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Think Like An Artist

Think Like An Artist, Wuflestad Group Blogblog

When a truly new innovation emerges, I find myself thinking, “why didn’t I think of that?” It seems so obvious, how did this get overlooked until now? Someone could see an opportunity which hadn’t been seen before.

Leonardo da Vinci thought sight was humankind’s most important sense and eyes the most important organ. He stressed the importance of saper vedere, “knowing how to see.”

Ed Catmull, CEO of Pixar made the comment that “an artist isn’t someone who can draw, but rather, someone who can see.”

Many executives are so focused on the the next benchmark; they miss the real opportunities flashing at them. Like a race horse running with blinders on, they can only see the race track. In The Innovator’s Dilemma, Clayton Christianson suggests that management has a vested interest in merely sustaining or maintaining what they have and maybe don’t want to see anything new.

Sears, Kmart, and JC Penny were at one point leaders in retail, they failed to see the changes in the market. Amazon, Walmart, Costco, and other niche stores stepped in.

GM had over 50% of the automobile market and was encouraged to break up to stimulate innovation. They didn’t, and Japan automakers took advantage of it.

IBM was dominant in technology and didn’t see software as the leverage point, Microsoft did. IBM was focused on business computing and Apple exploited the personal computer.

Microsoft was dominant in software and didn’t see the internet or changes in mobile technology; Google and Apple exploited the opportunities.

Howard Shultz saw something in Europe that he applied to the U.S and created Starbucks. Mark Zuckerberg saw other’s ideas and exploited an opportunity to create Facebook.

Some would say that vision is inspired, I would suggest that seeing takes action. The great artist Edgar Degas said, “I assure you no art was ever less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and the study of the old masters. Of inspiration, spontaneity, temperament… I know nothing.”

Peter Drucker said, “I don’t predict, I look at the future that has already occurred”. He saw management, decentralization, and knowledge work years, if not decades, before others did.

Never before have we had such visibility into society, demographics, culture, and data as we have now. And yet, so many institutions are becoming so irrelevant. Maybe Clayton Christianson was right in one respect, and there is a tendency for management to avoid change. Those who are able to see and have the courage to act on the change are the ones who will be the leaders in the next season.

Transformation through Preservation

Transformation through Preservation Blog, Wuflestad Group, Woodinville, WA

Consider the changes we have experienced since the millennial celebration. There have been wars, stock market bubbles and crashes, technological changes, social change, global change, political change, and economic change. It is most likely that rate of change over the next 15 years will at least continue.

While transformation, disruption, and abandonment are necessary strategies for every organization, there is also the fundamental need for continuity. Without continuity change cannot happen.

MIT professor and author Peter Senge said, “There’s a principle in biology about the history and evolution of species. A famous biologist said, “history is a process of transformation through conservation.” It is precisely the way that nature preserves a very small set of essential features that allows everything else to change. As human beings living and working together at some level, we’re always asking the question, “What are we preserving?”

This is an important question for the organization to wrestle with. Products will change, processes will change, customers will change. What are the elements of the corporation that will not change?

Peter Drucker added, “…it’s by no means an accident that all animals have the same number of heartbeats during their lifetime-forty million? Once nature learned that this is optimum, it preserved it and didn’t play around with it. If you look at organizations, what is the equivalent? It is trust, and we are not really doing the things needed to preserve the trust in organizations. Trust basically means some predictability”

He went on to say, “You do things differently, you have to, with different tools, with different markets, but the things you fundamentally are committed to remain the same. They are values; they are not tools.”

Simon Senek has made it quite popular to discuss the “Why” of the organization, the purpose or reason for being. While important, the answer to this question will probably change as society and markets change. Jim Collins would say you need to focus on “Who?”. This is also an important, but people change and move around.

Values answer the question of “What?”. What are our beliefs that must be preserved? This is the continuity that must be preserved to create change. Many of us go through the exercise of stating our values, beliefs, or convictions and maybe even hanging them on the wall or posting on the website. Have you dusted them off recently to see if they are being protected and preserved? These are the guard rails for you and your people that through change they can trust.