Category Archives: leading

Bob Sutton: creating infectious action

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During the formative years of the Stanford d.school, I taught a class with Bob Sutton and some other colleagues called Creating Infectious Action.  The class revolved around a basic question: could ideas be designed to spread?

The answer, delivered by successive student design teams working to spread ideas as diverse as downloading Firefox to creating a pedestrian-only zone in Palo Alto, was an unqualified yes.  Yes, you can design ideas to spread, so long as you pay attention to something roughly approxmating these three key principles:

  1. create something remarkable – an idea, product, or service
  2. weave sticky stories around the offering
  3. identify communities receptive to points 1 & 2, then light some small fires, and then spend time pouring gas on those fires

This week, Bob has created some hugely infectious action around the pathetic treatment by United Airlines of the daughter of our mutual friend and colleague Perry Klebahn.  You can read about it here.

I just did a Google News search on the topic, and over 160 news items have been written about this sad episode.  All of this from a blog post.  And there's more to come, for sure.

United's woeful performance is remarkable in a negative way that hits principle one above: a girl, stranded by an airline, kept from getting in touch with her parents, meanwhile surrounded by supposedly responsible adults who can only take action when they go off duty from their job at United.  And Bob has written some very sticky stories around this, all backed up by the authority which comes from an extremely well-regarded, tenured Stanford professor.  And to the third principle above, it's easy to dismiss this as some thing which just happens naturally on the web, but Bob has put a lot of hard work over the years into building an online audience for his blog.  It's an audience highly engaged with the hard issues of organizations and culture, primed and ready to spread an idea like this — which reflects the very worst aspects of bureaucratic, disconnected, corporate cultures.

As a formerly loyal United customer who now goes out of my way to fly on JetBlue and Virgin America, I really hope that this sad story is a tipping point for United's management and culture, and gets converted into concrete, positive action.  It's rippling across the web, and it's going to be around for a long time, because it's designed to be infectious.

 

metacool Thought of the Day

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Mario Andretti

“For every negative, there’s a positive.  It’s in everything.  How you deal with life, outlook, how much energy you put into achieving something.  That’s why I detest entitlement.  Anything that’s worthwhile is going to call for some sacrifice.  Nothing worthwhile will come to you without a price.  People think in sports, you have different rules.  You really don’t.  It’s whatever motivates you.”

– Mario Andretti

Embracing Risk in the Pursuit of Victory

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Embracing Risk in the Pursuit of Victory Stefan Bradl Lucio Cecchinello Diego Rodriguez Reilly Brennan Stanford Revs Program MotoGP LCR Honda

Earlier this week I moderated a discussion with Stefan Bradl and Lucio Cecchinello titled Embracing Risk in the Pursuit of Victory.  Bradl and Lucio were appearing as part of the Open Garage series hosted by Reilly Brennan, Executive Director of the innovative Revs Program at Stanford.  Bradl is a rookie phenomenon in the MotoGP motorcycle racing series.  Cecchinello, also a successful motorcycle racing champion, is an entrepreneur who is CEO of LCR Honda MotoGP, the racing team that enters a motorcycle for Bradl in MotoGP.

Live discussions are always an exercise in improvisation and serendipity.  As a moderator, you can frame up a discussion, but you've got to go where the ideas take you, and weave a narrative from there.  Panel discussions are jazz where as a moderator your job is to lay out the chord changes and roll with whatever comes along.  Most "sage on stage" presentations are something more akin to a piano recital, less sponteaneous but beautiful in a linear way.

The point of view I brought to the discussion was that — for racers and innovators both — risk is not something to be avoided at all costs, but is instead a source of great opportunity.  Whether you're probing the limit of adhesion on a MotoGP bike through the corkscrew at Laguna Seca, or figuring out how to design a technology to a place where it is both delightful and business viable, you're pushing for something remarkable.  You can't be remarkable without taking a risk, whether that risk is financial, technological, emotional, or personal (or all of the above).  Healthy opportunity, in many ways, is proportional to smart risk-taking.

Metacool Stanford Revs Rodriguez Bradl Cecchinello
I had a great time speaking with Stefan and Lucio.  My impression was that the audience enjoyed the discussion with the racers on stage.  You can see an unedited video of the evening here:

I'd like express my deep thanks to Reilly for asking me to moderate this discussion, which was a big honor for me. And many thanks to all the team at LCR, who are an extremely friendly, fun, good-hearted bunch of hard-core racers.

Metacool Stanford Revs Brennan Bradl Cecchinello Rodriguez

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Tenacity

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This year I've written at length about the Delta Wing project.  Last month the team reached their goal of racing at the 24 Hours of Le Mons, and did very well.  The car performed as advertised and was putting in competitive lap times until it was forced off the road due to a racing incident.

At Le Mans, a driver is allowed to try and fix a broken car, but is not permitted to receive direct outside aid.  So the driver is the only person allowed to touch the car in the process of fixing it, but can be coached by other people from the team.  The tools used to fix the car have to be carried in the car, and no outside spare parts can be used.  If you're able to drive your disabled car back to the garage, the entire team can then go to work on it.  Because of these rules, and due to the extreme time duration of the race, there's an imperative for drivers to do whatever they can to nurse a car back to health.

At the time the Delta Wing was shunted off the rack, it was being driven by Satoshi Mototyama.  The video above is an edited account of the 90 minutes Motoyama spent trying to get the broken Delta Wing in good enough condition to limp back to the garage.  Through much of the video, he's being coached by his team of engineers and mechanics standing on the other side of a chain-link fence.  Bear in mind that while he's doing this, it's hot and humid outside, he's wearing several layers of fireproof underwear below a nomex firesuit, and extremely loud race cars are constantly zooming by.  And, he's wearing his racing helmet; it's remarkable how much vision a race helmet blocks out.  When I last wore mine in an unfamiliar car, it kept me from being able to see my own seat belt harness, which made it hard to get out when I wanted to!

As you can see from the video, it didn't work.  Even after 90 minutes of trying just about everything, nothing worked.  And yet, I find Motoyama's efforts deeply inspiring.  He tried like hell.  He put everything into trying to win.  As a person who believes in the power of putting in as much as you can when the chips are down, I find his courage and tenacitiy utterly inspiring.

While I'm sad that the grand Delta Wing Le Mans adventure ended this way, his conduct made it a noble ending.  Tenacity really matters, and in another place, it could have worked out for Motoyama.  Possessing the grit to see things out, that's a true gift, and it's one you want to see in everyone trying to bring something remarkable to life.

Innovating is Tough: Hats off to the DeltaWing team

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I had a deep emotional response while watching this video about the DeltaWing project.

If you've ever struggled to bring something new and innovative to life, you know what everyone in this video is going through. What they've accomplished is immensely impressive.

Toward the end of the video, Dr. Don Panoz is wearing a shirt with the following aphorism emblazoned on its back:

The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.

Amen, Dr. Panoz.  Amen.  I think myself very lucky to be part of the team at IDEO, and there are very few teams or organizations I would consider signing up to belong to, but the DeltaWing project is certainly one of them.  I once again tip my hat to Ben Bowlby and everyone there who has worked so hard to make a clever vision into a stunning reality.

Innovating is tough.  Talking about it is easy.  Doing it to the hilt and creating a true gamechanger is beyond hard.  Respect.

2012-06-11 at 10-44-29

David Kelley on Creative Confidence

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“Don’t divide the world into ‘creative’ and ‘non-creative’. Let people realize they are naturally creative … When people regain that confidence, magic happens.”

– David Kelley

 

Earlier this year at the TED conference I had the wonderful experience of watching my teacher, mentor, colleague, and friend David Kelley give the talk above.  It’s about building confidence in one’s ability to be creative.  It’s also about empathy, courage, leadership, and choosing to strive to live the life you want to live.  

I hope you enjoy listening to David’s thoughts on creative confidence as much as I did.

 

Climbing Mountains and Wells

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Innovating upon something already in existence requires change.  The road to that change can be faster or slower, but there's always a journey to be had.  If you're lucky, it may be an easy path you take, but it's much more likely to be one with lots of obstacles, dips, and dead ends along the way. 

When I look back upon the things I've embarked upon to create change in the world, one thing stands out: the journey always took much longer than projected.  If that journey was something akin to climbing a big mountain, I spent more time navigating the approach to the base of the mountain than summiting the peak, if you will.  I rarely if ever planned for this "flat" part of the trip.  The mountain peak is so seductive, so sexy — it's where you want to end up, so you focus on what it will take to scale the verticals.  But as it turns out, it's the long walk to the base of the mountain that's the hardest part.  It's about perseverance more than strength.

Innovating something, be it a stand alone product or a massively interconnected system, involves many more days of getting to the peak than it does scaling the peak.  This is because there are so many pitfalls along the way — so it always feels like you're climbing something.  Climbing a mountain face or a well, it feels the same: steep, slippery, and difficult. As it turns out, a lot of that climbing happens because you've stumbled into a crevasse or a well, and you have to find your way out before you can get back to your mission of walking to the mountain.  It can't be helped; if you're innovating, by definition you're venturing out through the dark unknown, so of course you'll stumble and fall and have to pick yourself up.

While there were lots of hard points, in any difficult project I've done there was also more joy and camaraderie to be had along the way than I ever dared hope for.  This is key.  Whether it's Orville and Wilbur figuring out how to make man fly, or it's you tweaking the messaging on a web site in the middle of the night, you need the help of friends and colleagues.  Not only can they help pull you out of a crevasse, but they can help you see that you weren't yet on the mountain.  And that you need to keep walking. 

Understanding the difference between a mountain and a well?  Priceless.

Big Bang Theory

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The essay I wrote for RACER magazine is now available online.

You can find it here on pp. 34-35.  The topic is Game Changers.  At the risk of tooting my own horn, I think it's one of the better things I've written on the subject of innovating.  Here's an excerpt:

How to spot one?  Beware of self-proclaimed game changers; most are just marketing hype.  Real game changers trigger resistance from competitors and rule makers.  Or, like Jim Hall's fan car, they violate unspoken taboos…

I hope you like it!  Thanks.