ADAPT #13 - two thoughts: do innovation and the science of business

Hey!

Lately I’ve been diverting from the typical structure of this newsletter.
But there’s a good reason!

I’ve been having really interesting thoughts and want to check with you what you think about them.

So, my two thoughts today:

Thought #1 

Think always of innovation not as something you train-people-on or do-a-course-about, but more as the sum of the actions you take and lessons you learn when fixing a problem.

Because that’s all innovation is - fixing problems.

Little ones, big ones, business ones, customer ones, human ones, product ones, system ones, software ones … problems that are solved if you simply do something about them instead of talking about them.

The quicker you get moving, the faster the iterations.

The better you get at learning, the quicker you solve the problem.

You learn innovation by doing innovation.

And like Mr Miyagi taught us: you could be painting and subconsciously learning to fight…

Every problem you tackle, at home, with your kids, while travelling, in your shed, while surfing, sculpting, playing music, diving or cooking… all your practice will eventually add up to improvements in every other area of your life.

Stop talking about innovation and do innovation.

Thought #2

The science of transforming teams and changing cultures…

Going full geek for a minute here and blending science and business together, bear with me!

I guess transformation is so complex that this may offer us a good lens to look through!

Newton’s first law of motion states that: "A body at rest will remain at rest, and a body in motion will remain in motion unless it is acted upon by an external force."

I talk in my keynotes a lot about the danger of MOMENTUM which is basically this:
An individual, team or company moves in a certain direction and when things change they struggle to adapt to the change (…a body in motion will remain in motion…)

Over the last 12 months, I dived into astrophysics and discovered by coincidence (or not) that teams, businesses and industries follow Newton’s laws.

As always these things are not perfect so it would be amazing if you also have a think and help me complete the picture!!

In Newton’s second law, he describes the impact of the external force like this: F= ma - force equals mass times acceleration.

If we apply this law to business we get:

• FORCE described as the resource, time, budget - the EFFORT we must put into changing our teams and businesses.

  The question here is how much effort do we need to exert to change?

• MASS described as the size of the structure that needs to change, the SIZE and the complexity of the team or business.

  The question here is how big and complex is what we need to change?

• ACCELERATION is the actual CHANGE, imagine this as the direction and/or speed in which we have to move to keep up with the customer who is regularly changing speed and direction.

  Question here is: how crazy or drastic is the change we need to achieve?

So translated to business: E = sc - effort equals size times change.

The effort to change a team equals the size and complexity of the team times the desired speed or directional change you want to create.

This model is useful to articulate and communicate across the business the levers and impact you have when it comes to business transformation.

Play with this model and ask yourself:

A) can I change the size of the effort?
Or is the budget locked and the time is set?

B) can the business or team be smaller? Fragmented? Reduced?

C) can I be happy with a slightly different type of change? Do I need to do this in stages?

The last thing you want is to throw yourself on a transformational quest without understanding your variables.
How else can this model be used to explain transformation?

Yew!

Gus

My recommendations:

Neu21 is a Transformation Consultancy, Ventures Studio inhale and Product Lab.
We create better work for a new world.

Check out our sexy neu website, here

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