Dan Erwin

Six Resources for Creativity

Innovation and creativity, everyone says, is key to our nation’s success in the marketplace. While working through some new stuff on creativity and innovation, I stumbled, once more, across Robert Sternberg and Todd Lubart’s analysis of the resources for creativity. It has the intriguing title, Buy Low and Sell High: An Investment Approach to Creativity.

The resources are a reminder of what it takes to get a leg up on creativity. More significantly and perhaps more useful, the resources are especially programmed for succeeding as a worker in today’s business world.

1.    Intelligence. This is not a reference to your IQ, but your processes for planning, monitoring and evaluating your thinking. As Jonah Lehrer writes in a superb blog, it’s more than a matter of gut feel, it’s reflecting on your decision process itself.

2.    Knowledge. Almost tongue-in-cheek, the writers say that “advancing knowledge beyond where it is requires knowing where it is.” I suspect that the biggest, hugest, most terrible weakness of Googling for information is that you don’t go through the painful work of digging it out by yourself in books, articles, conversations and reflection. Just the process of digging out knowledge makes it possible to find out where the knowledge is, something that Googling can never replace.

3.    Thinking styles. Styles are proclivities or tendencies in the way we think. Not abilities. Creative folk not only just plain like novelty, but they also like to see problems in new ways, undertake new challenges and just plain put together things in their own ways. As Carol Dweck would say, they take an incremental view of life and intelligence. They’re fluid and changeable and get satisfaction from learning, and seeing opportunities to get better.

4.    Personality. There are a huge number of studies about the personality attributes of creative folk. The attributes overlap, and the include a tolerance of ambiguity, willingness to overcome obstacles, willingness to grow, the willingness to take sensible (interesting adjective) risks, and belief in one’s ability to correct mistakes.

5.    Motivation. Again and again, researchers have found that people do their most creative work when their motivation is task-focused rather than goal-focused, and internally driven rather than externally driven.

6.    Environment. Without a supportive organizational environment, all these resources are liable to come to nothing. It's important to note that the organization can support creativity by helping spark creative ideas, by supporting these ideas, and by serving as a basis for assessing and correcting these ideas as they are developed.

You’ll notice that these resources overlap. And because there are so many resources, creativity is not as common as we would like. Still, when people in business recognize that creativity is revealed just as much in new business processes as in new products (think iPad), there’s a lot of creativity going on out there, and a lot more space for creators.

IBM's Unique, Highly Successful "Ground Rules"

A textbook case in how to drive change, IBM has been so consistently successful that it is almost boring. Even more surprising is the size of its workforce in contrast to other tech firms: IBM has more employees than Microsoft, Intel, Dell, Cisco, Apple, Amazon and Google all put together. Furthermore, only HP pulls in more revenue than IBM.

What’s the secret to IBM’s success?

In an interview with Steve Lohr, Sam Palmisano, the retiring CEO, says that the firm’s pursuit of excellence around four dimensions—ground rules—shaped the strategy and focus over the past ten years. Palmisano boils his ground rules down to four questions:

• Why would someone spend their money with you—so what is unique about you?
• Why would somebody work for you?
• Why would society allow you to operate in their defined geography—their country?
• Why would somebody invest their money with you?

These questions cut new territory in the business world in a number of differing ways, providing especially relevant insight into the 21^st century orientation to talent management, careers, and socially responsible businesses. The third, why society allows you to operate in their geography, was rarely considered in the past. Today, although many ignore the question and social responsibility, more are beginning to take notice and get involved. Indeed, Rosabeth Kanter points out six strategic reasons for serving, a highly relevant necessity in today’s world. Palmisano not only read speeches and memos from the founder, Thomas Watson, but he had lunch regularly with Watson Jr., once a month. The Watsons, he says, always defined I.B.M. as a company that did more than sell computers; they believed that it had an important role to play in solving societal challenges. It’s old-fashioned, but it’s motivational, he says.

The second, “why would someone work for you,” has become a significant matter in the battle for brainpower in a day in which the so-called talent war has gone global, along with talent shortages. It’s a reminder that although all kinds of employees are out of work, more and more businesses are having a difficult time accessing needed talent, even in states like Michigan. Skills shortages are widespread. Dan Pink’s comment back in 2001 is even more relevant today: “Talented people need organizations less than organizations need talented people.” Palmisano found that social responsibility resonated with the young people IBM is recruiting.

A couple of times a year, Mr. Palmisano speaks to groups of elite students whom I.B.M. is trying to woo to its research labs. The pitch, he says, is that I.B.M. is a place where you can make a difference and do deep science.

“You can change the world, and you can compete for a Nobel prize,” he says, referring to I.B.M.’s five Nobel winners.

(Eighty-seven percent of the candidates who were offered jobs by I.B.M. Research this year joined the company.)

Mr. Palmisano’s appeal to young technologists is just one example of an answer to one of his four questions.

The first question, why someone would spend their money with you, goes straight to the heart of business strategy. This is an issue that has gotten much attention since Drucker, and continues to be the beneficiary of much thinking, refining and focusing.

Viewed individually, these questions are not especially unique, excepting the talent focus, but together they are a phenomenal set of ground rules. My response when I first read the ground rules was, “my god, this guy is really a thinker, a great thinker. Not just the typical business yeoman who performs in workmanlike fashion to achieve the company’s objectives.” Taken together, his ideas are client focused, but at the same time, they force a scintillating inward focus upon the operations of the firm. They impact the culture, the strategy, the workforce morale, the commitments of its employees, finances and the clients’ expectations. It’s no wonder that Warren Buffett, who normally shuns technology, to accumulate $10 billion of shares, amounting to a stake of 5%.

"The hardest thing is answering those four questions,” Mr. Palmisano says. “You’ve got to answer all four and work at answering all four to really execute with excellence.”

Finally, it should be noted that Mr Palmisano was not bred a techie, but came up through the ranks of IBM sales with a Johns Hopkins history major. His thinking is highly indicative of the strengths of that liberal arts background. History people are weaned on the big picture, and thrive on the intellectual ideas that initiate and maintain change in a sea of competing ideologies. This critical tool is especially useful for analyzing the sequence of events leading up to massive changes and reformations, and adept at forecasting the consequences of ideas for good or ill. History is one of two or three fundamental critical tools of global human thinking and analysis, and Palmisano’s thinking reflects that background. It’s paid off superbly for the firm over his CEO tenure.

The Next Frontier for Innovation, Competition and Productivity

A special report from the McKinsey Global Institute focuses on the next business frontier in two words: big data. McKinsey defines “big data” as “datasets whose size is beyond the ability of typical database software tools to capture, store, manage, and analyze.”

One thing for certain, the “frontier” will be impacting careers, recruiters and human resource departments profoundly.

To frame the big data problem--and the opportunity--McKinsey summarizes the data torrent in eye-catching statistics.

Here are some of the big data details from their report:

$600 to buy a disk drive that can store all of the world’s music

5 billion mobile phones in use in 2010

30 billion pieces of content shared on Facebook every month

40% projected growth in global data generated per year vs. 5% growth in global IT spending

235 terabytes data collected by the US Library of Congress in April 2011

15 out of 17 sectors in the US have more data stored per company than the US Library of Congress

Figuring out what all the sheer volume of data means and capturing the value of big data (McKinsey’s business) is even more striking in its potential for development in all the sectors and geographies. Here are the McKinsey estimates: 

$300 billion: potential annual value to US health care—more than double the total annual health care spending in Spain

€250 billion: potential annual value to Europe’s public sector administration—more than GDP of Greece

$600 billion: potential annual consumer surplus from using personal location data globally

140,000 – 190,000 more deep analytical talent positions, and. . . .

1.5 million more data-savvy managers needed to take full advantage of big data in the US

The opportunities for careers, recruiters and human resource people lie in the talent needed. What’s obvious is that our secondary and post-secondary schools have a lot of educating in math and statistics to be able to successfully take advantage of these opportunities. What many fail to recognize is that deep analytics typically require post-graduate university exposure, a costly, though equally profitable opportunity.

Are our schools ready for the implications of Big Data?

The New Career Paradigm: Matt Damon vs. Johnny Depp and Steve Jobs

Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne is the classic reflection of the American career--linear and mechanistic. Bourne, like many business professionals, focuses on the choices and the actions available to achieve his objective. Driven by incentives and desires, he focuses on a single objective and takes the necessary actions to achieve that objective. Ten minutes into the movie you’ve got a pretty clear lay of the land and where it’s liable to be going. Laying out the sequences of the movie on a storyboard would be simple. It is a very traditional, linear plot.

In stark contrast, last week I went to see Johnny Depp in The Rum Diary. Both my movie storyboards and career models got waylaid. Badly.

The movie, a semi-autobiographical depiction of the early years of the life of Hunter Thompson—the famous journalist and novelist—got underway with Thompson’s alter ego Paul Kemp (played by Johnny Depp), coming to consciousness, having ravaged the minibar in a dark, trashy Puerto Rican hotel room, overlooking a glorious beach. It’s the 1950s, and his bleary disorientation is accentuated by the small plane that flies by with the banner, “Puerto Rico Welcomes Union Carbide.” Yep. Pave paradise with parking lots! Ugly Americans infest the bowling alley. Right wing capitalists plan vulgar resorts on the unspoiled army testing range at Vieques.

Aside from the enjoyable script, filled with absolutely hilarious, cynical, insolent patter, after the first twenty minutes, I was stymied. Where the hell is this going? The only objective in sight was that the young Kemp (Depp), newly arrived from New York, got a job at the San Juan Star, a newspaper edited by a lunatic. The movie quickly introduced a garrulous, frustrated news photographer and a brain-damaged crime writer that initiated him into a round of barhopping, alcohol-soused benders, and cockfighting that result in a trip to the slammer. At the end of the first thirty minutes, two things were obvious: I couldn’t storyboard the plot like a Bourne movie if I tried, and I was the only person laughing in an audience of about 50 people. But just one thing was clear about the plot: it was jumbled and chaotic, not linear.

Even the ending failed to tie the threads together. The newspaper collapsed, and Kemp (Depp) got out with his life still intact, though flawed and, I assume, made even more cynical by his experiences.

Initially, I thought, rather superficially, that it was a crappy way to begin a career. Still, the movie wouldn’t let go of me. The audience didn’t give evidence of liking it--but I couldn’t let go of it.

Indeed, the more I thought about it, the more I decided that rather than a crappy way to begin a career, it was a highly auspicious beginning for a brilliant career. The Rum Diary, in contrast to the Bourne trilogy, depicts human experience in all its warts: chaotic, fragmentary, deviating from cherished values and given to imponderable ambiguity. Thompson was a successful writer, at the least, because of his rich exposure to a variety of encounters and involvement with the discomforting unfamiliar.

Johnny Depp’s Rum Diary was a classic break with the past. In profound contrast to the calculated, linear life of choice, the sense of Rum Diary is its focus upon the vagaries of human experience. Like real human experience, the Diary is messy and filled with misadventures.

The 21^st century is going to require competencies that are not easily derived from our incrementalist business schools and linear developed careers. Think about it. The key expertise for success in a globally volatile marketplace includes adaptability, exploration and entrepreneurialism.

Take adaptability as an example. Adaptation comes out of encounters with novelty that may seem chaotic. In trying to adapt, we often have to deviate from cherished values, behave in ways that we’ve barely glimpsed and seize on clues that are merely fragmentary. What better teacher than novel experiences?

It’s obvious today, that careers and work are experiencing a break with the past as significant as that in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries when parts of the world began the long process of industrialization. The twentieth century mindset ruled our careers. It was, as the Bourne movies revealed, a highly calculating, narrow, specialist’s view of career. And though I’d be the last person to reject that career model, I’m also very certain that, of itself, it’s inadequate for the demands of the 21^st century.

It was Steve Jobs, of all people, that brilliant, painfully difficult and dysfunctional executive, who pointed to the same problem when discussing professionals in the technology industry.

A lot of people in our industry haven't had very diverse experiences. So they don't have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one's understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.

It’s this journey of experience that The Rum Dairy so eloquently points to. And it’s this very important career shift that businesspeople, desirous of a career future, had best pay attention to. When someone can’t adapt to changes, lacks creative insight, has difficulty resolving complex problems or making decisions, one important conclusion becomes obvious: he (or she) doesn’t have enough dots to connect.

Picture: Flickr..Celine Q.

Big Is Beautiful, Especially R & D

Although a lot of people have read my blog, Big is Beautiful, I've been surprised at the total lack of rejection. Now comes still more input about big corporations and their research and development, supporting my suspicions and ideas.

It's true that Steve Jobs built the first Apple computer in his garage. And also true that Mark Zuckerberg typed the original lines of code for Facebook in his dorm room. But their real genius was not the invention by itself. It was translation. 

When we talk creativity and innovation, we seem to omit the differentiating issue: translation. The ability to translate theory into practice. Robert Sternberg, the cognitive scientist, talks about creativity and innovation in three stages. First is that of creative intelligence, the ability to go beyond the given and create novel and interesting ideas. These are typically people who see connnections that other people don't see. Gates saw his basic software as connecting to IBM and Apple's computers, with the potential for making them free-standing.

Analytical intelligence, that ability to evaluate ideas, solve problems and make decisions is extremely important for creatives to analyze their own ideas and evaluate their merit. I worked for a number of years with a partner who could toss about more ideas than I could digest. But he seemed to lack the ability to evaluate the usefulness of those ideas and put them to work.

The third aspect of creativity, practical intelligence, is all about translation. It's the ability to "translate" theory into practice and abstract ideas into practical accomplishments. Translation, ultimately, is about selling. Indeed, the ability to sell your creative ideas determines whether it ends up on the scrap heap or becomes a product or service. 

3M is famous the world over for its R & D. Having consulted there for years, I've learned that the best ideas can easily go into the circular file. Thus, inventors spend a lot of time with colleagues figuring out how to use the idea and how to sell it to the leaders of the company. And if the senior execs don't buy that idea, it goes nowhere.

The Foreign Affairs writers had this to say about big companies and their contributions to research and development: 

Today, we celebrate small places with big ideas. It is true that Steve Jobs built the first Apple computer in his garage and that Mark Zuckerberg typed the original lines of code for Facebook in his dorm room. But the genius of Jobs, Zuckerberg, and many others was in turning their ideas into highly competitive global enterprises. Apple now employs 46,000 full-time employees -- and it is the combined energy of those employees that delivered the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad.

At the turn of the twenty-first century, the National Academy of Engineers ranked the greatest achievements of the previous century based on how each innovation improved people's quality of life. Major U.S. corporations -- the Edison companies, General Electric, AT&T, and General Motors -- played significant roles in the development, production, and distribution of the majority of these achievements.

It is safe to say that without its major corporations the U.S. economy would not be, and would not remain, the largest and richest in the world. Big businesses invest significantly more in research and development than smaller firms. And they are far better placed to capture economies of scale and scope, which is crucial to making U.S. goods and services competitive abroad. Large companies account for more than 70 percent of U.S. exports. The same economies benefit U.S. consumers, too. Despite the vilification of Walmart, for example, the arrival of a Walmart Supercenter to a neighborhood leads to a 25 percent decrease in the average grocery bill for local residents.

Beyond R&D performance, sales abroad, and bargains, big business offers what the United States needs most: jobs, and many of the best in the country, at that. The largest firms pay about 50 percent more and provide 10 percent more working hours per week than small companies. These firms provide jobs to almost a third of the American work force.

In our glorification of small business, let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater. We really, really need big corporate America. Big really is beautiful.

You cannot possibly realize how deeply writing this goes against my biases and my historical mindset. But reality is reality. And I believe it's important to sing the truth, even when it is very, very difficult. Otherwise, our country will be in a long, very hard slog.

What I Learned About Creative Problem Solving from a High School Sophomore

For the past 12 days, I’ve been at our summer condo by beautiful Gull Lake, near Nisswa, MN. It’s always a learning experience for this granddad. My teachers are my two grandsons and granddaughter. I’ve had a number of lessons this summer, the most important being how to learn creative problem solving from a 15 year-old.

Evan, who merits my blogging a strangely diverse set of topics (lying, civil action, laptops as serialized interruption, American mythology, etc.) detailed with (amusing) frustration his honors class in Algebra II. First, a bit of context: Though an avid reader and superb scholar, my grandson Evan is not a nerd, his parents are not helicopter parents, he has a passel of friends, and he’s nuts about ski-boarding [32 days this past winter], golf, skateboarding, his kid-brother (a real piece of work) and investing.  He attends one of the top prep schools in Massachusetts, a school that emphasizes not only academics, but also leadership and social justice.

The algebra class took up 2/3 of the year.  His teacher like all of his teachers is “awesome.” This teacher made a pot of money on Wall Street and turned to education in his retirement years. (He also advises students on investment strategy. Intriguing . . .) Evan and his classmates took about 10 or 12 tests over the two semesters. The tests were typically 5 or 6 questions, each very complex, demanding and time consuming. The first 5 questions covered material from the class and the 6th was always about material the students had not discussed in class nor covered in the syllabus or book.

Evan tells me that you try to figure it out for yourself, based on prior learning. He assumed that his familiarity with all previous material would make it possible to be figured out. Typically, he said, you look for patterns. The sixth question was “really, really hard.” Over time, they began to think like the teacher, using his mental techniques for solutions. Of course, they put their assumptions and conclusions on paper, getting partial credit for their thinking. But at the end of the semester, no one had gotten more than half of those questions correct.

Evan received his lowest grade in that class, a B+, but since it was honors, the grade was figured in as an A-. Neither he nor his classmates is shy, so on several occasions they went to their teacher and complained of the process and the lack of preparation for that last question on each test.

The message from their teacher was four simple words: “Get used to it.” On several occasions he explained to the students that when he was in college he had to teach himself a lot. And when he went to Wall Street, he also had to teach himself a lot.

More significantly, the teacher said, the world is like that. You won’t always have a teacher around. The problem may be nearly insurmountable. And you’ll have to use every resource imaginable to solve problems. And . . . some problems won’t be solvable.

Evan told me that he strongly disliked the results at the time. But since he’d had a couple months to think about it, he decided that he learned an awful lot. He thought that the lessons were very valuable, but that “he should have gotten a higher grade.” Ha!

We talked over the lessons learned from his experience.

1. Expect that you will inevitably face difficult, even insurmountable problems in life and work.
2. Resolution will require every possible resource from the past, including techniques and thinking that you’ve never used before.
3. Joint problem solving offers keys that are unavailable to the individual. Collaboration is a must for success.
4. Part of your responsibility as an adult is to take on very difficult problems.
5. “Get used to it.” Reality presents us with complex, difficult problems, and may not readily—sometimes never—bend to our desires or hopes.

We now know that the teen-aged brain develops the executive functions between 13 and 18 years of age. As the prefrontal cortex matures, teenagers learn to reason better, develop more control over impulses and make better judgments. Intriguingly, this part of the teenage brain has been dubbed “the area of sober second thought.” It strikes me that Evan’s math teacher was approaching brain growth in brilliant fashion and with exact timing, forcing his students to reason about the difficulties of problem solving and adult reality.  He was also forcing the students to develop neuronic patterns in their gray matter, patterns that would be functional over their lifetime.

The research also shows that adolescence is a supremely important time to learn to deal constructively and innovatively with reality. It leads me to think that a major reason that many have great difficulty with adaptability, innovation and creativity is at least partially because few experienced opportunities like Evan. Just yesterday, a Gen-Y acquaintance called me with a very difficult problem he faced on a small professional board of musical leaders. Although we talked for more than a half-hour, it was rather clear that he had a great deal of difficulty dealing with the realities of the group. He seemed unable to understand a basic fact: The world is not a just place.

Failure to learn about complexity and social and physical reality has two big negative effects. First, it hinders our ability to learn from all situations, including those whom we don’t like or respect. Second, it anesthetizes us to the need to be proactive in building the kind of thinking skills and intelligence network that are of ultimate value.

Do You Have a Magical Network?

Rob Cross often reminds us that it's not what we know, but whom we know.  The fact is that those of us with top-drawer networks are dealing with a lot of magic.  As Cross writes in an HBR Blog, there's a great deal of difference in networks. 

Work since the 1970s shows that people who maintain certain kinds of networks do better: They are promoted more rapidly than their peers, make more money, are more likely to find a job if they lose their own, and are more likely to be considered high performers.

The secret, or the magic of networks has never been about size.  Indeed, building mammoth Rolodexes or Facebook accounts can be harmful to your health and your performance. 

The people who do best tend to have ties with those people who are not connected to each other.  If you've got a network like that, you're more likely to hear about unique ideas--ideas that don't echo around in others' networks.  Those are the ideas that will enable you to piece together really fruitful opportunities.  I detailed this stuff in a blog on social networking back in 2008, but thankfully Rob Cross is pushing the same buttons again.  

In his recent post, Cross and colleagues studied networks and innovation in social media.  Just like face-to-face networking, they found that innovativeness has nothing to do with the number of bookmarks accessed or even the number of people collected from social media.  Instead, the more innovative employees had what Cross labels as bridging ties--ties that connected them to other employees who were themselves not connected.     

So we want to focus our electronic links not on people we have known forever, or on those who are all spending time in the same interactions.  Bigger is not better.

The magic of new ideas will come from connections into different networks.

Quotation of the Week: Steve Jobs on Innovation

Shortly after Steve Jobs showed off the IPad tablet last year, he was asked what consumer and market research guided its creation.  His  response was telling:

    --None.  It isn't the consumer's job to know what they want.

Although that may seem an arrogant response, I take a different orientation to it.  In many cases it's very appropriate.  One of my long term clients, 3M Corporation, usually operates out of the same model.  The famous and highly profitable Post-Its came into being on that basis.  To a significant degree, many, perhaps most of their products are developed by their research people with little input from their clients.  And, as most know, they've been highly profitable. Still, even though it sounds like Jobs and 3M totally ignore the consumer, that's not at all the case.  They are very familiar with the larger consumer context, but the consumer never "guides" the innovation.  The innovation goes several beyond consumer knowledge and expectations.

As a management consultant, I've also found the same model highly useful.  Here's how I go about it.  When a client contacts me for work, typically they have an idea of what they need.  I develop an in-depth understanding of their need, then come back and double-check to see whether I've understood their needs correctly.  With their affirmation, I'm ready with a much more creative, more effective program.  It's rare for them to reject my unique contribution.  Furthermore, the quality of that innovation often means that I'll have return business.

Art of the Americas at Boston's MFA

Yesterday I spent three hours at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, all in the new wing, devoted to the Art of the Americas.  When visiting my daughters in Boston (I live in the Twin Cities), we always take a trip to the MFA--and as this year, the Pops Christmas Program.  

Because of the recent reviews and my love for that museum, I'd anticipated the new wing by Sir Norman Foster to be a masterpiece, not a neoclassical work of beauty, but a museum that shows off its art.  I've often told my friends that when in California what you want to see, far more than the Getty, is the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena.  The interior of that museum was renovated by Frank Gehry ten years ago, and the interior, very much unlike Gehry's exteriors, showcases the art.  One of my daughters is an artist and gave me an impromptu lesson on the hall.  It is what she called "pure."  In other words, the interior, walls, floor and ceiling, though very different materials, are all the same color.  A light, sandy off-white.  It is among the most seductive exhibition halls in the world.  I'd argue that their holdings are more significant than those in the Getty.  I understand that the Getty tried to buy the museum, but that the Norton Simon thumbed their noses at the Getty.  Great move, if it's true.  Because the Pasadena Museum shows off it great art famously.

The new MBA wing reminds me in many ways of the Norton Simon.  It's completely focused on exhibition.  A bland exterior, but marvelous exhibition halls.  You walk into a 63 foot high entry area, with informal dining, and from there to the four floors of exhibition.  There's a new openness here.  The galleries are large and open to the exterior.  They're also of many different sizes, unlike, say the Met or the older wings of the MFA.

And what an exhibit of American art!  I expected the works of John Singleton Copley, Winslow Homer and John Singer Sargent--and they were all there.  But this time, I found myself intrigued by the works of America's silversmiths--and especially our carpenters and cabinemakers.  The furniture was a wonderful surprise.  One beautiful piece dated from 1620.  I was curious as to why Americans did so much furniture, and toward the end of our tour I found my answer.  By 1700, Britain was completely deforested, and when carpenters and cabinet makers came to America they must have thought they were in paradise.  The entire land was forested.  In one instance there is a frame of an early colonial residence, and one log is more than 50 feet long, an impossibility in the Britain of that world.  What you'll see is magnificent furniture, still being duplicated in today's world.

Well, when you're next in Boston, take time at the MFA.  The new wing will introduce you to pieces from our history that will give you a new appreciation for our founders. 

We're All Knowledge Workers

At most corporations at which I consult, senior management draws a distinction between knowledge workers and those who aren't.  You know the implication.  The knowledge workers are the smart ones, the high potentials, and the fast trackers.  Very often these are the people who are being groomed for leadership positions.

The phrase knowledge workers dates from Peter Drucker's coining in 1960 when he defined a knowledge worker as one who works with information.  As John Seely Brown and his colleagues pointed out in an earlier blog on knowledge workers, Richard Florida's work on the creative class has been very useful for helping us to understand different roles and workers and their contributions, but it also "unintentionally diminshes the potential contributions from other parts of the workforce."

On numerous occasions I've stressed the value of complex problem solving and innovation to all organizations.  By now, most people that knw that your ability to engage in those contributions may well provide opportunities, raises and security for your career future. 

Yet when you talk innovation or creativity, most people still think that's genius stuff.  That's a gross over simplification.  Some of the most creative and innovative work in corporations takes place at very low levels in organizations.  It's composed of the ordinary changes and adaptations made by people who work all over organizations: receptionists, front line assembly workers and even hotel maids. 

A few months ago, I was staying a one of the better hotels in the Marriott group, and found my allergies acting up very strongly.  So much so that I decided to try on one of their down scale inns the next time I was in Detroit.  When I checked in I told the front desk about my difficulty.  The employee sent a maid up to my room to check on me, finding that I had no allergy response to their cleaning agents.  The maid then asked if I'd be willing to be a guinea pig and check out the odors of some new cleaning agents.  I had no difficulty with two of the solutions, but the third sent me into a spiral.  I found out later, that her boss had contacted the local upscale hotel, related my experience to them and that hotel had started doing some experimenting and research on their on.  All of this was through the smarts of a lowly supervisor who probably made less than $15 buicks an hour.  She was someone most companies would have ignored, but a highly creative lady who was working to manage customer relations very creatively.

As Seely Brown and his colleagues concluded, perhaps the single greatest lesson from Japanese auto manufacturers is that all employees are ultimately knowledge workers and that the role of the firm is to both encourage and support problem-solving by all employees.  

As companies become more and more focused on talent development, they need to pay attention to the fact there's a lot of untapped talent inside organizations.  The distinction between those who have talent and those who don't is misleading and way overdone.  We undermine organizational potential when we draw artificial boundaries throughout the workforce.  Competition is going to force us to expand our understanding of talented people.  Like the Japanese, train them all to grow their creativity.