SD. How does this book relate to your two earlier books?
TK: This book is quite different in the sense that the other two books spoke primarily about the organizational setting. Although this book covers the business world, it also tries to speak to people as individuals in their work. There’s a chapter about finding passion in your work. Normally in my work, I’m speaking to business leaders but this case I am speaking to individual contributors. The book made the New York Times best-seller list, not in the business category, but in the “advice” and “how to” category, although the Wall Street Journal did put it in the business category.
We speak about creativity in the book. I had shied away from this in my previous books as some people divide the world into the “creative” and the “non-creatives” and they insist on believing that they are not. We take that head-on in this book. Instead we say: everybody is creative. People can remember back to kindergarten where they certainly had creativity. It’s buried a little deeper in some people than in others. But it’s still there. So first we give people the knowledge that they are creative and then we talk about some of the fears that hold people back. Prominent among them is the fear of being judged. Then we give them some tools or approaches for activating that creativity in a way that helps them have more influence at work or in the world.
SD: Why did you go from the organizational picture down to the personal individual level?
TK: The impetus came partly from the work of my brother, David Kelley, at the D-School at Stanford. The people there didn’t self-identify as creative, but we kept seeing this transformation that we call “flipping”, in which they suddenly thought of themselves as creative. And we saw how cool and how much fun it was to be around those people. They were taking on bigger challenges and showed more resilience when they ran into obstacles. So we dived into the topic.
We had seen all these individuals transform and we wanted to speak at the level of the individual. We were still interested in the impact that it had on the world when they did that. It’s not just something interesting that happens inside their brain. It manifests itself as action in the world and that’s our primary interest.
SD: Can you give us an example?
TK: My favorite is Doug Dietz. Doug was a mid career guy at GE, a very, very efficiently run company, and Doug reinvented himself, and in the process, reinvented his product category. Doug is now an ambassador. He is an adjunct professor at GE Crotonville. He’s got a point of view that is so valuable to share with other technical people. But his story is not about the technical side at all. It’s about the human side. When Doug tells his story, he cries. He always cries. I get choked up sometimes telling Doug’s story. There’s so much emotion in it. He also teaches at the D-School at Stanford. He has become a thought leader in the world.
SD: The emotion comes through in the book, and one reason for that is that Doug was doing what he was doing despite the organization.
TK: That always happens. The company fully embraces it now. He alludes to the fact that they weren’t sure. I don’t know if he asked for a big budget and was refused, or not, but I know he did not get a big budget. He created his own volunteer army, including some people in their spare time from GE, and also people from the community. Doug is the poster child of Creative Confidence. He’s a person you want to be around because he’s got such a positive outlook on things. And he’s a person you want to have in your company, because he made a big change on a shoe-string budget.
SD: Do you always have to be creative despite the company?
TK: At the beginning, you as an individual often have to invest. We sometimes talk about double-delivering. You do things the way the boss asked and then you do it using the “design thinking” method or some more creative approach to the solution. That’s double the work. And you have to do it on the same schedule. But what we find is that even the most skeptical or old-fashioned boss still loves success. You show someone a new path to success, they will back you in it. Doug invested a great deal personally at the beginning. But he was tremendously successful. That is a pattern that many of the people that we interviewed followed. They built their own success in Round One. And then in Round Two, others, interested in the success of it, said, “Hey, let’s us try that too!”
You can’t blame GE. They have had their success. They built one of the most successful companies in the world, following the Six Sigma path. Metaphorically, they are like Singapore. Around 2000, I was invited there for a think-tank, and I talked with Tony Tan, who was Deputy Minister of Defense at the time, and is now president of Singapore. He said, “Here in Singapore, we have had such great success with hard work and unity of purpose. My fear is that these are not going to be the key success factors in the 21st Century. We are going to need diversity of thought. We are going to need innovation.” A lot of companies are in that setting right now. The key elements that have gotten them to their great success will not take them forward. They need to recreate and do something new.
And read also:
The four stories you need to lead deep organizational change
Competitiveness vs Creativity: GE vs Apple
Don Tapscott: We Need Fundamental Change In All Our Institutions
The Meaning Of Management: The Great Awakening
A new center of gravity for management
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Steve Denning’s most recent book is: The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management (Jossey-Bass, 2010).
Follow Steve Denning on Twitter @stevedenning
