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L13. Cómo construir una cultura de originalidad - Coggle Diagram
L13. Cómo construir una cultura de originalidad
“Culture is king”
Kohlmann realized that to fuel and sustain innovation throughout the navy, he needed more than a few lone wolves.
So while working as an instructor and director of flight operations, he set about building a culture of nonconformity.
He recruited sailors who had never shown a desire to challenge the status quo and exposed them to new ways of thinking.
They devoured a monthly syllabus of readings on innovation and debated ideas during regular happy hours and robust online discussions.
“When people discovered their voice, they became unstoppable.”
Letting a Thousand
Flowers Bloom
People often believe that to do better work, they should do fewer things. Yet the evidence flies in the face of that assumption: Being prolific actually increases originality, because sheer volume improves your chances of finding novel solutions.
In recent experiments by Northwestern University psychologists Brian Lucas and Loran Nordgren, the initial ideas people generated were the most conventional.
Once they had thought of those, they were free to start dreaming up more-unusual possibilities.
Of course, in organizations, the challenge lies in knowing when you’ve drummed up enough possibilities.
How many ideas should you generate before deciding which ones to pursue? When I pose this question to executives, most say you’re really humming with around 20 ideas.
But that answer is off the mark by an order of magnitude. There’s evidence that quality often doesn’t max out until more than 200 ideas are on the table.
The more darts you throw, the better your odds of hitting a bull’s-eye.
Though it makes perfect sense, many managers fail to embrace this principle, fearing that time spent conjuring lots of ideas will prevent employees from being focused and efficient.
The good news is that there are ways to help employees generate quantity and variety without sacrificing day-to-day productivity or causing burnout.
Think like the enemy.
Research suggests that organizations often get stuck in a rut because they’re playing defense, trying to stave off the competition. To encourage people to think differently and generate more ideas, put them on offense.
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Solicit ideas from individuals, not groups.
According to decades of research, you get more and better ideas if people are working alone in separate rooms than if they’re brainstorming in a group.
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Bring back the suggestion box.
Suggestion boxes can be quite useful, precisely because they provide a large number of ideas.
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Developing a Nose
for Good Ideas
Generating lots of alternatives is important, but so is listening to the right opinions and solutions. How can leaders avoid pursuing bad ideas and rejecting good ones?
Make it a contest.
Idea competitions can help leaders separate the wheat from the chaff, whether they’re sifting through suggestion box entries or hosting a live innovation event.
When an innovation tournament is well designed, you get a large pool of initial ideas, but they’re clustered around key themes instead of spanning a range of topics.
Thorough evaluation helps to filter out the bad ideas.
The feedback process typically involves having a group of subject matter experts and fellow innovators review the submissions, rate their novelty and usefulness, and provide suggestions for improvement.
With the right judges in place, an innovation contest not only leverages the wisdom of the crowd but also makes the crowd wiser.
Lean on proven evaluators.
Although many leaders use a democratic process to select ideas, not every vote is equally valuable. Bowing to the majority’s will is not the best policy; a select minority might have a better sense of which ideas have the greatest potential. To figure out whose votes should be amplified, pay attention to employees’ track records in evaluation.
So, in a company, who’s likely to have the strongest track record? Not managers it’s too easy for them to stick to existing prototypes. And not the innovators themselves.
Research suggests that fellow innovators are the best evaluators of original ideas. They’re impartial, because they’re not judging their own ideas, and they’re more willing than managers to give radical possibilities a chance.
Cultivating Both
Cohesion and Dissent
Building a culture of nonconformity begins with learning how to generate and vet ideas, but it doesn’t end there. To maintain originality over time, leaders need to keep fighting the pressures against it.
We used to blame conformity on strong cultures, believing they were so cultish and chummy that members couldn’t consider diverse views and make wise decisions.
But that’s not true. Studies of decision making in top management teams show that cohesive groups aren’t more likely than others to seek consensus, dismiss divergent opinions, and fall victim to groupthink.
Yet there’s a dark side to strong, cohesive cultures: They can become homogeneous if left unchecked.
As leaders continue to attract, select, and retain similar people, they sacrifice diversity in thoughts and values. Employees face intense pressure to fit in or get out.
In fact, members of strong cultures often make better decisions, because they communicate well with one another and are secure enough in their roles to feel comfortable challenging one another.
This sameness can be advantageous in predictable environments, but it’s a problem in volatile industries and dynamic markets. In those settings, strong cultures can be too insular to respond appropriately to shifting conditions.
Cohesion and dissent sound contradictory, but a combination of the two is what brings novel ideas to the table—and keeps a strong culture from becoming a cult.
Solicit problems, not just solutions.
Although leaders love it when employees come up with solutions, there’s an unintended consequence: Inquiry gets dampened. If you’re always expected to have an answer ready, you’ll arrive at meetings with your diagnosis complete, missing out on the chance to learn from a range of perspectives.
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Prioritize organizational values.
Give people a framework for choosing between conflicting opinions and allowing the best ideas to win out. When companies fail to prioritize values, performance suffers.
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Don’t appoint devil’s advocates go find
them.
Research by UC Berkeley psychologist Charlan Nemeth shows that assigning someone to play devil’s advocate doesn’t overcome confirmation bias.
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Model receptivity to critical feedback.
Many managers end up promoting conformity because their egos are fragile. Research reveals that insecurity prevents managers from seeking ideas and leads them to respond defensively to suggestions.
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To balance out a strong culture, you also need a steady supply of critical opinions. Even when they’re wrong, they’re useful—they disrupt kneejerk consensus, stimulate original thought, and help organizations find novel solutions to problems.
Make dissent one of your organization’s core values. Create an environment where people can openly share critical opinions and are respected for doing so.