8 Issues & Observations

covered that he was tempted to attribute to others the same manipulative motives that he himselfoften had, and that this allowed him to justify hisown manipula- tions. This had happened in Looking Glass when he had attributed manipula- tive intent to Wendy’s actions and had assumed that she was trying to out- maneuver him. As Allen admitted, this assumption was probably based on the fact that he was trying to outmaneuver her.

After taking all of this in as well as he could - and Allen proved to be remark- ably resilient and accepting - he had this to say in conclusion: “This has been eye- opening for me. I thought I was on reason- ably good terms with everyone during the day. I’m worried about the fact that 1 came across the way I’ve heard myself described here. Because even though I was thinking about my own potential gain in all of this, 1 was also concerned about the organiza- tion as a whole. This hasn’t been all that easy to hear, but it’s been useful. It’s what 1 came here to learn:’

Mr. Bath is Publicntions Editor at the CenteT; Dr. Kuplan is Director of New Program Deuelopment.

Sketches by Dave Hills

Reprints If you would like reprints of any

feature (lead) article from Issues B Obseruatiom, please send $1.00 each (minimum order of 10) to: Publications, Center for Creative Leadership, PO. Box P-I, Greensboro, N C 27402-1660.

INNOVHTIONS Action Learning in <an Innovation Intervention

Stanley Gryskiewicz, Kathleen Holt, Anne Faber, and Sharon Sensabaugh

During a fifteen-month period of 1982-83, we offered a monthly briefing for the professional R&D people of Mead Central Research, the principal research lab for Mead Paper Company. In these briefings we discussed, reviewed, and tried out some current techniques and practices designed to encourage innovation. .An art- icle in TheJoumdofProduct lnnowation Management reports in detail on this pro- ject, covering what we tried to teach the R&D people and what we learned our- selves. In this article, we will present a summary, in thumbnail form, of the lessons we learned.

topics: individual creativity, small group creativity, and organizational creativity. The content of these briefings is shown in the figure.

The lessons we learned from this pro- ject can be summarized in one word: com- munications. More specifically, we learned five lessons about communications in rela- tion to encouraging innovation thal: might be helpful to others who are about to embark upon similar projects.

1. Setting up hete~ogeneous teams,. Dur- ing our briefings and innovation exercises, the participants were asked to form iatypi- cal work groups that were cross functional and that consisted of people from outside their regular work groups. These hetero- geneous groups worked as teams on case studies in product innovation, group problem-solving exercises, and issues of application. They also tackled assigned projects ranging from specific long- standing product problems at Mead Research to recommendations for struc- tural changes on project procedures within the lab.

The participants told us that “getting to know people outside one’s own profes- sional group” helped them see the know- ledge and skills of others as potential

The briefings were divided into three

Issues & Observations 9

Individual definitions creativity styles convergent/divergent thinking mind sets intrinsic/exttinsic motivation

Creativity Briefings Content Small Grow

brainstorming brainwriting excursions targeted innovation uniformity pressures

Organization alternative structures parallel organizations restructuring for innovation reward systems

resources. I t also helped them learn more about job-related activities taking place outside their own work domain. We found evidence that the performance of these heterogeneous teams was superior to the performance of homogeneous project teams at Mead.

2 . Establishing trust with management and participants. We paid particular atten- tion to balancing our relationships with management and participants and avoided scoring points with one group at the expense of the other. Often we high- lighted our impartiality by innocently poking fun at issues dear to the hearts of both sides. This helped establish an atmosphere in which both groups could trust us not to be pursuing a hidden agenda with the other group. This trust, in turn, allowed us to confront openly the factors that inhibit innovation.

3 . Entering with an integrated yet fix- ible intervention design. We quickly learned that the way to ride the waves of uncon- trollable events such as layoffs, budget cuts, and attitude survey results that might come up during a project was to discuss these things openly with everyone in- volved, and then change our planned content accordingly. This enabled us to incorporate a crisis or organizational issue into our design, instead of allowing it to compete with our plans.

4. Making ourselves available. The participants had our back-home office telephone number and were free to call on us any time. When we visited we also made ourselves available for “drop in” sessions, during which any topic was open for discussion. Several times this provided information that helped us avoid organiza- tional “mine fields” such as undefined jealousies, members attending without the consent of their boss, and unclear owner- ship of ideas.

During the initial phase ofour interven- tion, the reasons people gave for a lack of innovation involved factors outside the control of the participants themselves.

5. Allowing time for the process to work.

These took on some generalized forms such as “the system:’ past “history:’ “man- agement:’ or “the corporation!’ About halfway into the project, the focus shifted toward problems and solutions that were within people’s control. Participants began to take responsibility for their own innovation initiatives, realizing that they could actually make a difference in many existing situations. The de-emphasis on external was further reinforced as the par- ticipants’ ideas were reviewed by manage- ment and were not challenged as being “not the way we do things:’ but were rather welcomed and embraced.

As these points suggest, the lack of communication among the various groups and departments within an organization must be addressed for an innovation inter- vention to be effective. Kottcamp and Rushton (“Improving the Corporate Environment:’ Research Management, 1979,22 (6), pp. 19-22) reinforce this conclusion when they suggest conditions for improving the corporate environment for innovation. Two of these conditions are:

Recognize that innovation is a complex series ofevents within the entire corporation. No one isolated function or depart- ment is solely responsible for innovat ion.

As we stated at the beginning, com- munication was a major learning theme for this project. In that theme, we heard five variations:

1. Diversity in the make-up of project teams brings in additional valuable resources.

2. Developing a trusting, open rela- tionship with management and partici- pants allows the open exploration and, when necessary, the open confrontation of the factors inhibiting innovation in an organization.

3 . Incorporating unplanned organiza- tional events into the design helps keep communications open and makes the pro- ject more immediately relevant.

4. Being available to people who have concerns inappropriate for focused discus- sion in the larger group provides a safet) valve for individuals and liberates the group to pursue group goals.

5. Havingpatience with the time it takes for learning to be internalized and acted upon within the organization can often spell the difference between success and failure.

Dr. Gryskiewicz is Director ofthe Crea- tivity Development Division; Ms. Holt is a graduate student at UNC-Chapel Hill; Ms. Faber is a Program Associute wi th the Center’s Creativity Development and Leader- ship Development Divisions; and Ms. Sensabaugh is a Program Associate wiith the Creativity Development Division.

INKLINGS David I? Campbell

In my previous column, I twitted the Wall Streetloumal about the considerable nonsense they published last December in a series of articles on “Executive Tnvel” (December 20,21,27,28, 1984). Using a maladroit collection of allegedly verbatim quotes from a variety of ostensible travel- ing executive experts, the WSJ apparently sorted out the weirdest, most oddball answers, and then knitted them together as if they represented the usual experi- ences of the typical business traveler. Working from that base, they then gener- ated “useful” tips for future travelers.

While this approach may have gener- ated good copy, it produced a distorted picture of what life IS like as a frequent business traveler, and the subsequent useful tips were nothing short of ludicrous, such as demanding matchbooks in hotel rooms with the city name on them to keep track of where you are, or leaving your dirty laundry wi th the concierge at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Let me tell you what frequent hrisi- ness travel is like. I t is boring, repetitive,