Avoid the Wooden Horse

From Peter Andrews:

I've always identified with Laocoön.  He was the perceptive individual who warned the Trojans about a wooden horse that had been left on the beach by the Greeks.  He ended up wresting with serpents and Troy fell. 

There are a few lessons here beyond the famous "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts."  One is to make sure your advice is understood.  Being an ambiguous oracle doesn't do anyone much good.  Another is make sure you get in shape before you go to the beach.  Or bring friends.  There may be serpents.

There are always serpents as we look toward or work to create the future:  Unintended consequences.   Hidden agendas.  Distractions.  Bureaucratic rules.  And our own neatly tied tongues.   This blog will be about taking on these challenges, looking at failures as well as successes.  I'll be wrestling with serpents, but I hope I won't be wrestling alone.  I look forward to conversations, questions and comments.

Right now, I'm looking off into the waves and I see a big serpent called priorities headed in my direction.  Fundamentally, I need to teach and meet my quota, but I also have commitments to write, work on studies (both intellectual and practical), answer questions, maintain relationships and  -- oh -- think.  Some of this is out-of-control because of my attention deficit behavior, but, on a gut level, I'm sure there are organizing principles.  Like most people, I have a list of urgent stuff and some milestones highlighted.  Unlike most people, I am making an effort to circle "fun" activities (work activities -- private life is separate) and hold onto them.  But I should be able to find better synergies between my efforts.

So I have a huge piece of paper covering half my kitchen table that looks like a Robin Williams mindmap.  Proposed book titles (e.g., Grease Monkey Innovation), learning activities (Spanish, for sure) and key relationships (clients, colleagues, sponsors) dance around the urgent stuff and the mundane (mandatory diversity training, expense accounts).  I'm looking for a pattern, but the bigger picture is not emerging.  So I'll resort the items on the paper, break some down further and nag friends with peculiar questions.  (It is an awkward time-consuming process.  If you have a better one, please let me know!)  The process is really a kind of self-reinvention.

And that is one starting point for creating the future -- recreating ourselves.  Because the wooden horse here is the self that's very comfortable in the present.   Every time I have been able to  create something new, it has been at the cost of destroying something old.  And that something old is, partly, inside myself. 

This relates directly to the problems innovators face.  With students and colleagues, I've explored barriers and, in particular, the enemies of innovation.  There are two lessons we keep returning to.  The first is that enemies usually force you to create a better future than you would have otherwise.  The second is that the greatest enemies to innovation are ourselves. 

I know this from hard experience.  For instance, back in the era before the dotcom bust, I came up with an idea for a useful site, and I actually did a very thorough job of development.  I worked with friends to create a business case in execu-speak, since it was difficult to get execs to look at a Web site at that time, I actually did a portfolio mock-up of the site.  I have no artistic skill, but I knew how to cut pictures out of magazines.  It looked good enough to move me as quickly up the line as I've ever gone.

When I got the the exec with discretionary dollars, he was totally sold on the idea.  He wanted to know when I could start leading the project.  Then he asked the deadly question: how long had I been a manager. 

Well, I had been a manager for my previous employer, but that didn't count.  The proposal died that day.  I saw something like it pop up with a competitor just over a year later.  That business ultimately sold for $500M.  Ashes.  What stopped me?  Me.  I didn't have the sense to challenge the assumption that I couldn't lead the project.  Or even to suggest my partnering with someone.  The exec wasn't the enemy, I was.  And I only realized years later.

These ideas are mine and don’t necessarily represent those of my employer. Nonetheless, my employer owns the words. © 2007 IBM Executive Business Institute. All rights reserved.

Comments

[Dan Gassert]

I have that same serpent sitting on my shoulder as I respond to your blog. I have many irons in the fire and although I know which are higher priority, I find myself migrating to the ones that are professionally or personally satisfying. I also keep adding more of this type, letting the higher priority/less enjoyable ones sit. Let me know how you slay your serpent, so I can try the same approach.