performance
while everybody else struggles. This
is because it essentially has
eliminated all (or at least most) the
risk of performance. And all thats
left to do is basically hard work.For example, there are some poster
children we are all aware of that have
performance disciplines. Toyota has
a quality discipline. General Electric
has a productivity discipline.
DuPont has a safety discipline.Federal Express has a reliability
discipline. Our research has been
aimed at understanding the
anatomy of those disciplines. I donot
have yet a full picture of it because
the research is still underway but I
have some fairly strong hypotheses
about what it takes to create a
discipline.
For example, what we consistently
see is that the companies that have
built a discipline around a
particular performance objective
tend to turn their work practices
against that objective into a science.
Its a science in two respects. First,
they have much more structured
and standardized work practices for
how they do things. The companies
that have a product innovation
discipline tend to have much more
structured work practices for how
they do innovation, companies that
have a safety discipline tend to have
much structured work practices for
how they handle safety, and so on.
The flip side is that we all know
standardization of process at some
level dries out local innovation. (If
everyone has to do it the same way
then theres not a lot of
experimentation)
In turn, the second way in which
companies make their practices a
science is that these firms create very explicit, controlled and managed
experimentation thats aimed toward
improving the standard work
practices. To illustrate, in Toyotas
quality processes, when they
encounter problem whether it is on
the line or elsewhere management
and rank and file workers are trained
to essentially turn the fixing of that
quality problem into a scientific
experiment. The manager or
supervisors job is to coach the rank
and file employee in how to set up
the experiment in order to try to find
a permanent solution to the problem.
And the second rule of the managers
once they have a successful solution
is to migrate that into the new
standard for how they operate so that
it is shared companywide.
In this regard, what we see are
companies that have a performance
discipline turn their work practices
into much more of science than
other firms. Also, the companies
that have a performance discipline
have taken the time and the effort to,
in essence, indoctrinate their
employees in a common mental
model of the principles by which
they succeed against the objectives.
If you talk to a FedEx driver or
someone who works in a call center
or someone who pilots the plane
in fact, anyone from that firm and
you engage them in conversation
about what are the principles
around how they manage reliability,
they will give you exactly the same
playbook. They have in essence
turned reliability into a religion that
they all live by. A great deal of
innovation, how to improve a
process or fix a problem occur down
among the rank and file in an
organization and it occurs
spontaneously. So these
organizations, when they have to get
in alignment about the new way
they are going to operation, already
start with 90% agreement because
they all basically agree with the same playbook.
The third thing that we see about
companies that really create a
performance discipline, whether its
for innovation or anything else, is
that they really only do it against
very long lived objectives. This is
because it takes years and years to
build it into the DNA of the
organization often a five to ten year
journey. As a result, they need to find
an objective that has legs and is going
to live for a long time.
-
Is there any relationship between
national culture and innovation culture?
(For example: Israelis, Swedes,
Americans, etc.)
I cannot directly address the question
of whether there is a relationship
between national culture and
innovation culture, but I can address
a related issue and that is there is
clearly a relationship between
national educational infrastructure
and innovation culture.
Allow me to relate my own
experience. I was an engineering
student in Canada before coming
down to study and then teach at
M.I.T. What I found was education in
Canada was actually more training
than education and it was with an
eye towards fulfilling a role of being
an engineer at a branch plant of an
American corporation. When I went
down to M.I.T. my eyes were opened.
M.I.T. first and foremost dedicated to
producing entrepreneurs and to
producing people who really think
for themselves. And what I really got
for the first time was an education. I
attended the most prestigious
university in Canada but the mindset
wasnt innovation, the mindset was
fitting into a large organization and
its way of operating. So, I think in
different countries you see the
postsecondary education has taken
on different character and it has led
to different qualities with respect to
innovation capacity.
I will give you one last example. Lets
look to Russia, where GEN3 Partners
has its business. In Russia there are
many positive reinforcements to
becoming a scientist or engineer.
Being a scientist in Russia is socially
highly prestigious. The reason is
they have a culture that is built
around intellect and truly they
honor, not the richest person in the
room, but the smartest person in the
room. That is what matters in their
culture who is smart.
