Pascal Dennis, co-author of Harnessing Digital Disruption
Innovation requires engaging & aligning three very different
personalities – the Hipster, Hustler and Hacker. Laurent Simon
Smart Growth takes
root when three very different personality types - the Hipster, Hustler and
Hacker - are present & in full flow. This may help explain why startup Failure
Rates are so high. If one or more are absent, our innovations are likely to be
flat, or worse yet, over-complicated & irritating.
Each of these characters
correspond to a fundamental question or test each innovation must pass:
1. Does it wow? Hipster
2. Can we make money? Hustler
3. Does it work? Hacker
The sequence of
questions reflects hard-won wisdom:
·
If the idea doesn’t wow the customer, why
bother?
·
If you can’t make money, why build it?
·
The ‘better mousetrap’ metaphor is flat
out wrong! Nobody cares about our mousetrap.
Last time, I talked
about the Hipster. Today…
The Hacker is the engineer, coder,
scientist, doctor, actuary, accountant…the one who is deeply engaged in the
technology underlying the offering.
Think Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Elon Musk or other famous Tech
founders. Hackers are often noteworthy for having a flat, abstract or seemingly
disengaged affect. It’s not surprising.
Technology is often so utterly engrossing, that it’s easy to disappear into it.
Hackers tend to be
very smart. I’ve mentored many accomplished ‘Hackers’ including COOs, CFOs,
CIOs, Chief Medical Officers, and Chief Risk Officers. Their domain knowledge
is profound and attaining it requires years of focus, often to the exclusion of
everything else. Ironically, being very smart can be limiting!
Mentoring ‘Hackers’,
therefore, entails sharing tacit wisdom from other fields & utterly
different perspectives. Chief Medical Officers, for example, readily absorb OpEx/Lean
concepts like Visual Management & Standardized Work in contexts as varied
as:
·
Surgery – (How do we ensure a quick,
effective changeover between surgeries?)
·
Surgical Instrument Decontamination –
(How do we know if a tray full of instruments has been disinfected?)
·
Infection Control – (How do we ensure a NICU
waiting room is not contaminated?)
·
Emergency Department – (How do we know when
we need another triage nurse, or doctor?)
Medical professionals
readily absorb these methods. (Where the methods fail, the culprit is usually organization
culture).
I was privileged to
mentor an extraordinary CEO & Hacker, who recognized his blind spots – and
asked for help to overcome them! Before
major meetings, he’d often whisper, ‘Help me understand’ the room…’ In other
words, help me understand body language, tone of voice, and the overall vibe
- essential inputs that were opaque to
him, despite his acute intelligence.
In the same way, during
innovation sprints, we help Hackers see the world through the eyes of the Hipster.
In Discovery interviews, for example, we are looking for often unconscious
customer signals of delight or discomfort. Hipsters pick these signals up
naturally. “Did you notice how her
body language changes every time you mention her elderly parents?”
These signals are
usually invisible to Hackers, and to Hustlers, for that matter. But when we
follow a clear validation process, we introduce them to an otherwise invisible
world. It’s like introducing a color-blind person to the color theory. The
Hacker may never become a Leonardo but will learn to appreciate the power of
Design and develop a deeper understanding of reality.
Each of us sees a
little bit of reality, which is why ‘radical collaboration’ is so powerful. A
diverse team helps us we see what’s actually there – and what we need to do.
But it’s a classic ‘Catch 22’: decision-makers can’t see what they can’t see!
Best wishes,
Pascal Dennis E: pascal.dennis@leansystems.org
PS For more on the 3H model, check out our book, Harnessing
Digital Disruption.
#StartupFailure #HockeyStickGrowth
#FailFastFailForward #InnovationStrategy #LeanExperimentation
#ExecutiveAirCover
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