Marina Gorbis's Blog, page 1329

How We’ll Really Feel if Robots Take Our Jobs

Visitors staying at Starwood’s Aloft Hotel in Cupertino, California, not only have the luxury of humans greeting them and toting around their luggage. They also may be taken care of by a robot bellhop, named Botlr, who is mainly charged with delivering toiletries to guests’ rooms and eliciting smiles along the way.

Of course, by referring to a robot as “who,” I’m already starting to blur the line between humans and machines, something Brian McGuiness, Aloft’s global brand leader, was keen to address in a recent interview with my colleague. “This isn’t going to replace associates or our talent,” he said. “For us, it was really just to augment the team that’s there.”

Despite assurances like these, there’s palpable nervousness among us workers about whether or not robots and algorithms will eventually take our jobs (including yours truly, but I’m generally nervous about everything). This is evidenced, and perhaps brought on by, the number of news reports about hot new bots, a depressed job market still inching out of a global recession, and a much-discussed “skills gap” when it comes to STEM fields. (The Upshot’s Claire Cain Miller does a nice job of putting all of these trends into context.) Even experts are pretty divided about whether or not robots will take our jobs.

The “enormous doom and gloom” about “botsourcing,” as Harvard Business School’s Michael Norton puts it, is part of the reason he and Kellogg School of Management’s Adam Waytz set out to study the emotions surrounding the question of robots in our workforce. “Much like the debate over outsourcing — when jobs previously performed in one country are outsourced to workers in another country — we found that people had strong emotional reactions to the notion that robots were poised to ‘take over.'”

In a series of experiments, Norton and Waytz tested exactly how these emotions work, and particularly whether the type of work being performed — described as either “thinking” or “feeling” jobs — changed how a person felt about a robot taking their job.

The researchers turned to members of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, the online task marketplace, to help answer these questions. Because jobs posted on the platform can vary from “evaluating advertising materials to generating a list of Bach compositions,” there’s a built-in range when it comes to emotional and cognitive tasks. The researchers then bolstered this range by presenting tasks to users as either “requiring the capacity for thinking and the ability to be rational” or requiring “the capacity for feeling and the ability to be emotional.” They then asked how comfortable they would be with a robot taking a task in general, and then specifically about taking a task they were originally supposed to perform.

“We were surprised by how consistent our results were,” reports Norton. “Again and again, we saw that while people were somewhat comfortable with robots performing ‘thinking’ types of jobs (like accounting), they became much more opposed when we asked them about robots performing ‘feeling’ jobs (like elementary school teachers).”

But in a twist, they also found that some simple reframing can alter emotional reactions. “People’s views were somewhat flexible,” says Norton. “We found that people were less opposed to botsourcing of teaching jobs when we described the same job as requiring more thinking skills (numbers) than feeling skills (the mentoring.”

This is something businesses should keep in mind. While their research certainly doesn’t indicate that people are wildly excited about robots in the workplace, “companies considering botsourcing are wise to — if possible — limit the practice to jobs that people deem suitable for robots: those that do not require emotional intelligence.”

Norton and Waytz’s work augments the growing scholarship about what it means as robots become part of our workforce, be it in manufacturing or traditional knowledge work. We know, for instance, that how we design robots matters when it comes to emotion; in one case from Carnegie Mellon University, researchers found that people anthropomorphized a treat-delivering robot aptly named “Snackbot,” building levels of trust and rapport. Snackbot’s presence also changed how people related to one another, changing the organizational dynamic.

In another example, a researcher found that people rated robots with male names higher than robots with female ones if the robot was performing security work. Gender bias, it seems, is alive and well with artificial intelligence, too.

What all of this boils down to is the fact that the robots-and-jobs question isn’t merely an economic or macro-societal one; it’s also a fairly complicated management issue. And while groups like The Future of Life Institute are laying the groundwork for the ethical creation and use of robots, it seems like similar considerations should be considered when it comes to robots at work. The ethical management of robots, in other words, and how robots will ethically manage us.

After all, as Norton and Waytz point out at the end of their research, humans are remarkably prone to becoming emotionally attached to AI. In the 1960s, MIT’s Joseph Weizenbaum created ELIZA, a computer program capable of conversing with humans via a chat mechanism. It mimicked Rogerian psychotheraphy — think answers like “Who else in your family hates you?” when you complain that your mom hates you.

Weizenbaum, who died in 2008, was said to have been “stunned to discover that his students and others became deeply engrossed in conversations with the program, occasionally revealing intimate personal details,” according to an obituary written in The New York Times. Their attachment to ELIZA didn’t change much, when they were clued into the fact that they weren’t talking to an actual person.

In the end, the programmer became a critic of artificial intelligence. But the blurring of what the human mind can only do —  and what we’ll accept as its alternative — hasn’t gone away. As Norton tells it, reflecting on ELIZA’s legacy, “even for jobs that people typically believe require human emotional intelligence, research may still uncover ways in which even the most emotional jobs might be botsourced.”

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Help Your Overwhelmed, Stressed-Out Team

Is your team stressed out? These days, everyone seems overwhelmed and way too busy. But even when your team members have a lot on their plates, they don’t have to sacrifice their health or happiness. What can you do to reduce your team’s stress? How can you help them focus on what really needs to get done?

What the Experts Say

As a leader, it’s your job to help your people find balance. Of course, you need results, but you also want a team that’s not at constant risk of being burnt out. Research shows that memory, attention, and concentration suffer when people try to manage the constant stream of communication and distraction that’s a regular part of the workplace. Julie Morgenstern, productivity expert and author of Never Check E-Mail in the Morning, sees this every day: “Almost everyone struggles to focus at work,” she says. “We want to think, write, and strategize, but because these functions require deep thinking and uninterrupted time, we stay busy with the tasks, meetings, and messages that pop up all day long rather than tackling really important projects.” Liane Davey, vice president of team solutions at Knightsbridge Human Capital and author of You First, agrees, noting that an overly busy office can kill morale and leave employees disengaged and less capable of getting everything done. It’s on you, the manager, to help your people cut through the chaos, reduce stress, and make sure your team can accomplish its most important work.

Focus your team on the things that matter

The first step, says Davey, is to identify the unique contribution your team makes to the organization. Begin by asking, “What does the company expect from my team that no other group can accomplish?” Don’t answer this alone in your office. Involve your team. Once you all agree on your team’s purpose, it becomes the guiding principle for how everyone should spend their time and the litmus test for what work team members should take on and what they should let go.

Further Reading




Manage Your Team’s Collective Time

Productivity Article

Leslie Perlow

Companies that make time management a group effort increase productivity as well as morale.




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Edit their workload

Evaluate each project based on whether or not it’s in what Davey calls “the sweet spot” — what you’ve previously identified as your group’s unique purpose, what they’re good at, and what’s important to the larger goals of the organization. “It’s the manager’s responsibility to develop an action plan that allows everyone to be more productive and to insulate their teams from low-priority work that may trickle down from senior management,” she says. When a new assignment comes your way, don’t automatically say yes. “Remember to consider each project with an eye to whether or not it takes advantage of what your team, and only your team, has to offer,” Morgenstern says.

Schedule uninterrupted work

“When you get distracted by something at work,” says Morgenstern, “it takes at least 20 minutes to refocus on the task at hand.” Encourage your team to set aside an hour or more (Morgenstern’s team gives it three hours) each morning for quiet, proactive work. “Be sure everyone understands that there are to be no interruptions unless it’s an emergency,” she recommends. By making it a group goal, you increase your collective focus and prevent backsliding. Also check that your team members know how to break larger projects up into smaller tasks that can be accomplished in the amount of time you’ve set aside for strategic work each day. “Once they use this time effectively,” she says, “their productivity will improve.”

Fix your meetings

“Meetings can be a huge waste of time,” says Davey. To avoid that problem, “every meeting should include standing agenda items to allow for productive discussions and decision making about the team’s core assignments,” she says. Morgenstern suggests that managers establish no more than three objectives, decide who needs to be there, set limits on the duration of meetings, and use the last 15 minutes to clarify how the participants will move forward. Above all, make sure a meeting is really necessary. “Sometimes an email or memo can accomplish the same goal in a much shorter amount of time,” she suggests.

 Set limits on e-mail

Technology has created an always-on culture, where work bleeds into evenings and weekends. But that can be counterproductive if your people never feel they have a break. Morgenstern suggests setting boundaries on the work day and limiting after-hours emails to urgent issues. “So many people are addicted to their phones, but over time, most people realize that there’s very little that can’t wait and that it’s far more important to connect to what’s meaningful to us both personally and professionally,” she says. The brain is actually wired for rest, adds Davey. “Without taking time to recharge, we create unsustainable levels of stress and anxiety.”

Lead by example

When setting new norms for your team, you need to walk the talk yourself. “The movement against busy starts at the top,” Davey says, pointing to the way Jeff Weiner of LinkedIn schedules time for what he calls “nothing.” Talk to your team about what you’re doing and why, Morgenstern recommends, and if one of your strategies isn’t working, admit it, try something different, and move on. Show that you’re committed to making a change both individually and as a group. “It takes a while to break these habits,” she says, “but once you all get used to a deeper sense of accomplishment, you’ll never go back.”

Principles to Remember

  Do:

 Agree on what’s unique about your group’s skills and experience
 Reduce or eliminate assignments that don’t align with your team’s purpose
 Schedule time for high-level, strategic work

  Don’t

E-mail your employees at all hours — set limits on technology use
Call meetings without an explicit purpose — stick to an agenda
Underestimate the importance of your own behavior — you set the norms on your team

Case Study #1: Set a good example

“As an organization and an industry, we’re as plugged in as we can possibly be, so we have to be deliberate about managing the flow of information and staying clear about our priorities,” says Lindsey Turrentine, vice president and editor-in-chief of reviews for CNET. “Otherwise, the work won’t be as good.”

In order to protect her staff from getting overwhelmed, she makes sure they know what they’re supposed to deliver and sets clear timelines for the work. “That way we’re able to meet our daily responsibilities and stay focused on our mission of creating innovative ways to deliver information to consumers.”

She regularly blocks off time in her own calendar and sets CNET’s internal instant messaging system to unavailable when she needs quiet, focused time. And she encourages her team members to do the same as long as they make themselves available at other times and coordinate with each other. “It’s not enough to simply set the limits,” she adds. “You need to take time to explain what you’re doing and why. It’s my job to make sure the work gets done and that my staff can walk away at the end of their shifts knowing that someone else is prepared and ready to take the baton.”

Case Study #2: Make time for your most important work

“Our employees were really struggling to manage their workload,” says Steven Handmaker, Chief Marketing Officer at Assurance, an independent insurance brokerage. Too many emails, too many meetings, and too many interruptions had brought everyone to their breaking point. Management decided to bring in a consultant to help. His recommendation: implement priority-work time.

Every employee at every level was encouraged to schedule a certain number of hours to complete important projects. “The consultant suggested 15 hours per week,” Steven says, “which was a huge shock.”

Nevertheless, the leadership team, including Assurance’s CEO, began scheduling priority-work time in their calendars, and employees enthusiastically followed suit. “It took about six months for the entire company to get used to the new system,” Steven says.  Most employees now have eight to ten hours on their calendars blocked off each week, and everyone is responsible for supporting their colleagues and employees in doing the same. If Steven sees that his team isn’t planning and using priority-work time, it’s his responsibility to speak to them and find out why.

How successful has priority-work time been? “What we know for sure,” says Steven, “is that our employees are happier. We’ve received awards from Fortune, the Chicago Tribune, and from industry organizations for being a great place to work. But we also see internally that the rapid adoption of this practice means that it’s been successful. We respect how hard everyone works, and part of that is simply letting people do their jobs.”

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Your Customers’ Behavior Is a Competitive Advantage

At a reception for JetBlue’s most frequent Mosaic flyers, I had the opportunity to listen to the airline’s top management discuss its ambitions to improve operations and enhance customer experience. The discussion was excellent and — on a whim — I asked one of the most senior executives what JetBlue’s customers could do to improve the airline. He paused for a long moment and essentially responded, “The most important way our customers could improve the airline would be by being more polite.” He talked about how stressful and debilitating it was for ticket agents, gate agents, and flight attendants to deal with rude and ill-mannered flyers. Nicer customers, he maintained, would make for a nicer experience for everyone.

Lo and behold, JetBlue recently announced a series of in-craft “jetiquette” videos for its flyers. The hope and expectation, of course, is that these visual “nudges” will preemptively smooth the air travel’s rougher edges. “We wanted to say, ‘We’ve all been there. We get it, and let’s talk about it,’” declared one JetBlue executive about #FlightEtiquette. “It’s a universal truth of flying.”

As big a fan as I am about organizational learning and the need to relentlessly refresh and renew employee human capital, I’m an even bigger fan of investing in how customers and clients create value. Making customers better makes better customers. Improving employees and associates is smart business. But so is improving your customers and clients. What — and how — your customers learn to make your business run better should be every bit as important as what—and how—you want your employees to learn, as well. Customers need to learn from you almost as much as you need to learn from customers. Serious customer experience design debates in organizations should focus almost as much on customer learning as customer delight.

This point was powerfully reinforced when listening to Nadia Shouraboura, former head of Amazon’s Supply Chain and Fulfillment Technologies and founder of Hointer, an innovative “digiphysical” retail startup, at an Intel roundtable on the future of retail experience. Shouraboura mentioned almost in passing that Hointer’s Seattle store makes a point of digitally keeping track of which customers like being approached by salespeople and which ones prefer to be left alone. But she noted that the data indicated that, “customers who liked being left alone ended up asking more questions than those who liked being helped.”

To me, that behavior’s not counterintuitive or unusual at all: most prospects and customers want the power to choose when to seek help and ask questions. The issue isn’t whether or when retailers should physically approach in-store customers, it’s what expectations retailers want to cultivate and inculcate in their customers with regard to assistance. In other words, Hointer is figuratively — if not literally — training its customers to shop on their own terms. Hointer’s salespeople are as much information resources as people who sell.

That distinction’s not subtle. As both a technology and retailer innovator — not unlike Amazon! — Hointer is educating its shoppers to shop in a different way with different norms and different expectations. The product of that education is not just a more sophisticated Hointer shopper, but a shopper who may now become impatient with the delays, inefficiencies, and inferior experiences proffered by other retailers. That’s where value-added differentiation and competitive advantage come from. That’s why helping customers learn can be as strategically important as learning from customers.

This is where a lot of UX design strategies fall short. Yes, Amazon, Apple and Facebook use data and analytics to learn a lot from and about their customers. But does anyone doubt that Steve Jobs, Jonny Ive, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg have done a fantastic job of educating and training their best users and customers to — with apologies to TBWA/Chiat/Day — “Behave Different”?

If a smarter, more knowledgeable or more polite customer can measurably reduce the friction of commerce — or measurably increase the ability to get value from an innovation — than that may be a much better investment than boosting the smarts, knowledge or good manners of an employee. The two aren’t mutually exclusive, of course — but they certainly aren’t the same.

Debate all you want about how best to communicate and sell the virtue of your products and service offerings. But never forget to seriously debate how even tiny investments in improving customers might lead to large-scale insights in improved customer experiences.

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Office Politics Is Just Influence by Another Name

Most of us cringe when we think about office politics. It’s a disgusting, immoral mess that we try to avoid. After all, who wants to participate in backstabbing, lying, cheating, blaming, sucking up, and playing people against each other? Or maybe you take a slightly less offensive view of office politics and see it as controlling agendas, building covert alliances, protecting access to key leaders, and holding “meetings before the meeting.” No matter what your take, it’s not surprising that honest people don’t want to get involved.

But are politics at work inherently dirty?

The truth is that just being a member of an organization is a political act. And in fact, we must influence people at work all the time. It’s how we get things done. And to influence, we must have power, the real currency in workplaces. Most people want it. All of us need it. In healthy organizations, we “get” power, or are granted power, by virtue of our ability to inspire and provide vision. We also get power as a result of what we can do for people. In companies that value people and results, we are granted power because we help to create a vibrant climate and a resonant culture that is ripe with hope, enthusiasm, and a can-do spirit. In such companies power is used well – for the good of people and the enterprise.

Office politics is really just the art of influencing others so we can get stuff done at work. And, despite the bad rap that politics gets, successfully engaging in politics requires the development and use of good qualities. For example, Gerald Biberman’s research found that those who engage in office politics are more likely to have an internal locus of control — they believe they can influence people and outcomes, which motivates them to get into the mix and try to get things done through others. At best, such confidence is grounded in self-awareness, self-management, and a desire to move people for the good of all. The combination of emotional intelligence and, what the late great David McClelland, called socialized power, can result in influence strategies that make people enjoy working together toward common goals.

Linda Hill and Kent Lineback, authors of Being the Boss argue that leaders should stop avoiding office politics. They note that people who actively steer clear of politics don’t do what the best leaders always do — build strong, positive relationships that serve a purpose beyond simple friendship (although that’s nice, too). My co-authors and I call these relationships “resonant”.

Resonant relationships are bonds we build as a result of truly seeing people and valuing them for who they are. These powerful relationships are grounded in empathy as well as authenticity and mutual respect. In such relationships, we come to know what drives people and what they value, and can hence inspire, motivate, and influence in a way that makes them feel valued. People who avoid office politics miss out on all of this, as well as on receiving help, benefiting from mutual support, and even having fun. Rob Ashgar, writing for Forbes, takes it step further, arguing that office politics is the art of getting along with others and of putting yourself in positions where your work will be noticed. That’s not bad. That’s simply a smart thing to do.

Further Reading







HBR Guide to Office Politics

Communication Book
Karen Dillon


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Politics, then, can be okay to engage in. Unless, of course, your organization is toxic (which too many are). If the politicos in your organization are Machiavellian types you’ll notice lots of lying for personal gain, self-aggrandizement, clever flattery, and people taking delight in crushing weaker team members and enemies. Research suggests that Machiavellian individuals tend to have lower emotional intelligence — particularly when it comes to empathy and recognizing emotions. These people — and there are a lot of them, to be sure — are destructive, self-centered horrors to work with. How can you protect yourself from these people? To start, engage your social awareness skills and ferret them out. Don’t be fooled by their flattery. Then, you’ve got to have clever strategies for avoiding them or beating them at their own game, without becoming manipulative yourself.

We can’t avoid politics and we should not, because if all of the good people stay out of the game, the Machiavellians and the narcissists win. Worst of all, if you choose to opt out, you may be putting your relationships — and your ability to influence others — at risk.

So, get in the game. Be authentic, and claim your right to guide and inspire others. Broaden your group of friends at work. Learn what it takes in your organization to influence individuals and groups. Do something for somebody else, every day, without thought of personal gain. Treat politics like the game it is, with all the seriousness and ethics it deserves.

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Make It Easy for Decision Makers to Approve Your Deal

Imagine you’ve been offered a way to purchase $1 lottery tickets for a penny each. How many would you buy? If you were operating based on rational self-interest one could argue that you would buy as many tickets as possible. How could you refuse an opportunity with so much upside and so little downside? Similarly, the role of the dealmaker is to find a way to drive the “cost” of the deal down to as close to zero as possible — so the decision maker can’t possibly refuse to buy that ticket.

It’s harder than it sounds. In order to make it happen, you need to understand the dynamics of the cost of the deal. In my experience, this is where people go wrong — they misinterpret the nature of the cost to the person sitting across the table. Getting to yes requires knowledge about the decision maker, but it’s not necessarily the knowledge you’d think.

In the first of now four pieces I’ve done for HBR, I outlined the stakeholder types you will encounter in the effort to close a big deal. Next, I went through a more detailed examination of the motivations of two of those stakeholders, the champion and the blocker. Now, I’d like to close the loop and talk about the decision maker, the final gatekeeper in the triumvirate. Based on many years as a business founder, executive, and advisor, I would argue that getting the deal closed requires an appreciation for one key principle about decision makers that many of us get wrong.

It’s as simple as this: Getting the green light on a deal is more about mitigating professional risk for the decision maker than it is about accentuating the business benefits of what you are offering. In other words, addressing the downside is more important than touting the upside.

Our understanding of how organizations think and act doesn’t always make this distinction between the interests of the enterprise and its managers. For example, The Wall Street Journal might typically report something like the following: “Exxon Corporation has announced that it is moving forward with development of oil fields in Kazakhstan in order to meet the world’s demand for oil.” Fair enough: Exxon does want to find and sell more oil. But the statement also seems to imply that Exxon is a “person” that makes such decisions purely rationally in its interests. News flash: There is no Exxon-level decision maker, there are only the people running Exxon and making the decisions based on their professional interests.  Corporations don’t make decisions, people make decisions.

When you or I decide (or even a billionaire decides) to make a personal investment, the thought process is very focused on the desired return. Will I get good value for my money? In a corporate decision, however, the decision maker is playing with the house’s money, not his or her own, so the financial and/or opportunity cost is almost irrelevant. The risk that looms largest is not about losing money; it’s about losing your job or shedding prestige.

So how do you reduce professional risk for the decision maker and get your deal done? By understanding three different levels of deciders and what motivates each of them at a personal level.

CEO, President, COO (Top Dogs):  These highest order decision makers are the big picture thinkers. They care about pleasing boards and shareholders. Public perception and legacy are what is important to them. In order to reduce a Top Dog’s risk profile, think about the individuals to whom they turn for advice and validation. These include:

Advisors—Top Dogs rarely know much about the details of the deal, so they rely on their lieutenants for counsel. Getting these individuals, who attend to the Top Dog, on your side is a crucial step one. Cooperate with them, show them respect, and give them the ammunition they need to look good to the big boss.

Shareholders—External credibility and public recognition is what helps Top Dogs shine around investors and customers. If a close competitor is doing a similar deal, for example, or others in the industry are aligned with the strategy or direction, it will help Top Dogs bring shareholders on board.

Board members—In the end, this is who Top Dogs really aim to please. If the deal goes south, the questions the board will always ask is: Did you do your due diligence? Two things: First, create a story or narrative that will help Top Dog’s position the deal and feel good about public perception. Second, create a strong case that will enable them and their lieutenants to say yes to the deal. (Remember it’s not about eliminating the risk of failure, it’s about providing a strong narrative for the Top Dog so that if something goes wrong, their decision can be defended.)

CSO, CFO, CIO, IT, Ops (Practice Leaders): Typically, these decision makers run cost centers as opposed to generating revenue. Practice Leaders care about avoiding mistakes, looking smart within their domain, and maintaining internal credibility. These are the people who have been hired to make sure things don’t go wrong. In general, they tend to be the most conservative and apt to say no to deals. How do you reduce downside risk for a group so attuned to potential loss? Provide them with voluminous documentation to make sure that they have a protective paper trail behind them. Your job is to think of everything that could go wrong and create solutions to address each of those scenarios. As with Top Dogs, Practice Leaders have lieutenants with deep domain expertise. These domain experts are where you should be cultivating your champions — get them on your side and not only will they advocate for you, but they will also help insulate the Practice Leader should the deal go wrong.

Sales, Marketing, GMs, Product (Business Leaders):  These decision makers are directly involved in generating revenue and they are judged based on the numbers. One the one hand, meeting budget projections is make-or-break for Business Leaders because it impacts their compensation and upward mobility. On the other hand, they have the latitude to fly below the radar and experiment. Timing is what dealmakers need to think about when they sit across the table from Business Leaders. Most Business Leaders have P&L goals that were established in the prior year — and anything that puts those projections at risk is a tough sell. If things are going well for the business leader, then he/she may be inclined to take a risk. Sometimes Business Leaders need to do a deal in order to make their year look better, other times they are out scouting for a new venture to help them start their new fiscal year off right. As long as the decision is contained within their fiefdom, business leaders are the easiest group to convince. They are always looking for ways to break out from the pack and become the next Top Dog.

Whether you are dealing with a Top Dog, Practice Leader, or Business Leader, getting a decision maker to say yes is all about building a platform of credibility that minimizes their professional risk and allows them to feel good about the deal. It is not necessarily that the platform improves the deal’s potential for success (although that is certainly part of it), but it gives them something to point to in case things go south. Remember, for a person in a position of power, it is more about protecting them from what can go wrong than it is about what can go right.

 

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We Still Don’t Know the Difference Between Change and Transformation

It’s been almost 10 years since HBR published John Kotter’s classic article,”Why Transformation Efforts Fail.” And although his suggestions for how to improve the odds have been widely accepted, the success rate of major corporate change programs remains essentially unchanged — it still hovers at 30%.

Given the amount of research that business schools have dedicated to understanding change management, the number of books and articles published on the subject, and the investment that companies have made in consultants and training, one would think that we would be doing better by now.

Based on consulting experience with dozens of companies over many years, however, my sense is that there’s an underlying semantic problem, stemming from confusion between what constitutes “change” versus “transformation.” Many managers don’t realize that the two are not the same. And while we’ve actually come a long way in learning how to manage change, we continue to struggle with transformation.

Let me explain. “Change management” means implementing finite initiatives, which may or may not cut across the organization. The focus is on executing a well-defined shift in the way things work. It’s not easy, but we do know a lot more today about what to do.

For example, when a large technology firm integrated specialized engineers into its regional sales teams, there were shifts in roles, client coverage, compensation, goal setting, and teamwork. The change affected hundreds of people. By applying well-known change management principles and tools — such as making the business case, building a coalition of leaders, getting early results, engaging stakeholders, executing with discipline, etc. — the new sales approach was implemented successfully, and is generating improved results.

I could cite similar examples of other companies successfully executing discrete change initiatives, like introducing a new performance management system, shifting from decentralized to centralized marketing support, and utilizing new personal productivity tools. The point is that all of these initiatives were reasonably well-defined. The change management work focused on execution.

Transformation is another animal altogether. Unlike change management, it doesn’t focus on a few discrete, well-defined shifts, but rather on a portfolio of initiatives, which are interdependent or intersecting. More importantly, the overall goal of transformation is not just to execute a defined change — but to reinvent the organization and discover a new or revised business model based on a vision for the future. It’s much more unpredictable, iterative, and experimental. It entails much higher risk. And even if successful change management leads to the execution of certain initiatives within the transformation portfolio, the overall transformation could still fail.

I recently met with the senior leadership team of a large technology company that had been successful because one unique product constituted 90% of its sales. When competitors started developing a less expensive version of the product, it became clear that they could not survive as a one-product firm. As a result, the CEO launched a transformation strategy with the goal of figuring out a more sustainable business model. It included a number of major “must-do” initiatives: get more immediate revenue from the current product, create a leaner support organization, shift from internally-focused to externally-partnered product development, and ramp up the search for acquisitions and adjacencies. The transformation also called for a new set of cultural principles and a revised performance management approach aligned with these initiatives.

While each of these initiatives required change management disciplines, leaders also had to learn a broader set of transformational leadership capabilities, such as more flexible and dynamic coordination of resources, stronger collaboration across boundaries, and communication in the midst of uncertainty. And since so many people were engaged in the changes alongside their day-to-day jobs, managers also had to figure out how prioritize and stop lower-value activities. In doing this, most of the top 150 managers were treading through totally uncharted territory. And while they knew that the goal was to make the company look very different, nobody knew for sure what the final outcome would be. In other words, the transformation was as much a process of discovery and experimentation as it was of execution. Success wasn’t guaranteed no matter how effective the change management skills.

It’s easy to beat ourselves up over failures in change management and the various studies that show we’re not getting better at it. But we really do know how to execute discrete changes. What we know much less about is how to engineer a transformation. And if we want to get better, let’s at least start by being more clear about which one is which.

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Surviving in a Family Business When You’re Not Part of the Family

We see all kinds of office politics – the good, the bad, and the ugly – in family-owned businesses. Families can be intensely political organizations, and non-family executives must know how to play politics both in the business itself and in the dangerous borderland between the business and the family. After reviewing the work that our firm has done with more than 200 business families around the world, we’ve identified some winning political moves that non-family executives can make:

Play in your “room” only. We like to explain to client family and non-family members that family businesses are like a home: Different discussions should be held in different rooms. Non-family executives who survive and thrive are those who either know intuitively or learn through experience how to separate the business into the management room, the owners’ room, the family room, and the room for the board of directors. Successful non-family leaders stick to the “management room.” They understand that when it comes to the “family room,” the family has all the power; it’s never going to be a fair fight. Blood is usually thicker than water. Yet family squabbles do spill over into the management room, and non-family executives must be able to isolate the business from the family when family members can’t see past their own internal squabbling.

Ironically, it often turns out to be harder for the manager to stay out of the family room than one might think. That’s because many business families either deliberately or quite naively try to involve the non-family executive in family affairs. We worked with a client family whose patriarch was continuously trying to engage the very talented non-family CEO in a bitter family fight with his son. This was a losing proposition for the CEO who, to his credit, refused to take sides in family disputes. He was empathetic, but he firmly pushed back against being used as a pawn in a game that he could never win. He repeatedly told the patriarch, “That is a family room issue; please take it there.” So far at least, this non-family executive is turning out to be very successful.

Be highly discreet and competent. Restricting your influence to the management room does not mean that you are powerless as a non-family executive. Far from it. Given your position in the company, you typically have access to an enormous amount of privileged information, and information is power. As we noted above, the problem for many non-family executives is not that family members try to keep vital information from you, but rather that you are deluged by potentially explosive information. Woe to the manager who cannot keep confidences! Lose the trust of family members and your career will tank no matter how good you may otherwise be at playing the game of office politics.

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This is not to say that family members always keep non-family executives informed of important business decisions that are in the offing. They don’t. But the best way to avoid being left out of critical conversations is to demonstrate your competence. We’ve seen this type of situation with another client family where major business decisions get made outside the office when the family gets together on Sunday afternoons. The non-family executives can’t force the family to involve them in these extra-office discussions, but in this case at least, one financial analyst is so good that the family invites her to all of these meetings. She has demonstrated her talent, her dedication, her discretion, and her commitment. She works extremely hard and has been careful not to align herself with any one family member or branch. She knows how to be professional in a family environment, and the entire family has come to respect her.

Avoid proxy wars. Alignment with one family member or branch is dangerous because families can act out their rivalries by “taking out” a relative’s favorite non-family executive. While proxy wars are hardly limited to family businesses, they can often be more intense in families due to volatile group dynamics. For example, we’re currently working with a client family member who is very vocal about his intent to break up the team of employees that is fiercely devoted to his sister, with whom he has a particularly contentious relationship. Our advice to non-family executives faced with this dilemma: Never hitch your wagon to just one star. Aligning yourself with a particular sibling or branch is always risky.

Give credit and invoke the family’s higher angels. In our experience, the non-family executives who survive the longest are those who know instinctively how to deflect credit from themselves to the family. While this is important for career success in all office environments, in family environments this tactic takes on far greater significance. Make a son look important in front of his father – a battle that child may have been waging all his life – and you will win the loyalty of that adult family member for life.

What’s more, most family owners are intensely proud of their companies. When negative family politics break out, you can nudge the family members to remember their family’s greatness. Do this with genuine respect for the family’s legacy, and you can go a long way toward helping them bridge their immediate political differences.

Make use of impartial outsiders. Giving feedback to executives about their performance can be tricky in a family business, where the sibling or cousin that you are evaluating may someday be the boss. Your instinct may be to step back and tell the truth, but to tell it “slant.” And, indeed, caution is the appropriate response. The fact is that you must deal with the reality of the power dynamics at play. Look for opportunities to make your feedback truly independent of you, and truly confidential. Encourage your business to conduct 360 reviews using an outside provider. Or find an honest broker – for example, a trusted, external board member – who can give constructive criticism without risking his or her career.

One of the most difficult political situations arises when a non-family employee has a genuine grievance against a family member who receives de facto protection because of the lack of any formal (or informal) channels for redressing the situation. Imagine for a moment what happens when a non-family employee with a complaint turns to the head of the business, who just happens to be head of the family and the father of the son who committed some egregious offense. This occurred at one client family where the son was making inappropriate sexual comments to several female employees. In this case, the power of the non-family executive to put an end to the situation was very limited; it took an outside advisor to step in, expose, and stop the harassment.

Know your genetic limits. Finally, to be successful in a family business, you must have a realistic sense of the destinations on your career path. Even the most masterful player of office politics is not going to get the top job if there is a family member in the leadership pipeline who is destined to assume the mantle of CEO. Don’t take it personally; it’s not about you. You are biologically disadvantaged and have to be savvy enough to recognize this fact. Always be thinking about the family tree and family dynamics when considering your own path up the career ladder.

In a family business, playing office politics successfully means having the humility — and the political shrewdness — to put the family first.

Some of the identifying details in this article have been changed to protect client confidentiality.

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Your Digital Strategy Shouldn’t Be About Attention

Are they talking about your brand? Around the clock? From Facefriend to Tweeter to Instapal?

Pssst.  

That’s probably not the right question.

Today, too many strategists believe that a clever plan to win the internet’s attention is a good digital strategy.

It’s not. Why? The painful truth is: attention itself isn’t worth as much as today’s marketers, boardrooms, and beancounters think. It’s not just that there’s good and bad attention — awe versus scorn, for example. Attention is a fickle, fleeting thing on which to build a business model, let alone a business, let alone an institution. Hence, attention without relation is like revenue without profit: malinvestment.

Institutions and leaders, obedient students of modern marketing, obsessively ask, “How do we get people to be loyal to us?” Meanwhile, they’re often (let’s be honest with each other for a painful moment) busy gleefully plotting to betray them at every turn. Hide the fees! Shrink the fine print! Why give customers cheese when you can sell them “cheese-like product”? Most “digital business models” are similarly sneaky — track their data! Make the terms and conditions impossible to understand! Why take the time to get to know your customers … as long as you can get them to use the corporate hashtag.

The real question — the one that counts for leaders and institutions today — isn’t “How loyal can we compel, seduce, or trick our customers into being?” It’s: “How loyal are we to our customers? Do we truly care about them?” Not just as targets consumers, or fans. But as people. Human beings. What every institution needs  —  and what every leader needs to develop  —  before a “digital strategy” is a human strategy. If you want to matter to people, you must do more than merely win their fickle, fleeting, frenzied attention. You must help them develop into the people they were meant to be. When you do, maybe, just maybe, they’ll reward you. With something greater than their grudging, wearied attention. Their lasting respect, enduring trust, and undying gratitude.

So here are my top four mistakes of digital strategy — and how not to make them.

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Titillating, not educating. It’s easy to win “clicks” by titillating people with Kim Kardashian’s naked behind or a list of the world’s cutest human-cat baby unicorn fairies. And it might lend a dreary day a moment of relieved escapism. But it won’t help anyone. To do that, you must educate. Not in the awful, misused corporate sense of the term: dully lecturing them about “product benefits.” But helping them develop the capabilities and skills they’re going to need to live better lives. What will your “digital strategy” help them become better at? Does it have a point? Skiing, dating, cooking, coding, creating, building? If the answer is no, you don’t have a strategy. You have a vaudeville show.

Making zombies, not superheroes. Too much of digital strategy is simply turned over to the marketing department. And modern marketing makes zombies. Most of the time, let’s face it: marketing is a tedious exercise in brainwashing. Or at least a poor attempt at it. See this toothpaste? If you use it, supermodels will fall at your feet! Or …  maybe your life will still be a bleakness punctuated by short moments of internet humor. Here’s the problem with creating marketing zombies. Sure, they might raid your malls. But once they’re done, they’ll probably try to eat your head. By that I mean that when all you do is earn people’s attention, without trying to earn their respect or trust, they can turn on you on a dime. Today’s viral hit is tomorrow’s laughingstock. Sorry, I mean the next nanosecond’s. That’s why making people zombies is a bad idea not just for the zombies … but for the mad scientists. Unless you happen to want to spend the rest of your life at war with the people formerly known as your customers. Creating an army of zombie customers is a terrible way to build a great brand.

When a company asks “how loyal can we be to our customers?” they don’t ask marketers to brainwash them, and they don’t ask customers to behave like zombies. Instead, they want their customers to be superheros with superpowers. Don’t track them on “God View,” for Christ’s sake. Instead, give them X-ray vision: let them see further and faster than before. Give them telepathy: help them understand the world better than they did before.

Infecting, not connecting. The holy grail of the digital marketing strategy is “virality.” But the goal of a digital business strategy is connection. One is shallow and fleeting; the other is deep and enduring. Connection means more than just gawping at your “content” when it’s trending. Connection means going beyond the strictures of marketing, and literally forging living, breathing relationships. It requires that you actually empower people to act as advisers, counselors, mentors to your customers … not just plastering your logo on digital billboards, or winning two more Facestagram hearts.

Consider Mr Porter, the man-cousin of Net-a-Porter. There, a fashion-challenged dork (a.k.a. yours truly) can ask experts for fashion advice, anytime, via internet chat. Or just learn how to make a great cup of coffee, if I’m not in the mood to buy anything. Reviewers have gushed over its ridiculously accurate sizing measurements and other little-luxury touches like a personalized label inside the shipping box and same-day delivery (in some cities). These may not sound like much … but they’re a tiny revelation when your world expands suddenly. Its rivals try to infect the entire internet with glamorous photoshoots studded with celebrities — something Mr Porter eschews completely. But those competitors are playing a losing game: trying harder and harder to win more and more uncertain gains in attention that last shorter and shorter. But what they won’t win is stable, less and less risky, long-run gains in trust, which endure and grow. Those must be earned; one connection at a time.

Communicating, not elevating. Digital tools have given companies the ability to communicate incredibly quickly with a ridiculously large number of people at low cost. But just communicating isn’t good enough anymore. The internet is full of sound and fury … signifying nothing. It’s full of trolls, haters, and loons, but they’re all communicating, aren’t they? The challenge isn’t merely communicating anymore. It’s elevating. Let me put it this way. You can use the latest, greatest social network as a tool to broadcast your crappy promise that no one really cares about. Or you can use it to build a book club, or a running group, a support group, a counseling center, a peer-funded scholarship. See the difference? One is about volume. The other about values. And creating value.

How do you build a digital strategy that rockets past loyalty through the horizon of marketing as we know it and into the wild blue yonder of trust, respect, and maybe even love? Simple. Forget about “building the brand.” Ignore the rules of communication. They were built to sell miraculously mass-made “product” to a stable, secure, sedated middle class forever ascending upwards into the plastic cornucopia of perfect prosperity.

Instead, focus on giving people what matters most to them — but what they feel cheated of, stymied from, and suffocated by at every turn. Improve their lives. Deliver lasting gains in their quality of life. Don’t just carrot-and-stick them into “loyalty.” Be loyal to them. Don’t win their attention  — give them your attention. And one tiny interaction at a time, help them live lives richer with meaning, happiness, and purpose. After all, they’re the only people that can help you find something greater, truer, and better than a strategy. A point.

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The Mistake Most Managers Make with Cross-Cultural Training

Mark is an HR director looking to improve his company’s cross-cultural skills, especially in Germany where his company is doing an increasing amount of business. After considerable research, Mark hires a firm to deliver a training solution that seems like just what the doctor ordered. It’s a tool that enables employees to discover their “cultural profile” and then compare that profile to those from a range of other cultures. The program — which is self-study and available on any digital device — also enables employees to click on a country and learn about its history, values, and cultural “assumptions.”

While the program looks great on paper, it ultimately makes no real impact on Mark’s employees’ behavior. The people who struggled before continue to struggle, and those who didn’t really need the program in the first place continue to thrive. Disappointed, Mark wonders what he and the company actually received for all the money they had invested.

If you’ve ever received any cross-cultural training — or even read a book on the subject — chances are, just like in the example above, it has focused on differences: differences in communication styles (like how Japanese workers are less direct than Germans) or differences in values (like how Americans have more individualistic values than those in China). It may have even focused on differences in etiquette — like how in the United States you can write on the back of a business card, but in Japan, that would be a taboo.

Knowing about differences can be quite useful. It can give you a sense of how you’re supposed to act in a foreign setting, especially when you have no idea where to start. It can also help you understand why others from a different culture behave as they do. But in my experience, the mistake many companies make is thinking that knowing cultural differences is enough — that discovering the key differences is all you need to master to be effective across cultures.

If the problem your employees face is that they simply don’t understand cultural differences, a solution focused on defining cultural differences makes all the sense in the world. But if, like in most instances, the real problem is that your employees can’t adapt and adjust their behavior across cultures, these solutions focused simply on differences likely won’t give you the bang for your buck that you’re expecting.

So what can companies and managers do to help their employees take the next step in their cross-cultural training?

First, match the solution to the problem. If the real challenge your employees face is adaptability, don’t provide a solution that focuses only on identifying and memorizing differences. In Mark’s case, for example, I’m guessing it probably wasn’t that hard for his employees to learn about differences in German and American communication styles — that Germans tend to be more direct and frank than Americans. But what was likely much harder — and also not addressed by the differences approach — was how to actually adapt one’s own behavior and either deliver feedback in a German style or react to straightforward and often blunt feedback from German colleagues without taking offense. Research indicates that it can feel extremely uncomfortable acting against your natural style. People can feel anxious, embarrassed, inauthentic, and frustrated, and as a result, many individuals either avoid these situations altogether, or perform them ineffectively. So match your solution to the actual challenges your employees face, or else you’ll be disappointed with the results.

Once you match your training to the goal, don’t compartmentalize training into a manual, a webpage, or an off-site program. Develop training that is integrated with the actual work people do. Athletes do drills, but then practice in scrimmages and games. In the same way, make sure that your employees have ample opportunity to practice and hone their skills in the actual contexts they’ll ultimately need to use them. For example, when I train MBA students to develop global dexterity, I have them practice in real situations, such as in interactions with their bosses during their internships, or with student project groups working on real case-studies and classroom assignments. By practicing and honing skills in real settings, the skills have a much better chance of sticking.

Teaching people to adapt behavior across cultures isn’t a “quick hit” you can achieve in a two-hour session, or by handing someone a book, a website, or a manual. It’s a real skill that requires patience, practice, and perseverance. Smart companies are starting to realize this and adapt accordingly.

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The Capabilities Your Organization Needs to Sustain Innovation

Why are some organizations able to innovate again and again while others hardly innovate at all?  How can hundreds of people at a company like Pixar Animation Studios, for example, work together to produce blockbuster after blockbuster over nearly two decades – a record no other filmmaker has ever come close to matching? What’s different about Pixar that enables it not only to achieve, but also to sustain innovation?

It’s a crucial question. In recent years, many people have sought to understand how organizational innovation works, hoping to shed light on the broader and deeper dynamics and principles at play. They have debunked the myth of the lone genius, discrediting the idea that innovation is purely a solitary act or flash of insight in the mind of one creative individual.

Amidst this swirl of inquiry, however, there has been less attention given to the precise nature of organizing for innovation, the capabilities that drive discovery, and above all, how to lead innovation successfully. This has been our focus.

Consider Thomas Edison, perhaps the greatest American inventor of the early 20th century. From his fertile mind came the light bulb and the phonograph, along with more than 1,000 other patented inventions over a 60-year career. But he didn’t work alone. As many have observed, perhaps Edison’s greatest contribution was not one single invention, but rather his artisan-oriented shops – a new way of organizing for innovation that has evolved into today’s R&D laboratory with its team-based approach. Edison may get the credit for “his” inventions – it was his laboratory, of course – but each typically arose from years of effort that included many others.

Edison’s example illustrates the collaborative nature of the innovative process. Innovations most often arise from the interplay of ideas that occur during the interactions of people with diverse expertise, experience, or points of view. Flashes of insight may play a role but most often they simply build on and contribute to the collaborative work of others. Edison’s true legacy – and secret to success – was that he was equally an inventor and a leader of invention.

At Pixar, they – like Edison – recognize the importance of organizing for innovation. They truly believe that everyone has a slice of genius to contribute to the collective genius of the whole. Without the contributions of large numbers of people, the company simply could not make a computer-generated (CG) movie. Whether it is the artists who develop the story, the engineers who render the images, or those who mind the business, all are aware that they cannot succeed alone. Collaboration is a hallmark of Pixar’s approach. No individual can produce the final solution, but each contribution plays its part in creating a spectacular movie. As Ed Catmull, Pixar’s cofounder and president noted: “We’re not just making up how to do CG movies; we’re making up how to run a company of diverse people who can make something together that no one could make alone.” 

So how does it work?

Three Capabilities of Innovation

After studying masters of organizational innovation for over 10 years, we’ve identified three key activities that truly innovative organizations like Pixar are able to do well. First, the people and groups in them do collaborative problem solving, which we call creative abrasion. Second, they try things and learn by discovery, demonstrating creative agility. Third, they create new and better solutions because they integrate existing ideas in unanticipated ways, practicing creative resolution.

A large body of research points to the importance of these three activities in innovation. They might sound straightforward and relatively simple, but consider what each of them actually involves.

Creative abrasion. New and useful ideas emerge as people with diverse expertise, experience, or points of view thrash out their differences. The kind of collaboration that produces innovation is more than simple “get-along” cooperation. It involves and should involve passionate discussion and disagreement.

This creative collaboration produces innovation, but to many, this kind of engagement is hard and can be emotionally draining. The sparks that fly can sting or, at minimum, create tension and stress. To collaborate means making oneself vulnerable to hard questions and push-back. Not everyone wants to do that all the time. It’s no wonder that some and perhaps many people choose to remain silent rather than participate.

Creative agility. Almost by definition, a truly creative solution is something that cannot be foreseen or planned. Thus, innovation is a problem-solving process that proceeds by trial-and-error. A portfolio of ideas is generated and tested, then revised and retested, in an often lengthy process of repeated experimentation. Hence Edison’s famous definition of genius: “1 percent inspiration; 99 percent perspiration.” Instead of following some linear process that can be carefully planned in advance, it’s messy and unpredictable.

By its nature, then, innovation requires activities and interim outcomes that make most organizations nervous. Experiments take time and patience. They produce false starts, mistakes, and dead ends along the way. Missteps and rework are inevitable and must be accepted, even encouraged. These realities don’t lend themselves to the preferred corporate approach of set a goal, make a plan, and work the plan. As a consequence, those who take this approach make themselves vulnerable to criticism and blame.

So, to avoid anything that looks like failure, most people don’t perform the experiments that produce real innovation. Instead, they simply generate a set of alternate solutions and then choose one and pursue it. Organizations that innovate not only attempt new things, but they invite failure as part of the cost of discovery.  And, nobody gets in trouble for trying something that doesn’t work.

As Ed Catmull told us, if Pixar had “no failures,” which he defined as a “less than spectacular outcome,” then that would suggest they had lost their appetite for doing bleeding-edge work. It’s part of Pixar’s culture that nobody gets penalized for trying something that didn’t work.

Creative resolution. Integrating ideas – incorporating the best of option A and option B to create something new, option C, that’s better than A or B – often produces the most innovative solution. However, the process of integration can be inherently discomforting, emotionally and intellectually.

The problem – and the leadership challenge – arises because options A and B are often incompatible, even completely opposable, ideas. To arrive at option C means people must keep both A and B on the table, and that is difficult to do. When faced with two seemingly mutually exclusive alternatives, the human impulse is to choose one and discard the other as soon as possible, or to forge a simple compromise. We crave the clarity provided by that kind of clean, assured decision-making. We crave it so much, in fact, that when a leader refuses to make a choice quickly, even when it can only be arbitrary or capricious, we grumble about the “lack of leadership around here.” It takes courage to hold open a multitude of possibilities long enough that new ways of combining them can emerge. There is often great pressure to make a choice, any choice, and move on.

Innovative teams, however, know that integrative decision-making often involves more than simply and mechanically combining ideas.  Rather, it requires a willingness to play with ideas and experiments until they “click.”  Discoveries emerge through constant iteration, through trying different approaches, including approaches that at first seemed inconsistent, through the involvement of lots of talented people, and through a willingness to wait and see what works and what doesn’t.

History – and not just Hollywood – is littered with star-studded teams that failed. We all know that it’s not easy to get people to collaborate on a straightforward task let alone to create something fresh and useful. Almost all cultures have some version of the saying, “Too many cooks in the kitchen.”

That’s why leadership is the key, cultivating the ability to keep testing possibilities before choosing one and moving ahead. But this is hard work. Given the difficulties, it’s not so surprising that people often choose not to innovate – or, more accurately, that they choose to avoid the challenging activities most likely to produce real innovation. The job of the person leading innovation is to create the conditions that allow and encourage all these things to happen again and again.

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