Chapter 5

BEYOND AVANT-GARDE

If It Doesn’t Make a Difference, It’s Not an Innovation

Ultimately, it’s not just the quality of an idea or the persistence of the leader that determines whether an idea succeeds or fails. It’s also the environment.

Corporate culture (the values, traditions, and policies that guide a particular organization’s behavior) is often far more important to the success or failure of a new idea than the brilliance of the idea or the doggedness of its backers. There are environments and corporate cultures that ignite innovation. There are others that foster, incubate, or accelerate it. And there are some that will kill it before it ever gets off the ground.

Before we explore the differences between these various environments (and what we can do to ensure that our own organizations remain innovation friendly), I want to clarify what I mean by the term innovation.

Long ago, I learned that people who use the same words don’t always use the same dictionary. So here’s my working definition, the one I’ve been using and will continue to use throughout this book. An idea, to qualify as a genuine innovation or successful change, must (1) work in the real world, and (2) be widely adopted within a particular organization or industry.

Both are equally important.

COUNTERFEITS AND SUBSTITUTES

Just because something is new doesn’t mean it is an innovation or helpful change. The better mousetrap that nobody buys may be a clever and fascinating invention. But it’s not what I call an innovation.

Consider the Segway. It was unveiled with great fanfare, and many marveled at how easy it is to balance, control, and move around. Many claimed that it would forever change the way people live and traverse in our major metropolitan cities. Now I would agree that the Segway is an incredible invention, ingenious in its design and engineering. But it hardly qualifies as an innovation or significant game changer — unless you’re a mall cop.

The same is true for new and creative approaches to ministry. Many start with a bang and die with a whimper. A new approach can get lots of great press. It’s assumed to be the next big thing. But if it fizzles out and doesn’t last for the long haul, it’s not an innovation or successful change. It’s a failed experiment.

That’s not to denigrate the value of failed experiments. I’m simply pointing out that trying lots of stuff that doesn’t work isn’t the same thing as innovating.

Admittedly, discovering what doesn’t work is an important step toward real innovation. Consider Thomas Edison. He spent two years trying out materials that didn’t work in order to discover a dependable and affordable filament for his incandescent lightbulb. But notice that Edison didn’t rush to market every time he had a filament that appeared to work. Instead, he continued to experiment, leaving himself plenty of room for failure in case he was wrong, as he often was. Eventually, he hit the jackpot.

This distinction between experimenting and rushing to market is important because when we confuse innovation with great ideas, ingenuity, novelty, and change, we tend to implement every new thing we’re excited about or think will work well on the false assumption that we’re being innovative.

But rushing to market with lots of stuff that fails isn’t innovative or creative leadership. It’s lazy leadership. It won’t make you a cutting-edge leader. It will make you a failed leader.

The same goes for the silly idea that we should change things for the sake of change. Making lots of changes won’t make our church, nonprofit, or business more innovative. It will make it sick, giving it a bad case of organizational whiplash, which is not something to be proud of as a leader.

The secret to becoming a creative and innovative organization is not found in having lots of ideas, trying lots of things, or making lots of changes. It’s found in having the right kinds of ideas, trying the right kinds of things, and launching the right kinds of products, programs, and initiatives.

BETTER IS NOT ALWAYS BETTER

Consider the QWERTY keyboard. It’s the keyboard that most of us type on today. It was designed in the 1870s as a way to prevent the arms of a mechanical typewriter from jamming. It separated commonly used letters so that a fast typist wouldn’t have to continually stop and unjam the keys. The result was faster typing on a mechanical keyboard. It was quickly and widely adopted.

But it has some problems. The way the letters are laid out, the left hand does most of the typing, even though it’s the weaker hand for most people. The middle or so-called home row is used only about 30 percent of the time, even though it’s the fastest and easiest row to use. Plus, the last time I looked, few of us type fast enough to jam the mechanical arms of a typewriter. Most people can’t even remember what a typewriter looks like.

Faster, more efficient keyboard layouts have been invented. The best known is the DVORAK keyboard. It has been demonstrated that it is easier to learn and faster to type with. Yet it (like all the other attempts to create a faster and better keyboard) has failed to gain traction. It has never been widely adopted, despite its superior performance.

Many have studied and written essays explaining the reasons why. The DVORAK keyboard has become a celebrated case study for exploring cultural and organizational resistance to change. For our purposes, all that matters is that the “better” solution wasn’t widely adopted or successful in the marketplace. It was an invention, not an innovation.

Faster, cheaper, and more efficient doesn’t guarantee success.

Imagine, for a moment, that you were once president of a manufacturing company. After you rigorously tested the DVORAK keyboard, you found it to be much faster and better than the QWERTY keyboard, so you decided to buy the patent and flood the market. You built millions. If you did so, the company would still have warehouses full of unsold inventory. You and everyone involved with your scheme would probably be unemployed. Because when it comes to innovation, better is not always better.

Which, by the way, is one more reason why an exit strategy is as important as a launch strategy.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AN ARTIST AND A LEADER

Another important distinction needs to be made. It’s the difference between artistic innovation and organizational innovation. This is a difference that is all too often ignored. I’m constantly amazed by the number of leaders (and pundits) who lump these two together when they advocate for more innovation. The unfortunate byproduct is confusion: it encourages leaders and organizations to take risks and behave in ways that are perfectly appropriate for artists, but foolhardy for leaders of organizations.

Artistic creativity is rooted in self-expression. It ignores boundaries, and it seeks to be unique and different. Anything that is fresh, anything that pushes the envelope, is highly valued.

It doesn’t matter if the average person likes it, understands it, or puts it to use. In fact, if an artist becomes too popular or ends up being widely accepted by the masses, he’ll likely be written off as someone who has gone commercial. He’ll no longer qualify as a “real artist.”

But organizational creativity is different. Leaders don’t win awards for self-expression, for breaking the rules or being unique. They win awards for solving problems. And if the masses reject their solution, it’s not a badge of honor. It’s a sign of failure.

Whereas artists seek to express their creativity outside the boundaries, leaders and organizations express their creativity within the boundaries.

Think of the famous story of the Apollo 13. While the three astronauts on board were running out of oxygen, the ground crew was trying to build a makeshift oxygen filter using only the items that the astronauts had aboard their stricken craft. They didn’t get to pick the materials, the colors, the timeframe, or the product. They weren’t allowed to bend the rules.

To an artist, such constraints are unacceptable. They’re devaluing and degrading. Even a commissioned artist hates to be given too many guidelines.

But within an organization, constraints are par for the course. Innovative leaders don’t bemoan limits. They embrace them. The limits define the challenge. They are half the fun.

This distinction between artistic and organizational creativity is important because when leaders think and act like artists, they put themselves and their organizations at great risk. A leader can’t ignore the rules. He can’t be true only to himself, or paint whatever he feels like on the canvas of his organization. To do so is not gutsy and bold. It’s irresponsible and selfish.

This is true even for an entrepreneur operating in startup mode. He has a lot more freedom to do what he wants than the leader of a mature organization. He can pursue his dream and do things his own way. But he still has to come up with a plan that is financially sustainable. There are still rules that define the path to success, and he must operate within those rules.

A starving artist is an iconic figure. But a starving entrepreneur is not.

I’ll be the first to admit that there are some great stories about people who succeeded using an artistic approach to organizational leadership. They quixotically chased their dreams, risked it all, breaking every rule along the way. They bet the farm, burned the boats, and against all odds hit it out of the park.

We’ve all heard their stories. Motivational speakers love to tell them as a way to encourage us to take greater risks. But if we look closely at the truth behind the story, for every person who hits it out of the park that way, there are thousands more who swing for the fences and strike out, bankrupting themselves, their families, and their organizations.

Make no mistake, those who confuse the values and methods of artistic leadership with the values and methods of organizational leadership are the ones most likely to end up living like an artist — in need of a day job to survive.

Successful innovation and change isn’t found in the avant-garde. It’s not an endless quest to be more creative, novel, and inventive. It’s not even found in the search for the better solution. It’s found in the right solution, the one that works and is widely adopted because people believe it makes their lives better.

And this points us to an important leadership lesson: When it comes to deciding what makes people’s lives better, what makes the organization run more effectively, what’s innovative rather than just creative and different, we don’t get to make the call. The people do.