Category: 200 words project

Early in 2010, Kaaren Hanson, VP of Design Innovation at Intuit, designed a team-based scavenger hunt with Intuit’s top 15 executives to help them explore the future of mobile opportunities. The executives were still tied to Blackberries (sacred devices at that time) and had trouble visualizing the opportunity with more modern smartphones. Hanson gave out new iPhones and Android devices to each of the teams, along with a list of different activities they had to accomplish before returning back to their base.

This challenge included diverse tasks such as checking in on Foursquare, finding something using a new GPS app, translating a clue given in a foreign language, and scanning a label to see where it came from.

Now that the executives experienced the depth of power and possibility of the new smartphone devices, mobile was no longer some far-off trend . Within the next six months, Intuit’s CEO Brad Smith was making bold statements about Intuit’s commitment to invest in mobile and cloud-based services.

So, when in doubt, consider a war-game!

Even if you’re not ready for a full-fledged immersive environment, your starter fuel for innovation could be as small as inviting new people to your next offsite, starting an important meeting with a personal story, intentionally framing questions in a new or provocative way, or by simply banning the usual materials like PowerPoint. – Lisa Kay Thompson

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Source and thanks to: 99u.com

US President Dwight Eisenhower used to have fits of anger as a child. Over time, he learnt that anger and hate clouded his judgment. And, in positions of leadership, he couldn’t afford to let that happen. So, he strived to make it a practice to avoid getting angry and hating anyone.

His technique for doing so was to write the person’s name on a piece of scrap paper, drop it into the lowest drawer of his desk, and say to himself – “That finishes the incident, and so far as I’m concerned, that fellow.” Over the years, the drawer became a sort of private wastebasket for crumbled-up spite and discarded personalities. During his time as Supreme Commander and President, he was frequently made a scapegoat by journalists for all sort of troubles. His anger drawer saved him from any negative reactions.

The learning that emerged for me – the anger drawer was Eisenhower’s method to pause and respond to adversity rather than react to it. And, he designed a system that worked really well for him. Here’s to doing that for ourselves..

Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot piece of coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one that gets burnt. | The Buddha

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Source and thanks to: Lifehacker.com

When General Motors launched Saturn, in 1985, the small car was GM’s response to surging demand for Japanese brands. However, after a brief sales peak in 1994, sales drifted steadily downward. While GM did go on to make a few changes to the division, it still went on to invest $3 billion to in 2004 to rejuvenate the brand despite continuous losses. Why?

This is a classic study in escalation of commitment – when we sink more resources into a prior decision despite new information telling us otherwise. How do we avoid this?

Well-run private equity firms may have an answer for us. One leading US firm assigns independent partners to conduct periodic reviews of businesses in its portfolio. If Mr. Jones buys and initially oversees a company, Ms. Smith is charged with reviewing it and is made accountable for the unit’s final performance. Although the process can’t eliminate the possibility that the partners’ collective judgment will be biased, the reviews not only make biases less likely but also make it more likely that under-performing companies will be sold before they drain the firm’s equity.

Here’s to more independent audits of our own decisions – especially when we find ourselves doubling down on losing investments.

The key to success, it seems, lies not in never quitting, but in knowing when to quit. That can be a tall order for people who like a concrete set of rules to follow, including “Never quit.” The data on quitting may just be further evidence of that so hard to swallow truth, that the only hard and fast rule of adulthood is to make your own rules, and even then be open to changing them. – Jessica Rotondi on the sunk cost fallacy, Huffington Post

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Source and thanks to: The McKinsey Quarterly

284 experts on political and economic trends were asked to make simple black-and-white predictions on their respective areas of expertise. The economists were asked about future economic growth while political experts were asked about future outcomes of elections. These experts all made their living by making predictions. By 2003, 82000+ predictions were collected.

The results?
– Even the best forecasters did worse than the “base rates,” e.g., predicting that an economy will grow at 2.8% given we know it has been growing at 2.8% over the last 5 years
– Extra education or experience (e.g. a P.hD) didn’t boost accuracy
– Media attention did prove predictive. Experts who made more predictions on TV and the radio performed significantly worse.

So, Chip and Dan Heath suggest that we watch out for “expert” predictions when we make decisions in our lives. Experts are best leveraged to understand the likelihood of events occurring based on the past (a.k.a. base rates). Once we have that data, it is best we prepare for various scenarios, then go out and test our assumptions and let the facts stand up for themselves.

Source and thanks to: www.EBSketchin.com

Because we’re so poor at predicting the future, we need to treat the future as a spectrum of possibilities. The future is not a point, but a range. – Chip Heath and Dan Heath

Source and thanks to: Decisive by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

Axiata Group is one of the largest Asian telecommunication companies. Its CEO, Jamaludin Ibrahim, who has overseen a period of hyper growth, had a big challenge when he took office – to bring together all the operating companies in the group and make them work in unison.

So, he invited all his business leaders to a leadership summit in Tokyo. And, rather than concentrate on organizational issues, he asked each participant to pretend they had his job and write a fictional press release dated in the future explaining how they had accomplished the company’s growth objectives. This approach forced them to begin with the end in mind, rethink the way things were done and paved the way for cooperation among them on various fronts.

Similarly, Amazon.com requires product teams to write a press release before they begin developing a product so they visualize the end and align everyone involved to achieve it.  And, these press releases are written in “Oprah-speak” (how would you explain your product on Oprah?) rather than “geek speak.” After all, iterating on a press release is a lot quicker and less expensive than iterating on the product/problem itself.

Source and thanks to: IBM CEO study, The Everything Store by Brad Stone

The JW Marriott hotel in Pune, India, is an award winning hotel in the JW Marriott chain of hotels.

A part of their secret sauce is that the management team executes a system called the DIR – or daily incident report – extremely well.  Every member of staff is encouraged to report any problems they spot or mistakes they made in the DIR.  And, the management team’s response? No consequence or reprimand when a problem is reported.

The rationale is straightforward – a problem can only be solved if it is reported. The management team’s focus is on the fact that individuals own up to mistakes they make.  It, then, becomes the senior manager’s job to resolve the mistake and to do their best to make sure that the guest comes back.

The team also uses the DIR for purposes beyond problems – if a guest is not feeling well, for example, it goes into the DIR. So, the next day, when the guest is in the lobby, there are at least two or three members of staff asking them if they are well.

Could we test a DIR-like system in our teams?

“We’ve created a culture where nobody works on threats, because you cannot deliver exceptional service with threats.” | Subhash, The JW Marriott Management Team

Source and thanks to: RealLeaders.tv interview with the JW Marriott team

Volunteers were brought into a study and separated into teams to fold shirts. Half the team leaders were instructed to speak assertively/powerfully (“Do this!”) and the other half to speak tentatively/powerlessly (“Do you think doing this would be a good idea?”).

It was found that teams with proactive team members had 22% higher output under leaders who spoke tentatively. Proactive team members viewed them as open and receptive while they viewed leaders who made an effort to be assertive to be afraid of new ideas. The same study showed to be true in pizza delivery teams.

This behavior was found to be reversed in passive teams with less interested and less proactive team members. The more proactive the team, the less the need for an assertive leader and vice versa.

So, an Adam Grant leadership tenet – identify how proactive your team is and adjust your assertiveness accordingly.

When people think you’re trying to influence them, they put their guard up. But when they feel you’re trying to help them, or to muse your way to the right answer, or to be honest about your own imperfections, they open up to you. – Susan Cain (she was clearly talking about proactive people :-))

Source and thanks to Give and Take by Adam Grant.

Here’s this week’s 200 word idea thanks to Malcolm Gladwell’s TED talk with a hat tip to Prof Jen Brown @ the Kellogg school for sharing.

Campbell soup went to psychophysicist Howard Moskowitz to help fix their Prego brand of spaghetti sauce in the 1980s. Prego was struggling and Campbell wanted Moskowitz to find the perfect Prego recipe.

So, Howard looked through mountains of data about how American people felt about spaghetti sauce. But, instead of looking for a perfect variety (a hypothesis that completely neglected diversity), he tried to see if there were clusters. And, sure enough, he found people who liked 3 kinds of sauces – plain, spicy and extra chunky.

Prego were shocked at his findings because there was no extra-chunky spaghetti sauce in the market. So, Prego completely reformulated their spaghetti sauce, and came out with a line of extra chunky that immediately and completely took off, making 600 million dollars in 10 years. It was a powerful insight – there is no “one” spaghetti sauce – one that economists call horizontal differentiation.

We often find ourselves looking for one perfect solution to solve a problem (or find happiness). But, Gladwell shares what he thinks is the most beautiful lesson from Moskowitz’s work – in embracing the diversity of human beings, we find a surer way to true happiness.

Source and thanks to: The Daily Eater

That’s when everyone else in the industry looked at what Howard had done, and they said, “Oh my god! We’ve been thinking all wrong!” And that’s when you started to get seven different kinds of vinegar, and 14 different kinds of mustard, and 71 different kinds of olive oil. – Malcolm Gladwell

Here’s this week’s 200 word idea thanks to Decisive by Chip Heath and Dan Heath..

At a time when call-centers kept revisiting their hiring process because the average employee left within 3 months, Evolve tried a different approach. They called it “a realistic job preview.”

On day 1, the trainers showed applicants everything negative about the job. They took them through an example of a bad customer call with an irate customer who insulted them, then spoke about the bad hours and the difficulties to commute to their center.

Almost as soon as they started this practice, they experienced decrease in turnover with savings of $1.6M in a call-center that employed 5000. The reason for the success of the job preview was not because it scared off applicants. Very few actually change their decision. Instead, it simply ensures vaccinated them to surprises and made them decide they would succeed.

As a result, the author’s advise – when starting on a new project, try getting a preview from others who have done it. These experiences trigger coping mechanisms and help us trigger responses long before we face real problems.

Source and thanks to: www.EBSketchin.com

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. – Viktor Frankl