What is the first step in the process of innovation? This question is worth 80% of your grade.
• Brainstorming? Wrong.
• Asking the customer? Wrong.
• Having a brilliant idea? Close, but wrong.
• Setting up a manufacturing site in China? Wrong.
Okay, the right answers include all of the following: forget, unlearn, destroy, dismantle, and undo creatively. Huh? Yes, you heard me. To innovate, you must get rid of the old.
An old story goes like this. An intelligent, rich man visited a wise eastern guru. “I want to be your student,” he told the guru. “People have said that you are very wise.” The man went on to tell the guru about all of his accomplishments. The guru looked at him thoughtfully. He offered the man tea. He began to pour the tea. And he kept pouring the tea, even as it overflowed the cup. And he kept pouring, even as the rich man tried to intercede. “You can’t pour tea into a full tea cup.” “Yes, I know,” replied the guru. “But teaching you would be the same thing.”
You cannot add more to an already full vessel. In order to make something new, you have to get rid of old forms. In order to create a new business process, you have to be ready to abandon the old process. That is why, as Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, states that good is the enemy of great. If something is working well, why change it? Leave good enough alone. But you have to be willing to destroy, throw away, abandon, leave behind, or blow up the old before you go on to something new.
Try this: Stop doing!
To be innovative means letting go of the past and making space for the future. How can you do that?
• What should be on your “stop doing” list? What are you doing regularly that is not adding value for anyone?
• What processes—evening routines, weekend mornings, making dinner—are you stuck to? Which are you willing to give up in order to innovate?
• What are you willing to get rid of in your life?
• What are you willing to unlearn or forget? Often, to learn something new, one needs to unlearn something. Before one embraces the world as round, one needs to let go of the belief that the world is flat. This author needs to unlearn some cooking in order to improve my skills in that category.
• What can you destroy first in order to create something new?
If you did not like the last story, here is another one to intrigue you. Let me quote the organization theory writer Karl Weick:
In 1949, 13 firefighters lost their lives at Mann Gulch, and in 1994, 14 more fire-fighters lost their lives under similar conditions at South Canyon. In both cases, these 23 men and four women were overrun by exploding fires when their retreat was slowed because they failed to drop the heavy tools they were carrying. By keeping their tools, they lost valuable distance they could have covered more quickly if they had been lighter (Putnam, 1994, 1995). All 27 perished within sight of safe areas. (Weick, 1996)
They had been trained to keep their tools with them. They could not let go of these tools. Sadly, they died. The first step of innovation is “letting go.” What are you afraid of letting go of? And by hanging on to that, what opportunities are you not taking?
The Japanese were able to be innovative in terms of quality processes and procedures after World War II. After having all of their major cities bombed, they were starting from scratch, from nothing. They embraced total quality management under W. Edwards Deming. It took decades for the United States to do the same. Why? Because we already had manufacturing in place, intact, that worked well enough to remain competitive in world markets.
This “letting go” is a difficult step. The trapeze artist must let go of one trapeze before being able to grab the next one. For an instant, she or he has nothing to hold on to. For an entrepreneur, that instant may go on for months or years. And sometimes, we need to be wedged away from what is safe because of our attachments.
“Destroy, Dismantle, Unlearn, Forget!” Perhaps this isn’t the mantra you were expecting. But it’s a requirement for innovative thinking.