Contrarian Thinking
Innovation is a very large ten-letter word. It usually conjures images of vast sums of money invested over lengthy periods of time resulting in significant change in products, services, processes or entire organizations. Anything small or incremental runs contrary to achieving success.
Or does it?
I've recently encountered two works that promote seemingly contrarian approaches to solving the types of problems that can lead to lasting change. These same techniques can help offset the "analysis paralysis" that often blocks the innovation process.
In their new book Switch, Chip and Dan Heath suggest that the key to solving big problems can be found by looking at similar situations where things are actually working well - in other words, by focusing on the bright spots. Instead of tackling an entire system at once, the idea is to investigate easy-to-observe elements of the system; instead of trying to fix what's broken, try to emulate what's working instead. The authors illustrate this point with an exploration of malnutrition in rural Vietnam. Instead of relying on heaps of socioeconomic data about poverty and education, for example, a research team went out into the field to understand what was actually going on in the villages, and even made villagers part of the investigative team. Taking this approach had remarkable results in the discovery of dietary habits with surprising nutritional value.
Robert Maurer's 2004 book One Small Step Can Change Your Life discusses the concept of kaizen, the Japanese philosophy of continuous improvement. Similar to the Heath brothers, Maurer promotes a focus on breaking a systemic issue down into smaller pieces (specifically, "small problems") as a more manageable way to deal with an overwhelming crisis. He suggests that asking small questions and taking small steps can dispel fear of failure, inspire greater creativity, and generally stave off inertia. Maurer, a clinical psychologist at UCLA, illustrates this concept through the successful efforts of individuals seeking to improve their health, financial stability, or personal productivity. As with the stories told in Switch, these too have positive outcomes.
The guidance offered by these two books is characteristic of design thinking - itself a contrarian concept that showcases inspiration, intuition, and experience as key elements of the innovation process. The Heaths' "seeking the bright spot" is a human-centered approach to insight gathering that is based on observing how people actually behave in a specific context in order to design solutions with broad impact. Maurer's "taking small steps" is suggestive of rapid prototyping where pursuing a series of low investment experiments can increase the pace of learning towards reaching more significant outcomes. Both of these techniques have application to innovating in the nonprofit sector, a sector that passionately tackles society's biggest challenges utilizing minimal resources. Contrary to the complexity of these efforts, a focus on small steps and bright spots can actually help lay the groundwork for transforming our world.
Laura Weiss is the Vice President of Service Innovation at the Taproot Foundation. The newest member of the Taproot team, Laura comes to the Taproot Foundation after nine years as Associate Partner and Practice Director with the world-renowned design consultancy IDEO, where she was an advocate for bringing a business perspective to the design process. A former licensed architect and educator, Laura holds an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management, an MArch from Yale University and a BArch with honors from Cornell University.
Laura,
I think we need to separate Transformational change from Continuous Improvement (CI) or step change. The former usually is the result of a cataclysmic event (takeover, failure to deliver, etc..). CI is something we should look to do each day in a step-by-step fashion. The 6-sigma world is basically a process to manage continuous improvement.
The 2 forms of change require different levels of investments, approaches and usually pain.
What is consistent with what you have noted above is that both forms of change work best if the actual users (owners of the activity to change), are involved and feel they are contributing to the change. Forced change is always hard, but an approach where people make their own improvements (and see the rewards), always has the most lasting results.
Thanks for the article and making us think.
Dale Myers
Pinole, CA USA
interesting. so the "contrarian thinking" is to focus on what's working and take small steps in the right direction? this sounds to me like what most nonprofits HAVE been doing amidst a lot of criticism... It's the upstart, "new paradigm" groups who get the press and the new dollars but with this thinking, the philanthropy world might be better served by looking at those who have made slow but steady progress chipping away at an issue. An innovator/activator truly partnered with those experienced voices could make real inroads in building on the positives.
Right - the idea is that innovation can take many forms. It's not always about bright shiny objects. And it's not always about the next big idea - rather, the most profound innovation often happens around execution, not ideation. Taking small steps can help pave the way....
Laura and Lara's comments underscore what makes innovation and change efforts go "viral".
Innovation's take off when existing receptors are ready, willing and wanting. Innovations that fly over or fail to meet these requirements flame out.
Perhaps the tougher challenge is harnessing the momentum gained at initial reception and spreading it to accelerate innovation diffusion (read viral). Non-profits leverage the passion for the "cause" inherent in their work but distance and differences still get in the way.
I believe that we need to move from solar system models where change emanates outward from the center to network models where local nodes have distinctly different citizenship norms which foster accountability for diffusing innovation. see http://bit.ly/czrWYO for more if interested
Great first post, Laura. This follows the thinking of the Strengths Finder 2.0 book that Aaron Hurst had blogged about previously.
This is a little bit of a tangent, but I'm somehow also reminded of one of Obama's campaign challenges/statements/questions: “The question is not what are you against, but, what are you for?"
Taproot is one of the few organizations I know that is truly and endlessly trying to innovate. It's incredibly inspiring to watch, and feel a part of to some extent.
Welcome to the team, Laura.
- John
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