Why You Should Revisit Google’s Interior Design Strategy If You Want Your Employees to be More Creative

Posted on June 15, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Screen Shot 2015-06-14 at 11.33.49 PMExcerpted from Francis Cholle’s The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass

Thinking paradoxically is an exercise in setting linear and logical patterns aside for a while and opening ourselves up to the possibility that solutions and new ideas can come from places that challenge common sense.  To wit, Einstein once said:  “Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted.”  The question that follows, then, is this: what happens if a company departs from the traditional business approach, where executives focus on reason and results and where everything that count can and must be counted?  Could this company still be successful with a business approach that reaches beyond conventional logic?

The best example is a company that designed the most playful and instinctual work environment we’ve probably ever known.  This company is Google.

Google’s European headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland, offers a slide to take employees to a gourmet company restaurant, swing chairs hanging from the ceiling in study rooms, bathtubs to lie in and relax in front of lit fish tanks in rooms with low light, massage tables and masseurs available for employees’ breaks, and igloo-shaped meeting rooms with penguins and snow as background  It looks like a kindergarten playground, not like the offices of a serious company.  Yet it probably has one of the most analytical and efficient work culture if judged by the number of patents it register every year and its exceptionally high profitability.  This is because Google fully embraces paradoxical business thinking.

First, let’s remember that research shows human productivity does not follow a linear continuum with time.  Specifically, according to Pareto’s principle, people produce 80 percent of what really matters in approximately 20 percent of the time they spend at work.  So when I hear clients complain about summer hours, coffee breaks, or employees’ short days, I always remind them of the result of the study. Timesheets for employees are a relic of the past.  They made sense in the industrial era when the scientific management of labor was implemented to organize work in assembly lines.  But in today’s global economy more and more companies rely on their employees’ creativity for their success.   Because creativity does not follow a linear relationship with time, time management for creative employees shouldn’t either.  For instance, great advertising copy can take weeks or even months to be worked and reworked to final edit, whereas, conversely, a brilliant slogan may come to mind in just a few seconds.  Time spent on copywriting is not a guarantee of success.  So when Google provides employees with space and resources for a break, relaxation, or a massage they actually are managing the 80/20 rule of human productivity very well.  They know that at some point in the day it inevitably becomes useless to require employees to sit at their desk.  Google embraces the paradox of creative time management.  In my work I regularly hear executives in creative firms stating along the lines of conventional wisdom that summer Fridays off are unnecessary and counterproductive and the employees sitting at their desk all day long is their ideal representation of productivity.  They do not recognize the paradoxical nature of creativity management and have a hard time thinking paradoxically when it comes to managing employees’ time.

And what about the slide to get to the restaurant?  What does it do to people? What would it do to you? Do you remember the last time you went down a slide? It’s a physical experience for many of us, it’s fun, but, for others, it may feel risky. In all cases, it involves our body and therefore engages us in our guts and puts us in play mode.  Simply put, it sends people to a place where they can best access their genius.

Similarly, the swing chairs get us literally off of our feet and off of the ground, and take us away from verticality, Language first developed in human beings when we moved from a horizontal position (resting on our hands and knees) to a vertical position (standing on our two feet).  So when we’re sitting back in a swing chair we’re away from the axis of language, which is the instrument of logic.  Therefore sitting in a swing chair takes us away from our rational mind and opens us to our imagination.  Here’s the paradox:  Google is extremely analytical and specific in the steps they take to engage their employees’ creativity and commitment in a playful and instinctive way.  Google is probably the greatest financial success in the history of capitalism.  It’s work reflecting on the face that Google handles the paradox of relying on hardcore brainpower and intellect very well while simultaneously offering headquarters that look more like a school playground than a studious and orderly library.  It obviously understands something that would very likely benefit many other companies seeking higher levels of innovation.  If you wish to have creative and agile employees you need to embrace paradoxical thinking, because creativity does not follow any predictable rule, but rather demands specific ingredients: flexible time management, proper play, physical engagement, and some element of random collaborations, among other things.  In the same fashion, if you wish to tap into more personal creativity you need to embrace paradoxical thinking, because new ideas will not come from common assumptions.

Build Holistic Thinking Into the DNA of Your Brand For Outstanding Results

Posted on June 8, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Screen Shot 2015-06-07 at 9.23.46 PMWhen it comes to business, too often we expect profitability to be the driver of satisfaction, and therefore of motivation.  But this isn’t actually how it works.  When we want people to be creative or to change, adapt, and innovate, profitability alone won’t motivate them to do that.  These activities require a deep commitment, and if any part of us is not engaged, we won’t make that commitment.

This is why the first tenet of Intuitive Intelligence is the ability to think holistically; in other words, the ability to focus on value that goes beyond dollars and cents to include thing like integrity, honor, and meaning.  The legendary retailer Hermès Paris is a case in point, Hermès is a luxury goods house specializing in leather, ready-to-wear apparel, lifestyle accessories, perfumery, and fashion.  Its undisputed reputation as one of the most prestigious luxury companies in the world comes from a tradition of impeccable craftsmanship and a holistic approach to business.  Established in 1837 by Thierry Hermès as a saddle shop in Paris, Hermès today has fourteen product divisions, employs seven thousand people, and owns stores all around the world.  Hermès reports a total billing of approximately two billion euros and a next profit margin of roughly 10 percent.  The is a spectacular success.  But what’s even more remarkable is that Jean-Louis Dumas, who was CEO of Hermès for twenty-eight year until 2006, always looked at Hermès in a holistic way.  His vision for Hermès was inseparable from the three core pillars that define the brand.

First, using strategic skills, he envisioned Hermès as always ahead of consumer and market trends.  Second, he called on Hermès’ creative skills to invent luxury goods of exceptional value that exceeded users’ expectations.  Third, using keen management skills, he always stressed the fact that it was equally important to make sure that all Hermès products could feasibly be manufactured according to consistently outstanding quality standards.  And fourth, emphasizing saleability, he determined that all goods produced had to be marketable, because Hermès is not about is not about objects of art for museums and galleries;  it sells consumer good for the enjoyment of customers.  This holistic approach, which was first articulated by Dumas for Hermès, has been enforced ever since because it has consistently ensured the integrity of the Hermès reputation.

Excerpted from The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass, 2011. 

Intuitive Intelligence: The New Key to Problem Solving and Decision Making (part 2)

Posted on June 8, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Screen Shot 2015-06-07 at 9.39.29 PMLast week we began a discussion of Intuitive Intelligence as a way to make use of our inherent abilities and aptitudes in the task of creative problem solving and optimum decision making.  The four tenets of Intuitive Intelligence are thinking holistically, thinking paradoxically, noticing the unusual, and leading by influence. We continue by exploring tenet number three.

3. Noticing the Unusual

The third tenet is the ability to look beyond what’s usual, to notice the odd and unfamiliar, and to embrace the paradoxical and mysterious nature of life, beyond what we know or what we’re used to perceiving.  To notice is to pay attention, and for this we use our senses.  We can pay attention outwardly by seeing what’s around us, or we can pay attention inwardly by feeling what’s inside of us.  When we notice things we can receive information in two ways; one is paying attention to what make logical sense, the other is paying attention beyond the logical sense of what we contemplate.  In the second case we have to open up to our feelings, our emotions, our sensations, and our intuition.  We get closer to our instinctual nature, and our creative imagination gets triggered.  We connect with our unconscious; we gain access to, and nourish, our imagination and creativity.

4.  Leading by Influence

There is at the heart of any living system a self-organizing principle.  The less we try to control it, the more we can reap its power and creatively engage with it.  The worst way to deal with The same is true for the creative process.  Any creative process is experimental and chaotic due to its unpredictability.  Successfully leading disruptive innovation calls for someone who can lead by influence and leverage the self-organizing principle present at the heart of the chaotic process of creativity to facilitate transformation and guide the process towards effective change.

This following simple anecdote illustrates the practical application of the four tenets of Intuitive Intelligence.  A student I met while teaching at the graduate program of Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales (HEC) drove every day to the business school campus, which is in the countryside close to Versailles, approximately twelve miles away from where he lived.  Because he is from Chile, he had been relying on his car’s GPS to find his way each day.  But one day, after a seminar on Intuitive Intelligence, he decided not to switch on his GPS and to instead rely on his gut instincts to find his way.  He had a big smile on his face when he told the entire class that driving to the campus without the help of his GPS actually worked perfectly and more easily!

So, this is how intuitive intelligence was manifested for my student:

–Thinking Holistically:  Finding his way to the campus was transformed into a richer experience, one colored with emotional, intellectual, instinctual, and almost spiritual aspects; it ultimately both a task and a game.  It was about a journey of self discovery and adventure as much as it was about achieving a goal.

–Thinking Paradoxically:  He managed to get to campus more easily while taking a paradoxical problem-solving approach: relying on less factual information.

–Noticing the Unusual: To make choice at any given crossroads, he had to pay attention and be receptive to his inner perceptions, even if they were unusual (not reading instructions on a screen or taking visual cues on a digital map).

–Leading by Influence:  He accepted giving up logical control over the situation and letting other seemingly random possibilities emerge to help him find his way as he kept focused on his goal:  getting to the campus on time.

Intuitive Intelligence: The New Key to Problem Solving and Decision Making (part 1)

Posted on May 26, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Screen Shot 2015-05-25 at 10.53.00 PMIntuitive Intelligence is a different way to organize and use what we already know and what we are already capable of doing.  It helps us understand how to make use of our inherent abilities and aptitudes in the task of creative problem solving and optimum decision making.  Intuitive Intelligence activates the profound, yet often intangible, interaction between instinct and play.  The four tenets of Intuitive Intelligence are thinking holistically, thinking paradoxically, noticing the unusual, and leading by influence.  Each tenet helps us to complement the dualistic and limited nature of the logical mind with the other parts of our mind, which are much more cryptic, much less articulate, but extremely powerful.

1.     Thinking Holistically.  Holistic means that the totality of a system is more important than the sum of its parts.  It is always interesting to think and focus on a holistic approach because we can gain new perspectives and learn new things from it.

 2.      Thinking Paradoxically.  We know many theories, we have had many experiences; they all contribute to our personal belief system and collective knowledge.  Although there is definitely more of what we don’t now than there is of what we know, culturally we tend to evaluate everything through what we already know.  Embracing new situations and new ideas with an attitude that is as open as it is critical, as candid as it is discriminating, is the only way to enter uncharted territories and conceptualize new ideas.  The unconscious does not follow the logic of analytical reason, yet new ideas stem from our unconscious.  So we need to open our mind to the paradoxical logic of the unconscious to reach beyond common ideas and beliefs, which is exactly the meaning of the word paradox.  To do that is simply requires giving up our need for immediate logical understanding of a situation and trusting our other form of intelligence–at work, for instance when we get insights from our dreams or myths.

Excerpted from The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass, 2011. 

 

Taking Stock of Today’s Business World

Posted on May 17, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Screen Shot 2015-05-16 at 10.44.13 PMThe best business leaders want to innovate, embrace change, and create new business approaches because they recognize the need to evolve.  And yet in business too many leaders still do things by the book and stick to the logic of reason and results to the exclusion of other ways of thinking.  Too many of us think and operate primarily this way, especially during difficult times.  The uncomfortable reality is that disruptive ideas come from the combination of instinct and play, so we’re pretty much thinking backward when it comes to engaging innovation.  We’re rearranging our companies rather than exploring the many ways we could create a completely different kind of company.  Organization has the potential to add the most value when it follows creative imagination possibilities, no when it precedes it.

Popular thought says that by applying more analysis, focusing more on results, and working harder to get those results, we will get to the new and different.  But that is not the case.   This is a forceful approach to change, but it’s not actually a smart approach to change.  It’s certainly not a very creative approach to change. Given this way to thinking, however it’s no wonder that we’ve developed business models that are hard to sustain.  The fragrance industry, the car industry, and the media industry, for example, have all been predominantly operating in the same way for many years, still try to innovate with reason to get results, and still hoping that if they use the same business models and the same management models they will be able to capture the market, keep sales afloat, and maintain margins.  But that is not in the cards.  In fact, the odds have been against it all along.

On an even larger scale, it’s no wonder that we’ve developed economic models that are not sustainable and that contribute to dwindling resources, climate change, and pollution.  The way we’ve been thinking about development has been through the linear, rational management systems.  But life unfolds according to very different principles.  Most likely, if we haven’t integrated the fundamentals of play, intuition, and instinct into our development models, it’s because we haven’t conceived of them in the first place.  Yet they present a huge opportunity.

It’s clear that we have evolved, progressed, grown, and prospered through a model that largely excludes the fundamentals of our ecosystem.  But we’ve reached a place where the disconnect is so big that we have no choice but to think differently–really differently–and innovate radically. Play, intuition and instinct show us how to do just that.  They show how we can think in a way that includes the fundamentals of life, the randomness of play, and the power and adaptive nature of our instinct for survival while responsibly harnessing our propensity for aggression and leveraging our valuable scientific heritage and its instrumental tool called logic.  And if we’re able to do that, then we’ll be able to innovate and change more easily.  We’ll also be able to prosper in a way that is more balanced between cooperation and competition, without compromising our ecosystems, our survival, and our legacy for future generations.

Excerpted from The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass, 2011. 

The Importance of Rituals in the Workplace

Posted on May 11, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Screen Shot 2015-05-10 at 9.56.51 PMRituals are significant and powerful.  Symbols can have a great impact, as they communicate beyond words and convey meanings without explicit explanations. Rituals and symbols play an important role in the success of managing the creativity and innovation because they speak to our subconscious, comfort our unspoken fears, enable us to tap into solution that cannot be found in a linear fashion, and connect us emotionally to our friends and colleagues.

Ritual is a powerful way to harness the life force the lives deep down in every one of us.  The way rituals impact us is through rhythm (rituals occur at well-defined moments: Sunday mass, birthdays, the end of puberty, end of year graduation) regular repetition (Thanksgiving every year, morning ablutions, Sunday family lunch) and dramatic staging (Christmas tree, sculpted pumpkins, candles for a Valentine’s Day dinner).

Rituals imply a certain level of ceremony and require time, but they are profoundly efficient in both the short and the long term.  For example, think about how football players huddle before they go onto the field at the beginning of a big game.  It is a moment that may include a prayer or words of encouragement from their coach, but most important it is time that they set aside to reach beyond self-doubt and turn fear into audacity by connecting to their guts.  In Rugby Six Nations Tournaments, national anthems are played at the beginning of the game to invoke a sense of pride and responsibility for the success of the team.

Rituals are transformative because they help us deal constructively with the intangible dynamics within us and within groups.  They productively channel instinctual forces into creative powers.  Ritual is what allows us to gather the energy needed to achieve great things, often beyond what we could imagine ourselves capable of.  When managing the creative process, celebrating wins and awards is one effective way to reassure creative teams, whose members often question their own talent.  And one thing is certain:  not celebrating wins can cause a lot of damage to the spirit and motivation of your creative team.

Navigating creative and innovative processes is rarely easy; it often entails a lot of unknowns and a lot of erratic moments.  No matter how seasoned and brave you are, self-doubt and fear are simply unavoidable in the process of creation.  Rituals address fear of the unknown, self-sabotage, and procrastination, which can all happen during any creative process–hence the importance of rituals in southwest management.

There are many ways to spark creativity and establish an atmosphere that resonates with creative teams.  These are effective ways to improve creative output that you can apply to your business.  Consider how many of them you’ve thought about before and how many of them you actually implement in your management.  Leaving these out is not a valid option.

Excerpted from The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass, 2011.

 

Giving up on Uniformity can Increase Creativity

Posted on May 3, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Screen Shot 2015-05-03 at 12.10.30 PMGiving up on uniformity is really about acknowledging in tangible ways the fact that different people require different conditions in order to perform at their best. So rather than requiring everyone to follow the same rules within the workplace, you make allowances that enable all concerned to pursue their responsibilities in the way that best suits them.  Creative people have a tremendous capacity for teamwork, but they can also have a tremendous need to follow their own rhythms or work style.  It is very likely shortsighted to force creative talents to follow rules that inhibit their creativity without adding anything to your company’s goal of generating innovations. For examples, it may be important for everyone to show up to a weekly progress meeting, but is it really important for everyone to show up at 9 a.m. and stay until 5 p.m.?  They may be more productive working at different hours or not coming in at all on some days.  When you manage by exception you honor people’s individual requirements for freedom, and when you manage for inclusion you make sure that everyone feels a responsibility for the collective success (or failure) of the project.  When I was a publisher, my experience in working with authors was that each author was very different and required adaptation and careful attention to approach their creative talent in a unique way.  Over the many year I have worked in the fragrance industry,  I have observed the same thing with perfumers.  Creative talent is rarely separable from the individual’s personality, because it has a lot to do with imagination, sensitivity, and feelings. This is why seeking uniformity is rarely the way to go.  Management by exception will bring much more efficiency.

Excerpted from The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass, 2011.

The Role of Constraints in Creativity

Posted on April 25, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Screen Shot 2015-04-25 at 10.29.01 AMFostering an atmosphere of creativity and innovation doesn’t require business leaders to concede all control or throw all rules out of the window.  In fact, the judicious and clear application of constraints frames the challenges that employees are asked to address.  By setting a goal and laying out the constraints, business leaders can create excitement.  Most people like the experience of overcoming some obstacles; constraints are the obstacles that make the finding of the solution exhilarating.

“It is common knowledge that Cirque [du Soleil’s] designers don’t like budgets, deadlines, and limited resources,”says Lyn Heward, president of their Creative Content Division, but she adds, “Privately however, even they will admit that these ‘constraints’ force us to become more resourceful and more creative!  They require us to come up with solutions we’d never thought of before…and they actually become motivators for getting the job done.  In fact, some of our most inspired ideas arise from moderately Spartan situations.”  Cirque du Soleil enforces very strict budgets, and creative teams have to abide with nonnegotiable deadlines.

This is just one of the many paradoxes managing creativity.  As leaders and managers we we need to both establish constraints and free our employees from self-imposed boundaries.  In short, we need to find balance.  Along with budgets, time is of course one of the most obvious constraints.  Deadlines, as daunting as they may seem to creative people, are also their best ally and help them move through the fear of the white page and the unknown.  However, time pressure needs to be handled with a serious sense of balance.  A study by two Harvard Business School professors shows that to develop the creativity of team members it is better in the long run to be careful with excessive time pressure as it easily leads to high levels of stress and potential burnout.  In my experience with creativity, efforts to save time by accelerating the process can sometimes end up costing time.  Creativity often requires patience, because it follow its own rhythm and entails moments of what I call “active inactivity”–moments when creative teams need to lie fallow.  Creativity is quite often about problem solving, and problems by definition have some established factors.  Once the confining factors are clarified, the goal is identified, and balance can be more easily achieved, creative minds are more able to find inspiration to overcome challenges.  A paradox of time management applies:  time constraint is productive, but too much of it, repeatedly, leads to the risk of burnout.  This paradox cannot be resolved by following a fixed rule.  Managing the time of creative teams requires the ability to manage paradox and feel one’s way through it, depending on how your team members react individually and collectively, which talent(s) you are most heavily depending on, and how much leeway with constraints you have in any given situation.

Excerpted from The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass, 2011.

How perfectionism can keep your organization from succeeding

Posted on April 19, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Screen Shot 2015-04-18 at 11.25.57 PMFrom the mailroom all the way to the C-suite, employees have developed an exceptional capacity for reading between the lines.  The boss or the shareholders may say they want innovation, but the unspoken message may be, “but only if it’s risk-free.” If we want innovation, we have to tolerate risk, and we have to make it safe for our employees to take those risks.  When corporate leaders make it clear in their words and actions that employees aren’t expected to be perfect–that “mistakes” are not only acceptable, but are indeed just part of the process of getting to winning ideas and products–then employees can relax in a way that supports their own creativity.  And when employees get creative, innovations can happen.

Cirque du Soleil, which reinvented the traditional slow-growth genre of the circus and in doing so became a multinational company with four thousand employees, twenty simultaneous shows running worldwide, and one hundred million spectators in less than twenty-five years, embraces risk taking and sees occasional failures as simply part of the creative process.  In an interview, Lyn Herward, president of their Creative Content Division, explained that at Cirque du Soleil “employees are offered the protection and support that they need to take risks on the company’s behalf.”  Successes and failures are seen as the result of a team effort, and this reduces the fear or shame that is associated with personal failure.  As a result, individuals feel encouraged to take risks and even protected from adverse consequences.

Making failure an acceptable part of the creative process is also a core value at Mango, a men’s and women’s fashion company.  Founded in 1984, Mango now has the biggest design center in Europe in a highly competitive industry, and is present in ninety-one countries, with 1,220 stores and 7,800 employees.  Mango explicitly promotes, “the practice of a culture of mistakes” in their written policies, or more explicitly, ”our organization encourages a climate of trust and communication, working in teams, and learning from our mistakes.”  They acknowledge that the final design for a dress does not always manifest in the designer’s first draft.  And they go as far as to recognize that not every single final design of the eighty million articles shipped out throughout the globe will necessarily become a success.  Mango executives know it is essential to acknowledge this important part of their business, because not accepting it and denying the possibility of human error can become very stifling to the creative process of fashion designers.

Excerpted from The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass, 2011.

How Your Office Space Can Affect Creativity and Innovation

Posted on April 14, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Space affects moods. Screen Shot 2015-04-13 at 10.57.56 PM A beautiful space can make people happy; a small cramped office can make them feel depressed.  But more important, space also affect behaviors and communication.  Open space offices allow an easier flow of communication among team members and can convey a strong feeling of belonging, but they also can make it harder to focus.  Separate offices allow for more privacy and concentration but can easily create silos that separate people and teams.  Depending on what you’re trying to achieve, you need to be ready to manage space not only from a budgetary standpoint but also from the perspective of what it is your creative teams actually need in order to be creative and in a position to deliver the level of innovation your company needs.  To achieve this, some companies will have to literally give away space–that is, to sacrifice space for its positive impact on the environment, the company culture and ultimately the creative output.

Office space is an expensive commodity, especially in the world’s most competitive markets, and historically offices have been designed and furnished to maximize administrative efficiency and minimize facility costs (private offices only for senior executives, “cube farms” for lower-ranking personnel).  But today companies are looking at efficiency differently, and consequently they are looking at space differently.  They are looking for ways to maximize the creative output of their employees, and from that viewpoint the most efficient use of space is one that supports creative interactions.  For example, Pixar’s California headquarters–where bathrooms, mailboxes, and meeting rooms are clustered at the center of the building–are designed to ensure that employees from different divisions of the company are certain to run into each other throughout the day.  This facilitates informal and random conversations among diverse team members and allows creative ideas and collaborations to be born.  I once had a client who wanted to close off an open space in their New York City offices; I struggled hard to convince them otherwise.  The company needed more private meeting rooms.  Moving out of their existing facility was not an option, nor was renting another floor, so the president of the company wanted to build elegant glass walls to enclose what in his opinion was wasted space. 

My observation was quite different.  The open space, which offered an inviting round table nestled by a large staircase, was the only place in the office where different members of the product development team would spontaneously sit to discuss their projects.  Account managers would stop there after coming back from client meetings to share the latest developments about those clients and their projects.  In other words, it was the perfect spot for an informal communication and feedback loops.  In the end, the precious open space was saved in spite of financial pressures.

Excerpted from The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass, 2011.