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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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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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