Culture: Evaluating Styles and Mindsets

Learning Objectives:

• Reflect on individual preferences for creative thinking and collaboration, and how they affect culture on innovation teams

In the previous articles, we discussed strategies for overcoming status-quo bias and communicating the value of your innovation concepts during implementation. In this lesson, we will focus on another aspect of implementation: sustaining an innovation culture that empowers teams to create and iterate on user-focused solutions.

As you have learned, implementing design thinking or another innovative process can be an innovation itself, and one that requires behavior change. Teams need three things to execute consistently:

• Culture
• Motivation
• Ability

We will now explore all three elements in detail, starting with culture.

FourSight is an innovation company that provides organizational analysis and training to determine where employees excel in the four phases of design thinking.

Their official assessment is detailed, but to put it simply, it measures innovators’ working styles and preferences. The FourSight model is a great initial window into the existing culture at your organization and your own strengths.

Imagine you are solving an innovation problem with your colleagues. Which of the following describes your preferred approach?

Note: Of course, you may prefer different approaches at different times. For now, just choose whichever one tends to resonate with you most strongly.

• I like to explore and experiment to generate different and unusual ideas. I like asking questions and probing for new perspectives.
• I like to evaluate the available options and combine ideas by thinking critically and creating connections. I like making decisions and guiding the direction of the project.

There is no correct answer to the preceding poll because the FourSight model tracks preferences and working styles, which can be complementary in a collaborative environment.

FourSight accomplishes this by measuring employee responses along two axes: preference for thinking, and preference for assertiveness. Both thinking and assertiveness are measured in terms of exploration versus analysis—expanding options versus narrowing them down—and then placed in a 2 by 2 framework.

• Along the x-axis, employees are asked: Do you prefer divergent thinking or convergent thinking?

• Along the y-axis, employees are asked: Do you prefer to ask questions and explore more and more options, or to assert your preference for a specific conclusion and move on?

Depending on how they respond to these two assessments, employees will find themselves in one of four quadrants. These quadrants give them clues as to how they prefer to work, and how they work with others. These quadrants also map to the four phases of design thinking.

• Ask and Diverge: Clarify
• Ask and Converge: Develop
• State and Diverge: Ideate
• State and Converge: Implement

In which quadrant of the FourSight model do you think managers and executives tend to place themselves?

Managers generally have strong implementation skills because companies want managers who are assertive and take initiative. However, implement is just one phase of design thinking, and it represents only one perspective on an innovation team.

Clarifiers, ideators, and developers need to have a voice in innovation too. Familiarity with the earlier phases of design thinking demonstrates why. The ability to confidently make decisions is an asset when you are refining prototypes and negotiating with external stakeholders. But earlier in the process, it can be a disadvantage.

The same skills that help a team in the implement phase could impede progress when valuable research still needs to be done in the clarify phase and numerous opportunities remain unexplored in ideation. Team members who enjoy qualitative research, creativity, and questioning the status quo shine during these parts of the process. However, implementers may not value these explorations as much.

This becomes a problem when team members are unaware of these differences in preferred working styles. And it can result in personal conflict. Clarifiers and implementers can easily be tempted to brush off each other's concerns.

This is not to say that certain types of work should only be done by certain people. The value of the FourSight model is it lets you openly discuss these working preferences before conflicts arise.

In the following text you will find deeper explanations of each mindset in the FourSight model. While not everyone in each group will display all of the listed traits, the FourSight model is a good starting point for analyzing how you work, collaborate, and resolve conflict.

As you review the following mindsets, pay special attention to how each working style might frustrate others on the team or create conflict. No matter where you land on the FourSight model, it is your responsibility as a leader to manage and resolve these kinds of conflicts.

• Clarifiers:
  • Are inquisitive, methodical, organized
  • Need order, access to information, permission to ask questions
  • Can frustrate others by asking too many questions, pointing out obstacles, overloading with too much information
• Ideators:
  • Are imaginative, adaptable, independent
  • Need stimulation, variety and change, the big picture
  • Can frustrate others by being too abstract, not sticking to one idea, being impatient when others don’t get their ideas
• Developers:
  • Are careful, pragmatic, patient
  • Need time to craft and develop ideas into useful solutions
  • Can frustrate others by focusing on small details, finding flaws in others’ ideas, getting locked into one approach
• Implementers:
  • Are persistent, decisive, action-oriented
  • Need control, timely responses to their ideas, the sense that others are moving rapidly
  • Can frustrate others by overselling their own ideas, demonstrating impatience with research and exploration

Ideally, innovation teams will have people representing all four quadrants because teams need individuals from all four phases (clarify, ideate, develop, and implement). The strengths and weaknesses of each member of the team balance each other so that the team can benefit from all the needed skills.

A key element of innovation culture at any organization is establishing what is non-negotiable, or at least what should be the central focus of any conflict resolution.

• In times of conflict, what elements of the innovation will you prioritize, even if it means making difficult adjustments?
• If a product must launch without feedback or iteration, how will you manage the tension and communicate the risks?

In the following video transcript, Design Executive at IBM Shani Sandy explains how these decisions can bridge the gap between people—in this example, designers, engineers, and leaders with real launch goals—who might find themselves in different quadrants of the FourSight model.

Again, this is a classic scenario and tension point that we manage constantly. And I think it's really important that we don't lose sight of our purpose. We talked about this a bit in terms of everyone being focused on the user outcomes. But, as we know, in practice, conflicts come up.

We have the design team saying, well, we really shouldn't get this out yet because we don't have user feedback. So how is that acceptable? And I do have to say that we need to go back, reset. You cannot think that you've created the best solution, product, offering, without getting user feedback.

There are some things that we don't compromise on. And so I think it is absolutely fair for us to have that tension and figure out, how are we going to get feedback in this example before we release what we think is amazing, but still don't have the feedback?

And so, different solutions may come up, right? So we might say, well, we only have a limited amount of time to get this release out, but perhaps we can get a select, targeted amount of users to provide feedback.

So this is also when negotiation becomes extremely important. And it may be something of the effect that you still, this product is going out into the world. It's going out. And there isn't much that you can do before going out without getting the user feedback that you know is important. State that very clearly. Here are the risks that we're undertaking by putting this product out into the marketplace without the user feedback.

Think of an idea that you are passionate about. You might describe an idea from your innovation project, or something else important to you. Spend a minute describing this idea with enthusiasm. Your goal is to convey this enthusiasm to an imaginary colleague.

Now that you have written your thoughts, imagine that your imaginary colleague brushes off your idea. They believe it is silly or unrealistic. How do you feel? This interaction would probably create complex, negative feelings.

The exercise above asked you to react to the rejection of an idea you are passionate about. The goal was to demonstrate how subtly conflict can arise in a collaborative environment. As we noted earlier, people with different mindsets and skills need to understand and respect each other. But this can be difficult.

If you follow the advice in the ideate phase to generate as many ideas as possible, it follows that most ideas will be rejected. However, research has shown that, if a person A discounts person B, person B may wish to get revenge on person A at some point in the future, whether it is in a minute, an hour, a day, a month, or even a decade later. This can even be a subconscious response. And person B doesn't have control over when it will happen.

Because we all need to remain validated in our interactions in order to participate wholeheartedly, the goal is to create an environment where ideas are rejected without inspiring feelings of revenge. But this is especially difficult for teams with diverse skills and different working styles. Why? Because we overvalue the things we know and undervalue the things we don't know.

To break the discount/revenge cycle, a leader must encourage everyone to contribute ideas, promote group authorship, and create a culture that values everyone's perspective.