October 30 Readings

At 3M, A Struggle Between Efficiency And Creativity

• · James McNerney joined 3M on 5 December 2000 from GE to great acclaim (20% jump in stock price)
• · McNerney immediately reduced the workforce by 11%, tightened budgets, and introduced Six Sigma to every department
• · Six Sigma can either seek to remove variability from a process to decrease errors, defects, and to increase predictability (DMAIC)
• · McNerney focused on Black Belt/Green Belt
• · Six Sigma helped 3M stop “throwing cash at problems” by reducing capital expenditures by 22% ($200M) and held R&D constant at $1B
• · Current CEO Buckey saw profits grow, on average, 22% per year creating present shareholder value
• · 3M’s concentration on TQM changed heavily influenced corporate culture and may have caused 3M to shift from the 2^nd most innovative company on BCG’s list to the 6^th most innovative company
• · "New things look very bad on this scale," says MITSloan School of Management professor Eric von Hippel, who has worked with 3M on innovation projects that he says "took a backseat" once Six Sigma settled in. "The more you hardwire a company on total quality management, [the more] it is going to hurt breakthrough innovation," adds Vijay Govindarajan, a management professor at Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business. "The mindset that is needed, the capabilities that are needed, the metrics that are needed, the whole culture that is needed for discontinuous innovation, are fundamentally different."
• · Six Sigma can either seek to remove variability from a process to decrease errors, defects, and to increase predictability (DMAIC)
• · Six Sigma helped 3M stop “throwing cash at problems” by reducing capital expenditures by 22% ($200M) and held R&D constant at $1B
• · Several engineers, use to 3Ms innovative culture, did not find the Black Belt/Green Belt mentality inspiration to their innovation
• · "You cannot create in that atmosphere of confinement or sameness," Buckley says. "Perhaps one of the mistakes that we made as a company—it's one of the dangers of Six Sigma—is that when you value sameness more than you value creativity, I think you potentially undermine the heart and soul of a company like 3M."
• · Now increased R&D budget by 20%, capital expenditures and acquisition

I do not think that Six Sigma should be applied to every part of the business because it focuses on reducing variation. However, the latter half of ultimate goal, that reduction in variation increases quality, should be applied. Had 3Ms quality of innovation improved through other techniques, I think you would have had advanced success. Granted, the reduction in capital expenditure can slightly crimp the innovation process that emphasizes prototyping, but true innovators should view that budget constraint as a positive. The best innovations, like the Sticky Note, are inexpensive and simple. A reduction in budget could help the situation, rather than hurt it. The CEO should have approached the issue of quality with multiple tools, not just Six Sigma, to improve results.

Inner Work Life

• · Inner work life is a crucial driver of a knowledgeable person’s performance, but it is rarely openly discussed in corporations
• · After examining 12000 diary entries from 238 professionals, researches determined that manager behavior drastically shapes employees inner work lives
• · Every work event causes a personal emotion
• · Inner work life is the interplay between personal perceptions and motivation (grasp of what needs to be done and the drive to do it)
• · The diary entry asked participants to indicate opinion on event, its personal emotional impact, and to rate their colleagues and themselves
• · Results showed “sense-making” – trying to understand why an event happened and its implications
• · If people perceive work as having high value or are excited about it, they are more motivated to better complete it.
• · Controlled labs discovered loose relationship between emotion and creativity. This project tightened it. 50% of people are more likely to have creative ideas when they are in a positive mood
• · People are more creative when they view organizations in a positive light
• · Creativity requires intrinsic motivation
• · Work progress impacts mood
• · Managerial decisions that impact progress require early communication for maximum impact and position emotion
• · “when managers facilitate progress, every aspect of people's inner work lives are enhanced, which leads to even greater progress. This positive spiral benefits the individual workers--and the entire organization. Because every employee's inner work life system is constantly operating, its effects are inescapable”

As an ex-Google employee, I do feel that you are more excited to go to work every day if you love your job and the people you work with. I always felt that part of Google's innovative culture stems from the way it treats its employees. When you are working with the best of the best and you are well fed (for free) and feel valued, you are far more likely to continue to advance that company in new and creative ways.

Wicked Problems

· Originally proposed by Horst Rittel, UC Berkeley and M. Webber

• · Wicked problems have incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements; and solutions to them are often difficult to recognize as such because of complex interdependencies. Often the solution reveals or create another complex problem
• · Rittel created IBIS (Issues Based Information System) transformed into Dialogue Mapping to decompose and better handle wicked problems
• · Characteristics of a wicked problem:
• · There is no definitive formulation of a wicked problem
• · Wicked problems have no stopping rule
• · Solutions to wicked problems are not true-or-false, but good-or-bad
• · There is no immediate and no ultimate test of a solution to a wicked problem
• · Every solution to a wicked problem is a "one-shot operation"; because there is no opportunity to learn by trial-and-error, every attempt counts significantly
• · Wicked problems do not have an enumerable (or an exhaustively describable) set of potential solutions, nor is there a well-described set of permissible operations that may be incorporated into the plan
• · Every wicked problem is essentially unique
• · Every wicked problem can be considered to be a symptom of another problem
• · The existence of a discrepancy representing a wicked problem can be explained in numerous ways. The choice of explanation determines the nature of the problem's resolution
• · The planner has no right to be wrong (Planners are liable for the consequences of the actions they generate)

After problem solving, almost the last thing I want to work with is Wicked Problems. In honesty, I think that Wicked Problems are very rare. However, when approached with a Wicked Problem, I think the best approach is one of "if at first you don't succeed, try, try, again." Often, a daunting problems prevents people from acting. The best thing you can do to solve the problem is to act and do something. My trumpet instructor once told me "if you are going to fail, fail big." Granted, one doesn't want to fail with lives involved, but it means that you have put the amount of effort into solving the problem that the problem requires.

TED Video: David Kelly

• Shift from product-centered design to human-centered design
• Design behaviors and personality into the products
• Forming internal production groups in order to make experience prototypes to demonstrate man/machine relationships akin to architects showing people in the houses as opposed to them being empty
• Prada uses RF tags to scan and then visually display a specific product on a screen, use liquid crystal in the dressing rooms so that people don’t have to leave the dressing room to gain approval, or have a 3 second delay in a 360 mirror to gain better opinion as to what the product looks like from the back
• London museum visually displays comments and has interactive games
• San Francisco company wanted to make the cubicle more alive and more human. It has more “homey” touches with a built in fish tank into the cubicle, a flower that wilts when you leave, and simulated sunlight
• The ‘Spy Fish’ simulates ‘scuba diving’ with a wireless remote control with superimposed graphics that makes you feel as though you are underwater without getting wet
• Approtec has created deep well, low cost manual pumps for Kenyans to enable them to grow crops in the off season. Sales of Approtec products contribute to 0.6% of Kenya’s GDP
• Designers are more trusted and integrated into business strategies

This video provided a visual display of expanding technology to unlikely reciprocates. The concept of having a time delayed mirror or a ‘living’ cube is fascinating. I never would have thought to have an electronic mirror or cube. However, how do these items benefit the consumer? A consumer would expect innovation, bells, and whistles from a company like Prada, but not from a company like Penny’s. Also, the problem with a living cube is that cubes exist so they can be reorganized quickly and cheaply. A living cube does not provide that capability. Innovation is constricted by practicality. I think that shifting innovation from product-centric to human-centric is a great way to gain increased consumer and business acceptance of innovation. Right now though it works in a dream space that may not be rooted in practical reality.