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Leadership

Questioning for Creative Leadership

We are always told to be good listeners.  Our moms and grade school teachers often told us to “shush and listen.”  And as adults, as many of us think we are good listeners as we think are good drivers.  (By the way, that’s a lot more than 50%, leading to an irrational conclusion.)

Active listening is more than just hearing what someone says.  Listening involves silencing our own thoughts and opinions, connecting empathetically with the speaker, and providing feedback.  The best way to provide feedback and to gauge if you really, truly understand what someone has said is through questioning.  I’ve observed that there are two general forms of questions:  transactional queries and questions for reflection.

Transactional Questions

In a market economy, we exchange money for a product.  Just as in a commercial exchange, conversation and dialogue can be transactional.  If there are multiple product choices with comparable features and functions, a rational consumer selects the least expensive product.  The decision is based on logic and the transaction is designed to minimize time, effort, and resources.

Some conversations are transactional in nature and should be.  “What time does the meeting start?” and “Where is the restaurant?” are responsible transactional questions that allow us to increase our efficiency and productivity.  The responses are typically used to complete the exchange, just as handing money to a cashier completes the purchase.  “The meeting starts at 10 am” and “The restaurant is at 123 Main Street”.

We use transactional queries to obtain data.  Remember that data and information are different.  Information allows us to make decisions, create opportunities, and to expand our knowledge of a given situation.  In a transactional conversation, we exchange impersonal data and the individuals may translate that data to information on their own.

For example, if I know that the meeting starts at 10 am and is held at a restaurant on Main Street (data), I will plan to leave my office at 9 am since I also know it is a one-hour drive.  Converting the transactional conversation to information also tells me that I need to take dimes and quarters with me to put in the parking meters on Main Street.

Reflection

While my decision to leave at 9 am and carry small change with me is not necessarily creative, it does explain another level of communication.  Questions for reflection use “right-brain” thinking to analyze the conversational feedback, to draw conclusions, and to offer alternatives.  For instance, I could have countered the restaurant location with a suggestion to meet at a different place that allows me to take a shorter drive.

It is through questions for reflection that we build creativity.  Innovation is enhanced when we look at things from a different perspective and try to envision a unique outcome.  Transactional queries normally limit the participants from seeing alternatives but can support incremental improvements and operational efficiencies.

Leadership Questioning Skills

How do you know if you’re asking transactional or reflective questions?  As an innovation leader, you want to drive creativity and encourage alternatives in new product development (NPD).  You want to empower your team to listen and to learn.

Transactional questions, potentially hindering radical innovation, are easily rephrased to “yes” or “no” inquiries.  We could easily have said “Is the meeting at 10 am?” instead of asking what time the meeting is scheduled.  This gives us a strong clue that the question is purely transactional.

Another indication is that the response to a transactional query is quick.  The meeting time is known so there’s no hesitation in providing the answer to the question.  At most, people will need to check their calendars to confirm the data.

On the other hand, reflective questions introduce a pause in the pace of the conversation.  A person has to stop and think about how s/he might respond.  The response provides information and not just data.  And, information allows us to take on different perspectives and to generate alternative solutions.  An indication that a question is designed for reflection is that a “yes” or “no” answer would be totally inappropriate. 

Creativity is driven by viewing problems from different perspectives.  Those viewpoints should include all potential stakeholders, including designers and developers, functional organizational representatives, customers, and end-users.  Understanding the entire ecosystem of innovation lays out the scope of a new product development effort.

Customers and Open Innovation

When customers are involved in innovation, we call it open innovation.  While customers cannot tell us what features and specifications they want in a new product, they can answer our questions and we gather both data and information.  It’s important, however, to focus customer interactions on qualitative data, such as that gathered through reflective questions.  Market research and open innovation are driven by understanding and empathizing with customer needs.  And only when this information is collated, can a development team go into the labs and pilot plants to design a new product or service.

While questions for reflections are best used in gathering customer impressions and feedback, there is a place in innovation for transactional questions.  Of course, these are often limited to setting pricing parameters and in A/B market testing.  You’ll also want to collect and analyze demographic and geographic data about potential customers since this can frame future marketing efforts.

Questioning for Innovation Leaders

Leaders set the tone for the culture and climate of an organization.  Restrictive, distrustful environments hamper creativity and are often characterized by strict boundaries and constraints.  In these situations, questions are largely transactional.  Managers are tracking directives for scope, budget, and schedule metrics.

In open, creative cultures, leaders provide freedom and autonomy for innovation teams.  Questions seek knowledge building and deeper understanding.  Open-ended questions without right or wrong answers can stimulate perspective-taking and novel approaches to solving problems.  Involving customers and end-users in creative questioning can improve innovation exponentially.

Summary and Learn More

Learning to ask good questions and to fully listen to the response are skills that can be honed and grown through training and coaching.  We can each practice creative leadership questioning by converting transactional queries into questions for reflection.

Learn more at our complimentary webinar on 13 December 2019 at noon CST (1 pm EST, 10 am PST).  We will discuss the Transition from a Technical Role to Leadership.  Register here.

About Me

I am inspired by writing, teaching, and coaching to build innovation leaders.  I tackle life with an infusion of rigor, zeal, and faith.  I am an experienced professional with a passion for lifelong learning with a PhD in Chemical Engineering and an MBA in Computer and Information Decision Making.  My credentials include PE (State of Louisiana), NPDP, PMP®, and CPEM, and I am a DiSC® certified facilitator.  Contact me at info@simple-pdh.com or area code 281 + phone 280-8717 for more information on coaching for entrepreneurs and innovators.

The 3Cs of Innovation

Innovation is both easy and complicated.  The easy part of innovation is focusing on customer needs and the complicated part of innovation is … focusing on customer needs.  Customers vary and our ability to serve them depends on three key aspects of a company’s strategy:  choice, collaboration, and competency. 

Read on or watch the 30-second summary below.

Choice

Firms have many choices in innovation.  First, a company can choose to serve a broad customer base or a narrow market segment.  In choosing a broad market, companies often look to cost competency for a leadership position.  However, when products compete on price, customers lack loyalty to the brand.  Serving a narrow market segment, on the other hand, allows a firm to create products and services that are differentiated.  Typically, these markets allow the firm to charge a premium and generate significant revenues.  But, of course, there is no utopia.  Choosing a narrow market segment for innovation ties a firm to a specific pattern of development and technology.  If an unhealthy marketplace matures, it can be disastrous to revenues. 

Next, new product development (NPD) choices also involve the degree of innovativeness.  Are products simple line extensions or are they radical departures from existing competition?  These business choices reflect investment, risk, and global economic conditions. 

Finally, innovation choice includes decisions matching product development with strategy.  Some firms are more risk tolerant or cash poor than others.  These choices reflect strategic decisions to grow the business or to expand in existing markets.  One of the most frequently cited failures of NPD is a lack of strategic alignment; therefore, choices of product and service development efforts must closely align with growth objectives for the company. 

Collaboration

Cross-functional teams that work together from idea to launch are proven to be most successful in NPD.  Collaboration means more than naming individuals from different functions to be part of the “team”.  It means sharing ideas and problem solving with various perspectives, including the customer’s view.  True collaboration crosses departmental barriers and external boundaries.

Collaboration also means the team shares trust.  Trust requires sharing vulnerability and a social contract among innovation team members.  New products will be “ho-hum” if team members do not trust one another enough to share crazy ideas and so-called “outside-the-box” thinking.  The more risk involved in an innovation the more trust is necessary for the team. 

Competency

Quality in design and competency of execution differentiate the best companies from average ones.  To always consider the customers viewpoint and what service means is a hallmark of a firm delivering high quality.  Such companies hire, train, and nurture innovation competences in all of their employees.  And competency feeds back in a continuous loop to customer intimacy – understanding needs and wants. 

Training is the starting point to build competency for a quality-driven innovation organization.  Sustaining best practices through coaching can take an organization to even higher levels of success.  In the Flagship Innovation Leadership program, we recommend both individual coaching and master mind groups for senior leaders.  Both opportunities increase accountability and accelerate learning. 

The 3Cs of Innovation

Innovation should be simple, yet in practice is often quite challenging.  The 3Cs of innovation help teams and leaders to focus on what is most important to create success for new product and service design.  First, the company must choose who the customers are.  Innovation takes different forms, risk, and investment for broad markets or narrow customer segments.  Customer choices align with the organization’s strategic growth goals. 

Next, innovation teams must collaborate across functional barriers and with external stakeholders to be successful.  Collaboration is built on trust and trust is essential for taking on disruptive innovation.  Finally, successful innovation requires competency to deliver high quality results.  NPD team members build competency with customer interactions and training in innovation best practices (check out our 1Q2020 innovation training schedule here).  Organizational leaders grow their competency through coaching and sharing with others in master mind groups.  Join us for an Innovation Master Mind pilot on Friday, 22 November at noon CST (register here). 

Your Next Steps

Consider how NPD project choices are effectively implementing strategic goals.  Then, ensure your teams are cross-functional and collaborative.  Finally, implement training to sustain quality through competency.  Read more about innovation best practices in my new book, The Innovation ANSWER Book, available from Amazon here.

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A Division of Global NP Solutions, LLC  

Study.       Learn.       Earn.       Simple.

Making Decisions

I told Siri, “Thank you,” twice yesterday.  Of course, I know Siri is not real and can’t hear me and doesn’t care if I say thank you or not.  But Siri gave me a route through traffic in an unfamiliar neighborhood where I was driving.  And I was grateful when “she” pointed me to the nearest Starbucks!

Siri is really a form of artificial intelligence and AI is a form of digital transformation.  We are using AI in our personal lives as consumers a lot.  We use Amazon’s recommendations, track package shipments around the world, schedule haircuts from our cell phones, and, of course, let Siri guide us to Starbucks. 

One of the ethical questions I hear at every presentation on AI and digital transformation is:  “How far does technology go into our private lives?”  Banks, credit card companies, doctors and dentists, and even hotels have an obligation to keep our private information secure and confidential.  Yet, all institutions need access to aggregated data to better serve us as customers. 

These organizations use algorithms and software to make decisions, and these decisions range from simple to complex.  “Where is the nearest Starbucks?” is a simple analysis.  Predicting the optimum time to pull a pump from refinery service to do maintenance based on vibration logs is a sophisticated decision. 

Read on and watch the 30-second summary video.

People Decisions

My feeling is that no matter how good Amazon gets at recommending new books or products for me, my decisions will always reflect my human nature.  On Star Trek, Data’s emotion chip could make him “feel” but even his robotics were not sophisticated enough to replace logical decisions with “gut instincts”. 

Gut feel is a decision parameter based on our experience, intuition, and emotion.  Often, we talk with friends, family, and colleagues to gather information before we make decisions.  Our best decisions are logical and rational, yet they also consider our thoughts, feelings, and dreams. 

Better Decisions

Wouldn’t it be great if we could harness the power of gut feel and couple it with the logic of a robot?  In Life Design Master Mind, we explore personal and professional opportunities using Design Thinking tools.  Design Thinking is a creative and collaborative problem-solving methodology that builds on awareness and curiosity.  Design Thinking tools capture our “gut feel” to help lead us through brainstorming solutions and prototyping to find the optimal, rational answer.  Used broadly in new product development (NPD) and innovation, Design Thinking focuses on the whole problem and generates optimum solutions without pre-supposing a solution.  You can read an excerpt of my new book, The Innovation ANSWER Book, on Design Thinking here. 

Learn More

Life Design Master Mind (LDMM) is a place to explore career, product, and other life challenges.  We use Design Thinking tools to capture our feelings about work tasks, hobbies, and passions to identify the next best step in life.  A trusting peer advisory board both gives and receives help in each session.  YOU bring YOUR challenges to LDMM and YOU set the agenda.  As we embark on the master mind journey together, I will share Design Thinking tools that you can immediately apply to find joy in your job, career, and family life.  Register now.  Space is limited!

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A Division of Global NP Solutions, LLC  

Study.       Learn.       Earn.       Simple.

Leader A and Leader B

I just finished reading “The Leader You Want to Be” by Amy Jen Su.  She paints a vivid picture of two leaders – one who is firing on all cylinders and is content and another who is spinning his wheels and feeling frustrated.  She calls the first person “Leader A” and the second “Leader B”.  

What is startling is that all of us are both Leader A and Leader B.  Some days, we are engaged in productive, building strong relationships with clients, customers comment and suppliers.  We can see our legacy in the teams we build and the innovation projects we complete.  These are Leader A days.

Other times, we spend all day in seemingly pointless meetings, fighting fires, and refereeing personal conflicts.  At the end of the day, we feel spent and exhausted.  We are too discouraged to work out and bury our resentment.  These are Leader B days.  “The Leader You Want to Be” gives tips on how to increase the ratio of Leader A to Leader B days. 

Self-Awareness

In her book, Amy Jen Su discusses the importance of self-awareness.  Of course, we have to know when we are in Leader B mode to take steps to move away from it.  Yet, Leader B is as addictive as chocolate or alcohol.  It seems that if we just do a little more we can escape.  But just like having another sugary snack or glass of wine does not help the problem (and might make it worse), trying to do more with less time just makes more Leader B days occur with more intensity. 

Self-awareness means we can look at ourselves as leaders from the outside in.  We can certainly ask our trusted advisors for honest insight to our behavior and performance.  We can also observe our team interactions and results.  Missed product development deadlines and project budget overruns are symptoms of Leader B mode. 

Life Design Master Mind

Design Thinking is a set of problem-solving tools that rely on collaboration and empathy.  Design Thinking does not necessarily offer a better solution than other problem-solving methods, but it does offer an opportunity to increase our self-awareness and to utilize our network of trusted advisors.  Life Design Master Mind applies Design Thinking tools to identify the best path forward to fit personal and professional passions.  You learn how to creatively analyze situations so that you don’t let the temptations of Leader B mode derail you and maximize Leader A days.

A master mind group is a peer advisory board that meets regularly – either in person or online.  Nothing in the master mind discussion leaves the room so we are all safe to explore and learn.  Master mind group members are pre-screened to match experience levels so that everyone both gives and receives help. 

For example, in my master mind group, I recently learned tips to improve PowerPoint presentations from another group member who has expertise in digital technology.  Our facilitator has over 20 years of experience and offers valuable sales and marketing tips.  In an upcoming master mind group meeting, I am going to share my own presentation on Building Effective Cross-Functional Teams. 

In this way, all of us in the master mind group both give and receive help.  We learn from one another and, importantly, hold each other accountable to reach significant business goals and objectives.  When we do meet a goal, we all celebrate and share the sweet pleasure of success. 

Increase Your Leader A Days

All of us want to increase our Leader A days when we feel productive, efficient, and successful.  Design Thinking tools that build self-awareness (like mind mapping and customer journey maps) help us to recognize patterns of destructive Leader B behavior and pursue activities that support Leader A mode.  When we combine Design Thinking tools with a board of trusted peer advisors, the power of Life Design Master Mind results in life changing Leader A transformations. 

Learn more about Design Thinking tools with hands-on practice at the Institute of Management Consultants conference.  I’m speaking this Sunday in Dallas on how to Enhance your Consulting Skills with Creativity. Next, join me on 21 October at noon CDT (1 pm EDT/10 am PDT) for a free Q and A webinar on Life Design Master Mind.  You don’t want to miss this chance to grow your professional insights!

Routines for Innovation Teams

Last week, we discussed two key arenas for success with innovation teams – communication and the project charter.  Good communication is obvious in all areas of our lives, but we are often staggeringly inept at sharing information when needed by others.  The project charter is a critical guiding document for the team that lays out boundaries and constraints for the product development effort.  You can watch a short video on communication and charter here. 

While skills development is one of the biggest concerns for innovation executives and leaders, routines in innovation processes can build habits that drive success.  Many of the systems and processes in new product development (NPD) are detailed and sophisticated so that companies minimize risk and maximize ROI.  On the other hand, routines for project teams are simple and inexpensive with high returns. 

Rewards and Recognition

Most of us get up every day and go to work for a purpose.  We might say we need to earn money to pay the bills, but as creative professionals, our purpose in working is far deeper.  People drawn to innovation, design, and development work, value helping others and improving lives.  Hiring for Purpose is the first practice in the Initiation and Structure element of the Virtual Team Model (VTM). 

Element 1 of the Virtual Team Model

Human beings also want to reap rewards when we fulfill our purpose.  Creating a new product that makes it easier to do yard work or yield an increased throughput at the factory are achievements worth celebrating.  Recognition of successes in innovation is an important motivator for teams, especially when the challenges seem insurmountable. 

NPD teams can build rewards and recognition into their daily routines.  For example, daily stand-up meetings can also celebrate successes when goals are met, and tests are completed.  Innovation professionals can gather in an informal celebration at lunch after a successful gate review.  Displaying the first-run production batches in commemorative packaging builds morale and showcases the team’s efforts. 

Rewards and recognition should also include profit-sharing for the new product or business as well.  Profit-sharing and stock options are long-term rewards that encourage strategic development rather than quick hits.  Longer term rewards also demonstrate the organization’s commitment to learning and development for the innovation teams. 

Renewal

Too often, we are on the go all the time.  Because of the dedication to the purpose and mission of new product development, innovation professionals often put in long hours.  Especially during crunch times to meet critical deadlines and during commercial launches, team members work evenings and weekends, traveling away from their homes, families, and friends.  All of this go-go-go takes a toll. 

The Hullett Provincial Wildlife Area

Therefore, innovation teams must build routines of renewal.  It can be as simple as instituting walking meetings instead of sitting in stuffy conference rooms.  Renewal comes from relaxing the mind, body, and spirit. 

Japanese companies require a two-week vacation each year.  The reason is that you don’t really let go of your worries and concerns with just a few days away from the office.  But, in two weeks you have time to pursue a favorite hobby, breathe in nature, and rejuvenate your soul.  Renewal is also the reason that churches and universities offer sabbaticals.  The intensity of work in these professions – to help guide and educate others – must be balanced with personal renewal.  Sabbaticals give preachers and teachers an opportunity to clear their heads of day-to-day busyness and to focus on important messages. 

What is Your Innovation Routine?

Does your innovation team have routines beyond schedules and budgets cycles?  Do you recognize and celebrate all accomplishments?  Even the learnings that come from failure?  Do you reward teams with both financial and motivational honors?  Do you give your innovation professionals time for renewal?

Innovation is tough work.  If you face issues with too many failed projects and demotivated teams, consider adding routines of reward recognition and renewal.  Learn how at the complimentary Life Design Master Mind Q&A webinar on 21 October 2019 at noon CDT (1 pm EDT, 10 am PDT).  Register here.

Are Your Innovation Teams Struggling to Move Forward?

If your teams are struggling with cohesiveness and generating timely results, please join us on Friday, 6 September 2019 at 12 noon CDT for a complementary Q&A webinar on Building Effective Cross Functional Teams.  Everyone who attends the webinar receives a FREE work style assessment.

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A Division of Global NP Solutions, LLC  

Study.      Learn.      Earn.      Simple.

Two Skills for Innovation Teams

There is no question the innovation is hard work!  It is challenging to identify and create technical solutions to solve customers’ problems.   It is even more challenging to really identify those customer needs.   

Yet, innovation and new product development (NPD) are especially fun areas in which to work.  We have the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of people in our communities, around the world, and in our workplaces.  Changing for the better is a happy outcome from innovation efforts!

Innovation projects are executed by teams, usually blending a variety of functions, disciplines, and capabilities.  Cross-functional skills are necessary for successful innovation since each discipline – marketing, engineering, operations – brings unique approaches to solve problems.   Unfortunately, these diverse viewpoints can sometimes lead to conflict.   There are two skills for innovation teams that lead to increased productivity and better outcomes:  communication and chartering.

Read on or watch the short summary video here.

Communication

Communication skills can make or break the success of a team.  Cross-functional teams bring together people of different backgrounds and experience and require collaboration and cohesiveness to produce results.  Marketers speak a different language than engineers, and engineers use a different jargon than the suppliers and distributors. 

Effective communication for a cross-functional team starts with understanding internal team needs.  Using a workstyle assessment like DiSC® or Team Dimensions Profile, team members grow in self-awareness.  Understanding how we tick ourselves allows us to be more receptive of unique ideas and approaches from others. 

For example, a friend was going on a job interview.  Understanding that she preferred action-oriented relationships that produce results quickly can help her frame responses to interview questions.  Especially, in highly technical fields, people may prefer careful analysis over the speed of the response.  DiSC helps team members to recognize the strengths of their preferred working style and offers a common language to adopt for increased improved communication within the team. 

Charter

Projects without charters are like taking a drive without direction.  My dad (a farmer at heart) always liked to drive around the countryside of our town to see how harvest was going.  I found these drives boring and pointless.  I had no vested interest in harvest and I did not know the farmers whose land we passed.  On the other hand, as a CPA, my dad gained valuable knowledge on these drives.  He had a mission and purpose. 

If you don’t share the mission and purpose of the project, your innovation team members will be bored and disoriented (and may even fall asleep in the backseat!).   The project charter for the innovation effort aligns the team to the strategic mission of the project.  It explains why the work is important, who the customer is, how the work will be conducted, and what the expectations are for a finished product.  The project charter is so important in guiding the work of a cross functional team that the Project Management Institute (PMI®) says you don’t even have a project without a charter! 

Cross-Functional Team Skills

Cross-functional innovation teams become effective through a five-step process that includes:

  1. Self-awareness,
  2. Team management,
  3. Project life cycle,
  4. Charter, and
  5. Special circumstances. 

Self-awareness lays the groundwork for sharing conversations and creating open dialogue for intra- and inter-team communications.  Team management builds on the trust that comes from understanding how each individual team member prefers to work and helps the team commit to goals.

Every team goes through a standard life cycle of initiating the project, building relationships, planning the work, and doing the work.  Again, work style preferences and a foundation of trust support effective progress.  These elements are especially important for more risky innovation efforts.  And, as the life of the project advances, team processes, like the team charter keep the team on track. 

Finally, innovation leaders consider special situations or circumstances for team effectiveness.  For instance, virtual teams have special needs to utilize the generalist-specialist skills of the dispersed team members.  NPD projects with lots of government oversight and regulatory compliance require special processes and procedures, as well. 

Grow Your Team Skills

If your innovation teams suffer from a lack of open communication or are driving aimlessly you need attend our next webinar on Building Effective Cross-Functional Teams.  Part 1 covers the first two steps in the team building process:  self-awareness and team management.  Part 2 discuss is how to capitalize on the project life cycle and ensure the project charter links the effort to your strategic mission.  We also describe the Virtual Team Model so your new product development efforts can benefit from globally dispersed team members. 

Space is filling fast for the Q&A webinar on Friday, 6 September 2019 at noon CDT.  Register now!

About Me

I am inspired by writing, teaching, and coaching.   I tackle life with an infusion of rigor, zeal, and faith.   It brings me joy to help you build innovation leaders.   I am an experienced professional with a passion for lifelong learning with a PhD in Chemical Engineering and an MBA in Computer and Information Decision Making.   My credentials include PE (State of Louisiana), NPDP, PMP®, and CPEM, and I am a DiSC® certified facilitator.   Contact me at info@simple-pdh.com or area code 281 + phone 280-8717 for more information on coaching for entrepreneurs and innovators.

© Simple-PDH.com

A Division of Global NP Solutions, LLC  

Study.         Learn.         Earn.         Simple.

If Steph Curry has a Coach, Why Don’t You?

I like to watch sports on TV especially college football and pro basketball.  I like it best when my team wins but that doesn’t always happen.  Regardless of whether teams are perpetual winners or are growing in their capabilities, coaches play an important role in sports. 

I’m sometimes amazed at the number of coaches that famous and elite athletes have.  Consider Steph Curry or LeBron James, both superstar NBA players.  There is the team’s head coach, a half dozen or more assistant coaches, strength coaches, shooting coaches, and nutritional consultants.  The question is that if a superstar athlete uses and learns from multiple coaches, why do we think we can make it as innovators and entrepreneurs on our own?

Read on or watch the 30-second video summary.

What is a Coach?

Just like Chris Peterson (the coach of my beloved UW Huskies) guides players, individual business owners and innovation entrepreneurs need guidance and governance.  Of course, Peterson has assistant coaches that specialize in defense, offense, and special teams, but his role is to guide the overall effort of the team and to be a role model. 

Entrepreneurs and innovators need coaches that can offer an overall view of the work.  Coaches help individuals to identify challenges and to create action plans to close gaps.  There are executive coaches, technical coaches, and life coaches available to help entrepreneurs.  The key to coaching is accountability. 

Executive Coach

An executive coach will help you refine skills and performance to get to the next level.  Often senior management recognizes a skill gap and calls in an executive coach to help with a specific performance area.  For example, a coach may help a mid-level manager become more comfortable with sales meetings or with giving earnings presentations. 

Technical Coach

A technical coach plays a role like Steph Curry’s shooting coach.  Technical coaches are focused on helping entrepreneurs and innovators close specific skill gaps.  The area for improvement is narrowly defined and the engagement might be brief to transfer measurable knowledge and skills.  Your technical coach might be a senior staff member who also serves as a mentor.

Life Coaches

Life coaches help People sort through any array of challenges business or personal.  However, it’s important to note that our business successes impact our personal lives and vice versa.  Learning how to better prioritize work tasks has a positive spillover to being able to better prioritize home chores as well.  When we become more balanced in designing our lives, we are happier and more productive.

Coaches for Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs and innovators need coaches that cross the spectrum of executive coaching, technical skills development, and life balance.  We also need tools to manage the multitude of activities that make innovation successful – understanding goals and purpose, empathizing with the customer, prioritizing tasks, and designing a product. 

Design thinking is a set of creative and collaborative methods that aid in identifying needs and features of products and services that will satisfy customers and bring joy to the innovator.  Some of my favorite design thinking tools are the customer journey map, the affinity diagram, and the customer empathy map.  You can read about these tools here.  Innovation practitioners and entrepreneurs can use these techniques to ensure we are addressing the right problems at the right time.  Moreover, design thinking tools help innovators identify gaps in skills and performance to meet customer needs. 

Next Step:  Coaching and Design Thinking

Design thinking tools offer a simple and natural way for a person to develop new skills and to achieve balance in their professional and personal life.  Coaching drives accountability.  Join me for the free design thinking Q&A webinar on date to learn more.  Join me for a complimentary webinar to learn more about the Life Design Master Mind group.  Register now!

About Me

I am inspired by writing, teaching, and coaching.  I tackle life with an infusion of rigor, zeal, and faith.  It brings me joy to help you build innovation leaders.  I am an experienced professional with a passion for lifelong learning with a PhD in Chemical Engineering and an MBA in Computer and Information Decision Making.  My credentials include PE (State of Louisiana), NPDP, PMP®, and CPEM, and I am a DiSC® certified facilitator.  Contact me at info@simple-pdh.com or area code 281 + phone 280-8717 for more information on coaching for entrepreneurs and innovators.

© Simple-PDH.com

A Division of Global NP Solutions, LLC  

Study.        Learn.        Earn.        Simple.

Innovation Team Trust

Innovation is naturally risky.  We are not sure of the technology, markets, or product design – especially at the outset of a project.  Then, we throw people into the mix and it might seem that we are lucky to ever see new products make it to market.

Successful innovation teams share several characteristics.  Companies like Google and 3M offer unstructured time-on-the-job for individuals to pursue ideas.  Other firms focus on improved project management skills to manage the scope, schedule, and budget.  In my experience, it really is the people that make the difference between a successful innovation project and one that is so-so.

Read on or watch the short summary video!

Trust

Successful, high-performance teams build on a foundation of trust.  Trust is essential to communication and it is communication that allows us to share ideas for new product development (NPD). 

Trust means being not afraid to share an opposing view but also being open and receptive to listening to new ideas or concepts.  There’s a story that President John F. Kennedy nearly went to war in Cuba over the Bay of Pigs because his advisors were afraid to offer alternate ideas.  Everyone on the team, regardless of status, must trust one another in order to openly and honestly communicate.

Intellectual and Emotional Trust

For innovation teams we must manage both intellectual trust and emotional trust.  Intellectual trust is established when we recognize the credentials and experience of a colleague.  Knowing that a team member was an accounting degree establishes intellectual trust that he can conduct the financial analysis accurately.

Emotional trust, on the other hand, is established when we know someone else will support our position and stand up for us.  We can only build emotional trust when we have built relationships with others.  It is emotional trust that allows us to take risks – especially important for radical innovation.

Leadership

Of course, intra-team trust is built only if the leader is trustworthy.  But what makes a trustworthy leader?  A person keeps her commitments, treats others fairly, and asks questions makes a good leader.  My philosophy as a first-time pilot plant supervisor was that I’d never ask my technicians to do something I wouldn’t do.  That included staying after hours (even though I was salaried and they were paid hourly).  It meant watching gauges and monitoring process variables in the sweltering heat or cold, rainy winters of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  It meant building a relationship and building emotional trust.

Stability

Successful innovations often follow a tortuous path of development – starting with one technology and target market and ending with different technical specifications and customers.  While it might feel chaotic to change direction in the middle of a project, the best innovation leaders and teams draw stability from processes throughout the NPD life cycle.  Understanding the mission and strategy of the project is foundational to success. 

Senior executives and project leaders demonstrate trust during a project by offering tools for stability.  Project team members should be aware of expectations in their work assignments, anticipated deadlines and milestones, and follow standardized design and development processes.  By establishing stable and predictable steps in the innovation process, leaders demonstrated capability to build relationships and emotional trust.

Trust for Innovation Teams

Innovation teams need foundational trust to create risky new technologies and products. Without trust, organizations are limited to incremental innovations that suffer from intense competition and low profit margins.  Accepting risk, by building trust within a team, leads to more radical innovations and longer-term profitability.

Intellectual trust is enough if you want to fight competitors on the incremental innovation front.  But, to take new risks, teams need to build cohesive teams founded on emotional trust.  Leaders demonstrate the characteristics for successful NPD by being open and honest in communication, treating all stakeholders fairly, and listening to all perspectives.  Furthermore, leaders generate a trustworthy reputation by providing stability and predictability for the team.  Creating a project charter with roles and responsibilities, deadlines, and expectations allows a risky innovation project to follow a more predictable path to commercialization.

Learn more

There are lots of ways to learn more about building successful teams and leaders for innovation. Here are few.  Give me a call at area code 281 phone 280.8717 for more information or send me an email at info@globalnpsolutions.com.  Enjoy your innovation journey!

Act now to improve the effectiveness of your cross-functional innovation teams.  Space is limited in our complimentary Q&A webinars on Building Effective Cross-Functional NPD Teams.  Part 2 is 28 August at 12:00 noon CDT covering Steps 3 through 5 in the process:  team processes, team charters, and virtual teams.  If you missed Part 1 (self-awareness and team trust), please join us on 6 September 2019.

Learn firsthand how establishing trust can improve cross-functional NPD team effectiveness.  REGISTER NOW – spaces are filling fast!

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3 Team Lessons from Biking

I like to bicycle.  I enjoy riding either my mountain bike or road bike.  Since I recently bought a new road bike, I’ve been riding it as much as I can – and as fast as I can!

But I have a few pet peeves about cycling that have analogies in the work world.  Specifically, I observe that what bugs me when I’m cycling are traits and characteristics that drive people away from effective teamwork.  Watch the video for the 30-second solution or read on.

Use Your Indicator

A lot of people driving cars fail to use their indicators.  This is bad enough when you’re in another car, but it can truly be dangerous when you’re on a bicycle.  It takes a little longer for a cyclist to accelerate, so we use a car’s turn signal (or lack of) to help us judge when to enter or cross traffic.

On teams, you also need to use your indicator.  Other team members might know you well and hold expectations about your part of the project, but they can’t read your mind.  On top of that, each of us has a preferred work style and we project certain images and personalities to others.  One way to ensure proper communication on a team is to raise your self-awareness of your own behaviors and of your teammates’ behaviors.

In Step 1 of Building Effective Cross-Functional Teams, we will describe how the DiSC® work style assessment helps to raise self-awareness.  Once you understand your own preferred working style and those of your teammates, you can change work patterns and vocabularies to improve intra-team communications.

Keep Your Dog Leashed

I’m not afraid of dogs generally, but the other day, two large dogs chased me on my bike for two or three blocks.  I knew I could win on endurance (and probably speed), yet it still raised my blood pressure to have loud barking dogs pursuing me.  And just yesterday, a small dog ran into the road, dragging his leash behind him as his owner made no attempt to control him.  In both situations, the dogs and I could have been hurt badly.  Their humans were not managing them.

Teams need management and leadership.  For successful innovation, team leaders need to integrate different functional viewpoints as well as different work styles.  Marketing uses one jargon and R&D another set of terms.  Teams must overcome these biases to work together effectively.  Instead of using different perspectives as constraints, innovation succeeds when using varied viewpoints as strengths.

In our complimentary webinar on 31 July, you’ll learn Step 2 – team management – of Building an Effective Cross-Functional Team.  Team management starts with trust and healthy conflict.  When teams assemble tools and strategies for trust and conflict, they can commit to actions and hold each other mutually accountable for project goals.  This yields results.  Effective cross-functional teams understand and appreciate different work styles, different functional perspectives, and different approaches.  Ultimately, these teams outperform in innovation by producing more creative and customer-focused products and services.

Kamikaze Squirrels

When I was growing up, my dad constantly complained about the squirrels in our yard.  They stole the walnuts off the giant tree in our backyard and buried them in the grass, the garden, and the flower beds.  At the time, I didn’t care because I didn’t much care for my after-school chores of picking up and cleaning the walnuts anyway.

But, as a cyclist, I join my dad in disliking squirrels.  The little devils run right in front of your path, dance around, and turn back to cross your path again.  It seems like they have a death wish, and I have nearly wrecked my bike more than a few times trying to avoid these kamikaze squirrels.

Some teams have kamikaze team members.  They will never be happy and often refuse to do their assigned work.  The reasons vary.  They don’t agree with the approach, their idea is better, they are stubborn, and so on.  Effective teams, just like cyclists must watch out for these people who have self-destructive behaviors that can contaminate the team culture. 

In Step 3 of Building Effective, Cross-Functional Teams, we learn processes for working through the life cycle of a project.  The Team Dimensions Profile helps team members and leaders to understand strengths of different work styles during different phases of a project.  Creatives, for example, are great at generating ideas during the initiation phase of a project, and executors are needed to efficiently conduct the work of the project.  An individual who has a work style tendency to plan and schedule detailed tasks may identify the creatives as kamikazes trying to interrupt the workflow.

However, just as the kamikaze squirrels are trying to get back to their “home” tree, different team personalities are focusing on their “home” strengths.  We move from identifying team processes in Step 3 of Building Effective, Cross-Functional Teams to Step 4 which involves setting up team processes, like the team charter.  Finally, in Step 5, we address how to work with dispersed or virtual teams.  You will learn Steps 3 through 5 in Part 2 of our complimentary webinar and will be automatically registered for Part 2 (28 August) when you register for Part 1 (31 July) covering Steps 1 and 2.

Team Lessons from Cycling

Effective innovation teams need guidance and guardrails, just like we do on the road as cyclists.  Riding a bike means you must watch out for cars without indicators, dogs without leashes, and squirrels without direction.  Effective teams use indicators starting with work style preferences, managing their team relationships, and are wary of kamikaze behaviors. 

You can learn more about building and managing successful team behaviors at our complimentary, one-hour webinar on Wednesday, 31 July 2019 at noon CDT.  Everyone who attends Building Effective Cross-Functional Teams will receive a free work style assessment ($75 value) and you’ll be automatically registered for Part 2 on Wednesday, 28 August 2019 at noon CDT.  Space is limited!  Register now!

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Product Development Fundamentals

New product development (NPD) is a set of processes and systems that convert ideas into saleable products and services.  Successful NPD means that those processes are simple, repeatable, and lead to profit.  Nearly every organization – big or small – creates new products and services in order to stay competitive.  But, to win the competition, the business must be successful at continuous NPD.  As Peter Drucker said, “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”

Simple

NPD processes and systems must be simple to lead to repetitive success in innovation.  As an engineer, I appreciate simplicity.  The most elegant systems that humans have ever created are truly the least complicated.  And as an engineer, I know that when a system breaks down, it is much quicker and easier to troubleshoot a simple system then a complex one. 

Simple NPD processes include traditional staged-and-gated systems as well as emerging agile processes, like Scrum.  A typical staged-and-gated system for innovation requires the NPD team to lay out goals and action plans for the next stage of work.  A set of gatekeepers, will approve the course of work along with an appropriate budget and by assigning adequate resources.  In this way, each stage of work is evaluated for risk and the gate reviews ensure progress on the project as the new product moves from idea to concept to prototype and, finally, to commercialization. 

Scrum processes are also simple systems to develop new products.  In this case, flexibility in design is valued and product specifications are varied to ensure customer satisfaction.  Risk is managed via frequent customer feedback, and prototypes are created in parallel while the NPD team scopes the remainder of the project. 

Repeatable

Regardless of whether an organization chooses to follow traditional staged-and-gated NPD systems or more flexible Scrum project management frameworks, innovation processes must be repeatable.  Processes should repeatedly eliminate poor concepts early and rapidly advance the most promising ideas.  Project advancement decisions are made on a consistent and predictable basis.  As a result of repeatable innovation, investment in design and marketing is steady while new products grow in contribution to the overall product portfolio. 

Profitability

I recently heard someone say that if you’re not making sales, you are just playing with a hobby.  New product development must lead to business profits or the business will suffer.  Of course, there is an expected time period in which the investment in design and development will exceed sales, but at some point, every successful product or service turns a profit. 

As a kid, I really loved doing plastic canvas needlepoint.  I made all kinds of cool items from coasters to tissue box covers and tic-tac-toe games.  During the course of a summer, I completely saturated my mom, sisters, and grandmothers with my clever crafts.  So, I put the rest up for sale at the shop of a family friend.  After Christmas, half of my “wonderful” products came back to me.  I made a teensy, tiny profit and learned the difference between a hobby and a business.   

Fundamentals of Product Development

New product development requires three facets to be successful:  simple processes, repeatable systems, and profitable endeavors.  Without these three fundamentals an idea might be converted into a reality but not a commercial, saleable product. 

To learn more about product development fundamentals, join our easy online course at www.simple-pdh.com.  Learning about Product Development Fundamentals is the first step in your journey to becoming an innovation leader.  Contact me for more information!

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