Scott Cook, founder of Intuit, talks about innovation at CHI 2006
Scott Cook opened CHI 2006 with a plenary on fostering innovation. Live-blogging notes have been posted on the CHI Blog. Here are my notes, which are not a word-by-word report on the talk but more of an annotated reconstruction (quote at your own risk).
Creating Game-changing Invention
The brief - Innovation happens at the junction between business and customer needs, not from executive ideas or lonely geniuses within the company. Indeed, innovation bottlenecks are often at the top. Creating a culture of innovation is about nurturing customer observation, incubating new ideas, celebrating failure, and staying out of the way. Read Thomas Kuhn (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions) and Peter Drucker (Innovation and Entrepreneurship).
Intuit: Changes lives so profoundly people can’t imagine going back to the old way.
Alice in Corporate Wonderland: The Girl Made of Glass
Have you ever driven home from work crying? On Friday afternoon, after a very hard week, I drove home crying.
Granted, I was listening to StoryCorps on NPR. This particular story was about a 60 years old woman, Kristi, remembering her mother, Norine, who had just died. She described a moment of “blissful laughing fit” when she and her mother were laughing together so hard that laughing was not any longer about something funny that one of them had said, but just about laughing together. Few days before she died, Norine told her: “Kristi, it has been really nice knowing you.” Kristi said that was the sweetest thing ever. And we both started crying.
My sadness resonated with Kristi’s sadness. She was mourning the loss of her supporting and loving mother. I was mourning my unsatisfied need for a supporting and loving work environment. Was it the hard week I had at work, with a lot of beating and little recognition? Was it that a few days earlier I hit deer driving home from work way too late in the evening and I was still in shock? Was it that after just a month back in my old IT department I was already starting to doubt my skills and my value?
This morning I talked to my mother. She was in a good mood and happy to hear from me. She was also in older-daughter-praising mode, which is quite unfrequent. She was happy at how successful I had been, in spite of all the obstacles, difficulties, and confusion I had to overcome. She told me about my first grade teacher, who was mean and rude (I remember I was terrorized by her because she used to throw pencil holders at her students when she was angry). The teacher told my mother I was stupid and did not understand anything in class. A few months later, my parents discovered that I was severely near-sighted. I went to school for months without being able to see what my teacher wrote on the blackboard. They gave me prescription glasses and my grades went from almost failing to very good.
Correcting my vision saved my academic career, but it also confirmed my earlier suspicion that I was defective. By the time I was in third grade, I had to go to school wearing eyeglasses, corrective shoes, and braces. (Ah, the 60s! What a wonderful time.) I remember one dream I had when I was 7 or 8. I dreamed I was made of glass. In the dream, I walked very carefully, because I didn’t want other people to notice the noise I made when I moved. Hopefully, nobody would realize that under the white and red dress I was not a real person but a fake, just a girl made of glass. Then I bumped into something and broke in a thousand pieces. Somebody swept the floor and threw the pieces in the garbage can.
I am 45 years old. I am woman. I am strong. I am smart. I manage a group of really smart and talented people. And yet, sometimes I feel as powerless as that girl who once dreamed she was made of glass. I feel that the world is too big, too powerful, too out of control, and definitely not on my side. I still feel that I am a defective and fragile item in a world of perfect ones. I still feel I am a fake, I don’t belong, and shouldn’t be there.
I am still reading Necessary Dreams (and yes, you should read it too. You should read it if you are a woman; you should read it if you are a teacher; you should read it if you are a manager; you should read it if you still believe that women are “less ambitious” and care less about their careers than men do; you should read it if you feel overwhelmed and ready to give up.). Anna Fels unveils the many subtle and less subtle biases that have the net effect of providing less social recognition to women, which translate in a greater fragility of women’s ambition. She tells me that if I feel overwhelmed and inadequate it’s probably because I don’t have enough support and recognition in my work environment, not necessarily because I am bad and faulty; and that this is true of everybody, not just of me. People who have achieved much are not necessarily stronger and more talented, but likely more supported and more able to create the conditions for strong, motivating r
So, what’s a girl gotta do to be happy at work? Sometimes I feel like fighting to get what I deserve. Sometimes I feel it’s really not worth the effort and I would be better off leaving for good. In the meanwhile, I am left wondering, with The Clash:
Should I stay or should I go now?
Should I stay or should I go now?
If I go there will be trouble
An’ if I stay it will be double
So come on and let me know
Technorati Tags: ambition, business, career, recognition, the+clash, women
Persuasion, the Sheryl Crow paradox, and Antonella’s yogurt rule
I am reading The Secrets of Consulting by Gerald Weinberg (have you noticed how I always talk about books before I finish reading them? And BTW, thanks to Jared Spool and Kyle Pero for the book suggestion). By “consulting” Weinberg means “how to convince others that you can help them and how to be successful in helping them”. The book is quite entertaining and has some good insights on the art of persuasion and self-promotion.
I have a couple of ideas on how to address consulting challenges, too. Weinberg has a kick for breakfast food analogies (e.g., the law of raspberry jam, the orange juice test, and so on), so I came up with my very own Antonella’s Yogurt Rule. Before I introduce the Yogurt Rule, though, let’s step back for a moment and discuss the Sheryl Crow paradox. Read more »
I used to have a dream (but then I asked for permission)
I’m just back from a week in Italy. Going to Italy always puts me in a strange mood; like meeting an old lover, memories of all the good and bad moments in the relationship resurface. And together with the memories of what happened, I start imagining alternative scenarios and how my life could have unfolded, had I been raised in different country.
One particular event came back to me this time, vividly and with details I had not remembered in a long time. Many years ago, I wanted to become a journalist. I’ve always loved writing and at some point I thought that journalism would be a good career for me. One thing only held me back: the unsettling suspicion that I wasn’t “good enough.” I don’t remember receiving impressing praises for my writing. Not enough, at least, to make me feel I would be a good writer.
Partly, it was because in my high school there were many sons and daughters of the Italian intelligentsia. I remember looking in awe at the infinite bookshelves in my friends’ houses, full of novels and books of all kinds. My father was an engineer, not an intellectual. My parents had a very small collections of books and most of them were science books. The most impressive display in our bookshelf was the 12-volume Encyclopedia of Sciences and Technology.
When I finished high school, I had more pressing issues to deal with than my conflictual relationship with writing. I needed to move away from the unhealthy family environment and to find some space to breath. After an eventful and almost fatal two-year break studing agriculture in Pisa, I started thinking about a writing career again .
I volunteer to work at the Press Office of a large political event that was held in Pisa that year. After that, I worked for free at a leftist newspaper in Rome. It was one of the most amazing periods of my life. I loved the newspaper life. It was a tiny newspaper, and we basically did everything ourselves, from picking the news to writing them, choosing photos, and designing pages. It lasted a couple of months. The newspaper closed, and I found myself once again jobless in Rome.
After the high of working in the newspaper, it was a very depressing period. I tried to use my tiny work experience to find another position in a newspaper. I was willing to work for free, but I could not find a job, not even at those conditions. And, in truth, I needed to be paid. Not only because I needed economic independence, but also because the only career path to become a journalist at that time was a paid internship in a newspaper. To become a journalist one needed to pass the professional exam; to take the exam, one had to demonstrate to have written and to have been paid for a certain number of published articles.
In Italy, most opportunities are born out of recommendations. You know somebody, and this person introduces you to somebody else, and at the end you get an offer or an opportunity. Don’t confuse this with networking: it’s not an equalitarian economy of favors, but rather a sophisticated form of begging the powerful. At the end, the practice of “favoritismo,” as Italians call it, leaves a bitter taste in your mouth: the position you achieve has nothing to do with your merit and everything to do with the magnanimity of your sponsor.
One of my closest friends’ father was a journalist, a very important one. When my small newspaper closed, I went to him with a collection of the articles I had written neatly organized in a yellow envelope and asked for advice. I can still see the two of us talking. We were sitting one in front of each other at the dining table, the yellow envelope between us: “Do you think I am good enough to become a journalist?” I asked. He was very nice. He said it was a hard profession and tried to understand if I had the drive and the passion to succeed. Did I have a passion for news?
When he asked me if I had passion, I felt all my doubts creeping in; maybe I didn’t have what was needed to succeed or at least to be taken seriously, after all.
What I really wanted from him was a reassurance that all was OK, that I could do it, that I would not fail. He didn’t do it, and I started doubting myself.
What I realize now it’s that it didn’t occur to me at the time to ask for help. I asked him for permission. I didn’t take the risk to believe in myself. I didn’t take the responsibility for the passion and the need that I had in me. The fear of failing was bigger than the ambition to succeed. All I wanted was to find somebody who would give me permission to be daring.
It’s not that I didn’t try. I went to a couple of newspapers, I talked to people, I asked politely for an opportunity. I tried, but I didn’t fight. I thought it would happen if I really deserved it. I didn’t.
I suspect that the memory of these events are coming back because I am reading Anne Fels’ Necessary Dreams. Fels talks about women’s conflictual relationship with their ambition and their need for recognition. She deconstructs piece by piece the myth of women’s difference as an essential, fundamental constituent of women’s identity and shows how much cultural conditioning there is in it. And how limiting women’s identity to this difference becomes a cage that constrains our ability to give ourselves what we need.
I think about my current situation, all the discomfort and pain I am going through now in my job, and I see the same mechanism in operation. I passionately and loudly ask for permission and reassurance rather than demanding recognition for what I have done and opportunities to do what I love. By now, I should know better.
What if I stop asking if I am good enough and start focusing my energy in making my dreams reality? What if I give myself permission to dare and to fight, if necessary, for what I want?
It’s not about becoming less empathic or losing sight of our interconnectedness. It’s not about starting to treat other people badly or just as an accessory to my ambition. It’s about taking responsibility for my skills, wants, and needs; taking the risk to do what I really want. Even if nobody gives me permission.
Alice in Corporate Wonderland, Chapter 1: Running with the brakes on
In the last few days, I have been frantically reading the The Naked Truth: A working woman’s manifesto on business and what really matters by Margaret Heffernan (Jory, thank you so much for the recommendation).
Even if I felt a little bit skeptical before reading it, after the first few pages I was completely hooked. What Margaret was describing was exactly my corporate work experience. The enthusiasm, initial rewards, the successive disappointment, and then the eerie feeling that something is wrong, which sets in after a while and never goes away. Alice in Corporate Wonderland.
“Take some more tea,” the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly. ‘I’ve had nothing yet,” Alice replied in an offended tone, “so I can’t take more.” “You mean you can’t take less,” said the Hatter: “it’s very easy to take more than nothing.”
For the longest time, I tried to act like women’s issues in the workplace could not affect me. After all, I was raised a boy by my father. In his mind, even if I had a woman’s body–which was disappointing, unreliable, and dangerous–I still had a male mind. As old fashion as he was, he wanted for me exactly what he had for himself: he wanted me to be an engineer.
It didn’t work out that way. I ran away as far as I could as soon as I could. Maybe becoming an engineer, as my father dreamed for me, it wouldn’t have been all that bad. But at that time, it felt as threatening as a lobotomy. I was craving for my identity, and I could not find myself in the image of the “ingegner Pavese” that my father was pushing on me.
Even if I’ve had my passionate feminist periods and I am deeply interested in gender discrimination in the workplace, I just assumed that being a woman would not make a difference in the asexual work environment. At least, not for me.
I was wrong. It does make a difference. And I am not even talking about how the corporate world treats me, but how I feel in my corporate job. I completely feel the pain of living in the two disconnected worlds Margaret Heffernan describes (“work” and “my life”); so much that I often feel I’m deceiving myself and my employer when every workday I put my corporate mask and costume on and go to work. I get so exhausted at the end of the day because of the added effort of being someone I am really not for so many hours each day.
I suffer the disconnection between my values and corporate values. My company is a very good one: it takes honesty and integrity seriously. It values its customer. It’s fiscally responsible. It has great benefits for its employees and doesn’t believe in periodic layoffs. But at the end of the day, it’s still a large corporation and behaves like one. Its values make sense in that context and can be explained rationally, but are not mine. And yet, I have to make decisions and take actions based on them every day.
The true proof that I’m really a woman–rather than a man’s mind trapped in a woman’s body–comes from the errors I’ve made and continue to make in the workplace: I take things way too personally; I constantly look for outside rewards and recognitions because I don’t feel good enough; I want others to discover my value rather than making the effort of making my value impossible to ignore; I hope that somebody will hand me my perfect job rather than making the effort of creating one myself; I bash myself mercilessly and then I complain that others don’t recognize how good I am. Not always, but often enough to make me restless and make it hard for me to be happy at work.
Most important of all, I push only halfway because I don’t completely believe in what I do. I care about my career, but I don’t believe in it. I have a lot of ideas about how to do my job, but I don’t always push hard to make them happen. Even if I have in me the passion and the drive, they are just not turned all the way up. I run with the brakes on, and it’s a very wasteful way to run.
Perhaps, I run with my brakes on because I am afraid of where running full speed would get me. I see how it is to be at the top and I don’t like it. I see people married to the company, with less time to dedicate to their family, their health, and their creativity. I see people aiming to the top, driven to the point of losing the ability to care and be kind to others.
Which brings me back to my father. In my twenties, I desperately wanted to be loved by him, but I rarely did what he wanted me to do. I wanted to be loved for what I was in all my young woman’s raw passion, beauty, creativity, insecurities, mistakes, and imperfections, not for the male ideal he wished I was. Now, I desperately want to be appreciated and recognized by my company for what I am, with all my raw passion, beauty, creativity, insecurities, mistakes, and imperfections, not for the corporate (male) ideal that my company seems to appreciate so much.
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