The Special Sauce for Resolving Big Challenges
Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun. McDonald’s first launched that Big Mac advertising slogan in 1974. Now, 46 years later and I can still recreate it from memory. Oh… the power of marketing.
This blog however is not about marketing, McDonald’s, or the Big Mac, but rather the Special Sauce, which is as you’ll notice is the second ingredient and what distinguishes this hamburger as the Big Mac.
I’m not a chef, nor a foodie, I just enjoy eating. It occurs to me that the special sauce is what takes something ordinary and makes it extraordinary. Frank’s RedHot sauce, one of my favorites, had an advertising campaign where an old woman says, Frank’s RedHot… I put that sh.. on everything. Sauces are what give food their unique flavors and illuminate how different cultures value, think about, and prepare food.
SAUCE MATTERS.
I believe the special sauce for resolving big challenges with optimal effectiveness and velocity is Collaborative Innovation.
“I know,” you may say, “But Alan, collaboration is already prevalent today and so too is innovation.”
To which I respond, “While they are common buzzwords, my experience is that most don’t collaborate effectively, nor do people fully understand what innovation is or how to do it effectively.” If you don’t believe me, ask five people to define innovation and see what happens. I bet you might get six or even seven different answers.
In this blog, I’m going to focus on collaboration because I believe collaboration is the foundation that makes the innovation possible. Like a house, if you don’t get the foundation right, the rest of the structure will crumble, or in this case, innovation will not deliver what’s wanted or needed.
I recently had the honor of being invited into a session titled The Art & Science of Collaborative Innovation, a Masters Class. This group of 15 people spent eight sessions and 16 hours discussing Collaborative Innovation. The process we worked through has been both challenging, rewarding, and surprising all at the same time. Collectively, this group has over 500 years of academic, business, military, and innovation knowledge and experiences to draw on.
WE STARTED BY ASKING, ARE PEOPLE FUNDAMENTALLY COLLABORATIVE?
I believe the answer is both yes and no. When I observe children playing, I conclude that yes, children are collaborative. Young people routinely succeed in completing the marshmallow challenge at a far greater rate than adults do. They do so because they collaborate more easily and aren’t generally afraid to fail.
While it is true that today secondary schools and colleges promote collaboration, the truth is they do so against a cultural tide of competition, not collaboration. Business leaders and educators of today were raised to compete. In high school, we were taught to do well in school because we are competing against others to get into the colleges or universities which we believed would help propel us to professional success. Today's generation is even more competitive academically as evidenced by the 2019 college admissions bribery scandal, which was perpetrated by the supposed adults in the room, the parents.
While we had a couple of group projects in college, essentially we were competing again. Students were working to get the best grades, especially important if you wanted to go to a graduate school or get a coveted job with a well-branded company upon graduation.
High school and college sports teach us many values, including how to compete. We even compete academically in extra-curricular activities, like the debate team, mathletes, and Model UN to name a few. Then we got into the workplace where again we competed to shine above our peers so that we could get the coveted jobs and promotions.
As you can see from high school on, the behaviors which are rewarded were for competing, not collaborating. Even today, as students are encouraged to collaborate much more than we were, who’s going to support and educate them on how to collaborate, the people who have spent their whole lives competing?
So, while I believe that humans are fundamentally collaborative, in this country it gets knocked out of us by a culture that favors competition. Don’t misunderstand me, I believe in competition and its importance in a capitalist society; however, I also believe we need to build both skills and have them co-exist.
Turns out, collaborating isn’t about knowing something, but rather creating an environment and culture which rewards and allows for multiple viewpoints to be heard and considered, which is much easier said than done. To do that requires strong creative leaders with the courage to change tack — away from old ways of operating from the past — to resolve big challenges.
There are six principles of Collaborative Innovation, which really are the six principles of collaboration, and if done well, results in expanded creativity and innovation. They are Energy Awareness, Mutuality, Curiosity, Coachability, Generous Listening, and Committed Speaking.
Bringing together the combined knowledge and experiences of a group of people and encouraging them to collaborate based upon the Six Principles, ignites creativity and innovation and what emerges is whole new worlds of possibilities.
I’d encourage leaders to make collaboration a business imperative. Why? Because results will thrill and delight you and the people doing the collaboration. It’s a win-win.
If you’d like to learn more about Collaborative Innovation, you can buy the book on it, written by Bart Barthelemy, Founding Director of the Wright Brothers Institute, a man with nearly 60 years of Collaborative Innovation experience. You can contact Bart directly to buy the book.