Connecting Dots 41 ◎⁃◎ Leaderless Teams

Hampstead, North London 14 April, 2020

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 Hello,

Welcome to Connecting Dots, the monthly newsletter on Innovation Leadership by Brett Macfarlane. 

I’m back in London after recent visits to Spain, France, Netherlands and Canada. Everywhere I went, the need for leadership to do more was a theme I kept hearing. However, an 80-year-old experiment near where I live reminded me of just one behaviour needed to be an effective leader.

Best,

Brett

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Leaderless Teams

I recently learned that in 1943 the War Officers Selection Board headquarters was based near me in North London. In the bohemian neighbourhood of Hampstead, a group of psychiatrists set about to determine what makes a good leader—an existential question when deciding who to select, train and entrust with the lives of others during combat.

The few remaining pictures suggest a modest facility for a mission of such importance. Yet, this humble group reduced the failure rate of leader selection from 45% to 8%. Despite a decrease in the quality of army intakes at the time. A profound improvement in but a few weeks of experimentation.

The primary experiment that led to this success was “leaderless teams” pioneered by Isabel Menzies Lyth from St. Andrews University. Her innovation is used to this day for officer selection in most merit-based militaries globally. 

In the research, groups of soldiers without an appointed leader were given a “set” problem. However, the “real” problem unbeknownst to participants was their ability to balance their desire to do well with the need to work with and support other members of the group. Observers assessed, documented and ultimately coached this capacity. 

What emerged from this exercise is that social class, education, gender and athletic ability were less important for leadership than the capacity for an individual to attend to others in the group.

Coming across the 80-year-old findings surprised and also delighted me. We can see a direct line of evidence in Amy Edmonson’s work on Psychological Safety. Which has also been validated in modern organizational research such as Google’s Project Aristotle and a range of industrial firms in central Europe.

I asked myself if this truth is so sound then why isn’t it more widely practiced now?

Often overlooked in the findings is the real question of what gives an individual the capacity to practice psychological safety—or attend to the needs as described by Lyth. Many miss that this ability to attend to the needs of others is Lyth’s stated reframing of authority, away from the patriarchal notions of hierarchy and class standardization. In Lyth’s findings and theories, authority becomes a power within oneself to relate to others rather than to control them.

Often our relationship with authority is the hardest part of leadership for people to accept or take up. People who like to think they are “good” people unwittingly end up trying to control others. These behaviours are imprinted deep within a person, often only activated in positions of change and leadership.

To attend to others one first needs to attend to oneself— to understand their deeper imprint of the behavioural drivers and detractors that compel them forward. Revealing our underlying imprint is what enables true self-awareness and the ability to attend to the needs of others.

Like most learning, it’s found through action, not pontification. Most people feel there is widespread leadership failure throughout business and society. The good news is that we only need to develop one practice—the ability to attend to the needs of others.

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Leadership Gym

As you think about 2023, it’s a good time to start observing how you are relating to others in your teams. What situations draw you to control or compel you to withdraw? These may signal situations where your behavioural drivers or detractors are over-activating. 

When this happens write a paragraph summarizing what happened. Don’t overthink it, just capture what happened and how you feel about it. Once you have five situational vignettes themes will emerge revealing the deeper imprints of your leadership behaviour. Rich material to discuss with your executive coach, a supportive colleague or a trusted companion. It may point to an opportunity for your 2023 development goals.

Learn more about inspired and resilient innovation leadership with Brett Macfarlane.

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Connecting Dots 40 ◎⁃◎ Systemic Leadership

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 Hello,

Welcome to Connecting Dots, the monthly newsletter on Innovation Leadership by Brett Macfarlane. 

The point of this month’s article is that innovation is a result of systemic leadership—which we need more of and what it looks like in practice.

Onwards,

Brett

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Systemic Leadership

Why aren’t we innovating?

A frustrating question, that I hear more and more.

In a recent example, The Economist asked what happened to the promised Covid innovation boom that proved a bust. 

People are often surprised when I tell them we are in an innovation bust, not a boom. Sure we have FANG and Fast Company but they represent a tiny fraction of the economy. 

Despite all the hype and hope of emergent technology, the West is enduring a multi-decade innovation decline. Labour productivity, wage growth, GDP, new business formation and innovation intensity are measures of innovation that are all flat or declining.

Yet, patents and R&D investment continue to grow. That means knowledge or resources are not being constrained. 

The issue is that inventions and ideas are not sufficiently turning into innovations. Innovation is the application of a novel idea—an invention— to the market. An invention is merely potential value and innovation is the generation of value. 

It seems absurd that we have these powerful new working tools like Zoom, Slack and Salesforce, yet productivity benefits have not widely emerged. 

Equally, we have powerful technology advancements, applications on demand and businesses in the cloud, yet quality, reliability and resilience benefits have not widely emerged.

Why do we have so much innovation potential but so few benefits? 

Innovation is a Leadership Outcome

The problem is that behaviourally we are not innovating how we innovate. 

For many, innovation is still stuck in the project management and industrial production paradigm. 

People think of individual units of resources as investments, projects as plans and stage gates as the process. It’s fragmented, over-managed and under-humanized.

We need to see innovation as the result of systemic leadership. After all, innovation is a systemic outcome of an organization, thus leadership is the protagonist of innovation. 

Innovation matters because it is a priority for 75% of businesses. Therefore, 100% of employees in a business with an innovation priority have a role they play. They already are, it just isn’t visible nor orientated to cooperative value creation. 

Innovation is knowledge work, it comes from charge, is facilitated by leadership and results from diverse people, capabilities and skills working together. 

Therefore to change the system, each member has a role as an individual contributor and as a member of the system. Both roles are taken up in tandem.

We can make the system roles more intentional, visible and tangible. A systemic model of leadership has three primary roles aligned with an individual’s authority, responsibilities and primary task. Let’s call it EMS.

Executive Role - The System Level

• You are tasked with the climate of innovation.

• Your role is to set the mission that establishes the goal but not the means to get there.

• You empower and clear the way for those who work closely and deeply with the challenge.

• Your responsibility is to create a governance model that facilitates progress and clears value-destroying obstacles when issues emerge as they will (given innovation inherently is change.)

Manager Role - The organization level

• You are tasked with deconstructing the mission to establish, facilitate and support your team in concert with other managers and peers.

• Your role is to guide the team to take up the empowerment granted to them and to generate autonomy within team members motivating them to address the mission.

• You are the conduit to peers across the organization and the executive.

• Your responsibility is to facilitate effective working in the team and across teams outside your authority by maintaining open communication channels, identifying obstacles before they become blockers and leading give-take negotiations on what is prioritized along the way.

Staff Role - The clinical team level

• You are tasked with making the things that deliver the mission.

• Your role is to bring your knowledge and know-how to address the mission.

• You learn as you make something new for the first time, learn along the way and teach so collectively the team and organization build the shared pool of applied knowledge of what creates sustainable value.

• Your responsibility is to your team, to the mission, to impacted colleagues and the end external customers you are working to help.

If innovation is a priority in your organization, it’s best to think of it as a bottom-up process. Like in nature, a productive ecosystem has nutrient-rich soil that harnesses energy to create growth when climate conditions are favourable. 

Whereas stressed, over-extracted or under-nourished soil leads to crop failure. 

The point of a systemic approach to innovation leadership is that everyone has a role to play. No one is an all-good hero and anyone can cause harm by opting out in victimhood. 

Everyone directly or indirectly plays a vital role in working with others to make innovation happen. By looking at leadership systemically, you can more fully realize your innovation potential. 

~ Share this article if you agree. If you disagree please tell me why.

Brett’s Movements

Last month I loved NASA smashing asteroids at 17,000 mph. I also loved the latest Ocean Cleanup developments in the 2km wide plastic vacuum getting ever more effective at cleaning up the Pacific Ocean garbage gyre.

Later this month I’ll be hosting a session at the V20 Summit in Bali on 21/22 of October (I’ll be flying in digitally.) This is a formal briefing of government ministers for the G20 Leader's Summit hosted by Indonesia. I am attempting to innovate the multilateral policy process to be more values-based, as is the goal of the V20.

I am also making a policy recommendation to adopt multinational “fair process” through the legal framework of Meaningful Engagement and a DDNH (Digital Do No Harm) treaty to increase responsibility and decrease instability caused by cross boarder digital organizations. Sign up to join the summit or to receive the communiqué when it’s published. Change happens from within, join us. 

May you thrive,

Brett

PS. Need a boost? Revisit Panic or Prosper from edition 36 of Connecting Dots.

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Connecting Dots 39 ◎⁃◎ Systemic Innovation

~ Systems Mapping

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 Hello,

Welcome to Connecting Dots, the monthly newsletter on Innovation Leadership by Brett Macfarlane. 

This month we address the systemic nature of innovation leadership. 

Then I share a short but big update on my private practice.

Best,

Brett

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Systemic Innovation

A hard truth about innovation that many people get wrong is thinking that it’s only a task or a thing to manage. There is a big difference between managing an innovation project and being an innovation leader. The former is a task and the latter is a practice. 

Innovation is a systemic outcome. It is how a leader works with their team within the culture around them. It sounds obvious to say but is greatly overlooked that the leader, the team and the culture are a system. 

Seasoned innovation leaders often report relief when we start to illuminate the systemic aspects of their roles and career. Relief because we illuminate the “soft” factors like the culture that are the enabling lubricant or paralyzing glue of innovation’s “hard” factors like resources, inventions, prototypes and policies. 

I’m working on finding a shortcut to explain the truth that innovation is a systemic outcome. For professionals, the key point is to see innovation not just as what you do but also as how your team works within itself and the wider organization. 

All three spheres are part of a system that produces innovation outcomes which may or may not achieve the desired objectives. Let’s unpack the system a bit more:

Me:

The individual sphere is your imprinted mindset, capabilities and practice. This combines the theory and tools of how to do innovation with your behavioural practice of doing it. In other words, it’s the combination of "know-what" and "know-how." 

My Team:

The group sphere is the team and collaboration involved in an innovation initiative. A combination of group dynamics, resources, policies and processes that the group buys into, adapts or resists.

Our Culture:

The culture sphere is the wider organization and the external ecosystems it operates within. Often this is overlooked or seen as soft or fuzzy. Yet, the always-present cultural currents and dynamics in an organization can be assessed, decoded and adjusted where needed. 

We know from my research that innovation leaders do integrate all three levels. However, they rarely are conscious of this systemic picture. In particular the cultural sphere. 

Once we connect all three and work with the specifics of their situation it’s like a fog lifts. We demystify why and how they perform as well as the tensions and frustrations they experience. 

“That’s a relief! It’s not just me.”

It’s amazing the relief they feel. Partly to be able to diagnose their pain or understand the performance factors of their success. Relief also comes from not feeling alone. Their experiences are normalized, in a way unique to each individual.

I always feel great energy from innovation leaders when they start to take a systemic approach. It’s like dashboard lights turning on and they can see how the current system is helping or hindering performance. 

Curiously, of late multiple exceptional innovation leaders have laser-focused on this systemic aspect of innovation. I have noticed a theme that they are anticipating heightened innovation complexity and opportunity in the next few years.  You can be excited about the value unlocked with a systemic approach to innovation.

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Hopefully this “inside out” view of systemic leadership has been insightful from a practitioner's point of view to connect the dots of your work. You may also be interested in this “outside in” working model of pathway components from an executive’s point of view when responsible for organization wide innovation capital. I’m keen to hear what could make the models better.

Brett’s Movements

I am in Canada this week. Up in the Coast Mountains for an end-of-summer break and writing retreat. Stunning. I return to London on Tuesday and then head to Amsterdam for an INSEAD reunion followed by a few days in Paris. 

On this trip, I am publicly launching my organizational consultancy. Technically, my practice is a few years old. I have quietly been refining the core offering and validating my approach. 

It has been humbling and fun to do so working with leaders at top tech firms, management consultancies, creative/design agencies and sportswear brands. Thank you to everyone who has given feedback and support.

It's not a loud launch and some language is still being crafted. However, the foundation is rock solid and I’m pleased to open up and say:

Brett’s organizational consultancy specializes in leadership development and innovation for tech and creative organizations. 

Individuals Progress Together is his motto. It represents a systemic approach to leadership and organizational development. His practice unites organizational psychology, change-management and innovation methodologies. Through action learning, you practically develop knowledge and capabilities on the job doing real work. 

Services:

• Coaching leadership behaviours and practices

• Assessing organizational culture and identity

• Training innovation knowledge and skills

My goal is to help elevate 1 million innovation leaders in the next decade. So far I’ve developed 5,000 professionals in a range of programs with a 72 NPS. 

Learn more at brettmacfarlane.com

Please keep me in mind and share my practice with your favourite innovation leader or your company’s head of organizational/talent development.  I’m always open to having a chat to explore if my approach is a good fit for your challenges.

Have a great back-to-school September. 

Best,

Brett

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Connecting Dots 38 ◎⁃◎ The Offsite

~ The Stockholm Offsite

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Hello,

Welcome to Connecting Dots, the monthly newsletter on Innovation Leadership by Brett Macfarlane. 

It’s that time of year. Our minds shift from anticipating another swim on vacation to strategic planning at work.

Let’s dive into an intervention used by most leaders—the offsite. 

Best,

Brett

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The Strategic Offsite

August means the offsite season is approaching. Companies are starting to plan for 2023. For innovation leaders, it’s time to gain or retain space for your vision. A key planning intervention at your disposal is the offsite. 

I love an offsite—the heightened ambition, edge of uncertainty and hope that things will become better. 

Yet often, an offsite is seen as conflictual, confusing and chaotic. Though, isn’t that the point—to get all the tensions and different perspectives on the table, to clear the air and embrace a path ahead? 

An Example of a Good Offsite

One of my best offsites was in Stockholm at the stunning waterfront museum Photografiska. I designed the action learning afternoon of the two-day summit for the “top 120” executives of a leading tech company. 

The organization's culture was the focus. The goal was for leaders to learn and decide how to adapt and strengthen the culture to realize the company’s strategy.

Learning sounds fun and soft, but in the workplace, it can be hard and threatening. To truly learn means challenging what we know as individuals and elaborating what we can do as a team. 

In a group environment, it means addressing the diversity of knowledge, experience and perspectives while building cohesion. Good offsites work with and contain these paradoxes rather than deny them. 

That means you are designing for tension. A good offsite creates and works with tensions of competing needs—such as the need for planning while acting, thinking expansively while realistically or adding while removing resources. 

Yes, creating tension may seem taboo but constructive tension is a sign of healthy leadership. Where you can share, scrutinize and integrate opposing perspectives, evidence and experiences.  

The Experience of a Good Offsite

Constructive tension was at the centre of the Stockholm session. Managers had experienced small doses in prior offsites. Given culture was the topic, for this offsite constructive tension was the core objective to tangibly evolve the culture. 

Of course, we designed tension carefully and compassionately. We provided the materials for learning and strategy implementation—goals, knowledge, language, tools, space and coaching. 

The experience was planned like an orchestra. With different movements, builds, peaks, lulls and interludes. In practice, this looked like rounds of reflection, discussion and action. Each round building on the last. 

We also used the building to enhance cognitive switches and engagement. We all get stale sitting in the same room all day, even if the views are stunning.

After the initial exec briefing and a personal reflection activity in the main plenary room, we moved to the group working space. This transition was intentional and primed individuals for group work. 

Staying With the Conflict

At the start of the afternoon, there was resistance—to the challenge, the strategic question and of course me and my co-facilitators. All normal warm-up conflict. This conflict is a healthy elaboration of the task while processing and internalizing knowledge. 

As we contained the tension and kept the mission on-task their conflict moved to the discussion. And from that discussion came different perspectives, experiences and facts that were shared within their groups. Individuals disagreed, agreed and elaborated. 

I observed and sensed group dynamics to assess if the conflict was constructive and focused “on-task.” Were they addressing the strategic questions of their work? 

Or did they drift “off-task” to a new “as if” topic? It’s normal for a group to become overwhelmed. Emotional responses may trigger regressive responses towards each other; fight/flight, dependency or pairing. 

These responses might need escalation if it emerges they are caused by serious issues. Or typically, they just need a reassuring or clarifying guide to get them back on “on-task.” 

When Participants Take Ownership

In this session, there was a lot for us to keep track of, assess, contain and guide. After about two hours the questions dwindled, and a steady buzz of collaboration filled the air with the odd burst of laughter, “ah ha!” or “Oooh, we could also!”

At this point, I started to feel unnecessary. Our guidance was no longer sought. The teams busied themselves with deepening their work. It’s always off-putting to not feel needed, but that is the point. It’s about them not us.

The point of an offsite is as a catalyst or accelerant of change. So that plans are more understood, better informed and personally invested empowering individuals to progress and learn from each other after the offsite.

The best offsites are learning interventions. They are an experience that develops connectedness, understanding and interpersonal commitment between colleagues. It’s where strategy becomes real.

The Strategic Offsite

A great offsite is an art of designing constructive conflict. 

Here is a summary of a guide I use to design every aspect of an offsite. It enables us to address the past, present and future realities of a team. 

There are 7 phases of constructive conflict :

1. Prepare (before the offsite)

2. Start by establishing ground rules

3. Get views on the table

4. Orchestrate conflict by highlighting differences

5. Encourage accepting and maintaining losses

6. Generate and commit to experiments (may require follow-up sessions or BAU integration)

7. Peer leadership consulting (mostly after offsite)

Each phase has its actions and is rarely linear.

For the full guide get in touch and I’m always happy to help with feedback on your plans.

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Connecting Dots 37 ◎⁃◎ Empowering Innovation - An Executive Guide

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 Hello,

Welcome to Connecting Dots, the monthly Innovation Leadership newsletter by Brett Macfarlane. 

June's edition, Panic or Prosper, generated record feedback and enthusiasm. 

This month, let’s address a secret question executives have about innovation. "What do I do?"

Best,

Brett

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Empowering Innovation - Executive Guidance

“As a company, innovation is a strategic priority, but as board members, what do we do?”

What do we do?

I used to be surprised by this question from board members and senior executives. These are people passionately committed to innovation and often have a track record of leading highly innovative teams and organizations. 

There is a lot of great evidence and support for innovation teams themselves, but not so much at the organizational level for those who sponsor or govern innovation. What do we expect of people overseeing multiple innovation teams, programs and departments that likely each have varied processes, sub-cultures and capabilities? 

As an innovation team leader, it can be hard to understand or empathize with your sponsoring and governing executives. Even harder for you to say what it is you want them to do other than to say yes or give you resources. 

At the most senior level, the question of what to do is often very fear-based. As in how do I not unintentionally derail innovation. Or how do I protect teams from going down a path of failure? How can I derisk embarrassment or harm to the interests of our firm and our shareholders? What if my expertise isn’t relevant?

There are some nice research and theories about the idea of leaders creating a “climate” of innovation. Though I still find it fuzzy and theoretical. It’s like driving forward by looking in a review mirror. After reading it, I still have the question of “what do I do?” as a senior leader,

I see this stuckness even with leaders who strongly believe in psychological safety, empowerment, autonomy and contemporary theories of servant, authentic or transformational leadership. Yet, for all the theories the question remains “what do I do?”.

Procedural Fairness is What You Do.

Procedural justice is a field I’m deep in work at the moment. It comes from the legal profession and is the premise that if the process is deemed fair, people are more trusting and are more satisfied with the outcome. Even if the outcome is not to their benefit or what they wished for. In other words, it feels fair. This is especially important for complex, emergent and emotional topics such as innovation. 

The evidence tells us that innovation teams are highly sensitive to perceived fairness. Within the same company, the initiatives with procedural fairness deliver better outcomes than those without. Fairness matters.

Therefore, as a senior executive, to empower teams to take risks, make new things and launch value-creating changes to the status quo you can enact procedural fairness in management decision-making. The journey determines the outcome.

In practice, there are six practices of procedural fairness that I’ve paraphrased from research by Harry Korine.

1. Consult team members in the management decision-making process.

2. Create forums where team members can refute management opinions.

3. Familiarize yourself with team concerns.

4. Maintain consistent procedures over time.

5. Provide a full explanation for decisions.

6. Respect the team’s autonomy.

I regularly see that these six practices empower innovation team leaders and sole contributors to take up their roles and operate in the ILM Leadership Performance Zone. These leaders know innovation is not just the team or the wider organization in isolation. Innovation comes from teams and the system working together.

Empowering how they work or don’t, is what board members and senior executives do.

Procedural fairness allows senior executives to be “hands-on, fingers out.” Meaning they are close enough to make informed decisions While avoiding the traps of micromanagement or disengagement.

Procedural fairness dear executive is what you do.

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Connecting Dots 36 ◎⁃◎ Panic or Prosper

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 Hello,

Welcome to Connecting Dots, the monthly newsletter on Innovation Leadership by Brett Macfarlane. 

This month, I’m a contrarian optimist. I’m going to address how, in a stormy business climate, some innovators prosper when others panic. 

Grab your economic raincoat and let's get to work.

Best,

Brett

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Panic or Prosper

Panic or Prosper

Sonia was developing the official e-currency of her nation, a world first, when parliament was frozen by currency devaluation and 300-year-old legislation. Yet she prospered. 

Jim was launching the first-ever watch app that could control a car when partner Apple wouldn’t provide access to the yet-to-be public Apple Watch 1. Yet he prospered. 

Sam was developing a progressive financial literacy service when the banking sector was hit with criminal investigations and a threatened regulated breakup consuming executive attention. Yet she prospered. 

In each of these stories, the innovator faced peril yet held their nerve. They kept their eye on the light at the end of the tunnel while others panicked. 

I was thinking about each of them lately as dark storms cloud the economic outlook. I know their stories because I was there with them—in the middle of their storms.

It’s during these stormy times when a dangerous sense of panic can enter the air of a company threatening innovation projects. It’s easy to lose one’s nerve, individually and collectively.

One of the unrecognized challenges of tech innovation in these periods is its intangibility. It’s not like a grand bridge, train line or wind turbine that gives confidence through its physicality. A protected asset on the balance sheet.

The hard material of tech innovation is not its software code but its results - revenue, NPS, adoption, patents and other KPIs. Yet those come later. Until then the prototypes, experiments and business cases are an intangible future potential. An easy-to-cut variable cost on the P&L.

It’s time to hold your nerve. 

Especially if you are in a firm that has yet to experience a stormy economic climate. We’re all jittery the first time we go through any experience. 

Whatever your situation, now is not time to panic, you can continue to prosper.

“You cannot overtake 15 cars in sunny weather… but you can in the rain.”

— Ayrton Senna

In my work with innovation leaders, I most enjoy supporting those putting on their rain tyres for the unknown events ahead. 

We can say there is uncertainty and that we can’t predict the future. But that was true before today’s storm. And the next one.

It’s just that at the moment, the climate has changed and rain spooks some people. It’s a moment to seize with smart risk-taking and continued self-regulation. 

It’s natural to be anxious. It’s healthy. Provided we channel the energy and activity towards constructive efforts. 

A big part of the innovator’s task is to contain the anxieties of others. 

Prosperous innovators stay shrewdly ambivalent in the face of uncertainty. They see risk and opportunity, yet hold them in both hands to work out what is of true relevance and value. 

So when the rain is blowing horizontally and thunder booms in the distance it’s extra important to tune into how you are relating to others—your team, your peers and your board. 

Sniff out and snuff out the panic before it consumes people. It’s your duty of care to do so—with compassion and humility. You are used to extreme risk, uncertainty and unpredictability. 

You are the reassurance they need and want, no matter how challenging their questions.

As the innovation leader, it’s your role to continually adjust and maintain the climate of possibility for your team and organization. To maintain progress while others do too much or too little. 

Holding your nerve is contagious. It builds confidence in others amidst uncertainty. The military call it command presence. In the private sector, I call it the innovator’s aura. 

The aura isn’t for you, it’s in service of others—for their confidence and self-motivation to hold their nerve. It activates their autonomy to press on piercing through the clouds of doom.

It’s true in all companies—whether their culture is renowned for innovation or stigmatized as where innovation goes to die. In both, innovation happens only as a result of innovators leading through clouds of uncertainty that appear even when the skies are blue.

Every one of the projects I listed at the beginning was a leader I worked closely with. They held their nerve and were able to support their team and organization to hold theirs.

Each of them, overtook the metaphorical 15 cars ahead to deliver while others crashed out or sought false comfort by sitting on their hands in pit lane. 

These three leaders prospered in the rain, benefitting their users, their company and their career. 

All it took was holding their nerve and seizing the moment to prosper. 

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Learn about the Innovator.Coach program to train, coach and empower tech innovators at www.innovator-coach.com

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Connecting Dots 35 ◎⁃◎ The Smell of Innovation

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 Hello,

Welcome to Connecting Dots, the monthly newsletter on the psychology of innovation leadership by Brett Macfarlane. 

What does innovation smell like?

In this edition of Connecting Dots I answer this question through a recent visit to an innovative design studio in Girona, Spain.

Settle in with a ☕️ and have a think about what “the smell of the place” says about your innovation culture.

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The Smell of Innovation

You can learn a lot about a company and how they innovate in a short visit to their space. 

Three weeks ago I buzzed an unmarked door in the Spanish town of Girona. It was six in the evening and people were coming off work. At a cafe to our right, a group of office workers clanked their glasses of vermouth as the door clicked open.

We walked down a narrow nondescript hall and up worn wooden stairs. Nothing indicated it was home to the design studio of high performance and high fashion cycling brand CHPT3 (pronounced chapter three.) The founder and figurehead of CHPT3 is the thoughtful and philosophical champion Scottish cyclist, David Millar.

I was excited because I love visiting design and innovation facilities. Only by being in the space can you see and sense how the work takes shape, or what might be amiss.

A studio or lab is a living artifact of space and people interacting. Interactions that result in new products, services and processes. Some aspects are explicit but much of the work is implicit—hidden out of conscious sight despite its continuous presence.

The experience of CHPT3’s design studio told me a lot about the brand, the company, the people and how they operate. The assessment technique I used is called socioanalytic observation. It seeks to discover the hidden in organizations and social systems. It’s a parallel observation process, meaning at the same time I observe how I respond to the space and I observe how others around me relate to the space. 

OK, let me walk you through my experience.

Visiting the CHPT3 Design Studio

The studio is a collection of inter-connected rooms. The physical layout is unique to the timeless medieval walls cocooning the contemporary decor and work implements.

The closely connected rooms link with inconsistent door frames to duck under or pirouette around. Each room contains a discreet aspect of the company. As a brand, CHPT3 to me was a constellation of ideas, aesthetics, campaigns and use cases. Inconsistent yet somehow coherent. The space physically represents this tension.

As an example:

—> I walked past a museum of sporting accomplishments in one room

—> To a business affairs working table in another

—> Above, is an artistic installation of David’s custom race shoes

—> Then I entered a fashion closet upstairs away from the money talk

—> A rest area with soft white furnishing was hidden off to to the side

—> I returned downstairs to discover the most organized and tidy room—a workout space

I found this last room most fascinating. It featured two high spec bikes and computer simulation equipment.  It placed sport physically at the heart of the brand, the business and the lifestyle the space represented. Spiritually, I imagined it as a furnace of passion that whirred as staff pushed the limits of new product designs. I wondered if cycling is the means of business, or is the business a means to cycle?

Behind the workout-lab, was a chill-out space with a custom bike-mounted as though art. This highly engineered object seemed to hold desperately onto its mud and dirt from the road. Just as a Jackson Pollack holds onto its paint, defying gravity and the passage of time.

Depending on your perspective, the dirt as an art installation represents taming the chaos outside so it feels close yet safe. Or symbolizes the importance of ensuring the inside doesn’t get too removed from the chaos of competition and real life outside the studio.

Either way, it represented the uncertainty and mess of exploration yet the space was like an oven mitt - you feel the heat but don’t burn.

Interestingly, The entire studio hung over the streets of Girona like a VIP hospitality marquee or broadcast booth. Given Girona’s role as a global hub and home for professional cycling, it was as if they want wanted to be in the middle of the action but from a distance. In it but not of it.

I could peer down at cyclists passing by, freewheels buzzing, as if I was a researcher or police interrogator observing and studying from behind a one-way mirror.

 Reflections

This distance I noticed is a common feature of studios trying to create safety amidst the chaos of innovation. The distance can quell fears of getting too involved with and consumed by the outside world in ways that might annihilate their independence or identity. In this case, there seemed just enough distance to be safe enough yet close enough to and open to the outside world.

It’s a healthy and sophisticated tension to negotiate. This distance was an association that came to mind. It could just have been cheap property acquired at an opportune moment or space loaned by a friend. Sometimes a pipe is just a pipe, and nothing more, but more often than not there is more than meets the eye... if only I had more time and could observe David working with his team.

Functionally, I liked the experience of transitioning between the spaces. I’ve always found that everything on one big open floor makes it hard to create boundaries and transitions between functional, cognitive and relational tasks.

The walls gave demarcations between the spaces, roles and functions. The open doors and flowing air enabled integration. Each space gave different representations triggering different responses—in an inspiring and uplifting way. 

In many companies, demarcation lines often become fault lines—in perception or in physical representation through closed-off spaces, gatekeepers and formal processes. It can be intentional to activate and unfreeze an organization. Though, if one isn’t careful it can become a front line consumed by battles for control, power and resources. 

At the moment of my visit, it felt like the lives of employees flowed between business affairs, design work, sales, company archive, R&D flagships, hospitality zone and chill-out space. Where one spends their time likely reflects their level of formal or informal authority in the company—generalized or specialized roles.

I must confess to envying the space. I wish one day for my practice to have a physical space and experience. I can visualize it and imagine what it feels like to sit down under the morning light with an open window. 

Seasonal photography rotates with key themes in our work and injects people’s worldviews (physically and philosophically) into the room. The aroma of fresh coffee is in the air as we chatter away while putting our hands on the wooden work table to start the day. It smells great, like innovation…

I digress, but that’s what a great innovation space does, you dream and make it real.

Learn my about my programs training, coaching and transforming innovators over at www.innovator-coach.com

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