Corporate Unnatural Selection

Natural selection is a phenomena seen in nature where animals or plants with non-ideal genetics are selected out of an environment.  I live in the northeast and orange trees might do well here during the summer months here but once our 5 months of frozen overcast hits, the orange tree dies. Apple trees on the other hand are far tougher and manage to thrive and live on to reproduce.  Hence oranges are grown in FL and apples in NY, this is an example of natural selection.

 

A free market also has a natural selection mechanism. Entrepreneurs who work hard, network well, lead well and serve the market tend to beat those who do not. Good behavior is typically rewarded by the market, identity is ignored, hard work and not pedigree is favored over laziness.  Pedigree and elitism is ignored.

 

Unhealthy work cultures I think can begin to set up unnatural selection, it’s why good old boys clubs only allowed their buddies to be promoted and ignored other competent options. In certain organizations there exists layers and cultures where another set of rules are in force. It’s like when people developed a certain breeds of dogs that never would survive in the wild, dogs like our Maltese mix would not develop on its own. Our dog was bred for cuteness and for not shedding fur, he was not bred for staying alive in the wild (free market), not for hunting prowess, not for fighting to live in difficult conditions, they were hand selected for cuteness then given a protected status where food and shelter and warmth and affection are handed to them.  The net results is a net financial loss for the owners, energy must be poured into these pampered pups over their lifetime, my dog would not last much more than 24 hours on their own in the wild.

maltese wolf

Even small predators could take out our dog which was unnaturally selected.  The wolf on the other hand is an apex predator, it needs no help from humans.  It thrives on its own, strengthened by natural selection.

 

I have seen toxic organizations that specifically select its members based on identity, based on certain university attendance, based on gender, based on political beliefs. Hard work, diligence and market service was not as important as certain characteristics that leadership deemed important, finances aside, ideology dominated.

 

I have seen competent team members passed up for promotion based on nothing more than lack of a degree. I’ve seen incompetent employees promoted to leadership because they are able to pass litmus test’s that have little to do with performance or service to the market of the business.

 

Unnatural selection occurs in unhealthy organizations, its one reason why so many entrepreneurs can’t wait to leave certain burecratic corporations, it’s why bureaucracies thrive, it is one reason that companies plateau in their financial growth.

 

Sometimes when certain employees are selected in or out of an organization its like the leader has created a culture where an orange tree can survive in a NY climate.  Sure you can make it work if you go to the expense but it takes a great deal of energy to keep the tree alive in the winter.  The net energy is negative, loss of money, poor performance.  The savvy leaders know how to navigate the needs of being fair and diverse and the financial needs of a company.  A smart leader doesn’t allow the internal forces that would insist on unnatural selection dominate a culture because they know if that toxicity is allowed the flourish the company itself is at risk long term.

 

we should avoid going over board with unnatural selection we should accept that there is a level of ruthlessness in certain markets and not pretend that identity politics fits well into a free market.

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Innovation Teams – Categorized by Behavior

I like to categorize teams based on predominant behavior rather than function in order to highlight helpful or unhelpful behaviors for an organization. Below are three common types of R&D/ Innovation teams.

  1. The Siloed Team

  2. The Collaborative Team

  3. The Managed Team

The siloed team has strong technical contributors, they are very skilled technically, they are actively inventing and learning.  The siloed team tends to be competitive internally, the technical contributors hold back their insights and are reluctant to share what they know and what they plan.  This is both a strength and weakness, a strength because it often increases the quality of the science done by the team,  yet it is a weakness for the company because internal collaboration would significantly speed up time to market.

The behaviors of most in the siloed team is a product of both team members disposition and management’s promotion criteria.  The siloed team tends to have learning curves that move with the ability of the individual contributors. Managers often later compile learnings (learnings that are shared up) and then make business decisions. 

The collaborative team is characterized by team members who do not mind sharing what they are learning and sharing credit for team progress.  The behavior of the collaborative team is mostly result of the team members level of maturity and the ability of the managers who oversee it. The collaborative team learns the fastest for the company and ‘get to the point’ of new innovations as fast as possible.

The managed team is the third type of team. The managed team works well with their leadership and enjoys communicating up.  The meanaged team is open to sharing credit and the individuals on the team do not mind making their manager successful. A weakness of this team may be that those who are very strong technically may dislike this type of team and avoid it also corporate bureaucracies can sometimes thrive.

The goal of any science and engineering innovation team is to learn quickly and ‘get to the point’ to where new innovations thrive for the company or university and get there as fast as possible.  The collaborative team typically gets there the fastest. The siloed team can repeatedly learn the same things over again because they don’t take the time to learn from one another competing for that next promotion or award.

The biggest harm created by the siloed team is time wasted, time to market is the key to new innovations for a company.  The ability of an R&D organization to get from siloed to collaborative will have a large impact on how successful the company or university department will be over time, some may never get there and are simply wasting money, they may be the most intellectually talent people around but they are still wasting money.

Do you have tips for making a team less siloed?

I have decided to ignore all comments on this blog due to excessive amounts of spam so please tweet comments to @Colliers2 or email me directly at colliersengineering@gmail.com,

Adam Collier

Announcement – Podcast Coming Soon!!!

I fell in love with podcasting this past January 2013 I listen to business and other podcasts daily and decided I simply must create a podcast.

If you are unfamiliar with podcasting, a podcast is basically an audio blog another way to explain it is radio on demand, you can listen to podcasts over an internet site or through a smart phone.

Podcastlogo

iTunes has the largest and best selection of podcasts. To start listening to podcasts simply downloand the ‘Podcast’ or ‘Stitcher’ ap on your iPhone to begin listening about your favorite topic. If you have an Android try the Podkicker app or the iPP Podcast Player.  There are a huge and growing number of podcasts out there so check out your favorite topic.  Podcasts are great to listen to while driving, exercising, mowing, etc, just pop in some ear buds and push play, it is great.

I have decided to start a podcast about the niche topic; organizational health for innovation organizations.  I plan to primarily discuss organizational health for R&D organization, including ways to accelerate product development through effective innovation, how get more engagement and participation from science motivated employees, the type of culture to create and encourage for your innovation teams, and much more.

This is primarily a business podcast for the high-tech sector but we may also discuss other organizational health topics including leadership, good science vs. bad science, family health, church health,  ‘culture’ and team mindset.

I am passionate about this topic and feel there is a lack of audio content about this topic, I have more than 17 years of experience in the high-tech R&D sector and I am eager to start talking about this topic.

The podcast episodes will reside on this website and I expect they will become the primary purpose of this site.

I hope to have the first few episodes produced and published before the end of summer 2013.

Please stay tuned, and if you haven’t yet please load the appropriate podcast app to your smart phone today, you wont regret it.

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