could be brought about on earth?
I dare say with certainty that we’ve not seen this yet widespread, there may have been pockets here and there around the world but by and large we’ve not seen large numbers of men and woman who remain united to one another and who also are working to fulfill God’s purpose on earth.
God’s purpose on earth hasn’t change since the beginning. God created this universe for a reason, he created the earth and mankind for a specific purpose, and there is no reason to believe that this eternal purpose has changed.
Scattered throughout scripture we see references to God’s intent and activities before he created the earth. They are sporadic and seem to be mostly written by the apostles Paul and John.  Ephesians 1-3 is a great place to see some of these references.   From these and other scriptures some scholars conclude that God’s purpose for creating is essentially because he wanted to expand the love and the mutual love and fellowship that existed between God the father, the son and the spirit.
 
In timeless eternity God essentially decided to expand the love and fellowship of God into the earth, similarly we see a pattern throughout scripture, throughout the old and new testaments, God wants a house and a family to fill himself into on earth.
When mankind  is in step with God in fulfilling his ageless purpose, united and connected with his plan, surely nothing in line with God’s purpose will be impossible for us.  Now that is something to live for, not our will, not for our great name, but for his.
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Smart Enough

I want to share a interesting idea in this blog post about technology R&D organizations, private, public and Universities included.

 

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The majority of organizations do not need more intelligent employees. The truth is most organizations who hire engineers and scientists are smart enough already.

 

The idea that in order to build the best R&D organization we need to always hire the Stanford scientists, the Harvard MBA’s and the MIT engineers is incomplete.  Sometimes these high-caliber candidates can actually be a detriment to an organization.

 

There is something that trumps intelligence and training when trying to build a high-caliber R&D organization.  That something is team health.  A healthy team of average intelligence professional will beat a toxic team of Ivy league academics trying to produce within a toxic culture over time. I’ll take a team of state school engineers led well in a manner conducive to organizational health over a team of Nobel Prize winning physicists any day. That is if creating a productive and profitable company or University is the goal.

 

To be clear I am not saying that we should avoid recruiting Ivy league talent I am saying that there is something more important to do first.  R&D leaders often think they simply must hire the smartest and then take for granted the importance of building a healthy culture. A healthy culture enables the full utilization of the intelligence of both the Ivy league talent and everyone else.

 

Healthy beats smart every day of the week.  When unhealthy teams attempt to work they waste energy with internal politics and competitiveness.

 

I have watched some of the brightest and most talented scientists incapable of planning an experiment because of silly office politics that they were incapable of navigating.  They just were not trained in leadership, they were not trained in engaging in healthy conflict. The scientific skills and intelligence of that scientist were sitting idle because of the culture that they were not able to navigate properly.

 

Time spent investing in team culture, in understanding the nature of team dynamics. In identifying toxic leaders vs. healthy leaders provides more value than dues just hiring Harvard MBA’s and assuming they will outperform.

 

There exists a plateau above which it becomes difficult to move employee productivity beyond.  Beyond this plateau the per employee productivity can actually decrease creating a loss.

 

Cultures that encourage politicking, that have little to no vision and reward toxic leadership waste time and money.

 

In an unhealthy culture leaders often conclude that they need to hire another smart person if I want to increase productivity.  What the leader fails to see is that adding more smart people to a toxic culture is like adding wet wood to a furnace.  A lot of that new wood’s energy is consumed in boiling off the “water” that has saturated the culture.

 

The net effect of adding that wood to the furnace could actually be negative depending on how that new employee reacts to the corporate toxicity.  Do they react poorly, do they contribute to drama, do they shrink back in disgust? Are they the self-congratulatory academic type who have not had to do much else than impress a professor?  Of course every person is different and reacts differently to culture, but hiring great talent without preparing the way for them with a healthy culture is risky.

 

Invest in your team culture, create a culture of clear vision and with clear communication of that vision.  Manage well the behavioral values of your teams not only the written corporate “HR speak” values.

 

Work on culture first then Ivy league hiring second and build a creative, innovative, new technology pumping organization that the next generation can count on for technological advances.

 

How do you manage your team culture?

 

Announcement: Please stay tuned I am in training around forming knowledge-based products to help people tap into their personal creativity and help organizations become more healthy.  You haven’t heard from me in a while because I am aligning my podcast and blog content around this plan. 

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Time to Prune Your Technology Pipeline

 Prune March 2014

I have about a dozen apple trees in my back yard; I transplanted them a few years ago from a local apple orchardist who needed to get rid of them to make room for a different breed.  They were last pruned 3 years ago.  Last summer we harvested about one bushel from these trees.  The summer before that I think there was one edible apple harvested.   I have taken a pruning course and have studied apple tree pruning for some time now.   This weekend I had my loppers and my new pruning knowledge, it is the right time of year so I decided it was time to prune.  While I was pruning these trees I thought of several principles to growing productive apple trees that could be applied to my career in R&D.  Pruning apple trees is about energy management, the goal is to produce the maximum number of large healthy apples. 

 

An apple tree if ignored will produce a very large number of small unhealthy apples and it will be continuously harassed by pests.

 

There are at least six principles to maximize apple tree productivity; a professional likely knows several more but these are the ones that come to my mind.

  1. Protect the tree from parasites. Vines from other bushes, bugs, voles, rabbits and deer all want to eat bark, buds, leaves and apples from the apple tree; this year-round pressure can destroy a trees fruit quality and overall productivity.  It can even kill a tree itself, fencing, chemicals, trunk guards and wood chips are common tools to protect trees from these pests.
  2. Cut branches away that are growing vertical.  The reason for this is to maximize the light down in the lower part of the tree and to not allow shading of the lower leaves and fruit.
  3. Cut the branches that grow back toward the trunk of the tree, this also is a light management technique to keep light and airflow down through the entire tree.
  4. Cut away branches that produce leaves and apples too much for the size of the tree, apple trees will produce more sticks and more apples than the size of the tree can support. If you have ever noticed an un-pruned apple tree you will know what I mean.  The ignored tree will produce many small, unhealthy and unripe apples.
  5. Cut away dead wood, dead wood takes up space in a tree and can block sunlight.
  6. Thin the new apples, this means cut away apples which are too many, this is done when the apples are about the size of a dime, usually early summer, at this point you can see how many apples a tree is trying to produce.  If there are too many apples it is wise to cut away apples if they are growing more than one every six inches.  This is difficult to do for the novice pruner; hundreds and possibly even thousands of small apples sometimes need to be cut away.  After thinning, the surviving apples will grow larger because the energy flow from the tree is divided into less apples making each apple larger and more healthy.  Think of it this way, at harvest time, would you rather have 200 high-quality large ripe apples with great sugar content or 1,000 small, un-ripened apples that contain less sugar and taste somewhat bitter?  Quality is better than quantity for most people. 

These fruit tree principles can be applied to our innovation divisions and companies; there are times when leaders need to prune their portfolio.

 

There can be ‘parasites’ that want to drain teams of energy, employees who sap morale, sap the joy and excitement of creating, of innovating and of inventing new products.  The leader who is mindful of the productivity and the long-term fruitfulness of the team, will have the courage to set some boundaries to protect morale.  Some people are negative dream killers, they have given up on a lot in life and they spread that defeat and depression around, leaders should protect culture from these people because they hinder productivity.

Sometimes projects grow and expand in ways that hinder energy from getting into the ‘core’ of the company.  We should remember to take time for culture, take time to renew energy, the culture and morale of a R&D or innovation team is more important than the number of projects it works on.    When we take the time to focus on culture, on leadership unity and on clarity of vision we lead our company well.  The benefit of this is that we can produce higher quality innovation projects.  Excessive busyness can be like apple limbs growing vertically or back toward the trunk, they hinder the healthy culture that refreshes the energy of the company (sunlight into the base of the tree).  Trim away busy projects that perpetually consume employee time; set aside times of team building, time for employee training and personal development.  If projects demand employees at every waking hour for an extended period with no return on investment, ‘prune’ them out of your team.

Let’s face it, some of us produce a large quantity of lower quality fruit. Entrepreneurs call this the “bright shiny object syndrome”.  We get excited about opportunities or projects and don’t follow them through to completion.  I have a hard time with this personally; even now there are at least two major unfinished projects on my hard drive that need completion.  I now try to make it a rule to end one project, or bring it to completion, before starting a new one.  It is better to produce one completed project per month or per year then it is to produce five half-baked projects.  Similarly, leaders need to trim away the half-baked innovation pet-projects so that fewer projects can get more employee energy. It is not easy to decide when to cut your losses and quit certain projects for the sake of other things.  Is there another project that may be less exciting but would be a better use of employee time and company capital? You want to divide up your limited energy supply among fewer projects and increase the quality at the expense of quantity as is done in early summer when I thin hundreds of small apples.

 

Like the apple tree, R&D and innovation teams exist to bear fruit and to create great things for society.

Does your company or R&D portfolio need pruning?

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