#rapidinnovation

[noisyfartchaos]

AI and NFTs in Art Exploring Their Impact Ever wondered how technology is redefining art The integration of Artificial Intelligence AI and NonFungible Tokens NFTs is not only changing the types.

[dibyendu]

Rapidinnovation -- A case study in Organizational Development & Change

The Backdrop:

A ductile iron pipe factory operates in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India. It is a joint venture between the famous Tatas and Kobutu Pipes of Japan. This factory is run by Japanese managers and supervisors and even some Japanese operators. They provided the technology, set up the plant, run the operations on a day to day basis and guide the Indian workers, supervisors and managers too.

The problem:

Ever since the Japanese installed their plant, 3.5 years ago, productivity never went beyond 50% of the rated capacity and quality rejections hovered around 10%, which they wanted to bring down below 5% level.

The approach taken by the Japanese managers:

They took their usual approach to analyze problems one by one. For that they employed all of their famous quality tools plus a mix of TPM and TQM approach. Huge amount of data were collected, to which one executive jokingly commented that data collection has generated so much paper that it could possibly cover the whole of Kharagpur

They tried their methods for the last 3.5 years without any success. Neither productivity nor quality improved by even 1%.

That is when the Chairman of the company invited me over to show him some 'magic' (he always jokingly refers to me as a 'magician', since he experienced my method 7 years back as a MD of another company)

Application of Rapidinnovation

My approach to the issue, that is application of Rapidinnovation, ran something like this:

Step 1: create an internal team focused on improving reliability and resilience of the organization to face this challenge. The team was a mix of junior, middle and high level executives. Fortunately I found this combination has an advantage of accelerating change.

Step 2: was to initiate them in the new thinking process and solving problems. Taught them my all time favorite method of Improvement through design, named Rapidinnovation -- a) make them see the connection between all problems. Obviously, not all problems are to be tackled one by one. Only the critical nodes are to be address to resolve the issue holistically b) Show them the unity of the opposites to take the "creative middle" c) Minimal invasion or change based on the principle that a small change creates the desired change in the system both quantitatively and qualitatively. d) How all processes and phenomena would naturally negate their present existence to go back to the previous one hence developing a method of spotting changes and adapting quickly in a given situation. The focus was to creatively strike a balance between 'reliability' and 'resilience'. Two significant ideas of the approach were.

a) The design changes appeared seemingly insignificant. Extremely small changes (pivot points or lever points -- a lesson I learned from Judo). Now I call this Minimalist invasion surgery.

b) No specific attention was given either to improve productivity or quality. In fact not a single quality problem was addressed in the entire engagement. The changes had a holistic effect -- i.e. small changes had their effect on the whole (principle of interdependence) Step 3: was to work out a few problems directly for them to believe that the method of problem solving and improvement works. That is what I term as the Non-Process in problem solving i.e. -- Examine things in isolation and then see them in their own environment (interdependence, interactions and the 'struggle'). Objective is to help things continue their 'struggle' to be in the 'creative middle' of everything.

Step 4: was to encourage them to apply the method themselves and gain internal confidence and esteem. Here my role was that of a facilitator and a critic.

Step 5: make them think about quickly spotting changes to quickly adapt to improve resilience within the organization.

Step 6: walk the creative middle.

The Results

The results were astounding: Productivity increased by 100% to reach the 100% of rated capacity and quality rejections reduced and came down below the 5% level (i.e. by 100% from former levels) in just under 5 months and the results are consistent over the past 4 months at the time of writing this event. This innovative intervention left the organization with on going benefits for possibly years (that has been my intention in all my previous engagements, which were so far successfully achieved barring a negligible few, 2 out of 50 to be precise).

Appreciation & Comments

a) This is what the Chairman of the company commented:

"Thanks Dibyendu;

I am keeping track of the developments – and the results a lot of confidence that TMKPL would be ranked as one of the best performing cos. in DIP business in the world.

Thanks for accepting the challenge and carrying it forward well.

I had asked Somenath to get across to you about BF opn. ; did he get across to you?

Harsh"

(now he wants the magic for another plant focusing on operation)

b) This is what a senior team member had to comment. I loved it since they see the approach as something that changes 'culture'. (His reference to Reliability Management is the name of my consulting firm RMCPL, solely engaged in problem solving.)

Quote

...RELIABILITY MANAGEMENT is not a problem solving tool, its more of OBSERVING THE PROBLEMS IN A DIFFERENT FASHION AND TOTALLY A DIFFERENT APPROACH TO SOLVE THESE PROBLEMS. It has changed the mind set and APPROACH towards solving problems amongst the team members. RELIABILITY MANAGEMENT IS A TOOL FOR CULTURAL CHANGE throughout the organization which is reflected not only in availability increase of the equipment but also in reduction in the percentage of Rejection and other improvements.

More success will come if we can deploy and involve more people across the organization into this approach.

G Dhar, Manager, TMKPL, Kharagpur

Unquote.

Lesson learned:

Organizational Development and Change Management must always be centred around the reality of problems, challenges and threats an organization suffers from. Then only changes to the way people work happen. Similarly, innovation is also centred around unexpected events that happen in an organization.

[dibyendu]

Rapidinnovation -- A Room with a View

Observing Real Life Systems

To me, observing real life systems is something like this:

“A real life System comprises of a meaningful set of objects, diverse in form, state and function but inter-related through multiple network of interdependencies through mutual feedbacks enclosed by variable space, operating far from its equilibrium conditions not only exchanging energy and matter with its environment but also generating internal entropy to undergo discrete transformation triggered by the Arrow of Time forcing it to behave in a dissipative but self organizing manner to either self destruct itself in a wide variety of ways or create new possibilities in performance and/or behaviour owing to presence of ‘attractors’ and ‘bi-furcations’; thereby making it impossible to predict the future behaviour of the system in the long term or trace the previous states of the system with any high degree of accuracy other than express it in terms of probabilities since only the present state of the system might be observable to a certain extent and only a probabilistic understanding may be formulated as to how it has arrived at its present state and what would keep it going, thus triggering creative human responses to manage, maintain and enhance the system conditions, function and purpose and create superior systems of the future for the benefit of the society at large.”

Such a represenation of an observation looks quite involved. Perhaps it might be stated in a much simpler way. Most real life systems behave in a complex manner creating multitude of problems of performance and failures. But how do we get rid of complexity and uncertainty as exhibited by systems? We may do so by deeply observing the complex behaviour of the system to improve our perception to gain insights about the essence of the system; find out the underlying ‘imperfection’ that causes the apparent complexity and uncertainty and then find ways to improve the existing system or create new system and maintain them in the simplest possible manner. We do this by applying the principles of chaos, reliability and design. Surprisingly, the same process might be used to troubleshoot and solve problems we face on a daily basis. If done, we are no longer dominated or dictated by the ‘special whims’ of the system. 

The crux of the matter is how we observe reality and understand it so as to make meaningful choices as responses to life and living. 

[dibyendu]

Rapidinnovation - Understanding Complexity

As Problem Solvers we sometimes misunderstand complexity and the play of complex adaptive systems. We can become so obsessed with the solutions we come up with that we forget to take notice of the interactions and interdependence between things and how our proposed solutions might affect the existing web of interactions and interdependence, creating more difficult problems for us to tackle in the future.

For instance, in the late 1800s rangers at Yellowstone National Park saw that the population of elks was dwindling. They reasoned that the elks were not getting enough food to sustain and grow. Hence they came up with the bright solution that the elks must be 'forced feed' by human beings so that their population would substantially increase avoiding a possible 'risk' of extinction.

The solution seemed viable and nothing seemed to be missing. So the rangers of Yellowstone park brought in the U.S. cavalry to implement their solution to hand-feed the elks. And as expected the solution worked wonders. The elk population swelled. 

But that is not the end of the story. As the elk population swelled the elk started eating aspen trees. But aspen trees were what the beavers were using to build their dams that caught the runoff in the spring, which allowed trout to spawn.

Now with less and less aspen trees there were less and less dams and with less and less dams there were less and less trout to spawn. So more elks equaled less trout.

Why did this happen? It happened since we did not recognize that we were dealing with an 'adaptive system' which by nature, exhibit complex and often unexplained emergent behavior.

The seemingly 'good' solution of 'force feeding' elks led to a series of cascading events that were completely unanticipated.

We most often seek to improve complex adaptive systems, sometimes with disastrous consequences.

It doesn’t take a lot of stretching of our mental awareness to make comparative understanding of complex adaptive systems of the elk ecology to the ecology of organizations and economy. Even with our best intentions in place, there seems to be really no way we can anticipate the ultimate results with 'tinkering' with complex adaptive systems. .

The important question that we must ask ourselves is, "What conditions have to be in place to actually solve these kinds of challenging problems? It does not matter whether we are attempting to solve organizational problems, or machinery problems, ecological problems, economic problems or grappling with design problems.

For some strange reason they are all complex adaptive systems exhibiting their strange behavior through 'emergence'.

[dibyendu]

Rapidinnovation: Managers -- Change or Get Kicked Around!

Right from the start of my career I never wanted to report to a manager who would only be there to keep record of what I was doing and inform me when I slipped on a self imposed deadline or schedule.

I thought that this was really funny. Why should a highly paid person (obviously higher than what I earned) kept, only monitoring me as if I were a circus animal?

I wanted something better. I wanted a boss or a manager who can guide me out of my difficulties (even personal ones), teach me the tricks of the trade and cushion the shocks of my failed experiments in my efforts to change performance and innovate.

Was it something very peculiar to my psyche? To make sure, I asked some of my peer buddies. And surprisingly they all came up with the same need that I was looking for.

If this were so, why companies would waste their valuable money keep supervisors who were just modern day versions of ancient slave drivers? As soon as I thought that I was magically transported to the vivid scenes of Cecil b deMille’s “Ten Commandments” where the Egyptian slave drivers were merrily lashing their whips around controlling thousands of slaves building pyramids and other infrastructure of Egypt.

Things haven’t changed much from those ancient days. Perhaps the form changed. The physical whip has long been replaced through industrial revolution by the ‘verbal whip’ and pens that possibly stings more emotionally than physically, leaving people more unproductive, raw and vulnerable than before – smarting and humiliated.

This triggers another vital question – Who needs whom? Do the employees need the organization? Or does the organization need employees who can think for themselves? The answer is not easy. When viewed from the principle of interdependence (one of the guiding principle of Rapidinnovation) the answer is ‘both’. Employees do need organizations as platforms to use their talents and perform as much as Organizations need employees who are willing to put up a fine performance.

How can this be achieved?

This might only be achieved if we take a ‘Human Centered View’ based on reasoned thinking on emerging situations, spontaneous creativity aided and guided by the focused will of management and managers who would be more willing to act as coaches and mentors for employees rather than take up the sick role of glorified version of slave drivers and ‘kill-joys’.

Without wasting much time I started my humble experiments in this direction (1980) since even as a Graduate Engineer Trainee I was already the boss of the Maintenance department.

So, rather than enjoying the ‘strange’ powers and ethereal joys bestowed upon me by the Top Management to grant leaves, permissions of all sorts and motivating my subordinates through regular enticements of ‘overtime pay’, ‘special increments’, ‘office parties’ I started mentoring them in my own way. It was good in a way since there were no well laid out precedents to follow so as to be trapped by rigid standards of earlier performance.

The focus of all that mentoring was simple indeed. How do we make sense of what is happening in the ‘now’? No big theories to contend with. No vague and remote scientific truths to digest. There was nothing irrelevant to what is happening in the ‘now’. We were jointly trying to make sense with me in the ‘mentor’s’ seat.  

Though I was greeted by derisions from my well healed but old fashioned managers the ridicule and jibes soon turned into amazement, recognition and awe. The result was more than I ever expected. We could complete projects before time (not on time). We cut operating costs by half (not 10% as slated in the annual budget). We increased machinery productive uptime to more than 98% (from a measly figure of 50%)… and more.

Surely, I was then bitten by the bug of coaching and mentoring which I kept repeating with great success and joy in all my subsequent jobs and professional engagements.

Today, after so many years, it is amply clear to me that mentoring and coaching are things that employees respect and live for.

That of course is all bad news to mangers who try to manage their mundane affairs in old fashioned ways of stick, carrot, numbers and prediction models. It seems to me that their time is up and they now stand ‘naked’ and vulnerable in front of their subordinates who certainly expect more mastery from them in the true sense of the word. It is already late. People are now ready to disrespect the last vestiges of the quintessential ‘slave driver’ mentality in traditional managers. How do we know? We know when performance goes much below what is expected.  

Making a successful transition from Managers to “Mentors and Coaches” appears to be the respectable choice offered to present day managers.

Managers – change or get kicked around!

[dibyendu]

Rapidinnovation - The Non-Process

If perhaps the first two posts in this series did not make it obvious, the focus and intended results of Rapidinnovation is to increase individual awareness and understanding of the conditions, circumstances and phenomenon that surround them. 

The foundation of such awareness and understanding is built upon  a few Principles, rather than relying on specific tools and techniques.

Developing an individual's awareness and understanding helps effectively bring about significant changes in prevailing situations, which is the objective of any innovation. .

However, increasing an individual’s or a group’s understanding of an existing situation or phenomenon is a tricky issue that refuses to follow well defined paths.

So, in order to have a standardized approach to understanding the traditional route is to first have a theory in place, which we then try to fit onto existing situations to identify parts that cause trouble or problems. Parts of the situation that don't match the constructs of the pre-existing theory are then considered to be problems that need to be rectified to bring about desired changes. Additionally, it also calls for labeling or classifying a given situation into some sort of problem type like 'quality', 'productivity', 'industrial', 'machinery', 'financial' reflecting the present tendency to classify or categorize problems into definitive silos..

For example, if a problem is determined as a 'quality' issue the problem is observed through some of the known quality tools and methods to arrive at an understanding about the problem. Once the abnormality or deviation from the norm is identified efforts are stepped up to correct the specific finding generally ignoring other relevant connections and interdependencies that might modulate or influence a problem. 

This general approach to problem solving has pervaded all known problem solving approaches and methods. Such approaches have its own share of problems since they see an issue either in parts or whole but not together and never see or examine the quality or nature of interdependencies of the connections that connect the parts forming the whole.

The approach in Rapidinnovation is just the reverse. Instead of looking at an issue through an existing lens provided by a theory or a pre-formed mental construct we look at an issue to examine various parts, their connections and nature of interdependencies to identify inherent 'imperfections' in such connection to construct a contextual theory so as to gain understanding of a problem in totality and then improve upon the understanding through subsequent application of the balancing solutions aimed at modifying or changing the nature or quality of the ‘imperfect’ interdependencies of connections . The focus is to see the invisible interdependent links between parts that make the whole

This method of understanding a problem through the Rapidinnovation approach may be explored as follows. However, be forewarned that it is not a step by step process to be followed in a strict sequence. It only provides a general guideline for the mind to flow into ‘understanding’.  

The understanding starts with “Form” and ends with “Maintaining Balance” for a given reality.

1. Form -- All issues have a form in space and time. So observations start with the form. It starts from a part and then gradually expands till patterns can be seen. This needs a lot of curiosity and visual skills on the part of the observer.

2. Feelings -- 'See' the invisible interconnections and nature of interdependence of the links that connect between different parts that form patterns within the issue being observed. This part needs a lot of empathy and mind stilling skills to discover such hidden connections and interdependence between the diverse parts that make up the whole issue.

3. Perceptions -- Examine and use signals to establish the interdependences as closely as possible. This I call as 'Sense making' of the patterns. This requires a lot of 'questioning' skills to make sense of the patterns being observed.

4. Mental Constructs of Reality -- Based on the 'Feelings' and the 'Perceptions' contextual theories are formed that explain how existing patterns evolve or emerge within the issue being observed. This needs the application of both synthesis and analytical skills.

5. Understanding -- Check whether the 'Mental Constructs' explain the observed patterns and the phenomenon. This calls for developing deep insights through application of principles of Rapidinnovation as outlined in the previous post.  

6. Action -- Test out the understanding physically through real life application -- pilot, prototype or  'the real deal'.  Obviously, we would need practical implementation skills and skills in human relationships.

7. Maintaining Balance -- Once more finer, firmer and in-depth Understanding of the reality formed through 'Action' strive to maintain balance till new realities emerge to change existing patterns or phenomena. This demands more of wisdom, awareness and monitoring skills than anything else.

I have consistently used this guideline to solve problems or innovate to change existing situations. The interesting thing is that it requires the development of human skills of curiosity, visual observation, empathy, synthesis, analysis, etc more than mastery of methods, tools and techniques though there is nothing that prevents the use of any tool or technique in Rapidinnovation be it from any discipline of human knowledge.

Hopefully the significance of the internal development of an individual has been made obvious since Rapidinnovation is founded on the principle that one individual has the power to change a situation both in his/her personal or professional life if not to enable them to change the world.

However, the way through which such development would take place must not be standarized. It has to be customized to individual needs and natural apptitudes. Hence the path is a Non-Process. And that squarely is a challenge to be met.

[dibyendu]

Fear Induced Innovation vs Rapidinnovation.

Here is a Facebook status update of Rahul, a friend of mine, who works as a consultant in Tata Consulting Services, and is presently engaged in improving the manufacturing process of a large gold jewelry manufacturing company in India:

"Last 2 days I got great exposure and learning while understanding with respect to India "What does Innovation means & How it happens" for the companies like Google, Intel, Yahoo, IBM, 3M, Infy, Wipro, Biocon and many more big & small enterprises from the CEO's, MD or VPs of these companies....The mandate came from Summit- Making Bangalore the Innovation Hub for Asia. (in the field of Manufacturing, Pharma, Energy...and obviously "IT" :) )"

It was obvious that he was quite happy attending this Summit. But I wanted to understand from him the deeper insights he gained from the interactions during the Summit. Few days later he came out with a terrific insight about the Summit and put that in as a comment to the discussion thread, which was the following:

"I found that almost all big companies are involved in doing innovation in the name of fulfilling the Future needs of the people, But they are not thinking much to solve the present "Wants of the mankind" specially the basic wants of low income group..i.e. food, water, energy, transportation, house, having regular income....Business house generally think this as a charity or CSR activity, but this is wrong, these issues have huge potential for doing Innovation and also have successful business models to sustain it.....It requires patience and focused approach from individuals and organization to address the problems of the larger section of our society."

Now that was something very significant and what I fear most about 'innovation' -- that is trying to do something for the future by completely ignoring the present.

Trying to do something for the future is insurance and not innovation. And insurances are always made to cover known and unknown risks and consequences. I call such innovations 'Fear Induced Innovation' (FII). And why is that? Risks are imagined or perceived - never real. So addressing such risks is done more out of fear than anything else -- just like any insurance policy we undertake. 

Paradoxically, such innovations based on fear or induced by fear are always risky, costly and most often do not serve any real purpose of the society in which they spawn and develop. They sap the resources of the society without paying them back adequately. The society is exposed to more risks than achieving solid gains in improving the standard of living of its citizens. Hence to cover such risks at low cost big companies are setting up their innovation centers in India and China away from their homelands. It is a sort of gamble that may not pay off in the long run.

What is the answer?

Innovations must be based on the 'NOW' (N). Innovation must be based on 'Present Failures' (F). Innovation must solve some 'Present Problems' (P). And innovations must be guided and informed by reality. Otherwise it is mere distorted thinking. 

I have classified the innovations that address the NFP (Now, Failures, Problem) as products of Rapidinnovation, which is a more inclusive form of practice under Design Thinking. I shall write on Rapidinnovation in my next blogs.

FII ('Fear induced innovation') is never the real one. CEOs are often found to run after FII to turn around companies. But they fail. No wonder, the CEO of Yahoo got fired over phone just two days back on 9th Sept 2011. CEOs of modern companies seem to work like 'freelancers' far removed from the ecology on which they operate, thrive and grow.

I feel that the need of the hour is to have Creative Leaders who understand the inclusive nature of innovation, or more specifically the inclusive practice of Rapidinnovation.