The Performance Paradox

by Stephen Shapiro

Every leader dreams of finding the magic bullet that will increase creativity, boost productivity, and improve morale. Surprisingly, one of the most effective solutions may be the most counterintuitive: sometimes less effort, not more, yields optimal results.


Keep Your Eye on the Present

A few years ago, I worked with a Formula One racing team. Pit crews, consisting of 19 people, serviced the ultrafast, high-tech race - refueling cars, changing tires, and performing required maintenance in a matter of seconds. The crew members continually shifted positions to find the best combination for the optimal configuration of the team. As they practiced, they used a stopwatch to measure their time to milliseconds. Yet, ultimately, no matter how hard they tried, they couldn't work any faster. They had hit their performance plateau.

Then, they tried a new approach. They decided not to concentrate on their time, but on their style instead. Now, their movements became more significant than their speed. Astonishingly, the crew shaved several tenths of a second off their best time, even though they "felt" they were moving more slowly. This experiment reinforces the concept that the more you focus on your goals, the less likely you are to achieve them. By worrying about the future, you take your eye off the present.

In higher intellectual activities, the results are even more pronounced. Take the true story of a high school student who became increasingly anxious over passing her upcoming final exam in math, always her weakest subject. She studied hard, all the time focusing on her goal of passing her exam. In spite of her efforts, she failed. She pleaded with her teachers to give her one more chance. They did. This time, instead of concentrating on the goal, she used a powerful creativity technique.

Her first conscious thought each day when she awoke was to visualize herself as Condoleezza Rice, the U.S. Secretary of State, a very successful, highly educated woman. Dr. Rice wouldn't worry about a high school math exam, right? By imagining she was someone else, she stopped agonizing and gained more confidence daily. By focusing on the present rather than the result, she scored a 93%, her greatest performance with less effort.


Dare to Be Different

Does this also apply to sales? Can we perform better when we don't focus on our sales goals? A woman's clothing store had a competition to determine who among its employees could sell the most in two months. The winner would receive a bonus and, possibly, a raise. All had their eyes on the prize, except for one sales rep who decided on a different approach. Instead of trying to make a sale, she zeroed in on serving the customer. If a customer needed help for eight hours to pick out a blouse, that's what she would do. If she felt customers would find a better product at a competitor, she would send them there. After two months, this sales person who was not trying to make sales outsold everyone else by a significant margin.

We have seen similar results in many sales and service organizations. We all know (and believe) the expression, "You get what you measure." But a serious question arises: will you get what you want? Often, targets and goals create stress and dysfunctional behavior.


Less Motivation, More Performance

The concept of reducing goal-obsession to improve performance is not new. In the early 1900s, Robert Yerkes and J.D. Dodson developed the eponymous Yerkes-Dodson Law. The premise is performance increases relative to motivation only to a point, after which performance drops. Typically, it is drawn as an inverted U-shaped curve.

If you lack motivation, the result is low performance. This is not surprising. As your motivation increases, your performance increases - to a point. This point is the sweet spot of optimal performance. Then, as you become more goal-obsessed, performance paradoxically decreases. Goals increase stress and cause you to fixate on the future rather than the present.

Yerkes and Dodson suggest that different tasks require different levels of motivation. For example, physically demanding tasks often require higher levels of motivation. This explains why professional athletes are inclined to be very goal-driven. Even so, as demonstrated by the pit crew example, too much goal orientation will hurt even athletic performance. In 2004, the New England Patriots broke the records for the longest winning streak in NFL history - 20 games in a row. At a press conference after the game a reporter asked the team's coach, Bill Belichick, to comment on this winning streak. He replied, "We did not have a 20-game win streak. We had 20 one-game win streaks." His philosophy was for the team to play each game to the best of its ability. Setting your sights too far ahead is a sure recipe for failure.


Creativity Has its Own Rewards

Within the business world, Yerkes and Dodson found that intellectually challenging tasks required lower levels of motivation. The more creative the work, the less motivation required to hit peak levels of performance. Studies reveal that creativity diminishes when individuals are rewarded (externally motivated) for doing their work. Why? The desire to achieve the goal overtakes the personal interest in the endeavor. A myopic focus on the outcome overshadows the intellectual stimulation of the process. As a result, risk taking becomes reduced and creativity vanishes.

"Working hard" may not be the best way to improve productivity and creativity. Maybe it isn't even "working smarter." As we have seen, perhaps the answer lies in trying less. Or maybe it can be found in understanding human behavior and motivation, as illustrated in the following studies.


Your Loss Could Be Your Gain

Which magazine do you think American men are more likely to buy?

• A men's health magazine with the cover, "Lose Your Gut Fast" or
  
• A similar magazine with the cover, "Get Six-Pack Abs"?

Although most people intuitively think that the second cover, "Get Six-Pack Abs," is the sure winner, when a magazine did such a comparison, it found that "Lose Your Gut Fast" sold six times more copies. Why? The answer lies in the three requirements for individuals (or an organization or a society) to change:

1. They must be dissatisfied or uncomfortable with the current situation.
   
2. They must foresee a better future.
   
3. They must believe that they can reach that better future with a reasonable amount of effort.

Point #3 is critical. Using the "gut" example, when someone is 20 pounds overweight, as are many Americans, six-pack abs may be desirable yet seem inconceivable. It's just too much work, and the likelihood of success seems poor. Only when your gut is gone will the idea of six-pack abs seem like a possibility. Similarly, only when your organization is a lean, mean fighting machine will people embrace longer-term, strategic visions.

A question I ask when I address my audiences illustrates this concept further: "Which would you choose?":

• Option 1: A guaranteed gain of $75,000 or
  
• Option 2: An 80% chance to gain $100,000 with a 20% chance of getting nothing?

Seventy-five percent of audience members choose Option 1, consistent across all groups, regardless of demographics. People are risk averse when it comes to increasing gains. What would you choose if I worded the question as a loss rather than as a gain?:

• Option 1: A certain loss of $75,000 or
  
• Option 2: An 80% chance of losing $100,000 with a 20% chance of not losing anything

Over 80% of my audiences choose Option 2. People will take risks to reduce their losses. This explains why the status quo often wins over change. Although there may be a benefit in changing, the risk of losing what you already have is too great.

People will take great risks to minimize their pain/losses yet play it safe when the option is to increase their pleasure/gains. When your organization's change plans are utopian visions of a grandiose future, your employees move to the far end of the performance curve: high motivation, low performance. They become cynical about success and feel as though you are not addressing their current pains and frustrations. Instead, fix immediate problems first, then move on to more strategic visions.


The Bottom Line

To create a pervasive culture of innovation, you must first create an environment of performance and motivation. Achieving this is often, paradoxically, the result of less, not greater, effort. Although goals and performance targets are useful tools, they can also have a detrimental impact on results. When people are too future-fixated, their creativity and overall performance diminish. Find the sweet spot of optimal performance, and you will undoubtedly see an increase in employee productivity, creativity, and satisfaction - all with less effort.


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Stephen Shapiro is the author of three books, a popular innovation speaker, and is the Chief Innovation Evangelist for Innocentive, the leader in Open Innovation.

Selling Innovation to Your Boss

by Jeffrey Phillips

I've argued before that most firms innovate when faced one of two conditions: fear or greed. The fear factor indicates the firm has explored all other options, and now only the most "radical" option - innovation - remains. To paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, "when you've eliminated the possible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the answer". And, like Gordon Gecko from Wall Street, I believe many firms innovate when they believe they've spotted an emerging opportunity or new market. In this case, greed is good.

But if all innovation were based on these two drivers, then little innovation would get done. Clearly many firms latch onto innovation as a life preserver, a last ditch effort rather than a strategic focus, but there's more innovation underway than could be accounted for by desperation. And I'm relatively certain that while some firms are good at spotting innovation opportunities and moving aggressively to produce new products and services, they are fairly few and far between. That leaves us with the majority of innovation getting done by the firms in the hazy middle - not really desperate, but not really leading innovators either. If that's the case, what methods do they use to "sell" innovation to the appropriate decisioning individuals or bodies?

Innovation can be "sold" to executives in one of several methods:

1. As a method to increase organic growth, driving new profits
   
2. As a method to disrupt the existing market or adjacent markets, preempting a competitor
   
3. As a method to create significant differentiation within a market space
   
4. As a method to create product or service leadership

These are the hard-headed, rational reasons, and the reasons that organizations tell themselves they innovate. in reality, most firms take on innovation efforts because:

1. An employee created a great idea and we really have no choice but to exploit it
   
2. A competitor has launched a new (product, initiative, campaign) and we need to respond to it
   
3. A senior leader within the firm has made it his/her mission to create an innovation program and the squeaky wheel must be greased

We often find that innovation programs are formed around existing assets - people or ideas - that persist until they must be addressed. Sort of like a plant that must be weeded out or watered. Otherwise, most new innovation efforts are based on a response to what a competitor is doing. This "reactive" innovation is not, in our minds, the best way to innovate, but it may be the best way to sell an innovation program, to give your initiative the final "kickstart" needed to get the funding or resources you need.

Thus, to "sell" innovation you need to:

1. Link it to a corporate objective (growth, differentiation, disruption)
   
2. Build ideas and momentum under the covers
   
3. Demonstrate what your competitors and new market entrants are doing
   
4. Link all three together (strategy, existing momentum, competitive threats) to complete the package

Without all three "legs" of the stool, you'll struggle to gain credibility. Without a strategic linkage any innovation will be incremental point solutions. Without some existing momentum, the work will seem too overwhelming. Without the ability to demonstrate what competitors are doing, you rely on executives who place great emphasis on longer term strategic goals.


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Jeffrey Phillips is a senior leader at OVO Innovation. OVO works with large distributed organizations to build innovation teams, processes and capabilities. Jeffrey is the author of "Make us more Innovative", and innovateonpurpose.blogspot.com.

Realistic Impossibilities

by Kathy Robison

Being on the wrong end of the continuum between realistic and impossible is what plagues many of today's large multi-national corporations. The fear of failure by employees who are only partially engaged and don't entirely feel like valued members of the team, will always translate into goals and ideas that are mediocre and achievable and never ones that are innovative or impossible. In the 21st century, which is fraught with global economic adjustments, global-interdependence, developed world saturation, and a consumer base that is rapidly changing, creating the impossible is the only way to break away from the competition, ensure success and create a meaningful impact on the world.

Unfortunately most large companies live in the land of the realistic. It has permeated their business model, their culture, and the expectations of their customers. Many of these companies are starting to realize that creativity, thinking differently, and innovation are the keys to success in the future, but they feel stuck in how to achieve such goals. Hopefully some will view them as impossible and find the courage to achieve them anyway. You see, if you want to create a culture that reaches for the impossible, despite the odds, it must begin at the top and it often begins with an updated and innovative business model.

Designing an innovative and exciting business model with impossible goals is often a much easier and less expensive way to creating a culture of creativity and innovation that trying to dictate it. Processes, procedures, and changes in organizational structure can be dictated; innovation and creative thinking must be experienced and nurtured. The act of dictating, making rules, and imposing your will on others are the very things that have turned off our creativity, thinking, and innovative traits in the past. It was OK in the last century where the goals were to build, duplicate, and be efficient. The difference now is that we are moving from a world of industrialization and knowledge to one of conceptualization and connection.

Yes, there will be impediments and unforeseen circumstances that get in the way of creating the impossible, but they must be viewed as learning and growth opportunities. And, yes, there is always the possibility of failure, but failure is not altogether a bad thing. We must learn to accept failure as a part of the process of success. Unfortunately, many corporate cultures are so anti-failure that they no longer reach for anything exciting, tantalizing, or remotely interesting, which are the very things that improve productivity, reduce turnover, attract talent and create cultures that regularly innovate.

The disillusionment with big business and the realization that job security was really an illusion anyway is the fuel for new competition that will come charging out of the gates with all of these new attributes in tact. During the next 50 years, we will see some of the biggest companies in the world come crumbling down as well as the birth of some of the greatest companies in the world. It will be an interesting game to watch and fascinating to see the rules of play take a completely new direction. Here are a few of my favorite new perspective one-liners to start 2010:

• Do as Wayne Gretzky and "Skate to where the puck will be"


• Have the capacity to collaborate with the most unlikely of players


• Create something larger than the products you sell


• Lead with the tenacity of an underdog

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Kathy Robison is the CEO of YURU, (The Guru Is You), dedicated to assisting businesses to realize the full potential of their success through innovative business strategies, executive coaching and leadership development.

Innovation is Not Free

by Paul Sloane

One of the most common barriers to innovation is lack of time. People are just too busy doing their day job to spend time trying new things. The common assumption is that working hard and working long hours are good things and sufficient for success. The mantra is "focus on delivering this quarter's results." But doing more of the same is not enough - we have to try the new.

It is as though we are so busy building rafts to cross the river that we never look up to consider building a bridge, or a tunnel or a dam or fording the river or building boats or planes or all the other things we could do. We just focus on producing those rafts.

If you want people to be creative, then set the goal (e.g. crossing the river) and then challenge them to come up with ideas. Give them time and some resources to test their ideas - to build prototypes, or to investigate what people elsewhere are doing.

Google allows its people to spend one day a week on innovative ideas. Is this a wasteful luxury? No. It has led to remarkable innovations such as Google Earth, Froogle and Gmail. Genentech has a similar provision for its people. Most organizations could not afford to give up as much time as Google or Genentech but the same principle still applies - you have to create some slack time in which people can experiment. You do not get innovation for free - you have to allocate time, money and people.

For many years 3M has allowed its scientists and engineers to spend up to 15% of their time on any project that interests them. They do not have to ask their manager's permission but they do have to keep them informed of what it is they are doing. This permission to be free has resulted in countless ideas and innovations for 3M which is regularly rated as one of the most innovative companies.

The message is clear. The leader has to free time for innovation in order to empower people to come with great ideas and to explore them. Whether it is one day a week or one day a quarter, time for innovation is critical.

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Paul Sloane writes, speaks and leads workshops on creativity, innovation and leadership. He is the author of The Innovative Leader published by Kogan-Page.

What is your Innovation Intent?

by Stefan Lindegaard

I believe innovation can only work to its full potential if it is aligned with an overall corporate strategy. Many companies mess up here. They simply do not have an innovation strategy. Companies have marketing or sales strategies, but only very few have an innovation strategy.

What should an innovation strategy look like? It can come in many different forms as it needs to reflect the company itself. Due the obvious reason mentioned above, I have a hard time finding cases on this, but I definitely like the Innovation Intent created by Grundfos, one of the world's leading pump manufacturers.

Check out this description:

At Grundfos we have successfully achieved many of our targets and therefore we have recently reviewed our long-term business perspective by trying to look 15-20 years ahead.

This led to the statement of the Grundfos Innovation Intent. It represents a guiding star that will bring focus to our long-term innovation efforts and make sure the company is heading in the right direction. The Innovation Intent embraces three challenges, all of which every major concept, Grundfos launches over the next 20-30 years should meet:

CONCERN: Put sustainability first
CARE: Be there for a growing world
CREATE: Pioneer New Technologies

In other words, Grundfos will establish a substantial position in the growing markets by delivering superior sustainable solutions and offerings based on technology, the world has not yet seen. Perfectly aligned with our core values - being responsible, thinking ahead, and innovating - the Innovation Intent is a clear and bold statement of where and how Grundfos wants to develop its business. It is the ambition, that in 2025:

• Grundfos employs 75,000 people globally - today the number is 18,000


• 50% of our growth is coming from technology platforms that were not invented in 2007


• 1/3 of our turnover comes from other products than pumps


• We are still #1 in circulators and a specialist in sustainable solutions for housing


• We are specialists in selling directly to end-users within selected industrial segments and utilities


• We gravitate around local centres of excellence tapping into knowledge bases wherever they are


• We have become experts in translating user needs into new products and business concepts


• We are the first-choice workplace for the best and the brightest

Besides innovation work at the core, the company test new possibilities in Grundfos New Business which develops projects aimed at ensuring the limited resources of the earth will suffice for a rapidly growing population with increasing spending power, without destroying the environment.

I like this link between the overall corporate strategy and innovation and I definitely look forward to following Grundfos in the future. What do you think?

It would be great if you can share other cases on innovation strategies...

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Stefan Lindegaard is a speaker, network facilitator and strategic advisor who focus on the topics of open innovation, intrapreneurship and how to identify and develop the people who drive innovation.

Playing to Win in 2010

by Mike Myatt

Since we're about to flip the calendar and move into 2010, I thought I'd provide a bit of motivation to help focus your efforts as you prepare for the new business year ahead. Today's message is not likely to please the politically correct. I'm not going to talk about competing or playing nicely, rather I'm going to address the topic of winning. Want to succeed? It's easier than you might think...just don't quit. Strip away the excuses, rationalizations, and justifications and the only thing standing between you and the attainment of your objectives, is what you see staring back at you when you look in the mirror each morning. In today's post I'll examine the benefits of playing to win.

I'm a big fan of the Die Hard movies, and the one thing you have to admire about the main character, detective John McClain (played by Bruce Willis), is that regardless of the obstacles he encounters, he just won't quit. Granted, the aforementioned example of determination against all odds comes from a fictional character, but the fact of the matter is that successful people play to win. They don't indulge themselves in half-hearted attempts destined for failure, rather they choose to focus all their efforts and energies on accomplishing their mission.

My first football coach used to say: "Don't even bother showing up if you're not going to play to win..." Mind you I tend to be a bit competitive, but even so, that phrase has stuck with me my entire life. I don't often bother with taking on an endeavor unless I plan to accomplish the task at hand, and that means not quitting until I meet the objective. It is that "refuse to lose" and "never say die" attitude that I picked-up on the playing field, and had further reinforced during my time in the military that provides me with a competitive advantage.

I have found that dedication, determination, attention to detail, commitment, and focus are the traits that have been most valuable to me throughout the years, and are therefore the strengths that I tend to play to. The good news is this...if you examine the aforementioned traits you'll quickly see that I possess no special skill, and I have no secret tricks up my sleeve. Rather the things that have allowed me to serve my clients well, are things that anyone can harness and leverage if they have one thing...the desire to do so.

I could certainly paint a more complex picture of what it takes to be successful by citing esoteric management theories, but the truth of the matter is that I just don’t quit until I get the job done. I don't spend my time complaining about the challenges and obstacles, rather I spend my time solving problems and creating solutions. If my objective is to get to the other side of the wall, I don't really care if I go over the wall, under the wall, around the wall or through the wall...I just care that I get to the other side. While I might spend a bit of time evaluating the most efficient strategy for getting to the other side of said wall, it will ultimately be my focus on the tactical execution of conquering the challenge that will determine my success. A bias toward action is always a better path than falling prey to analysis paralysis.

I once played an entire half of a football game with a broken ankle, early on in my first entrepreneurial venture I found myself at a critical nexus and chose to liquidate personal assets to meet payroll, I've gone as many as 4 days in a row without sleeping to stay the course and solve a critical issue, I've led teams to achieve things that others said couldn't be accomplished, I've kept my family a priority having raised two wonderful children and having been married for 25 years and the list could go on...My point in describing these actions is not to pat myself on the back for anyone could have done these things, but the reality is that most people don't. They choose to accept defeat...they don't play to win...They aren't willing to do what it takes to be successful...they quit.

Quitting is a temptation that all of us are consistently confronted with. The reason that so many people become a casualty of giving up, is because they can. Put simply, quitting is one of the easiest things to do in life. If you take your eye off the ball, even if only momentarily, all it takes for most people to throw in the towel is a tinge of anger, humiliation, panic, rejection, stress, frustration, hurt, pain, jealousy, sorrow or anguish. Look back on your live, or the lives of others, and you'll find numerous instances of people who took the easy way out and just quit. You'll also find that it is those people who stayed the course, who overcame the challenges and barriers, and who stayed the course that have succeeded in life.

My message to you for as we enter 2010 is simply this: Play to win...Don't compromise your values, define your vision, refine your mission, architect your strategy, identify your objectives, set your goals, implement your tactics and engage in willful, purposeful action. Stay focused and do not quit until you've met your objectives...May your passion become your purpose, and I wish you the best of success in the year ahead.

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Mike Myatt, is a Top CEO Coach, author of "Leadership Matters...The CEO Survival Manual", and Managing Director of N2Growth.

What do you really mean?

by Mike Brown

Many (okay, let's be real, nearly all) corporate visions, missions, values, BHAGs (you name it), sound alike. They either extol bland concepts (i.e., "our associates will be the best") or meaningless ideas (i.e., "our human intellectual capital will leverage world-class synergies").

If you have boring or confusing strategic statements in your business, here's an approach to correct it: ask the questions below to help simplify and enrich the language in your strategic statements:

• How would customers describe what we're talking about in ways very meaningful to them?


• If we were telling somebody who knows nothing about our business about why this idea is important to the company's success, what would we say?


• How would we communicate this in a way that really inspires our employees to greatness? How about potential employees?


• What are more emotional words to describe this statement?


• How will we talk about it when we've accomplished this goal?


• How would one of our mothers proudly tell a relative about what we're trying to do?


• If we had to explain this to children, what would we say so they could understand it and be able to act?

Give these questions a try with your management team or on your own. Take the words and phrases you imagine and start turning strategic corporate speak into language that moves the hearts, minds, and actions of everyone in your company!

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Mike Brown is an award-winning marketer and strategist with extensive experience in research, strategy, branding, and sponsorship marketing. He's a frequent keynote presenter on innovation and authors Brainzooming!

Setting a Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal (BHAG)

by Matthew E May

Over at the American Express Open Forum Idea Hub, I've posted "How to Set a BHAG." A BHAG is a Big, Hairy Audacious Goal, and it's a term coined by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras.

I'm constantly asked about the challenge of complacency -- you know, things are going well, but there's a comfort setting in, and people are riding a different wave than when things were a struggle. The complaint goes something like this: "We're stuck. Stuck in the old school, stuck in the status quo, stuck in stall mode. We want things done differently, but we can't seem to get there from here. We've lost our edge. The days of rapid innovation are disappearing in the rearview mirror. There's widespread lethargy."

In short, the entrepreneurial spirit is M.I.A. and "How do I create a burning platform for change?" is the question.

G.K. Chesterton once said: "Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame."

In that quote is the answer to the question! You must create limits and constraints to frame the challenge and drive innovative thinking. The best way to do that in the midst of success is to set stretch goals...BHAGs.

You see, the problem is an addiction to abundant resources. And that addiction to resources is blocking innovation. The cry is for more money, people, and space to innovate. But wait a minute! That's probably not how the company started. Somewhere in the company tree is a story of humble beginnings. Maybe it didn't start in the proverbial garage, but it started with little of everything: money, space, labor. But it was those limits that made people more creative and resourceful than they are today. What WAS in abundance: goals, and a passion for reaching them.

So, reset the bar. Get back to the future. Get the band back together. Get back to basics. Get back to blocking and tackling. Return to your roots. And all the other cliches that spring to mind for vanquishing the complacency that comes with success. To recapture the start-up spirit, recreate the kinds of limitations that drive new thinking.

Then trust people to solve the problem.

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Matthew E. May is the author of "IN PURSUIT OF ELEGANCE: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing." He is constantly searching for creative ideas and innovative solutions that are 'elegant' - a unique and elusive combination of unusual simplicity and surprising power.