Innovation Health Check: Assessing Your Organization’s Capacity for Breakthrough Thinking (White Paper)

Here is an interesting white-paper from the KT (Kepner-Tregoe) Review
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Innovation Health Check: Assessing Your Organization’s Capacity for Breakthrough Thinking by Alan P. Brache, Executive Director, Business Solutions Kepner-Tregoe, Inc.

Diagnose your organization’s innovation environment. By looking at nine key factors, you can diagnose how your organization supports or hinders innovation. Your organization’s capacity for breakthrough thinking is influenced by your strategy, business processes, structure and other variables. By examining these and other key areas, you have the equivalent of a comprehensive physical exam that focuses on your innovation health. Read this article


...one of the other variables is 'Human Capabilities': 'A clear strategy, well-wired workflows, and on-target measures will not compensate for an absence of innovation's raw material: talent'.


The author then expands on the importance of both hiring & development to build this 'raw material' !

For me this article does a good job at identifying a set of key questions relating to assessing Organizational Capability for Innovation - clearly positioning the need to focus on Human Capabilities within this broader context.

People Styles at Work (book review)

I recently read People Styles at Work by Robert & Dorothy Bolton.

This is not a new publication - rather it is the text that supports our basic Interpersonal Skills training in the US.

[this model seems to have attracted more interest in the US than the UK ... and while not particularly robust evidence - it is interesting to see that the US Amazon.com site carries customer reviews of the book, while in the UK they await the first review to be added !]


People Styles (also referred to as The Social Styles Model') was developed ca. 40 years ago by Dr. David Merrill (an industrial psychologist).


'A person's style is his or her pattern of assertive and responsive behavior. The pattern is useful in predicting how the person prefers to work with others.'


While most models of 'psychological types' can be traced back to the foundational work of Carl Jung, the differentiating factor claimed for Social Styles is that it focuses on differences between people's outer behaviours rather than differences in their inner states.


As the quote above highlights - the model (as used by Bolton & Bolton) suggests that this can be focused down to just two dimensions of ASSERTIVENESS and RESPONSIVENESS. Consequently, the Behavioral Inventory (Questionnaire) is a very simple self assessment comprising of 9 questions on each dimension. From this the reader can identify their style as either:

• ANALYTICAL (less assertive, less responsive)
• DRIVER (more assertive, less responsive )
• AMIABLE (less assertive, more responsive)
• EXPRESSIVE (more assertive, more responsive)

As with other tools such as MBTI there is no 'best' style. Each style has characteristic strengths and weaknesses not shared by the other styles.

As the authors state:

'Whether at work or at home, success and happiness involve relating to others across a chasm of significant behavioural differences. Clearly, if you could figure out how to bridge the gap between yourself and others, you could make your own life - and theirs - much easier, happier, and more productive. That in a nutshell is what this book is about.'


In my view, the authors do a good job in clearly communicating the model, and helping the reader understand some key concepts, such as:

• how the specific 'Strengths' for each style become specific 'Weaknesses' when overused
• the different 'Back-up Styles' that tend to emerge in response to excessive stress (typically these behaviours becoming more extreme and inflexible)

The first part of the book focuses on promoting understand of the model and these core concepts. The second part of the book provides clear, step-by-step advice on how to flex your style ('as the key to productive relationships').

In summary, a book of this nature will naturally draw critique of both the author's structuring of information and the model itself. Bolton & Bolton have created a practical and accessible handbook for the Social Styles (People Styles) Model. The value for the reader will however depend on the level of prior exposure to psychological types and related work used in the workplace (be it MBTI, DISC, FIRO, Transactional Analysis, etc). The simplicity of Social Styles provides a helpful starting point to help colleagues understand that not everyone sees the world from the same frame-of-reference as they do ! (ie to build so-called Emotional Intelligence)

As the authors quote:

'The ability to relate well to people has become a critical factor for success in nearly every position in the modern organization'

Speed Lead (Book Review)

I recently received a copy of the book Speed Lead by Kevan Hall (http://www.speedleading.com/).

This is cited as ‘The practical antidote to corporate complexity’. Hall is the founder & CEO of Global Integration Ltd (http://www.global-integration.com/) . Hence this book incorporates the experience of ‘consulting and training more than 35,000 people in over 200 of the world’s leading companies in 40+ countries.’

The book explores four areas where simpler ways of working can speed up results:
Ø Cooperation
Ø Communication
Ø Control
Ø Community

The over-riding message in each of these areas is one of needing to ‘unlearn traditional management skills’. This includes:

Ø ‘deciding when not to be a team’
Ø ‘helping people communicate less’
Ø manager success linked to giving up control, and
Ø avoiding ‘too much investment in the wrong types of community’

‘We came to realise that the traditional line management skills that had made us successful early in our careers were holding us back in a more complex world. We learnt new skills ourselves and by working with hundreds of real teams, we evolved different ways of working to reduce and cope with complexity’


The book is indeed a collection of practical ‘common-sense’ (but often not ‘common practice’) advice, and the author highlights that ‘all of the value is in the implementation – it’s not what you know that counts in management, it’s what you do’.


Memorable descriptors and metaphors bring the concepts to life. In the chapter on Coordination, Hall talks about ‘spaghetti teams’ to illustrate the complexity of co-ordinating interconnected work involving eight or more colleagues. This complexity slows down co-ordination, vs. organising work using ‘star groups’ (in situations where interconnectivity of issues can be minimised).

For those seeking ideas relating to promoting increased empowerment within their organisation, the chapters on Control will be interesting reading. A powerful metaphor is offered for ‘breaking the chains of command’.

‘We use the metaphor of a waterline in working with teams to get them to diagnose the balance of control and autonomy that is right for them.’

On ships the waterline represents a clear point at which risk increases. This is variable depending on the conditions, for example: if the cargo is particularly heavy, or the weather becomes much rougher. Hence the point is made that ‘it is even more important to lower the waterline when you can than to raise it when you must.’

The section on Community covers several themes, particularly the balance of ‘loyalty to the centre’ vs. ‘loyalty to the local’; and also the impact of working with a mix of cultural values. Hall emphasizes that ‘understanding that community is different in complex companies can help you stop investing in unnecessary community and focus your time and effort on where it really adds value’.

My main criticism of the text is the narrow focus of the ideas explored in the section on Communication. In my view Hall rightly emphasizes communication as a ‘major time stealer’. As he states:

‘Communication technology has massively amplified our ability to miscommunicate and given us the ability to confuse far larger groups of people in more varied locations. Its immediacy also makes it too easy to fall into the trap of micro-management.’

Unfortunately the book focuses almost exclusively on achieving an appropriate balance between e-mail, phone and face-to-face communications. No mention is made of Web 2.0 technologies – and the speed advantages of appropriately using blogs, wikis, RSS readers etc. in workplace communications.

Given the breadth of advice being provided, I anticipate that all managers will find new ideas to implement within their organisations. The topic of ‘Speed’ is highly relevant in today’s workplace and the concepts presented are highly practical. The book describes the learning journey of the Global Integration Ltd consultants in their unlearning of (over-emphasising) traditional management skills to better cope with the complexity of modern multi-site companies. Consequently, this book will be particularly helpful for challenging the assumptions of leaders who have also relied on a mix of command and team-working in the past.