Readings 27 November

The Mixed Effects of Inconsistency

• Sometimes compensation strategies do not comply with innovative initiatives. This results in employee reflectance to participate in any initiatives.
• Learning by experimentation is fundamental to solving problems for which outcomes are uncertain and where critical sources of information are non-existent or unavailable.
• Tasks that are conducive to experimentation are those that allow multiple problem-solving trials and present opportunities to use knowledge gained from earlier trials to enhance learning in subsequent trials.
• Experimentation is critical to organizational innovation. Research shows that R&D teams spend almost 80% of their time on experimentation and that these experiments constitute an important source of technical information.
• Failures are unavoidable outcomes of experimentation due to the nature of experimentation's uncertainty
• Failure can have damaging costs; however, even when these costs of failure are greatly reduced, people are still reluctant to experiment due to a lack psychological safety - a belief that a group or organization will not hold a person's mistakes, errors, and failures against him.
• Upper level management needs to create messages of supportiveness and tolerance for errors to overcome perceptions of the level of psychological safety.
• Creativity is related to organizational culture, reward systems, supervisory encouragement, trust, and resources.
• Organizational variables that affect innovation behavior include both normative (established norms that define appropriate and inappropriate forms of behavior) and instrumental (formal reward systems and incentives) influences.
• One critical factor in organizations is 'evaluative pressure' - the degree to which individuals are closely evaluated and monitored on their performance. This pressure reduces psychological safety.
• Monitoring in the context of supportive coaching can increase interpersonal risk taking
• There are 4 primary differences between highly evaluated and lightly evaluated persons. First, ambiguity causes highly evaluated people to be aware of punishment and less likely to take risks; whereas lightly evaluated persons see the opportunity to learn. Second, constant evaluation creates a psychological burden. Thirdly, evaluative pressure shapes the emotional experience of coping with uncertainty. Finally, they react to emotion differently.
• One would be better to be consistently-discouraging than inconsistently-encouraging because it increases psychological safety. When individuals are exposed to consistent messages, each is more likely to be seen as credible and will then have a stronger effect on behavior. However, if an organization is inconsistent, those who are lightly evaluated, might be able to draw upon internal, psychological resources in order to support experimenting.

This article reminded me of my colleague Rita. While the company was consistent in its desire for innovation (everybody was "expected" to create a certain amount of quarterly ideas), it consistently monitored its employees to ensure that they were still performing on the core job. Rita was highly evaluated to the extent that she had very low psychological safety. She was so afraid of losing her jobs that she did not want to take the necessary risks to ensure she would keep her job. She did not want to experiment with different delivery messages because she was so focused on perfecting the core delivery message. I often felt that the managerial style was poor; so it was nice to see it reinforced in this article.

How Failure Breeds Success

• Nestle launched Choglit, a chocolate-flavored milk drink, in 2002 to capture Generation X and failed.
• As a result, Coke CEO E. Neville Isdell needs to convince risk-adverse employees and shareholders that he will tolerate the failures that will inevitably result from taking necessary increased risks
• People are afraid of failure, but failure is not a bad thing. It is important to the experimentation process.
• "Figuring out how to master this process of failing fast and failing cheap and fumbling toward success is probably the most important thing companies have to get good at," says Scott Anthony, the managing director at consulting firm Innosight
• Propose "failure parties" to recognize failure's importance in the creative process. Most companies don't spend enough time looking backwards.
• Corning combined two failed business of drug research with photonics to accelerate the testing of potential drugs and improve its accuracy
• Companies that struggle to be more innovative don't look for ways to prove that an experiment works, they try to prove themselves wrong. This forces early failure at a lower cost.

As I read this article, I was reminded of the film Elizabethtown. In that film, Orlando Bloom's character develops a brand new shoe that fails and ultimately costs the company millions of dollars and he, his own job. Of course, the film wouldn't exist if Orlando Bloom didn't journey to Virginia to rediscover his purpose in life and realize that he is not a failure at life. However, it is a shame to think that a million dollar loss can cost an innovator his job. It is hard to create a culture that will allow people to aim high and miss. My trumpet instructor use to tell me "let the chips fall where they may." If you are going to make a mistake, make a big one. At least people know you are trying hard and you are more able to quickly learn the next time.

TED: Joshua Prince-Ramus

• A hyperrational process - takes a rational process and makes people question its rationality
• This process does not have authorship and no master architect
• The most immediate need of operational costs often transcends any other possibility
• Compartmentalized flexibility - identify a series of points; whereas you gain the same perspective as you would have gained with high modernism
• Needed to convince the librarians that social rolls were as important as the books themselves. This directly impacts the design for the Seattle Central Library
• The building off-kiltered blocks that enable the Seattle Central Library to grow. Dimensions are designed for structure and to hold on to every piece of glass. Every spiral city block is stair stepped up one whole floor.
• The Seattle theatre is a rare multi-functional one, so they designed the theatre so that the stage can be changed with a push of a button, using capital costs we can achieve what cannot achieve using operational costs. This enables them to rent out the space during off season.
• Another company's desire to support contemporary art in Louisville, KY allowed them to create spaces in which the artists want to work. The center zone enables multi-use by both audiences and artists.

I am always intrigued by different architectural problem solving approaches. I have always seen architecture as art; so it is fitting that it serve as a multi-functional art form. However, I never before considered that art could also solve more functional problems than just the need for a building. A theatre I use to work at was multi-functional. However, it would have been great if it could be adjusted with the touch of a button, must like the lighting panel. To take it one step further, it would be interesting to see an adjustable seating arrangement for shows that do not sell out. Perhaps I should contact Josh and provide him with this suggestion.