Connecting Dots 20 ◎⁃◎ Positively Frustrating

Connecting Dots explores the psychology of digital innovation leadership. Published by digital innovation leader, educator and investor Brett Macfarlane. Subscribe.

Fontainebleau, FR I’m in a COVID bubble on the INSEAD campus in Fontainebleau. I am here to frame and interrogate the findings of my research into the emotional experience and behaviours of repeat innovation leaders. It was a curious realization last week that while leaders experience many different things they all experience frustration. Very strongly so. Universally so. Though while we might instinctively think frustration is a negative emotion it may actually be a positive precondition. Let me share why.

The Leader’s Chore

There is a simple difference between management and leadership. Management is about stability. Leadership is about change. Innovation by definition is about change and therefore requires leadership.

The problem with innovation leadership is too many think about it through the mindset of management. While tools, processes, resources and policy are important, the real task of innovation leadership is to find out how much change an organization can tolerate. The more change it can tolerate the more innovative it can be. (Note see Connecting Dots 18 ◎⁃◎ Tolerance for Change.)

Innovation is exceptionally frustrating for all involved. Instinctively frustration is a bad or unpleasant thing. Yet when trying to do something new for the first time it is necessary and inevitable. While innovation leaders often are frustrated with feeling frustrated my findings indicate it is in fact a signal and source of energy and vitality that enables progress.

Working With Frustration Positively

The amazing innovation leaders I’ve been researching, often unbeknownst to themselves, are masters at surfacing and containing frustration in ways that progress their team and organization. The frustration they generate is born from an intent. An intent to address something that could be better or an opportunity that hasn’t been harnessed - powerfully positive, visionary and value-creating.

The frustration comes from the leadership task of reconciling the paradoxes of the organization. How do we change yet retain our identity? How do we renew yet run our business? How do we invest yet return to shareholders? How do we experiment yet not fail? How do we learn without losing confidence in our expertise? Questions that appear absurd and irrational when presented simultaneously yet is the reality of what leaders face.

Repeat innovation leaders are able to hold onto the intent on one hand and tune it to reconcile the paradoxes on the other hand. True failure happens when the intent is uncompromised and stubbornly held like a rock. Or, the intent is compromised by appeasing all ends of the paradoxes dissipating to nothing like a splash of water. 

Humility, adaptability, restlessness and a compulsion to do the right thing are the traits I regularly identify in true innovation leaders. It is a thankless job with a propensity to hit walls or burn out. This I know from personal experience. For all its motivating benefits, frustration certainly has a powerful dark side.

To help, an instrument being developed looks at innovation leadership through three positions of frustration. The purpose of this instrument is illustrative to provide understanding for innovation leaders themselves or executives selecting leaders. As well, it can serve as a real-time diagnostic for how on-task and developmental a group is or isn’t when driving innovation programs.

Innovation Leadership Frustration as Positions:

Ref: Brett Macfarlnae

There are many great innovation leaders out there, you’re likely one. If we can raise comprehension of the true role and tasks of innovation leadership we may be able to improve the problematic state of Western organizational innovation. Hopefully, we can increase the success rate and improve the well-being of innovation leaders. 

Like great athletes, innovation leaders seek and thrive under the pressure and spotlight, but unlike elite athletes, the true cognitive capabilities are not well understood or practiced. If you have any reflections on your practice and your relationship with frustration please do share. The research continues.

“Without action, the world is still an idea.”

— Georges Doriot, founder of INSEAD and inventor of venture capital

Brett’s Movements

As noted, my research is in the sense-making stage and a first draft manuscript is in progress. I very much appreciate my EMC INSEAD peers for interrogating and validating the integrity of findings. A few final research interviews are lined up and I’ll be validating data synthesis with interviewees in November. Very rewarding to see it come together. There has been a lot of interest already and I’ve been fortunate to do a couple of company presentations of early findings. Helpful to gain further data and validate the findings are useful to leaders and their organizations.

My research was always intended to help real-world practice. I’m looking forward to next month to starting design an innovation capability development program for a global consultancy. As well there are initiatives starting on how we can increase board capability to support innovation and updating the governance model - because the current set up simply isn’t working.

I hope you are safe and finding purpose in your work as October unfolds. Your feedback on these newsletters is always appreciated. As well, please share it with peers or your social networks. It makes a big difference and I really appreciate your contributions.

Keep pushing boundaries. 

-Brett

Hits and Misses

Some new things that caught my eye this past month.

On Running- HIT 🤩

While subscriptions are growing in popularity, only if you go into the value chain is it meaningful innovation. The stylishly engineered Swiss brand On has developed as close to a closed-loop running shoe as possible. Cyclon is a shoe you’ll never own, made of beans, that is fully recyclable and replaced whenever you need. I really hope this succeeds. Also, that eco-warrior brands of choice are madly trying to copy. Looking at you Converse, Doc Martin and Veja. Nike, if you can look at subscription as more than removing some purchase friction to take full accountability and ownership of your product’s lifecycle then you might regain my loyalty. Till then I love my On’s. No, I’m not compensated in any way but open to offers :-)

Image Credit: The top image is from a lockdown discovery. Fortitude bakery in London. Previously a commercial bakery but with revenue disappearing overnight the entrepreneurial founder turned their Bloomsbury mews location into a virus-safe open-air cafe. A small taste of sanity.

Connecting Dots 19 ◎⁃◎ The Innovator's Fire

Connecting Dots explores the psychology of digital innovation leadership. Published by digital innovation leader, educator and investor Brett Macfarlane. Subscribe.

This month, let’s take a look at where innovation comes from at an individual level. It’s something that has been a rich and charged topic in my ongoing innovation leadership research at INSEAD. ~BM

Where does innovation come from?

Innovation itself isn’t so much a thing as it is a phenomenon. It’s something that humans do and a label that captures the experience of doing or creating something new for the first time.

Innovation as a phenomenon is only something we can label in hindsight after it’s happened. Once something has been made real and is put out into the world.

Innovation isn’t really a thing itself because it isn’t a law of nature. We don’t actually have to do it. Yet many are compelled to do it. For moral reasons, selfish reasons, existential reasons or seemingly just reasons of unexplained compulsion.

This deeper drive is a source of a lot of emotional energy when people talk about, or try to do, innovation in large companies. While strategy advisors, textbooks and HBR like to treat innovation as clean and logically engineered processes in reality it is deeply emotional and messy.

People who lead innovation will universally agree it’s hard. Intellectually, politically, socially and economically it’s hard for an organization to do something new for the first time. As individuals, as teams and as an organization it’s not just hard but a bit of a mystery why they would put themselves in harm’s way to do it in the first place.

So why bother leading innovation?

I’ve found that innovation leaders often aren’t aware of what drives them. Why, compared to easier alternatives to career and life advancement, do they feel compelled to generate new ways of doing things.

We know from emotional quotient (EQ) profiling and documentation that there is a metaphorical fire within that compels some people to take risks, strive for a vision, thrive in ambiguity or seek outcomes greater than themselves. Though I’ve found that few innovation leaders have looked within to speculate what is the source of their drive that fuels their EQ factors.

Within an innovation leader’s team, this lack of self-awareness is rarely an issue as they are skilled team builders. They also attract or choose to fit into teams that mirror their own world view.

The difficulty, or conflict, for the innovation leader emerges at the executive authority layer. For here the motivation to do new, seems to often deviate from the innovation leader. Whatever the reason, the climate for innovation is different at the authorizing, or executive altitude, than at the innovation leader and their team’s.

What Motivates Innovation Leaders?

In my research, I have been using three motivating anxieties to help leaders identify what moves them:

• Death Anxiety: We want to make a difference

• Validation Anxiety - We want to know we’re good

• Control Anxiety - We want to create a safe environment

For each leader, one motivating anxiety is dominant, based on their unique individual life experience. The motivating anxiety can also change over life stages and levels of seniority.

By better understanding, their own motivations the innovation leader is better able to understand the motivations of others. This helps them see motivation differences when interacting with executives with different motivating anxieties. 

A company with an innovation objective may be rationally aligned but emotionally misaligned. The former is visible and the latter hidden under the surface. When things don’t work many blame “the politics” or “risk aversion” as a way to explain phenomena they can’t see or grasp.

Understanding one’s own motivation is the foundation for seeing or sensing where motivation conflicts can emerge. The motivations themselves aren’t what create conflict but are the source of tension that emerges from misaligned or misunderstood motivates at a personal level.

I encourage you to reflect on what moves you. If you are driven to innovate, why?  For many, seeing the answer to this question helps them understand the motivation of what they are trying to achieve for which innovation is a beneficial byproduct. 🔥

“One person’s innovation can cause another person to feel incompetent, betrayed, or irrelevant.”

— Adaptive Leadership

Brett’s R&D Update

I’m fresh back from a jaunt high up in the Swiss Alps and feeling refreshed, revived and reinvigorated. I’m now diving into the data synthesis phase of my INSEAD research. While progressing with the third cohort of research interviews featuring CEO’s and board members.

I returned to London to learn the lock-down experimental digital product innovation micro-masterclass I did for the D&AD quietly went live. Over 500 folks have completed it and 2,000 more are in progress in just the first weeks, we haven’t even promoted it yet. This is 100x the number of participants we could have hosted at the live event planned last May at the D&AD Festival. It was just a rough experiment but what a fascinating early result.

I hope you’re doing well as the weather changes and we enter the 2021 strategic planning cycle. Your feedback on these newsletters is always appreciated. As well, please share it with peers or your social networks. You are a very smart and impressive group of readers, thanks for being part of Connecting Dots.

Stay safe out there and keep pushing boundaries. 

-Brett

Hits and Misses

Some new things that caught my eye this past month.

Government of Canada Track & Trace - HIT 🤩

Many countries have released track and trace applications. Canada’s does the best job I’ve seen of understanding and alleviating data privacy concerns during the onboarding experience while anchoring the social and societal benefit of doing your part for the greater good.

Britain’s AI Grading - MISS  🤔

Whatever the technical or political issues of this fiasco the failure is setting a precedent of distrust for software automation. Hopefully, it’s a lesson to increase digital literacy in government and education.

SBB - HIT 🤩

For years travel companies and infrastructure operators have aspired to real-time multi-modal end-to-end travel booking platforms (a mouthful and a tough task.) They often get one part right like checkouts, UX, maps or partners but rarely synch them up well. Trust the Swiss to do just that. 

Vipps & Visa - HIT 🤩

A decade ago I was one of many people trying to hep Visa develop new payments products and infrastructure.  Finally, they are getting their long pursued mobile wallet thanks to Vipps. The Hit goes to DNB, Norway’s largest financial services group that demonstrated a bundle of inspired large scale innovation from technology to the business model to marketing when launching Vipps

Image Credit: The top image is from our alpine hut last month in a remote Swiss alpine farming village where wood is the primary energy source for heating and cooking. The experience brought back many fond memories growing up of time at our cabin in the woods of British Columbia, Canada.

Connecting Dots 18 ◎⁃◎ Tolerance for Change

Connecting Dots explores the psychology of digital innovation leadership. Published by digital innovation leader, educator and investor Brett Macfarlane. Subscribe.

LONDON GB Last week I was delighted to connect with Paul Polman the ex-CEO of Unilever. In 2010/11 I helped run the Lipton Ice Tea brand globally. At the time Unilever attracted me because there was genuine work to improve sustainability and health outcomes in the RTD (ready to drink) sector. It was part of Unilever’s wider commercially-driven sustainability vision under Paul. 

He’s a fan of my research but I’m more a fan of his effort to improve corporate governance. His organization Imagine aims to develop a capability and capacity for more long term builders. His analysis argues that the current bias to cost-cutter profiles on boards and c-suites delivers relatively poor commercial returns and resilience. 

We long term builders accept the future is a moving target where changes and innovation are inherently part of the work. Long term builders don’t have to have an innovation focus, but it certainly accelerates performance and builds resilience. The ability to deliver innovation to the market is an indicator of an organization’s tolerance for change of any sort. 

Can companies even change?

While there is a compelling rational argument for long term building, most shareholders and board members aren’t of this mindset. We know that any change requires sufficient motivation to change. If change is merely “essential” but not truly seen as “vital” there isn’t sufficient motivation to change let alone innovate. 

So what motivates the drive to want to innovate in the first place? One research thread I’m digging into is the function of a morally worthy goal to generate sufficient courage to take intentional action in the face of risk. The emerging data suggest that innovation leaders are driven by a purpose greater than themselves, goals that benefit many people not just an individual’s needs. So what goals might generate growth, innovation and purpose that drives the next generation of firms?

What motivates change?

Paul’s passion for addressing climate, plastics and human rights issues through regenerative business models is inspiring. There is growing evidence and belief that doing good and doing well are mutually inclusive. We can create supply chains that regenerate to create products that are better, with greater social and environmental sustainability and commercial returns. 

Most talk of sustainability smells too much like CSR or virtue signalling. It serves a purpose but isn’t reformulating the mindset to drive the next generation of leaders. Let alone develop new and better ways to meet the world’s needs, which is where innovation has a role. 

But it’s hard. Just to think about it takes a lot of cognitive energy, even for seasoned repeat innovators. To focus energy productively it is essential to create some boundaries. As well as to avoid the traps of euphoric abstract generalization or depressive technical skepticism. This is why I like the idea of regenerative business models, as a goal they are something tangible to invent and build. 

How far can a company change?

I am regularly finding successful innovators, who have the job of pushing boundaries are exceptional at finding an organization’s invisible boundary of possibility. 

The boundary of possibility is an ever-moving boundary that sits in the air more than at hand. It helps define how much tolerance for change an organization can bear while building and progressing. Everything beyond the boundary is a distraction that sucks energy from the hard work of doing innovation. 

This is why Paul’s work is important. It’s obvious that boards (and shareholders) set the tone and grant authority for how much innovation is possible.  Even if they are many degrees removed from the front lines of innovation. 

This is why we need to reflect on why only one in ten executives are satisfied with their innovation efforts. Executives for whom innovation is a top-three priority. They want to but aren’t truly motivated to. It is not a rational problem, it is an emotional problem. It is the difference between Kodak who died and Fuji who thrived in response to the same market changes. 

What does changes look like?

Kodak’s boundary of possibility was its current reality. Whereas Fuji’s executive and board expanded the boundary of possibility. They granted authority for managers to look at their technology and find different uses and customers. For example, it turned out some consumer film developing technologies could massively improve medical screening. 

One of my working hypotheses is that innovation leaders scare board members, which causes emotionally rather than rationally driven reductions of the innovation tolerance boundary. There are multiple ways they might scare them and how they respond unbeknownst to themselves. A misdirection of energy taking teams off task or even anti task. 

This is an unexpected path of my research, but it’s proving quite provocative. Discomfort is necessary for real change, so maybe I’m onto something.

“Rules are for the guidance of wise men and the obedience of fools.”

— Douglas Bader

Hits and Misses

Grieg Seafood - HIT 🤩

A former client, four years after we reframed their social contract it’s great to see them take a new approach to financing. Tying a $105m capital raise to pressure supply chain improvements to reduce deforestation is a great new application of the green bond model.

Monzo Plus - MISS  🤔

After the hype and great app UX, the challenger banks sure look like traditional banks. Monzo can call Monzo Plus a subscription or SAAS all they want but it’s just a monthly fee.

Netflix auto cancellation - HIT 🤩

Principles are what you do when nobody’s looking. Netflix will auto cancel paying subscribers who haven’t used the service in two years. Sure it avoids future liabilities and bad PR, but mostly it builds trust and keeps the customer base active so they can continue developing quality content. 

Movements

My second wave of innovation leader research interviews is wrapping up. I am beginning the third wave which focuses on the experiences of executives and board members setting the “air” for innovation. It’s an exercise in mapping the array of experiences not a hunt for a single truth. If you can propose someone you know, or even yourself, nominations are most appreciated. 

Beyond the research, I’m starting to explore advisory roles and consider projects to help design leadership development programs for change and innovation. Also, there is a podcast in development (working title: Failcast) and a book on Leading in Transition. 

If you’re keen to chat or share feedback/thoughts let’s do a virtual coffee. ☕️

Stay safe out there and keep pushing boundaries. 

• Brett

Image Credit: The above is from a series I took on the Aguille du Midi towering above Chamonix FR on a day ski touring the Vallée Blanche.

Connecting Dots 17 ◎⁃◎ Innovation Courage

Connecting Dots explores the psychology of digital innovation leadership. Published by digital innovation leader, educator and investor Brett Macfarlane. Subscribe.

LONDON GB I want to share an unexpected finding in my research into the emotional experience of innovation leadership. It might tell you something about how deeply personal innovation leadership is.

I’ve found it’s a funny thing asking innovation leaders about their personal experience leading innovation. They can be quite disinclined to do so. They are happy to talk theory and models but less so their lived experience.

I was speaking to someone in London’s Square Mile who I know to be a multi-time innovation leader. She’s delivered large industry-leading machine learning platforms and business units. When I asked her what it’s like leading innovation she replied “terrible, saying you’re leading innovation is a great way to be hated.”  How odd.

Sure the outside world may heap praise upon Innovators. However, in practice, exposing what it’s really like in the moment to be leading innovation efforts is a conflicted experience.

Certainly, there is an aspect of humility and strong soft skills that enable the safety of exploration and experimentation. As well as recognition that corporate innovation is a game of teams, not individual heroes. 

The innovator’s spirit, much like the invisible hand, are terms economists and scholars use to try and capture a phenomenon we don’t fully understand. We can’t slice open a brain and pull out the bit that helps people think innovatively or creatively.

Therefore, we mostly revert to thinking through charts or spreadsheets. Which are helpful ways of coping with the anxiety of not knowing. In other words, making risk feel tangible and contained even if rationally we know they aren’t.

What we should be talking about more is courage. Innovation and creativity are outputs, a primary input to get there is courage.

The good news is social scientists have come close to a consensus on what is courage in the workplace*. The three essential components of courage are:

1. A morally worthy goal

2. Intentional action

3. Perceived risks, threats, or obstacles

Courage, at an individual and group level, is often an unthought known whether it is present or not. It may not be discussed but it is sub-consciously noticed in the air and felt under the skin.

A tangible way to determine whether there is sufficient courage to progress towards innovation is to assess:

1. Is our strategy morally worthy?

2. Are we acting on decisions? 

3. Do we see and learn from risks without shading the truth?

One of my tricks of innovation leadership is making small demonstrations of courage to anchor the group outside 100% certainties. At key moments I’ll share a photo taken that day of a competitor or adjacent industry where someone has innovated their offering in a way relevant to our agenda. 

How the group responds to this external stimulus surfaces their internal and collective level of courage. Depending on the courage temperature level we can turn it up, cool it or hold steady to maintain progress.

The world is full of risks we cannot control, but our courage level is one thing we can control if we want to. 

“It is sometimes easier to make the world a better place than to prove you have made the world a better place”

— Amos Tversky, co-founder of behavioural economics

Movements

As we head into the dog days of summer, I’m deep in data collection and interviews to better understand the thoughts and feelings of leading the animal spirits of innovation. In parallel, I’m studying and tracking developments in how group dynamics are adapting to a remote or distributed workforce world. Both are wonderfully full of mysterious resistance and discomfort. Yet essential for progress.

Over July a few things will be released. My micro-masterclass on digital product innovation for the D&AD New Blood Festival. I contributed to an INSEAD Knowledge research paper on the future of creative agencies, to be published mid-summer. Also, I have a few more articles in development for this newsletter to help exhausted executives revitalize and refocus on business innovation and growth as 2021 planning ramps up.

Feedback always welcome. Please do keep sharing these articles with colleagues and clients, it helps a lot and means a lot. 👏🏻

Stay curious,

- Brett

References

*COURAGE AS IDENTITY WORK: ACCOUNTS OF WORKPLACE COURAGE , MELISSA M. KOERNER Academy of Management Journal 2014, Vol. 57, No. 1, 63–93. https://journals.aom.org/doi/10.5465/amj.2010.0641

Image Credit: I took the top photo in the Sony Ericson radiation testing facility in Malmo, Sweden. The person is used to test the effect of new chips on our bodies.

Connecting Dots 16 ◎⁃◎ INSEAD Research Topic

Welcome to Connecting Dots where we explore the psychodynamics of digital innovation leadership. Published by digital innovation leader, educator and investor Brett Macfarlane. Subscribe.

I’m sore, sunburnt and stupendously happy after a long cycle into Surrey. It was one last half-time Friday before the data collection phase of my research begins on the 1st of June. Doing my own primary research was a key attraction to the EMC at INSEAD. It’s an opportunity to dive deep into a part of my practice and work to better understand some of the mysteries of business and human nature. The campus on the edge of the Fôret de Fontainebleau is the best place I can imagine to create space and focus for research and development..

Some of you know my area of interest but let me frame it a bit wider for everyone. At INSEAD we are pushing into the growing field of systems psychodynamics. As the top global business school, INSEAD teaches strategy and organizational theory (the systems bit) better than anyone. In fact, they birthed many of the leading models of value creation used in businesses as well the very concept of tailored executive education. They are also aware of the limits of traditional business school theory and acknowledge as even best practice fails more than it succeeds.

Why there is so much unrealized potential in business is where the psychodynamics part comes in. Building on the psychoanalytical field pioneered by Freud we live at a time of growing neuroscience and behavioural economics that better understands concretely the often overlooked role of psychology in leadership and change in the workplace. I specifically am interested in the systems psychodynamics of digital innovation. 

Innovation however is in a sad state. Innovation is a top priority for 75% of companies. Yet a meagre 6% of executives are happy with their innovation efforts. That’s a tremendous amount of frustration and unrealized potential. 

We see innovation celebrated in strategy departments, grand speeches and in heroic films yet for all the process charts in the world there is relatively little genuine understanding of how to lead it. Which is why we need some new hypotheses on how to think about it. Actually, we especially need new hypotheses for how to think when doing it. Or at least be more aware of how we are thinking, and feeling, and behaving, when doing it. After all, those are the drivers of our judgements and decisions. 

Over the past six months, I’ve been speaking to innovation leaders at a host of companies including Diageo, Facebook, Amazon, Google, Apple, Dyson, Phillips, McKinsey, Bain, Standard & Charter and other leaders in startups, academia and investment. A common experience to all was seeing irrational responses or judgments within innovation journeys that the theory and case studies don’t explain. There was a common pain caused by the distance between aspiration and execution. Thus, to explore this space, my research proposal is:

The animal spirit of innovation is always present though rarely addressed. Today’s reliance on process, resource models and leadership trait theory doesn’t explain the innovation gap where as little as 6% (McKinsey, 2019) of executives are happy with their firm’s innovation efforts. Corporate innovation is generally treated as a process or resource problem to control. Whereas the intangible risks to identity, reputation and self-actualization are only partially addressed, if at all, though strongly present through behaviours and felt emotions. In general, the emotions, feelings and behaviours of leaders that produce success for an organization are uncharted territories in the loci of leadership theory. Within the situational context of innovation journeys, how do the animal spirits of a leader’s internal emotions influence progress?

In-depth interviews with repeat innovators in multiple geographic regions and industries will analyze through a psychodynamic lens their thoughts, emotions, feelings, motivations and behaviours in both successful and unsuccessful innovation journeys. The grounded theory qualitative research method provides the rigour and interpretive framework to accept multiple perspectives, to collect and analyze a wide set of data on the felt emotions, acted behaviours and underlying motivations to identify how they may influence innovation efforts towards reaching their full potential.

So that’s the next 6 months of my life. I have some provocations and hypotheses in mind but I need to let the data emerge and interpret it objectively. I would love to hear what reactions you have when reading the abstract. What makes you happy, sad, mad or glad about it. Indifferent is helpful to hear too. Just reply to this mail (don’t worry it won’t cc anyone). 

Also - I’d appreciate your nomination for interview subjects - maybe it’s you even or someone you know.

I’ll continue to drop progress updates along the way. The full research will be published in 2021/22 but the findings will be valuable from early on. Let me know if they can be of help in your work. 

“I can accept failure, but I can’t accept not trying.”

— Michael Jordan

Movements

It’s been a week of progress. Gillian and I ran our first Leaders Remote Roundtable which surfaced some excellent reflections and insight for how leaders are coping and adapting through the pandemic. My Digital Product Innovation Micro-Masterclass is being edited by the D&AD folks for a release next month with the festival. A first experiment for me towards possibly creating a library of remote learning experiences around leading and running innovation.

Otherwise, I’m clearing the deck to start my first batch of data collection over June. 

Stay curious,

- Brett

PS Please share this newsletter on LinkedIn with a call to subscribe. It makes a big difference to help grow the Connecting Dots community. Thank you.

Connecting Dots 15 ◎⁃◎ Courageous Confusion

Welcome to Connecting Dots where we explore the psychodynamics of digital innovation leadership. Published by behavioural economist Brett Macfarlane. Subscribe.

Tolerating Uncertainty

I’m confused. By confused I mean uncertain about what is happening. We all want answers, five-point plans, geometric charts and inspirational aphorisms. However, these anxiety coping mechanisms deny us the opportunity to courageously acknowledge, work with and work through the confusion. This impulse to deny uncertainty is at the heart of why many who want to innovate or change fail to do so.

To help people better contain productivity through uncertainty I’ve been delving into the similarities between the domains of high-performance sport and corporate innovation. In both domains practitioners succeed not for better talent, resources or strategy, as they are relatively equal at the top, but for a better mental game. Both domains reward risk-taking while the consequences of failure are severe, fatal even.

Constraining Norms

Top performers aren’t just creative thinkers and ingenious problem solvers. They are willing and able to push the limits of “how it’s done.”  Going beyond norms means it might not work, which paralyzes most people as following the norms for how it’s done are necessary for safety and sanity. For pushing the limits is uncomfortable posing a risk to reputation, acceptance and self-image. 

These norms give us grounding and structure to give a sense of control in unpredictable worlds. Norms allow progress with certainty. Going beyond norms means going beyond precedents and into uncertainty. The zone of innovation. Where the map hasn’t been drawn yet. It’s the experience of being lost in an uncharted mountain rather than lost with a map in the Center of Paris.

Even if one has the capability to be a pioneer they aren’t always willing. Going beyond norms mostly gets fuzzier before it gets clearer. Exhilarating to start, yet once in the wilderness, past the point of no return it can become darkly terrifying. When progressing forward seemingly only gets you more lost. 

Negative Capability

This phenomenon of things getting more confusing with progress was well defined by romantic poet John Keats as Negative Capability. It describes the capacity of great writers to pursue a vision of artistic beauty even when it triggers intellectual confusion or uncertainty. It accepts philosophical certainty is a phantasy and is a trap that blocks progress. 

Digital innovation, because it follows the laws of bits and bits not physics, is a deep pit of negative capability. Every parcel of clarity helps peel another layer of the onion revealing more complexity and confusion. It’s hard going and why so many don’t make it past the first workshop or sprint. 

Leading Through the Void

One of my fondest memories coping with my own negative capability was a collaboration I led between Jaguar Land Rover and Apple.  Our goal was to have the first-ever watch that could control a car, science fiction till then. We the JLR team were an Apple launch partner working in parallel to Apple’s team developing Edition 1 of the Apple Watch. 

To get a watch to talk to a phone to talk to multiple servers to talk to a satellite to talk to a car’s onboard CPU to talk to the engine to fire up safely is rather complex. Especially when Apple, true to their reputation for secrecy, couldn’t provide access to the watch, tell us the specification nor provide an emulator until the eve of the launch. 

Normally this would end any project in a “get it right the first time” environment of an auto manufacturer. A wise approach as accidentally running someone over even once is a bad outcome. However, this approach typically kills any initiative when trying to develop an unprecedented piece of technology. 

The single most important thing the CIO and I did was accept the void we needed to walk into to progress. We held our leadership impulse to act and fix by identifying and naming the risks we faced. It was okay not to feel okay, for the team to surface why. By creating this holding environment we took accountability so that the group could feel safe venturing into the unknown so ideas and solutions could flourish.

We contained our anxiety and theirs to practice our negative capability. In this space the team built our own emulator and took informed bets based on teaser films and informed assumptions. Cavalier under business as usual conditions, pioneering when trying to do something novel for the first time. “What if we’re right” became more powerful than “what if we’re wrong.”

We maintained contact with reality so we could pursue the beauty of our vision. Which on one grey day in London’s Shoreditch our developer pressed his watch and seconds later the ice white Jaguar F-Type roared.

Courageous Confusion

We are all presently living in our own negative space. While planning helps and is necessary, it’s also a fiction. Comfort with ambiguity is a recognized capability of innovators. However, it’s not like a tool one merely picks up when needed. It’s a skill that needs practice and maintenance to stay sharp. Hence my connection between elite sport and innovation. A connection that first came to me thanks to working with sports psychologist Saul Miller when I was an athlete.

My hope is that as we continue to live in a state of high uncertainty we develop our collective negative capability. To grow our effectiveness to accept uncertainty, and grow the applied innovation capacity of leaders.

“I could no longer see anything. Certainly. Farther away, perhaps… They said on the wirelesss… But my on-board lamp had become weak, and I couldn’t see my hands any more. I wanted to put on my location light, so that I could see the wing at least. I couldn’t see a thing. It felt like I was at the bottom of a big hole, which it was difficult to get out of. Then my engine started vibrating.”

— Night Flight - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Movements

As the world opens up I’m trying to stay focused down on my research. Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be narrowing the boundaries of my inquiry into the emotions of multi-time innovation leaders. Next week I’ll elaborate for you my topic and why it interests me.

Thank you for your continued feedback. I appreciate hearing how you are getting on. I’m getting quite a bit of feedback on how therapeutic people find exploring the lived experience of innovation in these newsletters. If there is anything you wish the world understood better about innovation please let me know. Maybe we can do something about it to help unlock potential.

Stay curious,

- Brett

PS Please share this newsletter with one acquaintance or on LinkedIn to help grow the Connecting Dots community.

Connecting Dots 14 ◎⁃◎ Behavioural Innovation

Welcome to Connecting Dots where we explore the psychodynamics of digital innovation leadership. Published by innovation leader, educator, investor and scholar Brett Macfarlane. Subscribe.

The Innovator’s Toil

It’s Sunday morning. I’ve been cycling and suffering with hundreds of club mates in a virtual race up L’Alpe du Huez. It’s amazing how something innovative like the virtual cycling world Zwift quickly goes from being remarkable to just part of every day. What’s also strikes me as remarkable this morning is that business schools still don’t teach you what it feels like to climb the innovation mountain by taking an invention or idea to market.

In preparing for my research this summer I’ve been sharing a hypothetical abstract to hone my research question. Universally when people hear innovation is the topic they get excited. They speak as confidence experts, which they are, on their favourite theories, models or leaders of innovation. Which is great. Until I ask if these models and theories are so good why are only 6% of executives happy with their innovation efforts?

At this point, they become sad, maybe even a little mad. These are all successful innovation leaders, they know success and also pain. Yet they are strongly in the cult of rationality which is the foundation of business school logic. So before they hang up on me, I ask what it feels like along the innovation journey and suddenly an entire world opens up to them.

Predictably Irrational

We know from behavioural economics that people behave irrationally in predictable ways. We fall back on cognitive traps and shortcuts when faced with decisions. Especially fuzzy decisions, as innovation decisions are. Most business logic though is based on classical rationality and “expected utility” logically driving decisions. Hence why most organizations rationally score and plan roadmaps for potential innovation candidates. What we don’t understand very well is how our judgement gets distorted along the way and whether that’s why In the West we are suffering a decline in innovation.

My hope in the coming months is that the current awareness and willingness to address the emotional toll of events continues into all areas of work. Not just awareness but my wish is that in addition to helpful models and theory, business schools also teach emotional self-awareness and regulation. Especially in innovation where emotions are especially high given uncertainty, ambiguity and risk are high. The objective isn’t to fix or remove emotion from the boardroom. The goal is to be able to identify them and regulate it as part of the judgement process.

Going Negative

One thing that can help isn’t just to ask “how are we feeling” about something but to also acknowledge at times one needs to accept they are practicing what Keats coined “negative capability”. It is the ability to tolerate the pain and confusion of not knowing, rather than imposing ready-made or omnipotent certainties on an ambiguous situation or emotional challenge. It’s okay to feel not okay.

Next week I will elaborate on Negative capability and share an anecdote from a collaborative initiative I led with Jaguar Land Rover and Apple. I’m going to do a flurry of weekly newsletters for the next three weeks. to coincide with our experience emerging from the economic coma.

“The highest reward for a monk’s toil is not what he gets for it but what he becomes by it.”

— John Ruskin

Movements

In Zoomtopia, where work happens these days, I’ve teamed up with an old colleague Gillian to experiment with a new model remote of executive peer mentoring. As the trauma and burnout intensify we are trying to create an outlet to remotely share, reflect and learn amongst a group of executives leading through transition. You’ll hear more in a few months once we have some evidence on how it goes🎤. Likewise the Digital Product Innovation course I’m filming this week for the D&AD 🎬.

Most of my time is focused on designing my INSEAD research model to understand the productive zone of intra-psychic emotional conflict through innovation journeys🧐. In Connecting Dots 16 later this month I’ll provide a more in-depth preview👨‍🔬. Till then here’s a little teaser.

Thank you for your continued feedback. I appreciate hearing how you are getting on and any innovation paradoxes or questions on your mind.

Stay safe,

- Brett

PS Please share this newsletter with one acquaintance or on LinkedIn to help grow the Connecting Dots community.

Source Material:

• McKinsey Innovation satisfaction - https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/how-we-help-clients/growth-and-innovation

• Keats - Negative Capability

• Predicably irrational - Prospect Theory

Connecting Dots 13 ◎⁃◎ Ending Change to Start Transition

Welcome to Connecting Dots where we explore the psychodynamics of digital innovation leadership to bridge academic research and real-world practice. Published by innovation leader, educator, investor and researcher @INSEAD Brett Macfarlane. Subscribe.

Acting to Avoid Reflecting

Staring at the sky it still doesn’t make sense. I’m in my North London backyard soaking up the privilege of outdoor space and sunshine. I’m eagerly trying not to start anything new. My typical response to a crisis is to start something. Just what is less important than the act doing something new, it helps me feel like I’m initiating the change rather than change happening to me. The action also helps me avoid reflecting on the deeper meaning and implications of the crisis itself.

Action and busyness are typical coping mechanisms when we don’t feel in control. It speaks to our deep ability to handle change. The core task of leadership, whether running a company or attempting innovation, is change. Yet change rarely goes beyond incremental improvements or keeping business as usual turning over. Change operates within the existing paradigm of a company, industry or society. The components of change are events, situations, results-orientated and relatively fast. The change paradigm ironically is why radical innovation typically fails, it’s too painful to go through the transition required. Currently, change is all around us, but something deeper is happening.

“Change is disturbing when it is done to us, exhilarating when it is done by us”

— Rosabeth M. Kanter

When Change Becomes Transition

What most of us are living through is transition and we are just starting to address it. Transition is radically different from change, beyond actions it’s an internal psychological reorientation as we adapt to external changes. Its components are experiential, psychological, procedural and relatively slow. To begin transition one counterintuitively starts with ending. One must let go of the old world before the new world is in sight. Moving into a neutral zone where you figure out just what is the new paradigm, product, organization, system, identity, etc.. The greatest challenge isn’t to progress forward, it’s to let go by putting your present in the past.

A courageous question for a leader to allow into the agenda is whether they are entering change or transition, both as an individual and as an organization. The mistake is to underthink and wait till we go back to normal. As is the delusion of overthinking that everything, literally everything, is different or unprecedented. Both extremes deny the reality at hand and the opportunity for a deeper reorientation. Transition is an emergent challenge and containing the anxiety of not knowing is an ongoing wrestling match. What can help to lead through the neutral zone of transition is to surface how deep is your organization’s tolerance for transition in the months ahead.

The Great Reawakening

We are in a sort of induced economic coma, functioning but impaired. When we reawaken, it will be an opportunity to revitalize innovation efforts to renew your staff around how you serve your customers. Beyond its tangible outputs, the transitional role of an innovation effort is to surface, recognize and metabolize the anxieties of grief, hope, disappointment or euphoria that sit under the surface of your colleagues. For some organizations with a high tolerance for evolution, this may be a radical moon shot. For those of lower tolerance, it’s simply addressing overdue but neglected iterative improvements. The mistake waiting to be made is denying the emotions and suppressing them by staying in the change paradigm of routine actions.

My hope is the great reawakening will lead to a more thoughtful approach to innovation. To inject oxygen into the 94% of executives who are dissatisfied with their innovation efforts. While also adding more holistic accountability to the innovations that do succeed to regain trust, integrity, sustainability and accessibility to the influential (mostly digital) product innovations of our time.

It can be a therapeutic and galvanizing experience to allow the unsaid to be said, to shed the less good parts of a business’ practices and elevate the better parts. Innovation initiatives can be a safe container to grieve for the old world that has left, so we can let go, while in parallel renewing optimism, enthusiasm and commitment through drafting the new reality for yourself and your organization.

Movements

I’m safely in London and well on my own path of transition. This topic is very personal at the moment. I have the privilege of choosing from many paths and have recently come through my neutral zone that lasted two years. I’ve begun a semi-sabbatical to focus my INSEAD research over the next six months. While taking on select innovation-related leadership and organization development initiatives. If I can help, as a program designer or facilitator, please do get in touch.

Thank you for your continued feedback and please share with me any innovation paradoxes or questions on your mind.

Stay safe,

- Brett

PS Please share this newsletter with one acquaintance or on LinkedIn to help grow the Connecting Dots community.

Source Material:

• McKinsey Innovation satisfaction - https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/how-we-help-clients/growth-and-innovation

• Bridges, W. (1986). Organizational Dynamics, 15(1), 24–33.

• Bridges, W. (1991). Managing Transitions

• Hirschhorn L., The Primary Risk. Human Relations, Vol 52(1), 1999

• 3rd ed., rev.; DSM–III–R; American Psychiatric Association, 1987 (logic distortions)

Connecting Dots 12 ◎⁃◎ Holding On to Reality

Welcome to Connecting Dots where interdisciplinary learning helps leaders innovate for the digital era. I’m Brett Macfarlane and this newsletter is a testbed for my INSEAD research into the behavioural and psychodynamic factors behind today’s innovation crisis and the coming revival.

Holding On to Reality - Leading Through Uncertainty

Leading in a crisis shares many similarities with leading innovation. In particular, acting with a large number of unknowns and unknowables in the face of emerging events and realities. It is why I study innovation leadership because it is the F1 of all leadership. Where envelopes are pushed and stakes are high. Leading innovation is a crucible for the highest tests of leadership.

Whether leading an organization, team, family or yourself everyone at the moment is outside their comfort zone. The typical playbooks have been deployed. We’re in uncharted territory. This is why for leaders amidst uncertainty information elaboration and group reflexivity aren’t just essential but in fact vital. The daily reassessment cycle of new knowns and new unknowns is exceptionally challenging when trying to maintain a firm grasp on reality.

Beyond Change - This is Transition

We can reasonably expect, based on the evidence from past quarantine situations, that day 10 will be especially hard for you and your team. It will be when one realizes this situation isn’t just change and is in fact a transition. The effects associated with trauma will be the strongest emotion. Leaders may start to sympathize with BP’s CEO Tony Hayward when he said “I’d like my life back” in the middle of the Deep Water crisis as the oil platform burned with no end in sight.

The point of information elaboration (adding to the group new knowledge) and group reflexivity (considering how this knowledge changes goals and tasks) is to maintain contact with reality. To minimize the inevitable creep of logic distortion such as denial, intellectualization and distancing. To decide what to do , when and to contain restless anxiety to “just do something.” This is a test of EQ over IQ.

EQ Superheros

It can be helpful in a crisis to look at the EQ (Emotional Quotient) factors associated with professionals in vital life and death functions. The evidence tells us the most important and significant EQ factors of Physicians/Surgeons, as well as other health care professionals, are Independence, Stress Tolerance, Empathy, Impulse Control and Flexibility.

It often won’t feel good and there is no shame to acknowledge it doesn’t. That containment of reality helps to metabolize the strong and conflicting emotions that the situational stress may trigger in your teams. While acknowledging and listening to the feelings as they might provide important signals to inform your decisions or regulate your decision quality over time. Trust your training, listen to your intuition and you can minimize being blinded by emotion.

Movements

In the coming months, I’ll continue to publish Connecting Dots. However, we can expect the tone and content to evolve with the context of how the crisis emerges. While there are already signals of changes in the innovation landscape it’s important we stay in the here and now.

I will also increase referencing of source material so you are reassured I am sharing perspective born from documented and researched evidence. If you have questions or doubts please don’t hesitate to write. Likewise, any leadership or innovation challenges you’re facing. I’m available to help.

Thank you for your feedback and please share with two leaders you think would appreciate this newsletter.

Stay safe,

- Brett

Source Material:

• The psychological impact of quarantine and how to reduce it: rapid review of the evidence Samantha K Brooks, Rebecca K Webster, Louise E Smith, Lisa Woodland, Simon Wessely, Neil Greenberg, Gideon James Rubin

• Team reflexivity, development of shared task representations, and the use of distributed information in group decision making. van Ginkel, W., Tindale, R. S., & van Knippenberg, D. (2009). Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 13(4), 265–280

• The EQ Edge, Emotional Intelligence and Your Success Steven J. Stien, PH.D and Howard E. Book, M.D.

• 3rd ed., rev.; DSM–III–R; American Psychiatric Association, 1987 (logic distortions)