Working in the world that we do, we hear terms like innovation and strategy quite often. I want to take some time to look at innovation, with the help of some resources used in post-graduate coursework I was challenged with completing.
The course was titled Leading Innovation, and we discussed an article by Diego Rodriguez from IDEO which really resonated with me. I immediately started thinking about our interactions with clients regarding their products and the recommendations we make for their improvements. Rodriguez has 21 principles for innovating in his article which you can read more on if you wish, I wanted to highlight 10 that I feel impact the way we should be thinking about innovating for our clients.
- Experience the world instead of talking about experiencing the world
This is critical as we adjust from one client to the next with differing business models, audiences, and goals. We must take the time to experience our client’s products with the mindset of their specific audiences seeking to accomplish their specific goals. - Prototype as if you are right, Listen as if you are wrong
We are all human. We all want to think our ideas and approaches are the best, and we want to be confident in our recommendations. On the flip side of this coin, we must listen to feedback without attachment, and listen closely for the breaking points, or failures in the given approach so that we can accurately adjust without missing the mark again. - Live life at the intersection
This one led to my reading of another book on innovation, The Medici Effect, which explores successful ways of looking for innovation at the intersections in our lives. This is uniquely important for us as we constantly work at intersections; between disciplines, between clients, between goals, and between technologies. We can expand our way of thinking by looking at how these intersections can improve the products for our clients. Take a look at what has been successful for one client, and look at how that success might intersect with the goals of another. None of us like to live in silos, and 10up’s value to clients can be multiplied if we learn from our own successes and share the wealth. - Most new ideas aren’t
Building on the intersections, and also a big part of client support, we have enormous resources living from project to project. If you run into an idea for innovating, ask around. Explore peers to get insights that might have similar experience on a project that you may not be aware of. - Baby steps often lead to big leaps
We often times get presented with long-term goals that require a big leap from our current situation. By taking a step back, and looking at the milestones that live within those leaps we can organize an approach and think about innovation in more achievable near-term goals. This also allows you an opportunity to build a cache of small wins leading to the larger victory which ultimately helps to continue the illustration of our value to clients. - Everyone needs time to innovate
This is easier than it sounds in the agency world, but it is critical to continuing to improve our craft, and provide value to our clients. If you are struggling to find the time to step back and put solid thought into a project or ask, talk with your supervisors and/or the accounts team member assigned to the project, and explore opportunities to set this time aside. There may be openings to upsell or present the time as billable to the client with the correct framing, and if we don’t know you want the time, we can’t help in pushing that forward. - Do everything right, and you’ll still fail
Acknowledging that failure will occur, enables us to make a leap to a more productive way of thinking. There will be mistakes. Goals will shift. Clients will change their mind. These are all inevitable as we are all still human. That doesn’t lessen the importance of your idea, and shouldn’t distract you from striving to innovate for our clients…because of the next principle. - Failure sucks, but instructs
Rodriguez coined what he calls “Raney’s Corollary” which says, “you only learn, when things start breaking.” If we understand that mistakes will be made, and things will shift and even break, then we can focus on learning from the times when they do. There are two trains of thought here and we should take advantage of both through transparency and continued learning across the team. Train 1 operates under the idea of learning from other’s mistakes, because you will never have enough time to make them yourself. Train 2 is on the track with learning being exponential when you make the mistakes yourself. If we share not only our wins, but also our failures we can leverage both trains and help to extend our education to those around us that may be rounding the same turn on another project. - Celebrate errors of commission, Stamp out errors of omission
I’m sure the use of the term “celebrate” here is not likely the company line, but I hope you can see the value here. By lining up principles 7 and 8, we can start to see the value of learning what doesn’t work. This also sets up the idea of maximizing the education gained and understanding that if we don’t do anything in attempt to solve the problem, we could be doing more damage than taking the risk of experimenting. Of course we have to be wise with this since we are an agency, and our time is often the client’s money, but we also don’t want to slide into a realm of fear where all we do is sit back and wait for client direction and avoid taking some risks in recommending solutions and projects that could have positive impact for the client and their business. - Have a point of view
I would venture to say that you would not be at 10up if you weren’t at the top of your field. Have confidence in that, and share your point of view. The collective brain power at 10up is amazing, and if we don’t share our point of view with teammates and clients then we diminish the exponential power of the collective. Come ready to innovate, and have the confidence and conviction to share your point of view.
Now that you have these points of note in your brain, I also want to touch on two different ways of looking at the work we do for our clients: “routine” and “innovative.” Routine work looks to drive out variation and failure, while looking at the same old things in the same old way to ensure the variance decreases as well as the cost along with it. This way of thinking is all about minimizing the continued investment in a product while you work to build a long-term support model.
To contrast this, innovative work seeks to increase both the variances and failures in order to seek out a more expansive impact on the product or project. This way of thinking sees the risk/reward of experimenting with innovation, and values the advancement of the product through these steps. It is key to have stopping measures defined so that we avoid compounding a failure at the sacrifice of learning from the feedback gathered.
We need to understand the mindset of our clients and their businesses to know which should be our focus. This is not to say that we can’t also think of innovative ways to improve the routine work for those clients that don’t have the appetite for investing in innovative thinking and experimentation.
I want to leave you with a quote from the article and my course that really hit home…
“Strategy should bring clarity to an organization; it should be a signpost for showing people where you, as their leader, are taking them — and what they need to do to get there. People need to have a visceral understanding — an image in their minds — of why you’ve chosen a certain strategy and what you’re attempting to create with it. Because it’s pictorial, design describes the world in a way that’s not open to many interpretations.”
Tim Brown, IDEO CEO
Letter 10 