From the Crucibles of JPS Customer Value Academy
Just Plain & Simple
….. Helping Create Customer Value
We
are ourselves creation of God and by being creative, we further
continue the process set forth by Him. Not only is it in our nature to
be creative, but by doing so, we give back to The Creator, in our own
specific ways, His gift of creativity to us. Creation, in its very basic
meaning, is a process of ‘causing to exist’. Life has, inherent in its
nature, an element of creating ‘newness’ and ‘novelty’. The continuous
cycle of Creation, Preservation and Destruction is The Cosmic Cycle of
Brahma, Vishnu & Shiva. When we are creative, we harness the
universality around us and make it flow through us. Hence, creativity is
life; it is opening oneself to GOD (Good Orderly Direction). When we
refuse to be creative, it maybe self will, but contrary to our true
nature, leading to things becoming static/still/dead.
Nature
continuously plays out and demonstrates its tendency to create novelty.
The process of evolution is one of the ways in which nature expresses
it’s creativity. Evolution generally refers to the gradual process of
development that we see in nature. This process has been going on for
billions of years, from the time the first simple single cells were
formed, through all the stages as life evolved into forms with higher
complexity and order. The key routes to evolution were random mutation
(once in millions of cells), trading of genetic pools (bacteria had
access to a vast pool of genes, through which they passed traits in a
powerful and efficient global exchange) and symbiogenesis (this is the
key route of evolution for all higher organisms, in which there is
creation of new forms of life through permanent symbiotic arrangements).
The latter two are demonstrations of the powerful effects of
collaboration, co-creation and co-evolution that exist in nature and
these were then fine tuned and honed by natural selection. It seems that
there is a grand design where collective memories and energies (without
any regard to size, caste, colour and hierarchies) are at play to create ‘innovative evolution’ in an interconnected Dance of Life !!
Innovation
stands for a new way, technique or method to do things. By definition,
then, it is a creative process. Evolutionary history of life is full of
examples of ‘innovative evolution’. Breathing and photosynthesis are
excellent examples of this. When bacteria expanded, their energy needs
led to shortage of hydrogen. Photosynthesis was an innovation to break
water molecules using sunlight, to release hydrogen and oxygen. While
hydrogen was used to build sugar and carbohydrates, oxygen was emitted
into the atmosphere, leading to an oxygen crisis. Free oxygen is toxic
as it produces free radicals and also causes combustion and corrosion.
Breathing was the next innovation !!
Whether
there have been challenges of the kind where an oxygen crisis was
looming large, or whether the processes of mutation, gene trading and
symbiosis were in any case running continuously, followed by natural
selection, what is important in all these is that nature has its own
ways of creativity. We can call it ‘Evolutionary Innovation’ or
‘innovative Evolution’, but this concept of ‘Creative Evolutionary innovation’
has elements of sharing knowledge, competition and collaboration,
co-existing, adapting and growing. But ‘who collaborates with whom ?’
and ‘who adapts to what ?’ The species have an interplay with each other
and also with the environment and the ecosystem, shaping and adapting
to each other and the environment itself, thus Creating an Innovative Co-Evolutionary Dance ….. Nature’s creativity is boundless !!
Organizations
can learn a lot from this process . Each organization itself is an
ecosystem or an organism and has inter-relationships within and outside.
Every function/department/location within an organization is also an
ecosystem or an organism with such inter-relationships within
themselves, with other functions/departments/locations, with the overall
organization and with the external world. Such similarities with the
way ecosystems and organisms are organized and behave in nature, cause
organizations also to mimic the patterns and behaviour of species and
ecosystems. Especially useful is the observation and learning attained
through the processes of ‘Creative Evolutionary Innovation’ in Nature, no matter what the size of the organization
….. as is the case in nature, where size of the organisms is immaterial
for this process to propagate; the smallest single cell organism or an
amoeba or bacteria all played this game with equal adeptness, provided
they followed the rules well !!
In organizations, or more so in the corporate world,
innovation has to play a more practical and commercial role. It cannot
be just a ‘nice to have initiative’ without any observable impact. Organisations
exist to 1) add value for the customer and 2) create ROI for the
investors. Both these can happen, ONLY IF ALL THE STAKEHOLDERS IN THE
VALUE CHAIN, COLLECTIVELY STRIVE TO ACHIEVE them, by creating a
Differential and/or Cost Advantage in a WIN-WIN situation for all.
If this basic premise is accepted and understood, the parallel drawn
till now can make sense. Otherwise the organization and this discussion
both can become extinct.
Creativity can
be a lone/solo process and we have heard about many creative people who
operate alone and do end up creating masterpieces. However, there are
also the creative masters like Edison,
who actually had the benefit of learnings of a whole team with him.
There definitely are stories of creative geniuses who worked alone, but
we are talking here of common people and minds, working in day to day
operations in closer to ground organizations. How do they bring alive
creativity in their work ? A streak of genius happens once in a million,
like random mutations in nature. Rest of the story of evolution is
about the other two avenues of gene trading and symbiosis, honed by
natural selection.
What
then, could organizations do ? Draw on learnings from nature and life.
The simplest life forms could have Creative Evolutionary Innovation.
Organisations will not achieve it only by the chance stroke of a
brilliant idea that occurs to an employee in romantic environs on a
Sunday afternoon, relaxing on a hammock in the sun, glass of beer in one
hand and cigarette in the other ….. He can probably keep waiting for
that once in a million random mutation to strike. Or can organizations
actually engineer the creative process proactively ….. by drawing on the
know how encoded in the gene pool of the system and using symbiotic
relationships to collaborate and co-evolve innovative solutions, taking
the organization to the next level of growth and existence.
The
fact is that every organization has tremendous information encoded in
its DNA and the irony is that managers think that they know everything
and do not need help. Even if I know that I do not know something, how
can I be seen as admitting it in public ?? It was this ego that the
primitive species did not have and hence continued to collaborate and
evolve ….. and mind you, this was not only collaborating with other
members of the same species, but at times with species competing for the
same resources, to create a dynamic balance with win win for all. While
bacteria are associated with disease, they are also vital for our
survival ….. The story of evolution of life on our planet is one of
cohabitation and co-evolution, rather than of combat and rivalry !!
Creativity,
evolution, growth, learning and innovation are the lifeblood of any
dynamic organization. Continuous learning and improvement are the
hallmark of an adaptive organization. These organizations keep trying
various things/doing things differently, some work some don’t ….. very
much like natural selection ….. but the key element is their continuous
effort to stimulate progress. They keep evolving and growing.
What is required here is a process and mindset, which further reinforces and
structures the same. This not only supports evolutionary growth, but
also, in the way we look at innovation in more practical terms in our
day to parlance ….. breakthrough growth as well. The process involves
bringing together all the knowledge bearers (genes) together, to place
their understanding on a common plate (symbiosis), look at the same from
different perspectives and evolve combinations and solutions that are
innovative. This is not just a brainstorming exercise, but can involve
techniques and expertise that make this seemingly simple process very
effective. Selection of the right people to contribute their learnings,
framing the right objectives, asking the right questions are some
critical skills which can be facilitated if organizations are willing to
take this journey. The expertise lies in making the complex looking
process simple and structured ….. to engineer innovation rather than
hoping that it will happen one day ….. and experience says that it
can be engineered !!
At a critical phase in the lifecycle of one business, profitability and
hence survival was a big issue. A team comprising people from
manufacturing, materials, marketing, finance and maintenance, including
shopfloor workers who are closest to action, worked together. Within six
months they came up with actual, permanent, annualised cost savings to
the tune of 4% of revenue. Engineered innovation achieved through
facilitation with the right people, posing the right questions and using
the right approach made all the difference for this organization …..
between extinction and thriving growth towards industry leadership !!
In
another situation, a business was faced with the challenge of a
competitive launch within one week. Competition had guarded the news
very well and hence there was no time for preparing defence. A team of
key people were brought together. Facilitation through a structured
innovation process brought out a creative plan within one hour. The
result was that the competitive launch was totally blunted and inspite
of all the preparation, they could never gather the confidence and put
their act together again to gain any respectable market share.
There
was yet another organization with issues related to ROCE. Gene pool
trading and symbiotic facilitation process led to a restructuring of
P&L lines and asset turns to yield an increase of 7%. Examples
abound, of the ways we have been able to utilize this mechanism in
strategy, manufacturing, sales, problem solving, decision making,
business processes, marketing etc. with equal success.
The
process starts with divergence of thoughts (gene trading and symbiosis)
followed by convergence (natural selection), which includes
perspectives, analysis, combinations, risk analysis and action planning
….. all in a structured process. The attempt is not to just leave
innovation to chance, but to be able to engineer and determine our
destinies to the extent we possibly can. Loss of information in black
holes reduces our ability to predict the future ….. but atleast we
should not end up creating organizational black holes ourselves, to be
sucked up under the pull of organizational gravity itself ….. The idea
is to have an organizational dance to release positive energy for
Thriving Growth and Prosperity !!
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J.P.Singh
Justplainandsimple Consulting Pvt. Ltd.
JPS Consulting
Just Plain & Simple
….. Helping Realise Potential
JPS Customer Value Academy
Just Plain & Simple
….. Helping Create Customer Value
