I recently read David Shenk’s article on BBC News on the subject of skills development. If you’re not familiar with his work, his book The Genius In All Of Us summarizes research indicating that a person’s intelligences (and we have many) are more a function of environment and practice than most of us realize. .
“…everything about us, our personalities, our intelligence, our abilities, is really determined by the lives we lead. The very notion of ‘innate’ no longer holds together.”
I find this surprising, and I think it challenges the way most companies hire, assign, promote, compensate and discipline employees. Read the following description of brain research carried out on London cabbies:
“…spatial tasks were actively changing the brains of taxi drivers. This was perfectly consistent with studies of violinists, Braille readers, meditators, and recovering stroke victims. Our brains adapt in response to demands that we impose on them”.
When we think of an innovative company culture, we generally mean a culture that identifies, encourages, and supports potential innovators. Many of the poster children of innovation – Motorola, Eastman Kodak, General Electric – found success with cultures like that.
But this new research means we’re missing out on finding and using a much larger pool of innovators: people who don’t even know they’re innovators until they start living in more challenging work environments.
“It would be foolish to suggest that anyone can literally do or become anything. But new science tells us that it is equally foolish to think that mediocrity is built into most of us.”
Bend down and other strategies for continuous process improvement are steps in the right direction. But they focus narrowly, in my opinion, on improvement, not innovation. True innovation is not about polishing the apple, it is about finding the pear, the mango and the tomato.
The key to a truly innovative workplace is to set up work, itself, as continuous learning, with expert and novice hands coming together as a matter of policy to tackle all work challenges and get all the work done.
We don’t do that today. In the typical workplace, you are hired for what you have shown you can do and you are given the job of continuing to do it. The company relies on your limited experience in your area, but does not make use of your perspective, skills or potential in any other area. Although this approach has short-term efficiencies, it disappoints the future.
Rather, the enduring path to business success lies in a company culture that recognizes pervasive and ongoing collaborative development of people at work as its true competitive advantage. The practical demands of workers in such a culture drive them to innovate as confidently as babies navigating their complex world learn to walk and talk (and later ride motorcycles).
PS You’ll love the bikes!