The Lagging Learning Curves

 

It takes time to teach people, it takes time for knowledge to spread around a culture. Knowledge sometimes can not penetrate business cultures readily. Some people learn slower than do others, decision makers are not as brilliant as all team members in every area of life.

Working in R&D I am constantly reminded and focused on learning curves; my own learning curve on a variety of subjects, my team’s learning curve covering our projects, my department’s learning curve on the technology that we are developing and finally the entire corporation’s learning curve on a wide variety of technologies and markets.

We are constantly learning, and learning progresses as a rapid and as a gradual process.

Corporate learning curves are the learning curves that a team or corporation undergoes in order to execute in a market.  The corporate learning curve is not the sum of the knowledge in each team member’s mind.  Rather the corporate learning curve is the body of knowledge and wisdom about a technology that leaders use to make business decisions. The knowledge may include fundamental scientific understanding, it may include understanding about processes to competitively manufacture, it may include supply-chain connections and it may include insight into future market demand. Anything that the team uses to make business decisions is a part of the corporate learning curve.

The corporate learning curve almost always lags behind (in time) the sum of individual contributor’s learning curve on any topic unless the company is very small or if it communicates very often and very effectively.

There may be 10 scientists on a team who have an understanding of the mechanism and process in order to build the next great cell phone technology however if the management in that team or company do not have a grasp of the technology, or have knowledge of what the technology can and cannot do proper business decisions can not be made.  If the commercial team does not understand and cannot market the technology then the team overall has not advanced up the corporate learning curve and therefore cannot monetize their knowledge.

There can be a gap between what the scientists, engineers and middle management knows and what the organization can execute on in the marketplace.  Because of this, the importance of teaching cannot be over emphasized; if the informed team members cannot (or will not) communicate well to the business leaders then the company will not be able to capitalize on the knowledge.

In fact individuals in any part of the organization may be further up the curve but, if they do not have the ability or authority to lead the technical teams who will to execute and create the divisions and products then the knowledge is of no value to the company.   Claiming technical success and promising a product prematurely is a function of poor teaching and poor communication, knowledge is not enough to create revenue.

Sometimes it is important for ambitious leaders who feel very confident in the team’s abilities themselves and feel far along the learning curve to recognize that what really matters is the corporate learning curve. If they do not have the political clout to educate and persuade, if they do not have the willingness and the ability to teach the organization it does not matter what they know. The only thing that matters is what the organization “knows and will accept” as a whole and can prove in that company’s labs or manufacturing processes.

What is even more remarkable is how much organizational culture can further slow down the corporate learning curve. It is not necessarily a delay due to inability to understand or is it stubbornness in management, sometimes complex office politics further slows down learning curves.  I have seen refusal to learn by senior members of teams from junior members simply because of lack of relationship or competitive resistance.  The organization is accustomed to learning in a certain way and sometimes deviations from that way are rejected.

To read more on this topic click here for part 2 of this post.

 

What is the best way to keep an organization together in learning?

Why a simple thing like optimism may be the key to breakthrough!

School is out and summer free-time has begun, we have 5 kids under 11 years of age. I came home from work the other night and my kids were almost all angry, they were arguing about petty things and were visibly frustrated. My wife was making dinner and seemed unhappy and distant. I walked up to her and asked her what’s wrong, she then told me about the older kids arguing over the amazon kindle and the younger kids over some toys most of the afternoon. They all had a gripe about one of their siblings. I tried to talk things through with them but all I got was anger and a large dose of pessimism about their siblings.

I sat quiet and just listened as each one listed out their gripes against the other, there was a lot of “she always…”, “he never…” . At the dinner table I asked what everyone wanted to do after dinner. Only one kid said quietly “I don’t know”. There was depression and pessimism after this day of fighting and boredom. I felt it start to come on me but then stopped myself, I can change this.

I reminded them about forgiveness and how its time to forgive one another for the day’s fights. I told them everything is going to be ok. I then told them tonight we are going on a hike in the woods, we are then having a movie night and ice cream. Once that sunk in every one of their demeanor’s began to change. The two youngest changed the moment I spoke with a loud “yay!” The oldest three gradually began to cheer up and talk to one another as optimism about the evening set in, they also started sharing the dreams and hopes that they had for the summer. I stimulated optimism by changing their focus. They began to focus on the fact that they could end these feelings of anger against their siblings. They changed their focus to the fact that we could have a really great evening together.

Optimism is a powerful force on the human mind. Some people are naturally more optimistic than others. Pessimism and optimism can be a mood or can be an long-term intentional mindset. I have noticed repeatedly through the years that optimistic innovators enjoy more long-term career success than do pessimistic ones. I’ve noticed in my own career that pessimism hinders me as I try to be creative and build relationships.

Some Science of Optimism:

Charles Carver and Michael Scheier coined the term ‘dispositional optimism’ to describe their approach – the global expectation that good things will be plentiful in the future and bad things scarce.  They argued that optimism is associated with, and leads to, securing positive outcomes whereas pessimism is associated with greater negative outcomes (Scheier and Carver 1992, Scheier, Carver and Bridges 2001). 

Optimism works with intelligence to super-charge creativity and ingenuity.

Pessimistic leaders of innovation kill creative and innovative teams faster than almost anything I’ve seen. Not only do they send a message of mistrust but they also discourage team members from the hope of being successful in the future. Optimism keeps the creative juices flowing and is often the key to our breakthrough because of how it impacts our long-term performance and outlook.

Every creative or innovative person can cultivate a mindset of optimism by adjusting their focus to the following five truths:

  1. The human mind is the most creative force on the world and we who have a functioning mind have almost unlimited ability, so we have reason to be optimistic.
  2. Past successes give reason to believe success in the future is likely.
  3. Optimism or pessimism are just ways of thinking, very emotional yet they influence the outcome of our daily work.
  4. The power of optimism can be intentionally applied toward certain short-term efforts or projects.
  5. Optimism can not be faked but it can be carefully cultivated.

What are some other ways of becoming more optimistic?

I am excited to announce that I am writing an e-book on the topic of optimism and creativity.

Join my mailing list today to get early bird access to this e-book when it comes out and

if you join now and we will send you our optimism tool-kit pdf for FREE!

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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.

 

Nobel1

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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