Collaborative risktaking your innovation safety net in a reinvented world (ghc-wiki)

Collaborative Risktaking™Your Innovation Safety Net in a Reinvented WorldReinvented World

Dee McCrorey, Risktaking for Success LLCGrace Hopper Conference 2010 Atlanta, GA

Honoring the past to celebrate the future…

© Dee McCrorey’s Collaborative Risktaking: Your Innovation Safety Net in a Reinvented World

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5 Activities, 4 Sections, 3 shared rules, 1 afternoon

• Part 1: Your Personal Risktaking Style• Part 2: Your Personal Inflection Curve• Part 3: Your Global Decision Network


• Part 3: Your Global Decision Network• Part 4: Connecting the Dots

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Shared Rule…#1

• Do something out of character


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Shared Rule…#2

• Swim outside your comfort zone


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Shared Rule…#3

• Have fun, open your eyes to opportunities


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Introducing your Table Mentors…

Their role is to…• Support your learning during table exercises

• Facilitate the flow of information and


• Facilitate the flow of information and participant exchanges

• Ensure that everyone’s voice is heard

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Innovation: The New Currency

Overview

The New Currency

What’s different in the workplace today?

• We’re living through the longest-running recession since WWII

• 5 genx of workers under “one roof”


• 5 genx of workers under “one roof”• Boomers reinventing retirement • Career ladders are now cycles

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Supposedly the Great Recession ended in June 2009 – but it still feels as if it’s been ongoing since then. Career ladders, now cycles – why collaboration is so important

Old

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• Vision / Mission / Strategy -structured, rigid and hierarchical

• Change averse, status quo driven, culture of fear

• People as exploitable commodity, HR as legal watchdog & "hatchet" persons

New

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• V:ision / Mission / Strategy –innovation part of company’s DNA

• Entrepreneurial, adaptive, encourages Responsible Risktaking™

• HR as safety net for value creators and innovation catalysts

• Sustainability: the new bottom line

The Reinvented World


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Old

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• ROI at any cost

• R&D last added, first axed

• Finance driven

• Legality stifles innovation

• Global mouthpiece New

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• Sustainability: the new bottom line • Long range view of new product &

service development• Focus on value creation • Internal/external open source,

smart IP • Global mindset

Different “flavors” of innovation exist today

New Products

Sustaining


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ServicesOpen

Innovation

Risktaking needs to keep pace with innovation mix—you’ll need to be adaptable as your response to different environments and situations will demand different skills—one size doesn’t fit all in this complex, reinvented world. A key reason why DIAY or Do it All Yourself will no longer represent success in business or in the workplace. The old school individual contributor is now a misnomer. This is why smart, strategic collaborations are so important in successfully navigating the complexity that swirls around us. This is where women can truly come into their own. Why? Our societal influences have ironically prepared us for this period in time.

What this means for you in the new world of business.

Actions must be bolder, more

Influence, persuasion &

Innovative, measurable results

Delivering and communicating repeatable


more responsibleand create repeatable value

persuasion & collaborationassume greater importance

results determine business / professional success

repeatable innovation extends your “valuation reach”

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Depending on where you are in your career cycle you will need to determine your strategy for building these 4 focus areas into your career strategy. Repeatable value means that you must be able to reinvent yourself in your career, when adapting to a new environment or even a situation. How you managed past situations will also need to be reinvented—sometime on the fly. This is why it’s critical to understand your own Personal Inflection Curve, how to look for Inflection Points within your organization and how to manage both in front of the curve. The new world of work is about change but it’s also about knowing when the status quo IS better than change for the sake of change. Sometimes we get stuck knowing the difference and this is what leadership in a reinvented world looks like. Knowing when to ask for help and knowing who to ask help of and challenging your belief system that you need to have all the answers. The biggest challenge to women looking to introduce more entrepreneurial behavior a la risktaking into their career mix is that the fear of things NOT working out grow in importance as our rank increases. The more senior you are the more likely to want to retain the status quo that you’ve invested in. This is the real elephant in the room. It takes MORE courage to challenge an outmoded, broken status quo that you’ve invested in creating AND not feel threatened by others who challenge the “system”. But who’s more credible in changing a broken status quo than a person who help design it? It doesn’t mean that IT (whatever IT is) wasn’t good for it’s time, for the place, and for the right reasons. Once you get past this mental block, then you can begin looking at the possibilities. But first you must learn how to release, de-clutter your life before you can move forward. One of the biggest risks I ever took in my career was stepping down. A manager so believed in me but had NOT invested in my career development that he pushed to promote me before I was ready. And my ego took the front seat and was heading over a cliff. I was failing in the role and it didn’t feel good. Could I have been successful had it not been a start-up environment. Strong possibility. Could I have been successful if a coach or dedicated mentor had been my support nets? Absolutely. Could I have been successful in the new role if I had been more emotionally mature? No doubt. But none of these were in place at the time. The biggest fear for me was letting go. Letting go of disappointing someone who so believed in me. But sometimes the risk isn’t about asking for more but choosing when it makes better sense to ask for less. Quality over quantity. So I negotiated my release and my replacement—a more qualified woman for that time, that opportunity and I asked if I could shadow her. My aha discovery was that stepping aside was a personal risk for me—moving my ego aside—than it was a professional one. In fact, it wound up giving me more organizational cache. It’s about how we create repeatable value…and you can’t focus on repeatable value if you’re attached to titles and labels—adaptive is about transition and managing the flow of our career lifecycle. Blocking energy creates barriers for us and for those around us and, as leaders, our role in this reinvented world is to be conduits, gatekeepers, champions. FEAR has many faces. Understanding what truly lies outside your comfort zone begins by having a heart-to-heart chat with yourself. (favored, everlasting, a….., r….) We’ll cover this more in Part 2 and you’ll have a chance to work on some exercises that will help you do just that.

Your Personal Risktaking Style (PRS)No one size fits all.

PART ONE

No one size fits all.

My risktaking style “mix” has evolved over time.

• I’m an Optimist by nature.• I’m a Skeptic through experience.• I’m a Responsible Risktaker by


• I’m a Responsible Risktaker by choice.

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Example of how this has played out in my professional life and business: I’m an Expressive with lots of ideas and a can-do, problem-solving attitude – get me in a brainstorming meeting and I shine – I also enjoy building teams and working within a teaming structure. I can see big picture… But I also have a deep appreciation for data, supporting information in delivering results As a Responsible Risktaker, I’m about accountibility for myself and my team—I don’t flee when the going gets tough (even when I feel like tossing my cookies)

Your risktaking style is a preference, not an excuse.

Insight• There is no such thing as a wasted

experience unless you choose not to use it.

• Give yourself permission to pause, regroup and explore within a given timeframe.


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Insight• Give yourself permission to pause, regroup

and explore within a given timeframe.

Insight• Failed attempts will always beat out no

attempt at all.

Use the example of an 8th grade art teacher who said that I wasn’t artistic, compared me to my friend Rosemary sitting next to me who even at that age had the abilities of an emerging Van Gogh. It took me years before I realized how I had internalized her message as if it was THE TRUTH, allowing it to define the opportunities I walked away from. It was an early pattern in my career and not until a) I understood where this was coming from and b) how I was allowing it to play out in my life was I truly able to break the cycle and get my groove back. I started by keeping a small notebook and capturing times when I sat on the fence when I knew that playing in the field was where I belonged. Instead of keeping this notebook as a log for future generations, I decided to use this “self-deconstruction” for understanding what Debbie Ford, author and coach, describes as the “shadow sides” of ourselves. So, I gave myself 15 days to “change the groove”. � I took a series of art classes, just for myself, which taught me perspective, color, textures and other things that I was still curious about since 8th grade. Yes, I accept the fact that my skills and natural abilities don’t lie in fine arts, but what I did discover was that I have compositional abilities that I’ve used visually in other areas of my business. � I’ve made mistakes and have experienced some real setbacks both personally and professionally. But as Grace Hopper said it best “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to ask permission.


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Activities #1 & 2

• Personal Risktaking Styles• Situational Risktaking – Your Team’s Table Challenge


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Your Personal Inflection Curve™•Recognize your “change patterns”

PART TWO

•Understand your Optimum Change Cycle•Leverage both in a reinvented world

What does synchronicity got to do with it…

• I could have missed a critical personal inflection point altogether had I


point altogether had I never taken action.

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A year before I left Intel to start my own business, Dr. Andrew Grove, Intel’s CEO at the time, published a book in 1996 titled “Only the Paranoid Survive”� In his book, Andy wrote at length about the Inflection Point - in differential calculus, an inflection point is a point on a curve at which the curvature changes sign. The curve changes from being concave upwards (positive curvature) to concave downwards (negative curvature), or vice versa.� Andy defined his Strategic Inflection Point as “An event that changes the way we think and act.” � Ironically, in 2001 I had an Intel engineer ask me “How I learned how to, what she called, “Land on my Feet” and what I now refer to as “Reinventing in front of the Curve”. � Ironically, I had a PROCESS for RE-ENGINEERING AND REINVENTING BUSINESS ENVIRONMENTS, but not one for ME. So, this started me on my quest of deconstructing myself.


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I began with my early sign posts, how did I know when it was time to begin my reinvention. INTUITION is key. What internal messages do I receive, are synchronous events and/or people entering my life during this time. PERIPHERAL VISION, what’s happening around me. Is there a sense that I need to reinvent myself faster or what the engineer referred to as “Landing on my Feet”. I then look outside myself and my immediate surroundings to the greater environment—local, national, international—what’s happening in the world. I CONNECT THE DOTS. � Testing my own process, I created a HISTORICAL TIMELINE mapping personal, professional and historical events that had somehow changed me in a meaningful way. I was looking for PATTERNS in my life—the PEAKS and VALLEYS the highs and the lows. Why? Because I wanted to validate whether change that I instigated had resulted in a greater number of PEAKS or MORE FAVORABLE OUTCOMES vs. those instances when external conditions or people had REQUIRED that I change and what was the resulting short-term and longer-range impact.� What I discovered was that CHANGE that occurred every 2 years for me whether I had instigated the change or when events required me to change, always resulted in more favorable outcomes. This is now what I refer to as the OPTIMUM CHANGE CYCLE. I also discovered that I could ADAPT EASILY TO CHANGING CONDITIONS when they occurred between 12 and 18 months, but that MAJOR CHANGES that occurred every 6 months were more stressful for me depending on what was going on in my personal life and what support safety nets did I have in place. � At the other end of the spectrum, I discovered that when NO MEANINGFUL CHANGES happened within a 2-year cycle that I would self-sabotage by either a) Forcing a change whether it was the best one for me or not or b) Becoming bored, somewhat complacent and risk losing my edge and my hard-earned credibility before I made a change. So, in a way, fear of BOREDOM and STAGNATION became my motivators for change.� As I deconstructed my own “reinventing process”, I began collecting data from others regarding their change cycles and discovered that everyone I spoke with intuitively knew when it was an OPTIMUM time for them to change, on average between 2 and 5 years. So, even if someone remained at the same company or in the same job for 10 years didn’t necessarily mean that they had an OCC of 10 years, but that they may have had a 5-year OCC, which they had silenced during one of their cycles. Let me ask the audience “How many of you intuitively know your Optimum Change Cycle? In a Reinvented World, it has become more critical that you aim to remain in front of your Inflection Point Curve by proactively managing the pieces that you can directly control or indirectly influence. One thing you do control are your SIGNPOSTS. You’re now going to have a chance to create a snapshot of your own HISTORICAL TIMELINE with its peaks and valleys that you’ll use to identify your patterns and Optimum Change Cycle (OCC).

Activities #3 & 4

• Historical Timeline & Optimum Change Cycle (OCC)

• OCC Branding


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Your Global Decision NetworkYour Innovation Tribes

PART THREE

Your Innovation Tribes

Collaboration looks and feels different today.

• Nuanced complexity is difficult to maneuver

• D.I.A.Y. (Do It All Yourself) is just as risky as taking no action


risky as taking no action• The ability to collaborate is different from knowing how to leverage it

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Innovation tribe vs.Birds of a Feather tribe

• Diverse mix of talent & expertise

• “Likeability quotient” not as

• Focus is on similar interests

• Bonding builds social community

Innovation Tribes BOF Tribes


quotient” not as important

• Collaboration accommodates conflict

social community• Organic development of relationships

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We need both in our lives…we just need to know when it makes sense for one or the other. Cross-pollination is possible and I’ve build strong solid relationships—business and personal from both.

Navigating deep waters? Smart collaborators ask for help.


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Recent article about the Titantic The Titanic hit an iceberg in 1912 because of a basic steering error, and only sank as fast as it did because an official persuaded the captain to continue sailing, an author said in an interview published on Wednesday. Lightoller, the most senior officer to have survived the disaster, covered up the error in two inquiries on both sides of the Atlantic because he was worried it would bankrupt the ill-fated liner's owners and put his colleagues out of a job. "Instead of steering Titanic safely round to the left of the iceberg, once it had been spotted dead ahead, the steersman, Robert Hitchins, had panicked and turned it the wrong way." Crucially, one system meant turning the wheel one way and the other in completely the opposite direction. Once the mistake had been made, Patten added, "they only had four minutes to change course and by the time (first officer William) Murdoch spotted Hitchins' mistake and then tried to rectify it, it was too late.“ Patten's grandfather was not on watch at the time of the collision, but he was present at a final meeting of the ship's officers before the Titanic went down. There he heard not only about the fatal mistake but also the fact that J. Bruce Ismay, chairman of Titanic's owner the White Star Line persuaded the captain to continue sailing, sinking the ship hours faster than would otherwise have happened. There he heard not only about the fatal mistake but also the fact that J. Bruce Ismay, chairman of Titanic's owner the White Star Line persuaded the captain to continue sailing, sinking the ship hours faster than would otherwise have happened. "If Titanic had stood still, she would have survived at least until the rescue ship came and no one need have died," Patten said.

Toss your “innovation net” wide and deep.

• Think of your Global Decision Network as managed


managed crowdsourcing

• Greater the risk, wider the net

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The greater the risk, the wider the net(work) I’m an optimist by nature, a skeptic by experience, and a risktaker by choice – how has this played out for me professionally?

A process designed to handle high-risk, high impact decisions.

• Engage subject matter experts• Look beyond your own pond• Keep the process simple


• Keep the process simple• Give something back• Short commitment• Rotation

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Depends on the confidentiality of your decisions as to whether you widen your GDN to include external SME such as strategic partners and suppliers. Remember, this is different from focus groups or Customer care type of activity. These decisions are higher impact, high-risk decisions. This is different from mentoring, although you might include a current or former mentor. This is a different flavor of an advisory team because it includes a time deadline/commitment, rotational aspect

A reinvented process: leverage social networking tools.

• Set-up private internal discussion forum• Feedback via audio/video, texting• Report out via 5-min video or webinar


• Report out via 5-min video or webinar • Blog to share knowledge & expertise• Conduct 20-min interviews of SME’s

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I only had email and a phone when I developed this process. Today, I would leverage enterprise social networking tools such as… I would set-up an internal Discussion forum Feedback to me could come via an audio clip, video clip, email, text messaging, I would share the process in a 5-min video report out or short webinar I would blog about key learning and takeaways as a means of gaining exposure for my GDN, self-marketing and differentiating myself and my areas of expertise I would interview my SMEs and provide 20-min podcasts on their areas of expertise (gift that keeps on giving, marketing / differentiation)

Activity #5

(Following the 15 min break)

Team Preparation:


Team Preparation: Speed Decision-making Activity

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15 Minute Break•When you return you’ll begin Connecting the Dots… Connecting the Dots…

Connecting the DotsPulling everything together.

PART FOUR

Pulling everything together.

Activity #5• 3 Questions Rule: Will your team ask 1 or all 3 questions “in the field”?

• Field Role: Will you be a Scout, Interviewer, Analyzer, Wisdom Keeper


Interviewer, Analyzer, Wisdom Keeper or Strategist?

• Breaking the Rules: Add a resource, but you must negotiate her “release” first

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Speed Decision-making

• The Playing Field: 15 minutes to conduct your “field research”

• The Rules: Use your creativity to communicate with your table team while


communicate with your table team while on the floor

• Breaking the Rules: Add a resource, but you must negotiate her “release” first

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Upcoming “Transition” webinar series for women leaders


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http://thenewcareerlifecycle.eventbrite.com

• GHC10-20 code for 20% discount on 10-week series or GHC10-10 for 10% discount on single “transition phase” webinars.

Dee McCroreyChief Risk Guru, Risktaking for Success, LLC

Web: www.RisktakingforSuccess.comBlog: www.TheCorporateEntrepreneur.com

Leveling the Innovation Playing Field™

Blog: www.TheCorporateEntrepreneur.comVlog: www.RoadtoInnovation.TV

Intro video created for Grace Hopper 2010 workshop Collaborative Risktaking: Your Innovation Safety Net in a Reinvented Worldhttp://youtu.be/kA8mPyL6kiU

Video Photo Resources

1. "U.S. Army Photo", number 163-12-62. Left: Patsy Simmers, holding ENIAC board Next: Mrs. Gail Taylor, holding EDVAC board Next: Mrs. Milly Beck, holding ORDVAC board Right: Mrs. holding ORDVAC board Right: Mrs. Norma Stec, holding BRLESC-I board http://ftp.arl.army.mil/~mike/comphist/


2. Two women operating the ENIAC's main control panel while the machine was still located at the Moore School. "U.S. Army Photo" from the archives of the ARL Technical Library. Left: Betty Jennings (Mrs. Technical Library. Left: Betty Jennings (Mrs. Bryant) Right: Frances Bilas (Mrs. Spence) http://ftp.arl.army.mil/~mike/comphist/

Video Photo Resources3. Photo #: NH 96921

Captain Grace M. Hopper, USNR,Head of the Navy Programming Language Section of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations.

Working in her office, 1 August 1976.Working in her office, 1 August 1976.Photographed by PH2 David C. MacLean.

Official U.S. Navy Photograph, NHHC.

http://ftp.arl.army.mil/~mike/comphist/


4. Photo #: NH 96919-KN (Color)

Commodore Grace M. Hopper, USNR

Official portrait photograph, taken 20 January 1984.January 1984.Photographed by James S. Davis.

Official U.S. Navy Photograph, NHHC.

Video Photo Resources5. Photo #: NH 96566-KN (Color)

The First "Computer Bug"

Moth found trapped between points at Relay # 70, Panel F, of the Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator while it was being tested at Harvard University, 9 September 1947. The operators affixed the moth to the computer log, with the entry: "First actual case of bug being found". They put out the word that they had "debugged" the machine, thus introducing the term "debugging a they had "debugged" the machine, thus introducing the term "debugging a computer program".

In 1988, the log, with the moth still taped by the entry, was in the Naval Surface Warfare Center Computer Museum at Dahlgren, Virginia.

Courtesy of the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren, VA., 1988.

NHHC Collection

http://ftp.arl.army.mil/~mike/comphist/


• Anita Borg Institutehttp://AnitaBorg.org

• Women in Technology International (WITI) • Women in Technology International (WITI) http://www.WITI.com


• Women’s Biography Sites http://www.home.earthlink.net/~sharynh/WBSMT.htm

• Educational Cyber Playground• Educational Cyber Playgroundhttp://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Teachers/cwomen.html

Collaborative risktaking your innovation safety net in a reinvented world (ghc-wiki)

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