Scaffolding is a term that has been popularized in the field of education. In order for students to understand a third floor concept, educators have to provide scaffolding for them. In order for a student to grasp calculus, for example, they need a foundation in algebra. In order for a student to understand British Literature, they must have studied the English language.
Scaffolding is a series of mechanisms that ensure the success of students. First, a teacher has to understand what students know or do not know. For instance, if a student is sure that the world is flat, any teaching that the world is round is not going to stick. Second, a teacher has to deconstruct or successfully challenge the notion that the world is flat. Only then can a student be open to the concept that the world is round.
Scaffolding also includes providing support and modeling—ensuring the success of a student’s or student group success. For instance, if a college is going to accept underprepared students in order to ensure an ethnic or other balance, the college needs to supply tutoring, remedial classes, and mentoring for those students. Some colleges provide reading courses because some students do not know how to read adequately when entering college. Others provide peer tutoring centers and writing centers. These mechanisms are built in to ensure student success.
Scaffolding in Building Innovation Capacity
A CEO realizes the importance of innovation. He will order his top managers to be more innovative. They will agree and scratch their heads. They might order their product development people to invent five new products, hire a guru to give a one-day workshop on being more innovative, or plan innovation roundtables. Many of these initiatives are bound to fail because they have no context, support or scaffolding.
The concept of scaffolding can be applied to building capacity for innovation. An organization must build scaffolding for its employees in order that they embark successfully on innovation initiatives. It must provide the support, training, and right culture in order to become a truly innovative organization. Below are some of the activities that can help a culture build scaffolding for innovation.
Culture. Ongoing innovation requires a high disciplined culture rather than a highly undisciplined culture. Non-rule abiding mavericks may get more press than highly disciplined people, but the latter develop more products and innovations. One must not confuse bureaucracies with highly disciplined cultures. Bureaucracies have multiple layers, process forms, review boards, and controls that do not add value. Highly-disciplined cultures have minimal layers, and only process forms, review boards, and controls that add value to processes. They have processes and systems that aid rather than discourage innovation.
For instance, in a bureaucratic culture, a review board will find ways innovations cannot work in the current organization. In a highly disciplined culture, a review board will recognize a promising idea, and look for ways an idea might work, or change a system so it can work. A bureaucratic culture will have antiquated controls in place that no one is willing to change. A disciplined culture will constantly evaluate its controls. A bureaucratic organization with a rigid 15% margin cut-off for all new products, as opposed to a 15% guideline, will miss out on some very innovative opportunities.
Ultimately, an innovative culture is one that teaches many ways to say “yes” to an interesting proposition, rather than “no” or “yes, but” or “interesting, let’s ponder this.” That kind of thinking has to be part of a deliberate, concrete, conscious, top-down philosophy.
Motivation. Innovation is not that different from creativity. Managers in organizations have a variety of ways to increase motivation around innovation. Many believe that extrinsic motivation is the most helpful form of motivation—$500 for a winning idea, for instance. Research in the field suggests, on the other hand, that intrinsic motivators are more powerful. The large innovative industrial and consumer brands company 3M and Google, the internet service provider, for instance, employ many forms of intrinsic motivation to spur innovation. They employ research roundtables, awards, innovation circles, an innovation museum, time off for innovation research and other techniques. Both Google and 3M allow employees to use part of their workday on innovative projects.
Training in Processes. Training in processes helps organizations innovate in two ways. First, as many levels of people in an organization learn how to use process tools like flow charts and Gantt charts (a project management tool used to sequence steps in a process), they become educated on how to improve existing processes. Task forces can change a nine-step process into a five-step one, reducing cycle time, cutting costs, and helping customer relationships. These process tools are not rocket-science complex, but logical, simple procedures that can be employed at any level in an organization. Secondly, process tools can help build seamless systems for developing and evaluating new products and services. They can help expedite rather than hinder product development. Product development is really a series of discrete steps: ideation, concept development, bench testing, market analysis, and so forth. Each of these steps can be done efficiently with process tools. In this way, the organization does not have to reinvent the wheel every time they develop another product or service.
Try This!
Building an innovative culture can begin with a simple step. Hold a brown bag discussion group about innovation. Have participants read the same book. Or distribute an innovation article for participants to read and think about. Talk about how to build innovation into your organization. There’s no telling where these ideas will go.
Building Emotional Intelligence. As discussed in an earlier chapter, emotional intelligence is essential for effective collaboration. Innovation requires massive communication and collaboration between departments. This collaboration needs high emotional intelligence from all involved. Time lines are compressed, departments rub against each other, and tempers can flare when organizations try new things. Managers and employees need to have a high level of self awareness and self control to weather the fierce winds of outside and inside forces. They need to know their own limits and boundaries. They need to show empathy to people from other parts of their system that are also under pressure. Emotional intelligence is a scaffold that needs to be built.
Lac Su and Nick Tasler, in a TalentSmart whitepaper entitled “EQ and Innovation” suggest that engineers especially need to build their own emotional intelligence. Engineers must be able to connect not only with other engineers, but also with professionals outside their department, while recognizing the preferences of customers they’ve never met. It’s a tall task, especially when you consider that many engineers—the people most charged with innovation—tend to have more technical skills than people skills.
Training and coaching can improve EQ in most people. Some organizations use training which can have some effectiveness. If coaching is added to EQ, the net impact is much greater. [I suggest saying a bit more about training and coaching—it comes and goes too quickly.]
Systems Thinking. H. L. Mencken states, “For every complex problem there is always a simple solution. And it is wrong.”
Systems thinking is a valuable piece of scaffolding. Often people do not understand the unintended consequences of their own actions on other people and other departments. Training in systems thinking helps participants see the interconnectedness of different parts of a system. This creates an appreciation for others in the product development web. Without the systems piece, partners can turn into accidental enemies, playing out roles that are antithetical to the good of the whole.
Systems thinkers look for patterns and structures beneath patterns, rather than just events. Systems thinkers look at bigger pictures to ascertain how they fit into that picture. Inventors look at more than their prized inventions—they see accounting systems, billing systems, and manufacturing challenges. In doing so, they avoid falling into mistakes and organizational pits that can be avoided.
Like emotional intelligence, systems thinking can be taught. People can learn systems thinking and use its fundamentals as a new language as they move forward in product development cycles. Fewer conflicts and turf wars will ensue.
Action Learning Teams. Often, people learn best together. Teams approach, attack, and ponder challenging tasks together. Peter Senge calls this team learning. Action learning is a refinement of Senge’s concept that focuses on complex challenges. Action learning involves peer coaching and team learning; teams learn together by experimenting and making mistakes. They do this methodically and learn faster as they work together over a longer period of time. Action learning teams can overcome innovation challenges together faster than individuals.
In the context of innovation, action learning groups can provide support systems for those involved in innovation. The path to innovation is fraught with obstacles and loneliness; peers help this. In addition, diversity contributes to successful innovation. Having differing viewpoints in a support group will aid in thinking “outside the box.” This kind of scaffolding provides support for those trying to safely think differently.
Training in Innovation. Another form of scaffolding is training in innovation. Company-wide training in brainstorming techniques, “blue ocean” techniques, and assumption-questioning techniques help to create a culture of innovation. Innovation is a process, and like other processes (billing, customer satisfaction, shipping) it can be taught and learned. Whirlpool, for example, has a company-wide training program in innovation techniques that has been very successful (Skarzynski and Gibson, 2008, p. 8). These programs open up eyes to possibilities and options for changing the status quo. It would be money well spent to train a few employees on how to facilitate ideation sessions. They could be employed in a variety of departments in order to spark innovative thinking.
Moving forward on successful innovation efforts requires scaffolding. Yes, it takes time. Yet, as in many key initiatives, it makes sense to go slow now in order to go faster later. Without scaffolding, creative innovators may end up hanging off window ledges, alone in their efforts. Like lone voices crying in the wilderness, their voices will not be heard and valuable initiatives will die on the vine. Or, worse yet, they’ll go to work for your competitors!