Open up your mind and say, ahh...

A decade into the fashion industry’s romance with the pop-up store, the concept of temporary retail is no longer a novelty to consumers. Hoping to engage their audience with a six-week storefront in the East Village, high-end scent maker Odin invited Brooklyn duo Snarkitecture to rethink the pop-up. The resulting space opened yesterday in a tiny (350 feet wide) 11th Street space.

Snarkitecture is known for its process-oriented approach (last year, partner Daniel Arsham sealed himself into the Storefront for Art and Architecture with white foam and slowly dug a tunnel out). But for Odin’s shop, the duo imagined a still, austere space emphasizing the preciousness of Odin’s products. “We wanted to create an unexpected moment within this small storefront,” says Snarkitecture partner Alex Mustonen. “An escape.”

Snarkitecture started off with a simple visual insight: all of Odin’s packaging is black, with little text or decoration. They decided to cast one of the bottles–a simple black cube with a drum-like cap–in white gypsum cement. The resulting cast was “almost like a ghost or mirror of their product,” says Mustonen. Snarkitecture cast over 1,500 of the bottles, and hung the casts from the ceiling in an undulating sea of white cubes. On the ground plane, the ghost bottles rise on white poles to mirror the texture of the ceiling. The actual Odin products are few and far between, recognizable as the only objects in the store that aren’t white.

Rather than overwhelming visitors with gimmicks, Mustonen and Arsham say they hope the shop will offer consumers “a few minutes to contemplate this strange white-on-white landscape inhabited by only a few products.”

Last week I attended a fascinating forum on paid family leave at the Ford Foundation. As is often the case in any discussion about the demands of work and family, the need for work flexibility was front and center, with the primary challenge being, “How do we get middle managers to support it?”

Middle-manager support can be the difference between success and failure of a work flexibility strategy and, yet, it remains elusive. The advice on how to solve the problem ranges from “Put the policy in place. Tell managers this is the way it is. Reward those who do it and punish those that don’t,” to “You can’t lead a horse to water. I guess you need to wait for the dinosaurs to die off sigh.”

In my experience, a top-down policy and an ultimatum will fail. It only creates more resistance. And waiting for a generation of managers to leave is not only inefficient, but it unnecessarily leaves money on the table as the organization and its people miss out on the benefits of flexible work.

Over the years, we’ve succeeded in getting even some of the most skeptical middle managers on board the work flexibility train. But it requires a larger upfront commitment of resources (e.g. time, money, and people) than it takes to write a policy or rely on attrition. However, the return on that investment is a group of middle managers who not only accept work flexibility but understand how to use it as a powerful tool to run their business.

Here are five the ways we’ve gotten middle managers to support flexible work:

Ask middle managers to help articulate the “why” or business case for work flexibility in your organization, and then let them participate in determining what that flexibility will look like.   Interview middle managers–the supporters of flexibility as well as the naysayers. Ask them why they think it is or is not important to be more flexible in the way work is done. Encourage them to tell you how it will solve their business challenges. Gather groups of managers and employees together to expand this shared vision they’ve created. At the end of the process, people feel invested in this approach to flexible work that they developed themselves, bottom up and top down.

Allow middle managers to freely express the “prices” they fear they will pay, while also helping them to focus on the payoffs of work flexibility.  I love naysayers. When I am consulting to a group of managers about work flexibility and one of them has the courage to say, “Yeah, but I’m going to be left doing more work,” I want to hug them. They are articulating one of the very real fears many of the middle managers have about changing the way work is done. When you give middle managers a chance to share those concerns freely, they are able to move beyond them. They start to see the long list of benefits from having a more flexible approach to work. But if they can’t, they get stuck behind the fears.

Make sure that work flexibility in the organization is built on a partnership model where employees have as much responsibility for the success of it as the managers do.  Too many organizations put the responsibility for all aspects of work flexibility on the middle manager. They are expected to figure out what will work for the employee, how it will be managed day-to-day, and how the work will get done. No wonder managers don’t support it! When work flexibility is a partnership between the employee and the manager, the employee takes the lead and presents a plan outlining the type of flexible work that meets their needs and the needs of the business. The employee works with the manager to ensure their job is getting done. And, if the flexibility is not succeeding, they figure out a solution together, or they agree to end it. This is a much more appealing approach. Unfortunately, very few businesses prepare their employees and middle managers to make this type of partnership succeed.

Acknowledge that middle managers are people, too, who are increasingly under pressure to deliver more with less.  Middle managers have lives outside of work as well, and might also enjoy greater flexibility to manage his or her work/life fit. Also, the pressure to achieve quarterly goals must be acknowledged in the discussion. To ignore that pressure causes the idea of flexibility to lose credibility with middle managers.

Establish the expectation, at the beginning, that any issues related to work flexibility that cause the group not to meet its goals will be resolved by everyone, not just the manager.  For example, a manager finds that having two people in the group teleworking from home on the same day causes difficulty with customer coverage. That manager would call the group together and ask them to help her come up with a way to solve the problem. She wouldn’t be expected to take it upon herself to make it work.

As long as we make middle managers solely responsible for the success of something that they don’t help create, that doesn’t acknowledge their realities, and that they don’t fully understand, flexible work will continue to hit the roadblock of their resistance and fail.

What have you found works to get middle managers to support a more flexible approach to how, when, and where work is done?

Image: Flickr user smcgee

This is the second part in a series by Scott Anthony, author of The Little Black Book Of Innovation.

It sounds so seductive: a “culture of innovation.” The three words immediately conjure up images of innovation savants like 3M, Pixar, Apple, and Google—the sorts of places where innovation isn’t an unnatural act, but part of the very fabric of a company. It seems a panacea to many companies that struggle with innovation. But what exactly is a culture of innovation, and how does a company build it?

While culture is a complicated cocktail, four ingredients propel an organization forward: the right people, appropriate rewards and incentives, a common language, and leadership role-modeling.

If you ask most people what makes a great innovator, the most common response is innate gifts from parents or a higher power. Great innovators are undoubtedly different from the general population. However, pioneering research by Hal Gregersen at INSEAD, Jeffrey Dyer and BYU, and Clayton Christensen at Harvard shows that the critical difference is actually learned behaviors.

At the core is what the professors call “associational thinking.” That is the ability to make connections between seemingly unconnected things. A classic example of this is how a calligraphy class inspired Apple legend Steve Jobs’s emphasis on typography on early computers. The professors then detail what they call the “Innovator’s DNA,” four time-tested approaches successful innovators follow to gather stimuli that spur these connections:

• Questioning: Asking probing questions that impose or remove constraints. Example: What if we were legally prohibited from selling to our current customer?
• Networking: Interacting with people from different backgrounds who provide access to new ways of thinking.
• Observing: Watching the world around them for surprising stimuli.
• Experimenting: Consciously complicating their lives by trying new things or going to new places.

Aliens don’t quite fit in, and that’s exactly what you want.

Most organizations have people who follow these behaviors—even if they aren’t immediately obvious to senior leadership. Frequently they are what software entrepreneur Donna Auguste affectionately dubs “aliens.” They don’t quite fit the establishment, and that’s exactly what you want. But importantly these behaviors are skills that can be built through disciplined practice. Companies like Syngenta, Citigroup, Johnson & Johnson, and many more have made substantial investments in innovation training programs, which are critical ways to build an organization’s innovation competencies.

Sometimes the injection of a choice outsider helps shape a company’s culture. Ask for example why Hulu.com serves as almost the singular example of a successful disruptive venture launched by media incumbents (backers include News Corp, Disney and NBC Universal). At least one explanation is the hiring of a CEO from outside the media industry (CEO Jason Kilar previously worked at Amazon.com). If you are trying to transform your company or your industry you likely need to bring in at least a handful of outsiders who will look at the world in new ways.

One of the most common complaints of executives inside large companies is the challenge of recognizing and rewarding successful innovators. It seems like a Herculean task, as the best innovators can choose to work for startups and receive unbounded rewards. How can a large company—especially a publicly traded one—compete? The key is to thoughtfully blend the unique rewards at their disposal with a failure-tolerant culture.

An essential read on rewards in Daniel Pink’s Drive: The surprising science of what motivates us. In that book, Pink details how performance on creative tasks actually decreases with monetary incentives. And people who have chosen to work for larger, more established companies have already chosen to tradeoff financial upside for stability and the opportunity work with a larger group. Pay people fairly, of course, but Pink suggests that other incentives provide people with a sense of autonomy, allow them to master their trade, and give them a sense of purpose.

Every asset has a claim against it. Every strength has a corresponding weakness.

There are plenty of opportunities for companies to follow Pink’s playbook. What about creating unique career paths for innovators? Maybe someone who brings a great idea forward can stick with it as it winds through the organization. Or get a chance to work on an exciting new product launch. Public recognition matters, too. One media company holds an innovation awards ceremony that they treat as seriously as the Oscar’s—people get decked out and fete internal success stories. Winning is a big deal. It’s just one way for companies to shine a spotlight on success.

Of course, it is important to make sure you are rewarding the right people. How do you identify successful innovators? It seems like a simple question. But the realities of innovation make it complicated. Innovation is akin to baseball, blackjack, or investing stock. That is, success comes from a mix of skill and luck. Legg Mason Chief Innovation Strategist Michael Mauboussin argues that instead of looking at someone’s results, you have to look at the process they follow they achieve those results. Look for innovators that invest time to understand their target market, think holistically, design and execute smart experiments, and demonstrate a willingness to change course. Even if an individual effort doesn’t succeed, innovators who follow these behaviors are more likely to succeed in the long term.

Encouraging innovation isn’t just about what companies reward—it is what they choose to punish. In my book The Little Black Book of Innovation, I suggest that companies need to be more tolerant of failure. The most successful businesses come out of a process of trial-and-error experimentation. Failure and false steps are natural parts of that process. What kind of message does it send if you punish people who take well-thought-out risks that don’t pan out?

In a recent column at HBR.org, I detailed a heated debate between me and my colleague Piyush about one of the portfolio companies in which Innosight’s venture investing arm had invested. At one point I said Piyush’s argument was “utter baloney.” That drew a blank stare. I thought the brilliance of my argument had stunned him into silence. Then I thought perhaps it was because he is a vegetarian and didn’t appreciate the meat reference.

Understanding what innovation is, and is not, is critical for culture change.

Then it dawned on me. “Baloney” as a shorthand way of saying “that’s not correct” was vernacular that hadn’t made it to Singapore. It’s a lesson I’ve learned painfully over the past two years as I’ve had to slowly remove sports metaphors that just don’t translate globally from my speech. These seemingly trivial examples of how things can get lost in translation even when people appear to speak the same language serve as an important reminder of how subtle miscommunications can impair a company’s effort to move in a common direction.

Start with innovation itself. Next time you are in a group meeting, ask everyone to write down how they define innovation. Odds are you will have as many different definitions as meeting attendees. Having everyone understand what innovation is—and what it is not—is critical for culture change.

The next step is to identify the specific categories of innovation that matter to your company. For example, in 2011 financial services leader Citi decided its innovation portfolio would balance core innovations that involve improving existing offerings and processes, adjacencies that extend Citi products to new markets or leverage current capabilities to create new-to-Citi solutions, and disruptive innovations that create entirely new markets.

These definitions matter because different forms of innovation should be measured and managed in distinct ways. As an analogy, think about how you evaluate an investment in emerging market equities versus a real estate transaction versus buying a car. You approach each transaction very differently.

If you approach all innovations in the same way, odds are you are either sub-optimizing vital efforts to strengthen your core business or bungling efforts to create tomorrow’s core business.

Organizations take substantial cues from senior leaders. They carefully listen to what those leaders say, but, more importantly, watch what those leaders do. The most senior leaders seeking to make their culture more tolerant of innovation need to regularly demonstrate that intent with their words and actions.

One great example of this is the work A.G. Lafley did to change Procter & Gamble’s culture during his reign from 2000 to 2009. During various discussions related to the launch of his 2008 book The Game-Changer (with consultant Ram Charan) Lafley alternatively described his role within P&G as P&G’s co-chief innovation officer (with his chief technology officer), P&G’s chief “external” officer (“selling” the importance of innovation externally), Dr. No (helping to make prudent decisions to shut project downs), and an innovation cheerleader.

From work I did advising P&G during that time period, I know this wasn’t lip service. While serving as CEO, Lafley actively participated on the board of P&G’s internal innovation fund, and regularly conducted innovation and strategy reviews with each of P&G’s business units. He frequently proselytized about the importance of innovation and worked hard to select and nurture leaders that had the right stuff for innovation.

Studying leaders driving innovation in their organization, such as Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook, Indra Nooyi at PepsiCo, Jeff Bezos at Amazon.com, Ernset Cu at Globe Telecom, and Clark Gilbert at Deseret Digital, reveals similar patterns. These aren’t lean-back leaders that wait for change to happen. They roll up their sleeves and lean forward into specific innovation efforts. Active participation helps them spot inflection points that team members might otherwise miss—and gives them deeper intuition that helps when it is decision time. Active participation also speeds decision-making. Many companies review critical innovation initiatives at quarterly or biannual meetings. But key strategic decisions can’t always be scheduled. Finding ways to interact with teams more frequently can help to expedite the iterative process that so often typifies innovation.

Sometimes only senior leaders can remove the roadblocks that constrain success.

Leaders also help shape the context in which innovation occurs by making clear strategic choices. Specifically, they identify areas that are of strategic interest to the company, and areas that are not of strategic interest to the company. Many organizations waste tremendous time and money exploring ideas that, when push comes to shove, are destined to get shut down by senior leadership. Making explicit choices is a critical part of leadership.

Finally, lean-forward leaders break dysfunctional processes. A couple of years ago, a team was reviewing its progress with a key senior stakeholder. The team mentioned that their progress would be accelerated as soon as the company’s usual assignment process provided them with a critical scientific resource. No one was doing anything but following standard procedures, but the team was paralyzed. The senior stakeholder left the room, made two phone calls, and got the team the resource it needed. Sometimes only senior leaders can remove the roadblocks that constrain success.

Every company’s culture is different—that’s what makes them so interesting, and what makes paint-by-numbers recommendations painfully insufficient. Start by building what I call an “innovation balance sheet” detailing your innovation strengths and weaknesses. When building this balance sheet, remember the dual-aspect concept that has served as the cornerstone of accounting since its development in 16th-century Italy. Every debit has a corresponding credit. Every asset has a claim against it. Every strength has a corresponding weakness.

An honest understanding of organizational capabilities and disabilities helps to determine the right mix of people, rewards, common language, and lean-forward leaders that can help make innovation an everyday occurrence at your organization.

Images: svkv, woaiss, Junial Enterprises, and maridav via Shutterstock