Top managers fail to understand complexity?

Nokia along other big companies has tried a bunch of different strategies on it's way including touch, services, Maemo, Meego and QT. Seems that big organizations can only handle one -ism or vision at the time. The need to renew strategies completely can lead in ditching all parallel scenarios while striving for optimal beauty of a chart or simplicity of communication.

So why do these visions and strategies change so fast? It might have something to do with what I discussed in my last post about how leaders create a vision and keep up their reputation.
Creating a vision is a crucial competence for a leader. When things go wrong (stress rises narrowing the line of sight and lowering the willingness to discuss) the urge to form a strong vision can become the last straw to keep up the reputation, although the vision might be personally driven or not just good. When the vision is set, leaders competence is measured in how well the strategy is implemented - no matter what it is.

Adapting to new situations is crucial, but evaluating when a strategy is based on actual situation and when on personal drivers can be difficult. Stupidity should be easy to detect, but we want to believe in people and their decisions - to trust that there is a good reason behind every decision.
 

Employee centric leadership?

In my projects I could usually guess what the user thinks and wants, but in several cases, I wouldn't be accurate enough. That's why I practice user centered design against my natural way of thinking.
When I say natural, we come to the theory how I believe big leaders think:


Every profession is a combination of competence, reputation and vision.
As a designer, my job is to bring up the vision of the user need. In doing this, I might feel myself as a bad designer for the fact that I'm not competent to create the vision without asking the common people and I could believe that the fact lowers my reputation as a designer.
-In this respect being a designer is easy. Nowadays there is a managerial need for user centric design and you don't need to make excuses for their expert investment needing external support.

Being a big leader on the other hand, might not be as easy. I claim that employees are the information source for leaders, like users are for me. Unfortunately, there is no model for employee centric leadership - just the normal specialist model, managers on areas of engineering, markets and accounting try to keep up their good work and reputation by delivering insight, no matter how unsure that might be. And what would happen to the reputation of the leader, if someone heard the the grand vision is formed on regular workers opinions?


What would happen if we live based on the assumption that I cannot know - I'd better ask?
The natural bottle neck becomes the capacity of listening and finding out. The very same problem I face every day - just like different levels of management.

Skills can be trained, but not attitude

Attitude is more important in the job interview than skills claims Mark Murphy in Forbes article Hire for attitude.

Yesterday I had a chat in the bus with some youngsters pondering whether they will have sufficient skills for their summer jobs. I commented, that nowadays in most roles learning new and adapting constantly to new environments has become a skill. In my post What's your true profession? I referred to how organizational changes in Nokia made all positions anyway new and the speed of adapting to new environment was crucial. -It might be, that these guys willingness to learn new stuff is the key competence and ticket to new kind of roles that others cannot asses so fast.

I see Murphy's article also linking to my earlier discussion about tacit and explicit challenges in organization. Explicit challenges as known issues can be learned and trained, but how to train or even discuss something so tacit as an attitude?
-Murphy's answer is that you can't.

Are technical and soft skills less important than attitude? Why?

It’s not that technical skills aren’t important, but they’re much easier to assess (that’s why attitude, not skills, is the top predictor of a new hire’s success or failure). Virtually every job (from neurosurgeon to engineer to cashier) has tests that can assess technical proficiency. But what those tests don’t assess is attitude; whether a candidate is motivated to learn new skills, think innovatively, cope with failure, assimilate feedback and coaching, collaborate with teammates, and so forth.

Soft skills are the capabilities that attitude can enhance or undermine. For example, a newly hired executive may have the intelligence, business experience and financial acumen to fit well in a new role. But if that same executive has an authoritarian, hard-driving style, and they’re being hired into a social culture where happiness and camaraderie are paramount, that combination is unlikely to work. Additionally, many training programs have demonstrated success with increasing and improving skills—especially on the technical side. But these same programs are notoriously weak when it comes to creating attitudinal change. As Herb Kelleher, former Southwest Airlines CEO used to say, “we can change skill levels through training, but we can’t change attitude."

Mark Murphy, Hire for attitude, Forbes

How to bridge research to development?

How to transfer insight from research to actual R&D?
While rearranging our bookshelf I ran into a research I have carried with me apparently ten years. It sure has been an interesting topic, but my friends theoretical approach for semi interesting topic just haven't crossed the reading threshold.

The other day I had a good chat with my old boss about an action to bring academical research closer to companies by recruiting a agent inside the company delivering the latest news into companies.
I don't want to say that this Tekes program will fail, but there has been several attempts to enhance the technology transfer from research to development. -In a way we concluded that so far the best method has been individuals that are that much interested on a certain topic that they become specialists and champion on an issue. This is also one topic where 10% of innovation dedicated working hours could be used.

What hit Nokia - Elop or mediocre Middle Managers?

I have been repeatedly asked that what killed Nokia. I thought I'd better do the analysis now, when I still remember something about it. Tomi Ahonen writes exhaustively how incompetent formal Microsoft executive ruined it all, but I have to disagree with Ahonen that much, that there were also other reasons than just Elop.

Accusations on the burning platform memo are valid, but Symbian had already been burning for years. It was like a fireplace that keeps the house warm, but must be watched. More or less the memo peaked the crisis both externally and internally. Despite the crisis, the issue of what was the pothole that caused the decline of the competitiveness and consumed majority of the R&D resources, has not been discussed. Here I name a factor that hasn't been accused before: middle management.


I have several posts where you can find me reflecting this very topic, but in very general level. Now to be more concrete, I'll list few major reasons why Nokia among other big organizations failed:

Culture of finding problems, risks and saying no.
Engineers are taught to find problems. Under pressure, stress can create impossible obstacles out of ordinary challenges. If company culture does not support positive approach of accepting both the challenges And the cruel facts which might follow, the Culture of No get's into speed and managers prefer to make anticipated setbacks easy for their teams and themselves.

Culture to support innovation.
Despite Elop accused his employees of failing to deliver innovation, good proposals never stopped flowing despite repeated setbacks. What explains these contradicting views could be explained by having a highly innovative employees and a middle management cutting the wings of the proposals. According to Johtopätkii, creativity consists of competence, motivation and commitment which were in order thanks to the good reputation of the company among earlier recruits.

Making good work.
Everybody wants to make a good work. It's a matter of what you measure. If project has multiple stakeholders, everyone of them wants to optimize their part of the project. Abstract example; if sourcing, project manager and finance do magnificent work, the result can be poor hardware, hasty design and lousy experience. The need to make good work is also connected to fear of mistakes and to the pressure of getting good results to keep your job.

Pressure and fear.
Before starting in Nokia I had experienced two lay offs and been part of terminating two contracts, but I still thought that it was a unusual situation. Lay off waves in Nokia came more often than once a year. Even a single wave has a huge effect to the motivation, self esteem and effectivity - and repeated more so. Also reorganizing, replanning and the mistakes along with the corrective actions consume a huge amount of time and resources. Further if management anticipates new waves, they try to do extra good work and to say often no, which leads paralyzing the other half of the company.

Lack of vision.
Before Nokia seemed to know what was it and where it was going. But during the great rush Nokia had around the time first iPhone launched, they had focused on money and productivity. When readjusting the organization and portfolio to face the new challenge, mission and vision was replaced by an internal disputes about whether to rely on it's true competences. (Competencies that had already producticed the first touch screen smartphone four years before Apple, but was cancelled due the lack of managerial trust.) Or to make fast correction move and glue the touch onto the existing platform and rely on the ridiculous services agenda.
After that the vision has been jumping from side to side, which enabled the next point.

Rise of the career opportunists.
The questionable character in humans is that when things seem hopeless, they face up and hope that some extraordinary force turns everything good again. In Nokia this meant getting new talent to lead things. Positions started to slide outside of Finland due to the appeal of London and Silicon Valley. What happened was that new people started repeating old stupid mistakes, but now their accent was sexy and their designs rocked - at least on paper. Unfortunately when the faith is strong and you made the hire, seeing the truth takes usually way too long.

If you don't make mistakes, you don't succeed

While ago I wrote about the negative impact a fear of mistakes can create in services. Another major issue with fear of mistakes is it's impact on creativity.

Creative work is usually done in the crossroad of freedom of creative thinking and limiting factors like time and budget. There is clearly a need for both, but like in the post about the facit and explicit communication, the weaker one needs to be supported.

Schedules and budgets as resources are easy to measure and are monitored by managers that usually have a strong background on economy or engineering. Creativity and new ways of thinking can present themselves even as a threat. Typical manager role avoids uncertainty and wants to keep track of the process. Already letting other disciplines follow their process that inherently includes phases of uncertainty requires trust and tolerance for uncertainty.

When all risks are removed and processes optimized it can lead to reverting to old solutions and way of thinking which means that creative process has failed before it even started.
Another risk is that if an organization develops a culture with strong sense of "right" and "wrong",  important and revolutionary opinions may never be said aloud.


Creating something new includes always risks. If there is no room for risks, creating something new might be the wrong way. If organization has a strategy to develop something new, the strategy should surely enable new explorations by not limiting thinking of talented individuals.

Tacit or explicit communication for you organization? -Choose both!

I started to read legendary manual How to Adapt to the Mountain by Jimmy Odén. On first pages Oden reminds how mountaineering skills are divided to tangible and measurable knowhow and to abstract part that he calls mountain sense. According to Odén, mountain sense can be learned slowly through experience, evaluation and reflection.

Odéns duality reminded me not only about organization psychology, but also of my ancient post that compared challenges of free skiing and design process.
Also competences in the office have dual nature, divided similarly to explicit and tacit know how.
As organizations have their mountain tops as goals, the most tangible means are naturally seen the most obvious to get there. -The abstract and non measurable traits of competences can get overlooked although it might lead to compromising the innovation.


Then, how to nurture competences to promote innovation?

One example comes from the discussions we had while making the new sitting arrangements in our office.
It was acknowledged that two types of communication is needed to get creative organization working effectively. The first one being obviously the communication required to make progress in your tasks. Second being the communication that supports the values, learning and openness in the company.

The solution here is to support the primarily the latter - tacit - communication goal, although it might sound controversial. Rationale is that this effort is not on the cognitive level and should come effortlessly - almost unconsciously. Further, mutual learning, shared values and general openness enhances competences and creates good motivation to deliver the innovation - giving good base for the first - explicit - communication goal.

Negative criticism = Opportunity to engage

While learning about contemporary marketing theories and consumer goods touch points from Hanne, I ran into this video where Avinash Kaushik from Google discusses how seizing negative critisism can be turned into opportunity.

What we have learned is that customer can become even more loyal when errors are corrected promptly and smoothly.  Having a personal presence in social media can be a huge asset.
Instead of being worried about having negative content on the web, one can have negative content AND show how well complaints are taken care of and criticism is used to develop the service.

Use the link for the right spot (1m42s), or watch the whole clip.
Winning the Zero Moment of Truth - Ratings and Reviews: Word of MOT

There is a side track here also. You might remember the Talisker case. -The story took new turns after my post.
It actually makes a good example here, since we you all could already know how things are if their media policy would include the presence in the blogs.. 

Complaining makes you fail?

Somebody starts complaining and hesitating in the middle of action. Wanting others to know that there lies a risk in the activity. And more the complaint is overlooked, the louder it gets.

I remember a trip to Chamonix, which ended up me wondering that do I really complain. I though I was just making notions on the circumstances.
Complaining and negativitity spread from people to others. Although the intention might be neutral, the effect might be that somebody else starts focusing on cold feet insteads of good skiing.


Hesitation and negativitity grow from fear. A fear that something is getting worse and not having control over it. -Withdrawing while still able might feel like the rational thing to do.

Working in organizational environment and extreme sports have much in common in this. Going to the mountain and making strategic decisions contain risks. In both cases the missunderstood fear can lead to not getting the run planned or failing in business. Sometimes even to fall of mighty organizations.
-Do we have the skills? What do other think if I can't?
-Are we strong enough? Can we make it in time?
-Do we have the right gear? Have we covered all the risks?
-Am I able to take care of myself? Is this getting worse?

Both in organizational environment as well as in extreme sports there are times that you to make leaps of fait. Have the confidence on yourself and on what you are doing.

There are three good anti-dozes for fear:
Experience creates confidence, that all the challenges can be tackled and all the needed skills and gear is with you.
Positivity makes you focus on the solutions - not the problems and make sure you don't spread the hesitation to others.
Finally, if there is a fear behind a complaint, treat it as such and discuss through to diminish it.
-Monsters are as frightening even if they are put under the bed.

In both environments, not keeping noise about real problems can be lethal too. Good question is that how to recognice the serious stuff? -Mutual trust maybe?

Better service through accepting mistakes?

Just like people reveal their fundamental characteristics under stress, so do services. Giving feedback to service provider creates a conflict that reveals how well the service culture is understood and cultivated in a company.

Being passionate about services I usually tell if there is something wrong - because I care. Regular customer do not usually care - they just change company. Giving feedback has offered a front row seat in observing how is feedback taken. Companies operate through individuals and their defence mechanisms usually determine how feedback is received. -This is where service culture steps in.

If a company does not take a stand on 1) how feedback should be received, 2) how and within what limits the situation is settled and 3) how the feedback is eventually processed, the employee falls back on ones own defenses or in best case builds on the self confidence, wits and positivity.

Katja Okkonen writes in Helsingin Sanomat about poor service in the article Saitko surkeaa palvelua? Tästä se johtuu.  She points out that following rules and regulations diligently and being afraid of mistakes often creates poor user experiences:
-Tuulikki Juusela calls finnish culture a culture of regulations, which could be interpreted as bureaucracy. Hiding behind rules and regulations has become common and common sense is used less and less.
- It is easy for me to agree when Juusela assumes that finnish people have gained a significant fear of mistakes. We are highly cautious for our manager or coworker to give negative feedback. Current economical turbulence has also made the fear of losing one's work very real. When customer gives negative feedback, the fear of mistake and fear of losing one's work is combined and that can create a strong need to be right.
-Janne Löytänä has written that the best way to receive negative feedback is to response promptly and personally. Löytänä further reminds that compensation is actually cheap marketing for a company. If a company is able to turn negative experience to a satisfactory, the customer becomes a 15 times more loyal than a regular customer - and that must create a lot of good reputation.
-While Juusela mentions that Finland is a true self service culture with all possible technical innovations to support it, Camilla Reinboth takes another perspective reminding that engineering culture might also lead thinking that errors in product can be fixed when they occur. With services employees need to know how to deal with mistakes before they occur.

Egolocical thinking as a strategy; Patagonia and Basecamp Oulanka

Some might say that Patagonia is crazy company when launching a campaign with the motto "Don't Buy This Shirt Unless You Need It".

For me, it made read through their values and find out that Patagonia is one of the leading companies in the world really finding ways to produce it's outdoor gear in the most ecological way possible.


Outdoor lovers use enormous amounts of different kind of synthetic fibres, plastics and composite products. It's about time that there are some leaders in making our consumption leaner so that we will not destroy our environment while enjoying it.

Another good example of ecological thinking in nature travel is Basecamp Oulanka in Kuusamo. They arrange a range of wilderness activities from extreme adventures to well-being holidays - all with high environmental, social and economical standards.
Seeing what modern wilderness tourism has done to many areas of Finnish Lapland, doing things really in the original way and minimizing operational footprint in every way is a refreshing, delightful and not a bit less fun.

Buy a Patagonia - if you really need one, and go to Kuusamo to enjoy some real experiences!

The moment of choosing a strategy

CityDeal launched itself in Finland about a year ago. It has offered quite good bargains of quality products and services, but now it seems that the revenue expectation has contradicted with the growth and the offers include items that would be more suitable for TV store.

This clearly presents a critical moment in how CityDeal builds it's customer base and who do they focus their marketing. -At least I will delete my account in near future if this starts to be another channel for the crap available from TV store.

Personalization using product printing and modelling interface

Nervous System is a magnificent company. They manage to combine three highly appealing trends and form beautiful products as end result.
1) Personalization: Enabling user to modify the design or make completely unique design to make product truly personal via intuitive user interfaces.
2) Biomimicry: Combining nature and digital by basing the designs on patterns found in nature. If you think about it Now - there's no better foundation to build algorithmically formed designs.
3) Using 3D printing as manufacturing method to accomplish all this.


Check some of their videos or try their modelers and enjoy :)



Growing a Hyphae Lamp from Nervous System on Vimeo.