Category Archives: leading

Don’t settle

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My original working title for Innovation Principle 20 was "Don't settle".  This principle was inspired by one of my colleagues at IDEO, who has showed me again and again the value created by not giving up on an idea until the quality of its expression matches the magnitude of its potential.  

I evolved the messaging of Principle 20 to "Be remarkable" because I wanted it to feel more aspirational and open-ended, but it some ways I always go back to the phrasing "don't settle" in my head.  To be honest, I've been struggling with the wording on this one.  Is it about being remarkable?  Or is about sticking to your guns, never letting anything go?  While I'm a firm believer in embracing mediocrity in order to get the ball rolling, I'm also a stickler for doing amazing stuff.  Are these two at all compatible?

When I read this article about chef Daniel Boulud a couple of years ago, I filed it away under the heading "don't settle".  I just took another look at it, and noted this passage:

But during Round 8 of recipe tests, on Tuesday, he refuses to grade on the curve. He stoically appraises entrees and appetizers in what feels like a marathon episode of “Top Chef” — except that this judge has helped conceive the dishes and never seems very pleased by the results.

The lamb ribs confit with roasted lamb leg and spring beans? “Maybe a little more herbs in it,” he suggests. The Maryland lump crab cake with a curry sauce and pickled radish? “More crab, less garnish.” The passion fruit crepe with mango slices? “We’re still not there.”

We sit across from Mr. Boulud, shamelessly pillaging the leftovers and thinking: huh? Each dish seems head-spinningly yummy, but Mr. Boulud summons enthusiasm only when he tries a sausage called the Vermonter, and he cracks a smile only after a forkful of beer-battered haddock beignets.

“I think it’s good,” he says, like a man enjoying a guilty pleasure.

This excerpt hints at the relationship between "don't settle" and "be remarkable".  When it comes to the lamb and the crab cake and the fruit crepe, he's saying "keep working on it — not remarkable enough yet".  Not settling.  But when he tastes something over the bar, such as the beer-battered fish beignets, he celebrates the outcome.  I think that's the key: if you don't have the honesty to recognize something remarkable when it happens, people around you will think nothing will ever make you happy, and from that point forward you'll always be operating in a climate of fear.  And a working climate infused with fear never ever never ever takes us to a happy place:

This principle is about a stepwise journey toward a remarkable endpoint.  It is fueled by trust, a trust that none of us will settle for anything less than being remarkable.  But it also requires a shared trust that it is okay to deliver an interim step that is less than perfect.  In other words, we need to be okay with each of us failing as individuals if we're ever going to reach somewhere remarkable together.  I can't imagine that perfect fish-flavored beignets could ever happen right on the first shot, you know?

Stanford Magazine on the Stanford d.school

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Stanford's alumni magazine, titled — you guessed it! — Stanford Magazine, ran a great story on the d.school a few weeks ago.  The article speaks with my teacher/mentor/colleague/friend/hero David Kelley and others about not only the d.school, but on living your life well, and on the notion of achieving creative confidence (here's a secret: those last two items are deeply related).

It's definitely worth your time to read through the article.  I really liked this quote from Stanford President John Hennessy:

Creativity represents an important characteristic that we would seek to inculcate in our students, and obviously one that's harder to put a firm framework around.  It's unlike teaching some analytical method. Will a bridge stay up? Well, we know what to teach. You teach physics, you teach some mathematics and you can do the analysis.

It's much harder to teach creativity. [It involves] multiple routes, multiple approaches and, obviously, it's virtually impossible to test whether or not you've succeeded. The measure of success is likely to come long after, not unlike many of the other things we try to teach: To prepare students to be educated citizens, to prepare them for dealing with people from diverse and different walks of life. Those are things that play out over a long time, whether or not we've done a good job.

During my time as an undergraduate at Stanford, I was very fortunate to be able to pursue two degrees, obtaining both a bachelor of science in engineering and a bachelor of arts in a multidisciplinary program called Values, Technology, Science and Society [VTSS] (it is now called STS and is one of the biggest programs on campus, though when I was there it was quite small).  I spent a lot of time in the library.  Though VTSS sounds like something very technical in nature, it was actually an incredibly rich humanities experience, with a focus on topics which, if you've spent any time around this blog, you know that I love.  For example, my honors thesis was on the origins and development of the Ferrari aesthetic, looking at how meaning was created in Maranello via the mechanisms of storytelling, racing, and panel beating.  My VTSS teachers were an incredible group of people, really inspirational, and they helped me build up my creative confidence in myriad ways.  VTSS also gave me a way to take all of the product design classes with David Kelley which I otherwise would not have been able to do had I just pursued my engineering degree alone. 

I bring all of this up because I do feel that Professor Kelley helped, in Hennessy's words, to prepare me to be an educated citizen, to prepare me for dealing with people from diverse and different walk of life.  If the d.school had been around while I was there, I wouldn't have had to get the two degrees (though I would have anyway, as I'm always "doing both").  For me, as someone who was part of the founding team at the d.school, and who remains extremely passionate and optimistic about its mission and potential in the world — it is an experiment still in its very early days — it's very gratifying to see that mission be couched in these terms.  Ultimately, we are not teaching folks to be designers, we are helping them realize their potential as citizens and as happy, productive human beings.  Awesome.

I'll leave you with this recent d.school video which has students telling it all in their own words:

d.school bootcamp: the student experience from Stanford d.school

Wisdom from Francis Ford Coppola

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I learned something significant today from this wonderful 99% interview of Francis Ford Coppola at the 99%. 

As you know, for the past year or so I've been playing around with the notion that an essential — even critical — element in any successful creative endeavor is the existence of a crisp point of view to guide decision making along the way.  A point of view is statement of what something must be, and in that declaration lies an exhaustive list of everything which it cannot be.  A point of view allows for consistent choices to be made, which lead to coherent, strong end results.  When something is criticized for feeling like it was created by a committee, it's not so much the committee per se which is at fault, so much as the absence of any unifying principle to guide the actions of individuals in the name of creating a sum total which is truly remarkable.  In terms of outcomes, having a strong point of view is the difference between the music of an ensemble led by Charlie Hunter and the stuff you'd hear in an elevator.  There's nothing wrong with group creativity, but it needs to have a point of reference for goodness navigation.

Which brings me back to the Coppola interview.  While I've never made a motion picture, I always watch the credits, and I'm always amazed at how even a film with a modest production budget can employ so many people.  How can they all know what to do?  What good looks like?  How to make the myriad brilliant decisions that lead to something being truly remarkable?  Here's what Coppola says, and it's totally about point of view:

When you make a movie, always try to discover what the theme of the movie is in one or two words. Every time I made a film, I always knew what I thought the theme was, the core, in one word. In “The Godfather,” it was succession. In “The Conversation,” it was privacy. In “Apocalypse,” it was morality.

The reason it’s important to have this is because most of the time what a director really does is make decisions. All day long: Do you want it to be long hair or short hair? Do you want a dress or pants? Do you want a beard or no beard? There are many times when you don’t know the answer. Knowing what the theme is always helps you.

I remember in “The Conversation,” they brought all these coats to me, and they said: Do you want him to look like a detective, Humphrey Bogart? Do you want him to look like a blah blah blah. I didn’t know, and said the theme is ‘privacy’ and chose the plastic coat you could see through. So knowing the theme helps you make a decision when you’re not sure which way to go.
 
One word.  I love the idea of boiling the point of view down to one word.  An exhaustive written treatment of the point of view would be read by few, internalized by even fewer.  But a single word?  Think of the last US presidential election, and you can see the power of a single word to communicate an entire political platform: Hope.  And because creative endeavors ever love constraints, the specificity of a single word will engender mountains more creativity than a list of ten or a hundred or a thousand.  Transparent plastic rain coats don't just happen, you know.

Rest in peace, David E. Davis, Jr.

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"I suddenly understood with great clarity that nothing in life—except death itself—was ever going to kill me. No meeting could ever go that badly. No client would ever be that angry. No business error would ever bring me as close to the brink as I had already been."

– David E. Davis, Jr., on the liberating effects of the automobile accident which almost claimed his life

 

David E. Davis passed away today. 

I began reading his writing in December 1979, and it's not hyperbole to say that his influence changed my life for the better.  An amazing writer and raconteur, his magazines informed and inflamed my passion for automobiles, and provided me with a view into a fascinating world of colorful personalities, fantastic road trips, and his own singular point of view on what made for a quality life.  Everything I learned from his writing and editorial direction has informed my professional work.  As a consummate storyteller, he was truly a great American treasure.

I began corresponding with him via email a few years ago.  We exchanged views on a variety of topics, including the marketing of Suburbans as Cadillacs and the proper shade of metallic blue required to bring out the personality of a Ferrari 550 Maranello.  We tried to meet up at a running of the California Mille, but our schedules didn't overlap in the way we hoped, something I truly regret.  I left a copy of his book Thus Spake David E. with a mutual friend, and David wrote me a wonderful, humorous inscription with an offer of dinner sometime.  Though I took the time to thank him for his influence on me via email, I dearly wish I could have had that dinner and looked him in the eyes and told him so.  In life you've got to seize the day and make the most of things, and I didn't in this case, with regret.

The quote above is from a graduation speech he gave a few years ago.  Whenever I feel like life is kicking me in the teeth, I think about his points above.  The ability to pick oneself up from adversity, in the end, may be as important — or more important — as the instinct to go forth boldly in the first place.  For me, the lesson of David E. Davis is to live your life out loud, to keep on engaging with new adventures no matter what life hands you in return, and to do it all with as much vigor and chutzpah as you can muster.

RIP, David E.

Salman Khan and the primacy of doing

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What if all of the big intitatives — both public and private — put into place over the past decade to computerize learning were trumped by a smart, funny, personable guy who, acting largely alone and on a shoestring budget, used a human-centered approach to creating a simple, cost-effective way to reach thousands and thousands of students over the web? And what if it all happened simply because he started teaching kids?

Well, here you go: Salman Khan did all of that, and more.  He is a wonderful example of the primacy of doing.

Let's look at some of the innovations brought to market by the Khan Academy.  Among others:

  • free access over the internet
  • self-paced learning
  • lecture attendance at home, homework at school
  • the psychological and emotional safety created by learning in private
  • helping students achieve true mastery, as opposed to minimum tolerable levels of understanding
  • liberating "slow" students from the tyrranny of being put on the low achievement track
  • a more human classroom experience

What do all of these have in common?  Well, aside from being truly amazing outcomes for students, teachers, and parents, none of them were captured in a business plan slide deck, nor were they necessarily premediated goals for his venture.  In other words, Salman didn't start out with the goal to flip the learning paradigm.  He worked his way up to that point by doing something he loved.  To push that point even further, Sallman wasn't looking to start a venture at all, just to tutor his cousins more effectively.  He designed for them, saw the value he created, and then went from there. 

Embracing the primacy of doing, getting started, saying "what the hell, why don't I try this!" is a way to open yourself up to powerful forces of serendipity, luck, and good fortune.  In technical terms, doing gives you access to a real option, which is defined as:

the right — but not the obligation — to undertake some business decision; typically the option to make, abandon, expand, or contract a capital investment.

Think about it: if you could create the right to give yourself an expanded range of opportunities in the future, wouldn't you give that gift to yourself?  Of course you would.  So what Salman teaches us is that we need to act — we have to act — because inside of that action is a gift of a better future, both for ourselves and for others.  Accessing the gift requires some courage, so tell yourself you can do it, and help your friends and family to embrace their own potential to get out there and make it happen.  For me, that's the ultimate lesson of the Khan Academy.

 

John on TED

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I returned this morning from the TED conference in Long Beach.  This year I found it exceptionally inspiring.  And also draining: the content on stage, the people you meet, the people you don't meet,the locale, all of the activites — it's a jam-packed five days that leaves you feeling simultaneously energized yet also a bit like a spent tube of toothpaste.  Wow. 

I logged on this evening to write a summary of the week, but in the course of seeing what my friends wrote about their experience there, I came across John's amazing story of his experience in Long Beach, and decided that all I'm going to do is quote him here.  What he wrote is just beautiful, and it captures the essence of what happens there:

… Every time I go, there are at least a couple of experiences that I have that change the way that I look at the world, the way that I want to be when I go home. TED makes you want to be better, smarter, more present, more thoughtful, more impactful, more human. To be a better citizen and a better professional and a better dad and a better husband and a better friend. That type of inspiration doesn’t happen all that much, and it’s worth the price of admission every time.

And that’s why June Cohen and Tom Rielly, on the TED team are two of my true heroes. They both have chosen to spend their lives working on building up TED outside of just the week of the conference every year. Tom has built the TED Fellows program, which started out pretty damn great and at this point is starting to move into basically ass-kicking-terrifyingly-awesome territory. And June, who put TED Talks online for everyone to see, including subtitling into 80+ languages.

That, my friends, is how you change the world.

That’s how you take this beautiful, wonderful experience for a few people in California each year and turn it into something that anyone — anyone! — can use to make themselves, their community, their world better themselves.

Well said, John.  I can't wait to post some of my favorite speaker videos.  I had tears streaming down my face in just about every session of the conference. 

TED is something different from what it was half a decade ago.  If you can ever go in person to one of their events, or to a TEDx event, I heartily recommend you do so, but I do agree with John that the essence of the TED brand experience is by no means limited to those who hear it in person.  If you can take the time to watch and absorb the videos which appeal to you — and many of those which won't at first glance — you can have the same kind of transformational experience.  Perhaps even better. 

Tears optional, but highly recommended.

Always have a strong point of view

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It is so important to have a strong point of view.  Let me repeat: it is so important to have a strong point of view.  It needn't be as extreme as the one voiced in this ad, but you've got to stand for something.

If you don't have a point of view, you won't know what you don't stand for, and so you'll be tempted to try and do everything, because "no" won't be in your vocabulary. Trying to appeal to everyone by playing in the mushy middle not only will make you less appealing over the long haul (because being boring is not attractive), it also makes it very difficult to get started (because the enormity of the task makes everything too daunting to tackle), and makes it really tough to ship (because you have to do so much in order to meet the needs of so many people).

Having a point of view is incredibly liberating.  It takes more energy and more time to get to an honest understanding of what you believe in, what you need to do, and what you won't do, but it is well and truly worth it.

For more on this subject, read Principle 19: Have a point of view