Chapter Thirteen
Tinkering
The Genesis of General Mills's Idea Greenhouse
Michelle Sullivan joined three colleagues from the Consumer Insights (CI) division at General Mills and attended the PUSH conference in 2004. Maybe it was her training in anthropology that predisposed her to connect so deeply to the multidisciplinary experience, as there were two anthropologists (Grant McCracken and Robbie Blinkoff) featured in that year's program, along with futurists, artists, marketing mavericks, and technology gurus. Whatever the reason, Michelle had a big Like that! experience at PUSH. That kind of creative and farsighted thinking, that kind of inspiration and people, that kind of global perspective, that kind of approach to innovation . . . Michelle thought, “That's what I want to do in my work, and that's what we need more of at General Mills!”
So, the following year, when Michelle learned of the decision to send people from CI to a retail trend conference instead of to PUSH, she spoke up. Michelle had been hired by the CI function to work as an ethnographer on its Future Insights team, and found the broad perspective (what the folks at General Mills refer to as “external inputs”) that PUSH encouraged to be especially relevant to her job. More important, the previous year's PUSH had turned into a deep resource of inspiration and ideas for Michelle, which she drew on throughout the year. She'd gotten a whole lot of bang for her buck at PUSH, and was eager to return for more of the inspiration and forward thinking that was so crucial to her job. Michelle felt strongly about the value of the big-picture thinking PUSH represented for her CI colleagues, and she lobbied hard to change the commitment from the trend conference to PUSH.
PUSH: A Catalyst
Although her peers still attended the retail trend conference that year, Michelle's bosses appreciated her conviction and decided to reward it by allowing her to attend PUSH with a CI colleague of her choosing; she chose Jon Overlie, a manager in the division, and a kindred spirit.
I remember seeing Michelle and Jon engaged in what looked like intense and excited conversations during breaks. They might have been talking about presentations made by Iqbal Quadir; the former prime minister of Estonia, Mart Laar; or Helen Greiner, the founder of iRobot. Or perhaps they were discussing the power of collaboration as demonstrated by Tina Blaine's Jam-O-Drum, an interactive instrument she developed at Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center.
With their heads and hearts full, Michelle and Jon stopped me at the end of the conference to share their excitement and gratitude for their experience at PUSH. The total mix of inputs at PUSH had stretched their thinking about leadership and innovation in totally unexpected ways. But then, the sources were unexpected, too: among them a virtual world architect, a deep-sea explorer, an anthropologist tracking the influence of Tupac Shakur in the African bush, a game designer, an “open-source philosopher,” and diplomats from Pakistan, Estonia, and Colombia. Michelle was confirmed in the feeling she'd had the year before: that this way of approaching the future was right for CI.
Michelle and Jon told me, “We want to create a multidisciplinary futures-focused innovation laboratory at General Mills. We want to create our own engine for insight generation. We want participation to be determined by desire and passion, not job title. We want to collect our Like that!'s and create a change agency within Consumer Insights.”
As they shared all this with me, it was clear that their sense of purpose had been stoked. All the Like that!s PUSH had inspired brought what they wanted in their professional lives into sharp focus and gave them a clear sense of who they are and where they were going. Even after the crowds at the conference hall had cleared, Michelle and Jon were still huddled in a hallway. The inspiration was fresh, and they wanted to plan their next steps for creating a change agency right there and then. They knew that as soon as they left PUSH and reentered their family and work environments, their dreams might collapse under the weight of their workload. They couldn't leave until they had a plan for how they'd share what they'd learned at PUSH with their colleagues and, more important, how they'd pitch the idea of a change agency to Gayle Fuguitt, vice president of global consumer insights at General Mills.
At the time, Michelle was a senior associate, and Jon an associate manager, so approaching Gayle with a project as big as a change agency was a bold move. Typically, a new initiative such as they proposed would come from a leadership team, but what they were soon to learn about Gayle was that she didn't care what their job title was. In her position as VP, Gayle has understood her primary responsibility to be cultivating leadership wherever and in whomever it emerges. So to Michelle and Jon's delight, they found Gayle to be incredibly responsive. They didn't really even have to explain their case; for Gayle it was enough that they had the moxie to want to make something happen. She told them that if they put together a presentation to pitch the project, she'd invite a few key directors to the meeting.
A few weeks later, Michelle and Jon delivered their proposal to the group. Citing a general corporate directive to “lean into innovation more” and more specific statements from Marc Belton, executive vice president, global strategy, growth and marketing innovation (“Consumer Insights is expected to lead change within the organization”) and from Gayle herself (“Consumer Insights needs to drive trends to action at the business level”), Michelle and Jon believed that a change agency such as they proposed was the right vehicle to meet those goals.
The directors allowed that the change agency concept was intriguing, but until Michelle and Jon could present a more substantive action plan, there wasn't much more to do. The outcome of the meeting was a green light for Michelle and Jon to put some structure around their idea.
As Thomas Edison said, “Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration”; Michelle and Jon had the big idea, but now it was time to sweat the details of figuring out how it was all going to work. They recognized that building a program from scratch would take a lot more thought and time.
Ninety-Nine Percent Perspiration
Edison's inspiration-to-sweat ratio responsible for genius comes from a 1929 press conference in which he went on to say, “None of my inventions came by accident. I see a worthwhile need to be met and I make trial after trial until it comes.”1 There's no glamour here. Reduced to its fundamental activities, innovation consists of a very pedestrian effort: committed, persistent tinkering that finally transforms an idea into a reality. You try something out, often in a series of small pilot projects, editing and learning and adjusting as you go, finding what works and what doesn't.
In science, this kind of tinkering is known as the scientific method, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as a method “consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses.” This is what scientists do in their laboratories, which is similar to what craftsmen do in their workrooms, artists in their studios, chefs in their kitchens, and musicians and dancers in their practice rooms. The iterative process of trying things on, editing, and trying again is how the brain learns. It is also how we achieve mastery, excellence, and success.
It's certainly what Doug Cameron did in his quest to synthesize 1,3-Propanediol from biomass instead of petroleum. As I described in Chapter Two, it was in 1986 that Doug first had the idea to research how this process could be performed successfully, with high enough yields to make it economical for industrial manufacturing, yet it wasn't until five years later, in 1991, that his first paper was published detailing the biochemical process. Then, when DuPont bought the patent in 1993, it was another ten years before the company produced 1,3-Propanediol commercially. This one compound has been a game-changer for the chemical industry.
The lesson from Edison, from Doug and Iqbal, and from Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and a long list of innovators is that the path between the moment that an idea first strikes to when it breaks through as a reality is one of relentless pursuit.
This was the path that was now in front of Michelle and Jon at General Mills. As they considered what it would take to create a change agency, they realized that the innovation agency they dreamed of would have little chance of success unless they understood how the systems that would make it all work should be structured. What was the business model of a change agency? (That is, what resources would it use, and what results would it produce?) What systems would help them spark new thinking and innovation within the change agency, yet dovetail seamlessly with existing practices in the broader organization? How would they succeed in creating a process that deliberately takes people away from their regular activities, without interruption of or friction with those ongoing responsibilities? And how could such a program thrive among the day-in, day-out, task-driven, left-brain-dominated, meeting-overloaded realities of contemporary business environments. This was their greatest challenge.
The First Movable Piece
The warm reception to the change agency idea, and the support Jon and Michelle received to go figure it out had left them both excited and overwhelmed. They were excited because the change agency concept represented a solution for two issues Michelle and Jon wanted to address. The first was building the capacity to create what Jon called “clear space,” time away from their busy workload just to think. The second was a need for a mechanism that allowed employees at every level to contribute their ideas and thinking, an idea to which Michelle was especially committed. They were overwhelmed because although the change agency concept was right, it was also too general; as Jon described it, “We were not yet able to articulate a vision in which we reinvented how everyone could reinvent their own jobs . . . We just didn't see it yet.”
There's a wonderful piece of Buddhist wisdom that counsels, whenever you feel stuck, to “start where you are.” It's a reminder that you have all you need to take the next step, that any perceived necessity of better or different circumstances is an illusion, and that the time for action is always now. No doubt the Buddha had such human challenges as healing, love, life's transitions, and daily living in mind, but the reminder to start where you are is also an excellent piece of advice for this phase of innovation.
Instinctively, Michelle and Jon understood this idea. True to their values, they understood that to figure out how a change agency would work, they would have to start by finding clear space to think it through, and by opening the tinkering process to a larger group of people. This much they could do.
They knew that the two issues they cared about—the need for clear space and the democratization of the innovation process—were also important to the larger CI group, as indicated by the most recent Climate Survey, a questionnaire for employees to provide feedback on the CI culture.
They determined that what they needed most was to expand their merry band of rebels. If the change agency was about inclusion, it didn't make sense that the vision lived only in two people, so Michelle and Jon decided that the very first thing they needed to do—their First Movable Piece—was to share with more people the Like that! inspiration that PUSH had been for them. Because sharing, expanding, and improving the vision was job one, Michelle and Jon decided that bringing a larger group to the next year's PUSH conference would be the most efficient way to, as Jon says, “extend and firm what we would do.”
This decision was also helpful in that it gave them a specific goal and activity to aim for, so they worked to secure support and funding to send fifteen people to PUSH 2006. On its own, the knowledge that there was a contingent that was focused on reinventing CI started to build a buzz that change was afoot.
Tinkering. Again.
As Michelle and Jon began building their band of rebels, they realized that the change agency model they'd originally imagined wasn't right for the kind of open, collaborative culture they'd envisioned for the CI group. The change agency suggested a consultancy model: an exclusive team of “experts” who did the thinking for everyone else. The ideas for the kind of thinking and activities had been right, but what the two of them were after was an inclusive model that influenced how everyone on every level did his or her job.
So, with Gayle's blessing, Michelle and Jon adjusted their focus and joined a “Reinventing CI” task force that had recently been created. This group of volunteers shared Michelle and Jon's passion for figuring out how to build a democratic system for collecting ideas (for products, new methods and platforms for consumer research, and marketing) from anyone in the CI division. They would also figure out how to create “clear space” for thinking these ideas through, then find the support for execution within the appropriate brand team or function.
Attendance at PUSH would be used to catalyze questions and thinking about what would be “reinvented” within CI. Michelle and Jon organized a pre-conference meeting to discuss objectives for the group of people who'd be coming to PUSH. The form they used to guide the group's discussion is replicated at the right.
Sharing PUSH with a larger group was a really efficient way to create a common reference and point of view that would inform their Reinventing CI effort. Effectively, it created a common Like that! experience that put people on the same page and fostered personal commitment to a vision of what CI could be.
After the conference, the group came together to collect ideas and recommendations for the Reinventing CI effort and to determine next steps. They were now closer than they'd ever been before to seeing what a (still unnamed) program to boost innovation and collaboration might look like; the group worked to consolidate their insights and suggestions into a presentation that would be delivered to division leadership. In return for sending fifteen people to PUSH, the Reinventing CI group wanted to add some value to the division by demonstrating that the conference had helped them define more of what the new program needed to be and do.
Team identifies one change item for immediate implementation. Team identifies one change item for long-term implementation. Each individual identifies one change item for personal implementation. (Note: Does not need to pertain to job.)“Thank you for being such an inspiration to this group” was Gayle's welcome to me when I came into her office. Michelle, Jon, and the Reinventing CI team had asked for my help in working through a plan for the innovation program they envisioned. I hadn't met Gayle before, but immediately liked her direct, energetic style and her clear commitment to the growth and development of her people.
Gayle was behind her team. She'd been impressed by their passion and initiative and their objectives to increase participation, collaboration, and innovation across the division. Anytime a group could identify a need, then organize themselves to create a solution—whether tools and methodology, cultural changes, or product innovation—Gayle wanted to support the effort.
The innovation program that the Reinventing CI team proposed would be a platform for more people to do the same: create solutions to needs in their environment, processes, and businesses, as they saw them. Gayle's only direction to me was to support the team in knowing that this was theirs to own and succeed with and that they shouldn't hold back.
It was one of the most satisfying and energizing first meetings with a client I'd experienced. I liked Gayle's directness and her commitment to her team, but what really blew me away was that she had zero reservations about committing the time and budget to see the project succeed.
Rarely do people go “all-in” from the start. Usually they have to acclimate to the idea—as though going slowly into cold water and squealing with fear and delight with each step—if only out of habit. Gayle's readiness to take the plunge had everything to do with the work that had been done by Michelle, initially, then by Michelle and Jon together, and by the team that had come together to reinvent how they did their jobs. Their work over a three-year period had inspired a grassroots movement within CI that had advanced the idea that innovation was, in fact, a part of their job. And it all started with one person. It's important to remember how powerful that is. Michelle's passion for what CI could be was the spark. Her willingness to fight, first to return to PUSH herself, then to bring others, made room for a new perspective and mental model to enter the conversation. This was the moment that things shifted, the seed of CI's reinvention.
Now it was time to produce something concrete.
From Philosophy to Practice
When the Reinventing CI team reached out to me to help them design a twelve-month program, we decided to launch a pilot project named Idea Greenhouse. The goals they'd articulated for the program were consistent with the ideas they'd been pursuing all along; however, they were aware that their vision was still a little too lofty. They needed some help boiling it down into a process with clear steps and systems to manage it. This last piece of translation, from idea to action, is the most critical step of all. It can also be the most difficult.
In the Introduction to this book, I said that before you can get practical, you have to get philosophical. It's a reminder to step back from the situation to frame your challenge in terms of who you are and where you're going; to understand the context of your challenge from a systems point of view, regarding change in the environment, the human system, and the organizational system; to formulate Best Questions that focus you on the real need; to expose yourself to new thinking and experiences; and to formulate a vision.
Incorporate futures studies and methodologies in training, function, and deliverables. Train CI's next generation of leaders. Create “clear space” for ideation and innovation. Deliver strategic as well as consumer insights. Inspire and strengthen the CI community. Ensure the division's and organization's positions as industry leaders.Having done all that, now it's time to get practical by breaking down your vision into very mechanical parts so as to create a plan for action. You've got to suspend all the purpose and vision that has filled and moved you to this point and get down into the nitty-gritty of digging in the dirt, planting the seeds, fertilizing, weeding, transplanting, and doing all the various other activities that are associated with seeing an idea grow, as was intended for the Idea Greenhouse. In fact, you'd do well to think of your project as a gardening project for which you must design a hothouse that's suited to the plants you want to grow. Before you can begin to build the hothouse, however, you have to begin by defining exactly what the project will produce.
This is nothing other than a standard business plan, really. Whatever you're building, you still have to step through the same due diligence required to launch a business. The following are just some of the considerations the Idea Greenhouse team had to think through:
- Were there categories of ideas they wanted to solicit? Would there be criteria for submission? Did a person with an idea have to have a business plan attached, or could he or she simply make suggestions?
- Who develops the ideas once they're submitted? Are there workshops for development and a committed team for working an idea through? Is there a budget to fund the ideas? What's the group's capacity, in terms of the number of projects it can develop?
- What are the mechanisms for introducing a new project? Will Idea Greenhouse tie in to other innovation groups in the organization? Should it focus on general business needs, or is it solely for CI-focused initiatives?
Idea Greenhouse: Structure
Having fleshed out all the needs that the CI team wanted the Idea Greenhouse to satisfy, we rolled up our sleeves and sat down to map out a process to collect and develop ideas that would be launched as CI innovation projects.
The first thing to consider was how ideas would be collected from the more than 260 people in CI. The primary commitment of this program was that anyone with any idea would know there's a place where that idea would be heard and considered, so creating an easily accessible mechanism for idea submission was important. A couple of industrious team members got to work on a Web site, an internal wiki, on which people could log their ideas for brands, for research tools and projects, for business opportunities, or whatever they had a passion for.
As for finding people who were interested in serving as innovation agents, the people who would help prepare ideas for presentation to the venture board and shepherd them into project status, that was easy. Most of the people who'd been a part of the Reinventing CI team were already enthusiastic about the project and wanted to be a part of its implementation. In addition, the invitation to join them was open to anyone in the division who wanted to be a part of the start-up.
Following the business plan model, the Idea Greenhouse had established its resources and supplies (ideas submitted from the community) and its labor and production (innovation agents). The next step was to produce a project that could go to market. For this, a venture board was established, consisting of Gayle, her co-VP in the division, and a number of directors. Any idea that was project-ready was presented to the venture board by the person who'd submitted it, accompanied by a supporting innovation agent. The venture board helped connect resources to make the idea happen by tying it into existing projects that could leverage it, considering applications for teams and brands, and making introductions and funding start-up projects as needed. The process for evaluating which ideas would be presented to the venture board was sketched out, as shown in the following figure.
Creating a venture board was absolutely vital to the success of the Idea Greenhouse for two reasons. First, it established endorsement from leadership. If the Idea Greenhouse was really to deliver on its commitment to support ideas that come from anyone, with any job title, people needed assurance that their bosses would support them in coming up with ideas and initiating projects. The fact that the Idea Greenhouse had begun as a bottom-up, grassroots initiative, and that this “people's program” had buy-in at the top, clearly demonstrated support of Idea Greenhouse's core value: the best insights happen when innovation is sourced openly and collaboratively.
The second reason the venture board was so important was that it set up a reward system. It's common for businesses to champion innovation, right-brain thinking, creativity, and collaboration, but it's not common to reward the associated activities. Instead, what typically gets rewarded are activities that relate directly to productivity. If an organization really wants to increase the right-brain quotient in its business, it must reinforce the messages it's giving with real rewards. For these reasons, the venture board was the single most important part of the structure for the Idea Greenhouse.
In the end, there were two categories of products that the Idea Greenhouse would deliver: innovation projects and a culture that readily produces them. For a group that is grounded in measurement, it was important that this program also generate results that could be quantified. If the Idea Greenhouse hit its mark, the evidence would be an increased number of innovation projects out of CI, and demonstrable signs of the impact of those projects on the organization. The softer side of the Idea Greenhouse—its influence on the CI culture—would be tracked by the annual Climate Survey, which measured how people felt about their jobs, management, and environment and whether they trusted CI with risk-taking, innovation, collaboration, creativity, and other such right-brain activities. A more concrete measure of cultural change would be in leadership development; if the Idea Greenhouse delivered on its promise, then we should see examples of “breakout stars” who'd stepped up to lead as innovation agents or idea producers and who were rewarded through promotion and recognition.
The last piece of the Idea Greenhouse structure addressed how the thinking, learning, and values that were integral to the program would be disseminated through the division. The team created several formats. Among them was an annual PUSH-style conference at which projects that had come through the Idea Greenhouse were shared with the full audience. They also established the Out of the Box series, a monthly presentation that featured people from other disciplines and backgrounds, such as scientists and artists, entertainers and FBI profilers—anyone who would shift their perspective and expand their thinking.
Building “to Tolerance”
This is what happens once you put something in motion: you get feedback right away about whether or not your assumptions were right. You've then got to start tinkering on the fly, adjusting as you go. The important thing is just to keep moving and adapting.
No matter how well you plan, how well intentioned you are, or how well you think you assessed the situation in advance, the success of a new project will ultimately be limited by the system's tolerance for change. When I was first asked to work with the Reinventing CI team to design an innovation program, their ambitions were grand. The program was to include leadership development training, futures skills and research methodologies, innovation workshops, quarterly thought-leader gatherings, and more. The pilot I initially proposed was a yearlong program that integrated each of their wish-list items, but once we dug into it, we could see that it needed to be a staged process, probably over several years. If you get the foundation right, you can always build and add to it later, and the changes will stick.
So we shortened the pilot to three months and dropped all the extraneous programming except for the basic Idea Greenhouse program. With the initial goals in mind—creating a mechanism for ideas to come from anywhere and “clear space” to develop them, and securing full support from leadership—we thought “Let's just get this core function established and running right first.”
About halfway into the pilot, we realized that another adjustment was needed: it was a struggle for everyone to find time for this additional commitment. This presented a very real problem that, if left unsolved, would be the undoing of the program. The immediate solution was obvious: minimize the demands made on the innovation agents. Monthly training time, initially set at one-and-a-half days per month, was cut first to a full day, then to a half day, and finally to two hours each month. The result was that the leadership development content was eliminated from the program.
The increase in energy was palpable. The innovation agents were committed to this project, but it simply had to fit the realities of their lives. The Idea Greenhouse team had to let go of some things—for now—and focus instead on what could be accomplished given the time constraints.
Recall the Buddhist wisdom: “Start where you are.” When you are confronted with an obstacle of some kind, it's useful to adopt a Zen attitude: there is no point in resisting or trying to change a limitation (in this case, people's full schedules and existing commitments). You must accept things as they are and shift your focus to your First Movable Piece.
By the time we had whittled the Idea Greenhouse down “to tolerance,” we had arrived at a simple and highly effective focus for the program: the Idea Greenhouse would function as a filtering agency for ideas submitted by the CI community. Its primary goals were (1) to provide an egalitarian means for ideas to be heard and (2) to offer resources and stewardship for ideas with significant potential. Both of these goals fit into the previously existing system very comfortably, and the transformed system quickly became the “CI Way” for sharing and developing ideas and projects.
The 5 Percent Rule
A few paragraphs ago, I revealed one of the secrets of success for the Idea Greenhouse, and a core principle of the 5 Percent Rule. I want to be sure you caught it, so I'll restate it here: the formal time commitment for the innovation agents was reduced to two hours each month. Big ideas, big projects, big cultural shift—all in just two hours!
Granted, it took three years of groundwork to create that kind of efficiency, but the point is that integrating right-brain functions of curiosity and experimentation into your process ultimately improves efficiency and productivity.
In some circles, simply uttering the words “right brain,” “innovation,” “creativity” makes people nervous. The fear is that this is all a waste of time, that people can get seduced by process and ideas and get stuck in a kind of unproductive la-la land. And they're not wrong.
Unless, that is, the same kind of rigor, discipline, and rewards that are accorded standard left-brain-centric practices are also applied to right-brain activities. Unless we apply a left brain–right brain–left brain (L-R-L) approach to all matters related to strategy and innovation; unless we understand that insight is a right-brain phenomenon that is fed by New stimuli; unless we appreciate that insights have very little inherent value until they're translated into the left-brain language of action and goals. The beautiful thing is that if this structure is adopted, it really doesn't require a lot of time and resources, as the Idea Greenhouse example illustrates.
As the innovation agents experienced, when it comes to finding “clear space” and engaging in right-brain, ZoD activities, time is the biggest structural barrier organizations face. Asking employees to do more on their own or simply urging them to think creatively does nothing but stress the system, because such activity has no place in an environment that is jam-packed with meetings and deadlines.
If you want to embed futurist thinking in such a setting, you have to build a structure that nurtures and rewards it, then make sure that the structure sticks, by implementing it to tolerance. Taking the Zen approach, accept that you can't change the reality of Wall Street's quarterly earnings reports, a feedback mechanism that holds publicly traded organizations accountable (some would say, hostage) to a valuation of the company's stock every three months. These expectations permeate every business decision at every level, beginning with the board of directors. That's how the system is designed.
So, the incorporation of futurist thinking, with all its seemingly incompatible right-brain activities, can succeed only if the program is designed to fit in an environment that's driven by quarterly earnings reports. The 5 Percent Rule is a great place to start when setting up a program that cultivates exploration of, and reports updates on, the four forces in an L-R-L approach. As you follow the 5 Percent Rule, the inclusion of futurist thinking should accommodate big projects that require a lot of front-end research and discovery (as was the case for Clicks); focused ZoD workshops (such as Cooks of Crocus Hill experienced); and a tinkering practice that encourages prototyping through iterative improvements.
Creating a physical ZoD space is important to the success of an ongoing project. Make it a repository for your Like that!s—a living, growing catalogue of inspirations and insights. Create a stimulating environment that immediately triggers right-brain associations. Doing so will allow the space to become a working model of the vision you developed in Dream and Scheme, the ultimate context that frames your strategy. Use the ZoD space to revisit the four forces, refresh Best Questions, and update the MVS, adjusting project plans as needed.
Ideally, the ZoD space is a dedicated room, augmented by virtual collaboration spaces. To make futurist thinking a regular part of your activities, you must have a physical space that sustains inquiry over time. The environment should be reserved for, and reflect, big-picture thinking, research, creativity, and collaboration, such that just being in the space shifts people's perspective. An online collaboration space is important, too, allowing people to share, collect, document, and archive their activity in and beyond the physical space. (This is especially useful for sharing digital media and posting ideas and Like that!s whenever and wherever they occur.)
In a perfect world, the physical space is large enough to host several projects at one time, and is open as a gallery of thinking and exploration for anyone to visit, anytime. It can be booked for workshops and team meetings or for solo adventures. It can be a central innovation resource for a small business or, in the case of a larger corporation, for a team, division, or the whole organization.
But if that's not possible, find a wall you can claim as your ZoD. Make a board, a file, a collage, a notebook; whatever your resources may be, allocate 5 percent of your physical space to building a Zone at work.
Try it: 5 percent of your physical space; 5 percent of your time, budget, and job performance. Spend 95 percent of your resources doing what you have to do, then be just as disciplined about managing the other 5 percent to do what you must do to keep your eye on opportunities and challenges headed your way.
R3OI
In addition to developing leaders, Gayle's primary responsibility is to ensure that the work her division delivers helps General Mills brands succeed with consumers. When I interviewed Gayle in 2011, four years after the launch of the Idea Greenhouse, about the impact she'd seen the program have on the CI group, she was able to quantify their achievements. In her words:
The invest-early-and-often approach to innovation has been critical for us (Global Consumer Insights). If we don't anticipate consumer needs and behaviors, and the research methods to track them, then we've failed the organization. We introduced the venture investment model to General Mills and, with it, innovations for identifying and collecting insights that have served our brands extremely well.
One such example is a small project we funded through the Idea Greenhouse. In 2007, the Fiber One brand was launching a completely new product, the Fiber One Bars, but had a small marketing budget with which to do it. At that time, there weren't any data on the effect of social media on product sales, and three managers (Adam Guiney, Xavier Sanchez de Carmona, and Chris Quam) saw the Fiber One Bars launch as a great opportunity to start doing so. They brought their ideas to the Idea Greenhouse, and when it was presented to the venture board, their proposal easily won our support.
The results of that project have been nothing less than spectacular. In terms of impact on sales, their research demonstrated that online conversations were critically connected to the success of Fiber One Bars during its launch. In their final report, Guiney, Sanchez de Carmona, and Quam stated their key finding as a headline: “This Is the First Time We've Seen a Definite Correlation Between Online Conversation and Sales.” They had found not only that a new product launch could be successful without a big budget for traditional advertising but also that word of mouth really does influence sales more powerfully than anything else. Now, with social media, we had a way to engage consumers directly and, importantly, track their responses.
The research methodology they developed to track “buzz” marketing for this project was the first of its kind, not just for General Mills, but for the industry (Consumer Packaged Goods) for whom the methodology has become the gold standard for social media research in consumer insights.
The ongoing results for the Fiber One Bars brand are stunning. According to the General Mills's Fiscal 2011 10-K, Fiber One Bars contributed to a plus-5 percent in net sales for the Snacks Division. And as of early 2012, it had captured 10 percent-plus of market share of the grain–cereal bar category.
No doubt, a 5 percent increase in sales for an entire division is a good return on a 5 percent investment in innovation. This also confirmed for Gayle, and for General Mills, that keeping their focus on “what's next” pays off handsomely for the company's brands. The return for Fiber One is demonstrated in each of the three critical R3OI measures:
The Fiber One case study is but one example of many returns on investment in the Idea Greenhouse, a division-wide innovation program that had a system, a structure, and wide participation. What assured the success of the Idea Greenhouse was that participation was rewarded in concrete ways: funding for projects, opportunities to share the learning with the community, and recognition. Gayle recalls the moment when everyone “got it”: “At a conference inaugurating the launch of the Idea Greenhouse, Heather Maxwell, Idea Greenhouse sponsor and senior associate of global consumer insights, stood up and said, ‘People, they're giving away money!’ The idea that financial support was available for their ideas proved that the Idea Greenhouse was a serious initiative, and from that point on, the momentum never stopped.”
“Do Diligence”
Developing and implementing an innovation program—or introducing any new program, for that matter—has to be managed with great sensitivity to the everyday pressures of the business environment, and with an unrelenting commitment to the project's success. The results of the Idea Greenhouse bear this out: from the outset, it took a lot of focus, a boatload of persistence, and an infectiously optimistic spirit—what I refer to as “Do diligence”—for the CI group to adopt a new approach to innovation.
Know this: change is a willful act. Gravity—that of the system and culture—always works against you, as does your brain's default to the familiar. Recognize that transformation is rarely a revolutionary act (a fundamental change in existing power structures), but is instead an introduction of new thinking and processes (such as are presented in this book). This means that, to truly effect change in your world, you must design it to work with the system as it is. Then your work is to continue to feed and reinforce the new projects with Do diligence.
Begin with a bold vision, then institute with persistent action that coaxes steady, evolutionary change. Don't expect change to be easy. It's not. But consider the alternative: losing out on opportunities for growth and greatness. If you avoid or ignore change, it will leave you in its wake. Your best option, always, is to choose change.
The What's Next Toolkit, at the end of the book, provides tips and tools for defying gravity and the pull of the status quo. Use them diligently and you'll find that integrating a ZoD practice into your already full life, with just 5 percent of your time and resources, will take shape very naturally. Not easily, but indeed naturally.
But right now let's take a look at what happened at General Mills.
A Culture of Futurists
What began as a band of rebels within CI has evolved into a division-wide culture of futurists and innovators. The fact that CI-ers now think differently is the most important return on investment, not just for the CI function but for all the General Mills brands CI touches, which is to say all of them.
The beauty of building the Idea Greenhouse to tolerance was that its principles and practices became embedded in everything CI now does. One of the program's greatest achievements was, as Gayle says, that “it took the hierarchy out of innovation.” What's more, “it lifted up and differentiated very junior people as thought leaders” in the division. Among them was Kaia Kegley, who, when the Idea Greenhouse was formed, had been at General Mills for only one year. Kaia was among the first generation of innovation agents, and within a short time she was helping run the program.
Kaia was surprised that being new to the organization didn't hold her back. The invitation to participate was open, and the only qualifications were passion and desire. These quickly became deeply held values in the CI culture.
The Idea Greenhouse also introduced the business model of venture capital to General Mills. The reward system was readily apparent to all: seed money is available to good ideas, wherever they come from. This was a departure from how ideas were funded before the Idea Greenhouse; previously, they would have to work their way through a gated system in each department. Any new project would have to compete with other priorities for a portion of the department budget.
Installing a democratic system for idea submission, ensuring that ideas got an audience (with an innovation agent and venture board), and matching them with seed money made the Idea Greenhouse a success. Within two years, a culture of innovation was so well rooted in CI that a formal program was no longer needed.
Kaia described it this way: the Idea Greenhouse had “succeeded in reframing the thinking throughout the function. Innovation had become the norm . . . Where we look for inspiration now is much, much broader than consumer segments, retail and food trends, or industry practices. We look to countries, cultures, disciplines, philosophies . . . it makes the insights stronger.”
Jon Overlie recalls that the Climate Survey taken the year prior to the launch of the Idea Greenhouse had ranked “Freedom to experiment” as low. “Now,” he says, “it's an expectation! We've become comfortable with trying things out—just get the idea out there; it doesn't have to be perfect. Our job is to solve the problem, so experimentation is a valued part of that process.”
| Percerntage Who Agree With Statement | ||
| Statement | Before Idea Greenhouse (2006) | After Idea Greenhouse Launch (2008) |
| Innovative ideas can fail without penalty to group | 36 | 47 |
| People can challenge the traditional ways of doing things at General Mills | 46 | 62 |
| GMI environment accepting of differences in work styles | 54 | 69 |
| GMI is better than competitors on responding to changes in the market | 28 | 52 |
Looking back on the band-of-rebels era, Jon says, “We were taking a stand to create space to redesign the approach on your work, and put the emphasis on where the value is.” The goal was to reposition CI and demonstrate that “we don't do research; we identify the core strategic insight and build the business case for business strategy.” The Reinventing CI team was passionate about changing the perception of CI as a group of researchers who dig up numbers for the marketing department; rather, they wanted to be viewed as strategic partners who “are businesspeople first, with an expertise in research.” The objectives of the Idea Greenhouse, then, were to satisfy this aspiration with a practice and an ethos of “scouting for the next thing,” and to encourage employees who have an idea to just “Go get it!”
Recognizing that the CI culture had shifted, Gayle believed it was time to build on what the Idea Greenhouse had achieved and to focus those resources on the next level of development.
The Idea Greenhouse Legacy
The creation of the Idea Greenhouse provides an inspiring example of the power of one person to effect change. The model that was employed in the development and execution of the program illustrates why people-powered change, combined with supportive leadership and strong systems, is so effective. It's as Iqbal says: “Give the people the tools of production, and they will create the change they need.”
By building on each success to tolerance, tinkering your way toward the big vision you had at the beginning, change takes root. Distribute the “tools of production,” the power to create change in one's immediate environment, and momentum builds. This is how transformation occurs, advancing as an evolution of small wins and successes.
Which is what the Consumer Insights division has continued to do. The Idea Greenhouse established innovation as a standard practice and value, a ready foundation for incorporating more of the futurist thinking that had so inspired the team that attended PUSH. Gayle initiated the next iteration, named Futures Skills; these skills have become the guiding principles for the practice of Consumer Insights at General Mills.
The Futures Skills methodology encourages a “whole-brain” point of view that references a wide range of influences and disciplines. As was described in our discussion of the Discover phase of the ZoD, the collection of left- and right-brain inputs are distilled as strategic, actionable insights for the business.
There were other capabilities that developed as a result of the Idea Greenhouse as well. Among them were a Social Insights Network, a platform for conducting and measuring consumer insights on social networks; and iTECH, a frontline investigator of emerging trends and business challenges.
Begun in 2010, iTECH represented an evolution in structure, too. Not only is the team focused further out in the future, but it has eight full-time employees who spend their time researching new technologies and emerging markets, then formulating strategic solutions that might apply broadly, across the “world of food,” or very specifically to new research methods, for instance.
The most recent development is a nonhierarchical group (a model established by the Idea Greenhouse) of forty people in the department who are envisioning the future of CI in the year 2020. The goal for this group is to consider the role of CI; the methods, skills, and capabilities that will be needed; and a plan for evolving the division in that direction in the intervening years.
To address these issues, the Consumer Insights 2020 group has to consider, first, how conditions will change over the next ten years and how it will affect people's work, home, and family lives. How might those changes influence their food choices and behaviors? How will General Mills fulfill its mission to “Nourish Lives,” and will the meaning of that phrase be different in that future environment? Then the group can begin to define how consumer behaviors might be shifting and what they'll need in order to observe and anticipate those behaviors. With this scenario in mind, the group can determine the methods, skills, and capabilities they'll need to remain an industry leader in consumer insights in the year 2020.
The successful integration of futurist thinking in CI has influenced the corporate culture, as evidenced in a new, organization-wide adoption of “core hours” at General Mills. Beginning in 2011, meetings can be scheduled only between 9 am and 3 pm, leaving 5 percent of employees' workday—before 9 am and after 3 pm—free to be used at each employee's discretion. Jon's greatest wish, time for “clear space” to think, is now protected.
But the real legacy of the Idea Greenhouse (and the next generation of programs that have grown out of it) is that it has inspired other functions across General Mills to adopt a similar approach. The program also has proven influential outside the organization—becoming an industry best practice—and has been emulated by consumer research groups in similar organizations. The Consumer Insights division of General Mills is widely admired for its future-focused approach to research and innovation.
Michelle, Jon, and Gayle each had a moment when the Like that! ideas that had inspired them at PUSH converted into a “Let's do this!” commitment to make futurist thinking an explicit practice for CI. The Idea Greenhouse was the First Movable Piece in that direction.
Far too often, the First Movable Piece is also the last gasp for bold ideas, as most initiatives are abandoned after the pilot phase. The most important thing—by far—the CI group did to succeed in making futurist thinking an explicit practice for the function boils down to this: they didn't let the effort die.
All the people involved in the Idea Greenhouse, and since, have practiced Do diligence. They've allowed the form of projects to evolve, even as their individual roles and responsibilities changed. What remained consistent for all was a commitment to futurist thinking—long-term planning, an L-R-L approach, an orientation to Best Questions. As the timeline at the left illustrates, it took time, but their work has paid off.
As a means of assigning time and resources for tinkering, the 5 Percent Rule was the critical factor in sustaining the vision of CI as a source of strategic foresight within General Mills. The Futures Skills, iTECH, and CI 2020 programs are the results of such tinkering, each one an evolutionary step in making it natural for everyone in CI to think like a futurist.