The Performance Paradox on IdeaConnection

The second half of my interview with Vern Burkhardt from IdeaConnection was recently posted. Here are the first few paragraphs of this much longer interview.

“We can conclude that creativity is about being present, just as pit crews changing the tires on a Formula 1 car need to be present.” Stephen Shapiro

Vern Burkhardt (VB): While living in England for four years you worked with a Formula One race team. Would your Personality Poker playing card tool be useful in selecting the pit crew and drivers? (Vern’s note: see last week’s article for a detailed discussion about Personality Poker)

Stephen Shapiro: I’m not sure it would be useful in picking the pit crew members or the drivers, but I did learn a lot about how teams collaborate while watching Formula 1 pit crews.

There are some simple principles that pit crews use. One is each person is playing to their strong suit. Everybody understands completely what they must do. The person changing the lug nut on the front right tire does it better than anyone else. If I’m one of the two removing the rear left tire, we will do that better than anyone else.

The second principle is to make sure all positions are covered. If the person who is supposed to be fueling a car – back when they fueled a car in Formula 1 races – decided not to show up, you’ve got a serious problem that will cause the race to be lost.

The same thing applies to all organizations. They will have problems if they’re not “playing with a full deck” – that is, they don’t have all of the different positions or thinking styles addressed.

Another analogy to the card game we didn’t talk about last week is dealing out the work. It means we want to use a divide and conquer strategy. Everybody doesn’t do everything. They know how and when to pitch in.

Finally, from time to time we want to shuffle the deck to create some tension without having to have groupthink all the time.

The pit crew was a good model for creating high-performing innovation teams.

VB: The people who are the pit crew have to be present; they have to be focused on exactly what they are doing. Their brains can’t be wandering or thinking about anything else. Would that be fair to say?

Stephen Shapiro: That’s fair to say.

You bring to mind an interesting phenomenon that I call ‘the performance paradox.’ A study done by one of the pit crews found that when people did not focus on the stop-watch – on how fast they were working – but instead focused on being present, they actually completed the tasks faster even though the pit crew members thought they were going slower. They were encouraged to think about being ‘smooth’ if they were changing the tires or doing the other tasks.

We see the same thing happening inside organizations and, in particular, in the creativity space. When we tell people to be creative, and measure them on their creativity, the result often is less creativity. The process of focusing on the extrinsic measure of creativity paradoxically has the impact of worsening or lessening the level of creativity inside the organization. We can conclude that creativity is about being present, just as pit crews changing the tires on a Formula 1 car need to be present.

VB: Was it a difficult decision in 2001 to leave your job at Accenture, where you led that company’s Global Process Excellence Practice, to become a writer, speaker and consultant?

Stephen Shapiro: It was somewhat of an easy decision.

The launch of my first book, 24/7 Innovation, was on October 10, 2001 and my last day with Accenture was October 11, 2001. I had been speaking to audiences on behalf of Accenture for 8 years, and I felt it was time to try something different by promoting the book while still doing speaking engagements.

I quickly learned an important point about innovation when I launched my own business. There’s a difference between being a great speaker and having a great speaking business. I believe I was and still am a great speaker, but in the beginning I had no work. Just because I had a book published didn’t mean people were going to bang down my door so I had to be creative about how to find work.

For a lot of organizations you need to be creative about the way you market and sell because those are as important to the growth of the business as having a good product. Peter Drucker once said, “since the purpose of business is to generate customers, only two functions do this: marketing and innovation. All other business functions are expenses.”

I learned very quickly that he was right and marketing is king. The best product that no one knows about is not going to sell. Having said that, the ability to develop new products, services, and business models is also important and I don’t want to downplay their part in the success of a business.

VB: What do you do to psyche yourself up before you speak to a large audience?

Read the rest of this interview on the IdeaConnection website

How Can Goals Enhance Creativity?

In my previous blog entry, I discussed how goals can either enhance or detract from performance.

Over the years, I have written numerous articles on “The Performance Paradox” that show how an obsession with the future reduces performance in the present.  And typically, creativity is significantly diminished in the process.

But given that businesses are driven by goals, how can we leverage them as a tool for enhancing creativity?

One way is to use stretch targets.  REALLY stretch targets.

For example, one client that I was with last week has a target of doubling their business over the next 5 years. I know MANY organizations that have exactly the same goal.   That equates to a 14% growth rate each year (assuming compounding).  I’m sure, with hard work, they could hit those numbers, even though it would certainly not be easy.

But what if they set a target of growing by 50% a year? It might have a fundamentally different impact on the organization.  That level of growth is unprecedented. It will certainly stretch the way they think.  A 14% improvement can most likely be attained through conventional thinking.  But a 50% growth target would require some breakthrough thinking; radical ideas.

It might also have an interesting psychological impact on the organization.

Because a 14% growth rate is viewed as doable, it might create an attachment in the minds of the executives and employees.  “We should be able to hit these targets.  Therefore it we don’t, there is something wrong.”

But a 50% growth rate is unheard of.  Clearly no one in the organization would be “attached” to that outcome.  Surely the executives would not expect employees to deliver on those targets.

As a result, the 50% target becomes a “game” without attachment.  Everyone knows it is designed to shift their thinking and to help create enthusiasm.

The future gives them the present, rather than present giving them the future. (to learn more about what I mean by this, be sure to click the link and read the article)

As long as everyone in the organization believes they are playing a game which is designed to get them energized today, and it is not specifically about hitting the target, I can assure you that people will be more motivated.  Creativity will be stimulated.  And even if the company does not hit 50% growth rates, they will certainly have a better chance of hitting the 14% improvement than if they focused on that as the goal.

Goals that are not goals, can enhance creativity.

Simple Not Simplistic

People who play Personality Poker tell me that they love its simplicity.  But what they find most amazing is how this simple “game” can generate profound insights.

During a recent event, one participant commented that she learned more about herself and her team in 15 minutes than she had in her previous 15 years.

In today’s age of data-driven analysis, it is easy to fall into the trap of believing that more data and more complexity lead to better results.

This is not always true.

I was chatting with Michael Wiederman, Professor of Psychology at Columbia College, this morning.  Michael did a fascinating podcast with me a while back.  Be sure to check it out.

When discussing the simplicity of Personality Poker, he responded:

“Simpler is good, as long as it’s valid/useful.   As an analogy, I recall a published study from several years ago in which a battery of all of the widely-used depression inventories were administered to the same group of people, along with some other questions. The best predictor of who was depressed?  The single question: ‘Are you depressed?’ So much for complexity.”

Common Innovation Myths

Where else do we fall prey to the belief that bigger is better?

• More Ideas = Better Ideas.  Although free thinking is useful during the generation of creative ideas, if you are solving the wrong problem, all the ideas in the world won’t make a difference.
• More Data = Better Customer Insights.  Data mining is the rage.  Unfortunately it only allows you to study your customers.  Quite often the greatest insights come from those who are not your customers — or those who were and no longer are.
• More Goals = Better Results.  Goals are useful in moderation.  However, an obsession with outcomes often results in taking your eye off the present.  The result is worse performance.  Read my article on “The Performance Paradox” for more.

As mentioned in a previous blog entry, I am a big believer that “Simplification is Innovation.”  Don’t confuse complexity with quality.  The greatest ideas are often the simplest.

P.S. I am reading Made to Stick…finally.  It is an excellent book on the stickiness of ideas.  Once again, we see that often the simplest ideas are the ones that stick best.

New Innovation Article

Although I have written about this many times before on this blog, we have created a formal article on “The Performance Paradox.”  This is part of an eBook being published by 21 professional speakers.

You can find this, and a dozen other articles in my “innovation articles” section of the website.

2007 Innovation Lesson

Every year at this time, Chuck Frey at innovationtools.com asks experts/readers for the most important lesson learned during 2007 regarding innovation, creativity or brainstorming. Here is my response:

Over the past couple of years, I have observed something I call “The Performance Paradox.” This paradox looks at the relationship between motivation (goals, targets, and management) and performance (physical, intellectual and creative performance). Interestingly, the relationship between motivation and performance is not linear. It is not even exponential. It is parabolic.

Low motivation equals low performance. I’m sure this comes as no shock. As motivation increases, performance increases…to a point. The sweet spot of performance. Then, as you become more goal obsessed and task driven, performance paradoxically decreases.

This paradox holds true in all areas of performance including physical and mental performance. However, the paradox is most pronounced for creative endeavors. Goals increase stress and fixate employees on the future rather than the present. It has been proven that creativity diminishes when individuals are rewarded (externally motivated) for doing their work.

The more you measure and motivate based on innovation, the less likely you will have a truly innovative culture.

Another interesting component to the Paradox is the fact that people will take great risks to minimize (or reduce) their pain/losses, yet will play it safe when the option is to increase their pleasure/gains.

When your organization’s change/innovation plans are utopian visions of a grandiose future, your employees move to the wrong end of the performance curve: high motivation, low performance. They become cynical about success and feel as though you are not addressing their present moment pains and frustrations. Instead, fix immediate problems first. Then begin to address, more strategic visions.

For too long, well intended organizations have used the wrong motivation tools for creating cultures of innovation.

An article by me on The Performance Paradox is schedule to be published by the American Management Association in early 2008

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