Welcome to Polymathic Being, a place to explore counterintuitive insights across multiple domains. These essays take common topics and investigate them from different perspectives and disciplines to come up with unique insights and solutions.

Today's topic Builds on our first essay on the Keys to Innovation, Embrace the Divergents, which shares insights for inviting the divergents, pirates, and rebels to rethink the way we do innovation. The next step is probably the first toward actual change; you have to face the fear of change. We’ll investigate the basis of these fears and propose some opportunities to not only overcome the fear but leverage that concern into amazing innovation.

The McKinsey Company recently investigated the biggest barriers to innovation in organizations and identified that fear was one of the leading culprits noting:

Fear is a complex and personal topic—what intimidates or paralyzes some can motivate others to act boldly. In aggregate, however, our research shows that three fears hold back corporate innovation more than others: fear of criticism, fear of uncertainty, and fear of negative impact on one’s career. Individuals working at average or below-average innovators are two to four times more likely than those working at leading innovators to cite these fears as barriers to innovation.

As with any of the topics I love to cover, this is a complex and idiosyncratic problem to tease apart. I think McKinsey does a great job in addressing five solutions to mitigate these three fear with a culture that:

Believes and Values
Frames and Champions
Signals and Symbolizes
Shows and Ritualizes
Shields and Empowers

I think these are a great framework for what a good culture might look like. The issue is that, without understanding the foundation of why this culture doesn’t naturally exist, attempting to apply these five solutions is merely a band-aid. The risk is masking the root causes which won’t actually produce the culture or innovation that you are looking for.

In considering these findings and recommendations, I proffer there are three things underpinning the fears identified above that need to be addressed, and in doing so you’ll start to see the proposed culture manifest.

Understanding personality differences
Addressing incentive structures
Requiring systems of systems analysis.

We’ll look at each of these three independently and then weave a solution together that best allows organizations to face the fear and empower innovation.

Personality Differences

You expect from others what you expect from yourself

As we noted in Investigating Personality Proclivities, not everyone is wired the same way. On the Big 5 personality profile, I’m incredibly Open to new ideas and experiences with exceptionally low Neuroticism. I don’t have the same baseline fear of uncertainty. I’m also naturally curious and intuitive and so will look for the larger network effects and ‘crazy ideas’ that others shy away from.

This doesn’t make me better than a different personality type. It just makes me different and able to add unique perspectives and insights. In fact, I’m not that great at the detailed nuts and bolts of designs. My personality is my boon and my bane and I’ve learned that I have to build a coalition of different personalities to augment my strengths and weaknesses.

One place innovation fails is when we don’t understand the natural predilections of the team and force a common denominator of behavior, thought, and execution. The key to remember is that you expect from others what you expect from yourself. If you aren’t achieving the ideas or execution you desire, take a look at what you are expecting and whether you need to challenge the status quo with different personalities.

Personalities are important to consider because on one extreme innovation dies through a lack of vision and on the other extreme it dies through a lack of execution. Either of these two leads to the fear of criticism and the solution is to drive for a diversity of thought and action.

Incentive Structures

Whenever you see a behavior you don’t like, look for the metrics incentivizing it

Fundamentally I think this is where the rubber meets the road and is the hardest element to address. The incentive structures are what trigger, in my experience, the fear of the negative impact on one’s career that McKinsey identified. The key here is that, whenever you see a behavior you don’t like, look for the metrics incentivizing it. We’ve picked at this topic from a few different angles in other essays such as:

Lazy Leadership, uncovering that industrious leaders are often too busy executing instead of innovating.
The Great Cover Up - A Band-Aid Paradigm, highlights that we rarely actually fix the roots of problems, we just patch them.
The Successfully Unsuccessful, which shows that incentives matter in how people succeed, even though nothing improves or innovates

The incentive structure and organizational inertia are going to be the hardest to improve. I’d wager this is close enough to the root cause to state that, for true innovation to occur, this must be addressed or there will always be fear of career impact.

System of Systems Analysis

If you think you understand the problem, step back and see if you understand the system.

Thus far, we’ve addressed two of the three fears of innovation as well as a majority of the underlying hurdles to achieving the culture that McKinsey recommends. However, there is one major fear left to address.

The fear of uncertainty is largely based on not understanding the full system implications. Lacking this understanding also creates a larger problem for innovation in that you don’t understand whether the innovation in your space is actually changing the system at large. Even worse, without the system of systems analysis, we often miss that the greatest innovation is finding opportunities outside of your own area that can completely mitigate your problem.

Another aspect of the full systems perspective is to ensure that the innovation is aligned with customer needs. Too often, innovation lies right in front of us if we only really dug into the root causes and identified the real problems the customers are dealing with, not just the superficial ones. The key here is that a system of systems perspective requires understanding the customers’ systems as much, or more than understanding your own solution’s systems. By doing this you will find incredibly innovative and unique solutions.

To achieve a system of systems perspective we come full circle because, back to Personalities, not everyone is coded to intuitively look at the larger system, and back to Incentive Structures, we are often told to stay in our lane. I’ll save the full details of what a true system of systems analysis implies but suffice it to say, if you think you understand the problem, step back and see if you understand the system.

Facing the Fear

Innovation is the structured, disciplined, and intentional execution of ideas in a chaotic and noisy opportunity space.

In some ways, just identifying what drives these fears helps us see the solutions. What’s a bit more complicated is the three problems of personalities, incentives, and systems analysis can’t be done independently.

For example, the systems analysis needs to be done with polymathic thinkers who can think outside of the existing system as well as being comfortable with exploring divergent ideas from other disciplines. Clearly, understanding personality proclivities is necessary to check and see if you’ve got the right thinkers. We also have to look at the incentive structures to allow doing the systems analysis as well as using the systems analysis to illuminate more of the hidden incentive structures.

This isn’t going to be a five-step process, or a one-and-done, as it’s a wicked problem, a Gordian Knot if you will, that needs constant iteration and improvement. Fundamentally, I’d start picking apart the problem by Providing Direction, Focusing Energy, and holding [Proactive] Accountability. This also lines up very well with the culture McKinsey recommends for innovation specifically around framing and championing, showing and ritualizing, and shielding and empowering. The key is to look at ways to intentionally manage innovation that sets up both processes and people so that your products mature faster.

Why is it essential to manage innovation? Because Innovation is the structured, disciplined, and intentional execution of ideas in a chaotic and noisy opportunity space. It has to be disciplined because aligned with the Scientific Method, innovation must be replicable, repeatable, and collaborative.

While these problems underlying the fear of innovation are a wicked problem, as you tease it apart, remember to contextualize the problem from the systems perspective and, if possible, you might be better off just cutting it to clear out the tech, and organizational, debt.

Facing the fear allows you to emerge from the comfort zone, into the learning zone, and eventually into the growth zone where true innovation occurs.

The Comfort Zone - Original Author Unknown

Conclusion

Facing the fear of innovation means we have to understand why that fear is manifesting. I believe the fear of criticism, fear of uncertainty, and fear of the negative impact on one’s career are rooted in not understanding personalities, not understanding the incentive structure, and in not understanding the systems of systems implications. Addressing these three drivers provide keys to unlocking the vast reservoir of innovation potential in your organization.

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Face the Fear