The right balance of disruptors and stalwarts is needed

[Crossposted at SpreadingScience]

by Allan Henderson

People are biased against creative ideas, studies find
[Via Physorg]

The next time your great idea at work elicits silence or eye rolls, you might just pity those co-workers. Fresh research indicates they don’t even know what a creative idea looks like and that creativity, hailed as a positive change agent, actually makes people squirm.

“How is it that people say they want creativity but in reality often reject it?” said Jack Goncalo, ILR School assistant professor of organizational behavior and co-author of research to be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science. The paper reports on two 2010 experiments at the University of Pennsylvania involving more than 200 people.

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Stop Ignoring the Stalwart Worker
[Via HarvardBusiness.org]

There’s an unnoticed population of employees in business today. Strangely enough, they’re also the majority.

The diagram below illustrates the labels that organizations often use (knowingly or unknowingly) to classify their employees. The y-axis focuses on how a professional is measured on meeting the organizational performance criteria that fuel the business engine. The x-axis centers on how the professional fares on meeting the expectations of the human engine. In each of the four corners, we find the Stars, Sinners, Low Performers, and Saints. I’ll go into more detail on the four corners of the diagram in my next post, but for now, I want to bring to your attention those falling in the middle of the diagram — the Stalwarts.

These solid citizens make up the majority of employees in most organizations. The odds are you may find yourself among the Stalwarts at some point in your career, no matter how high-revving your internal drive is. If so, you probably will find yourself questioning your significance.

That’s because, despite the number of Stalwarts in an organization, these good, solid citizens of the organization go largely unnoticed. Few leaders think about the motivation, inclusion, and explicit career management of the solid performers. One Fortune 500 leader said, “I thought that it couldn’t be true that so many workers are systematically ignored through no fault of their own (except for the fact that they may not be politically astute or they don’t draw attention to themselves). But the more I reflected on my own company, the more I realized that I spend all my time worrying about the high performers and assume that everything is OK with everyone else.”

These two things are connected. The stalwarts are what I call the doers – the middle of the bell curve that get things done but do not easily take to new ideas. Innovations are disruptive and these stalwarts hate disruption to their routines and processes.

It is hard to be stalwart – to making sure the important basic parts of an organization get accomplished –  if things are changing all the time. A stalwart is the slow moving but determined tortoise to the disruptive hare. In most cases, a company succeeds because its stalwarts make the ideas of the disruptors a reality.

But that does not mean they like it. As I mentioned, the stalwarts do not take to innovation rapidly. They need to be shown by someone they trust from the community – the thought leaders – that it is worthwhile to adopt a new technology or innovation.

A company of disruptors will not get anything done, because there are not enough stalwarts to realize the ideas. But a company of stalwarts will not be innovative, because there are not enough new ideas being presented.

Companies that are run by disruptors – usually many start-ups – do not understand that the stalwarts must be supported. And companies run by stalwarts – usually the more mature organizations –  do not understand that disruptors must be supported.

The two types often do a poor job communicating their needs. So the first article describes what happens with a company where the stalwarts are in charge – an organization resistant to new ideas.

And the second article discusses a problem when the disruptors tolally run things  – those that actually get things accomplished are ignored.

A truly successful, adaptive and resilient company knows how to support both types, has the right balance of each and has identified thought leaders respected by both groups.

These will be the 21st Century organizations that will succeed.

‘Until the Last Sinew, the Last Synapse Gives Up’

by ressedue

‘Until the Last Sinew, the Last Synapse Gives Up’
[Via Daring Fireball]

Jean-Louis Gassée on Steve Jobs:

For a long time, I’ve seen him as having an animal inside him, the one with the desires, the instinct, the drive. In 1985, that animal threw Steve to the ground. He picked himself up at Pixar — you’d be a captain of industry for doing no more — and NeXT. Then, in 1997, armed with Pixar’s success and Next’s technical prowess, he came back to run Apple and make it really his.

He had learned to ride the animal.

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An excellent write-up by someone with almost as storied a career with Apple and beyond as Jobs. In some alternate universe, Jobs never returned to Apple because it bought Gassée’s Be.

He has a strong connection then, as the man who might have run Apple. This is a great read regarding Jobs. This seems todesribe what Jobs is like:

When I first met Steve, in February 1981, he was sitting cross-legged on a credenza in the Apple board room, picking his toes. Since then I’ve watched with glee as he went against received wisdom, causing pundits to have fits at every turn. I picture them as a gaggle of eunuchs standing around the caliph’s bed, braying in high-pitched voice: ‘Steve, you’re doing it wrong!’

For a long time, I’ve seen him as having an animal inside him, the one with the desires, the instinct, the drive. In 1985, that animal threw Steve to the ground. He picked himself up at Pixar — you’d be a captain of industry for doing no more — and NeXT. Then, in 1997, armed with Pixar’s success and Next’s technical prowess, he came back to run Apple and make it really his.

He had learned to ride the animal.

And the Herman Hesse quote at the end is so opportune and revealing.

It would be interesting to see if  Gassée might become more directly connected with Apple and help provide the same sort of vision that Steve has. He does have a similar vibe.

 

 

Jobs calendar. It’s funny because it’s true.

The Joy of Tech comic… throwing a banana cream pie in the face of technology.
[Via Joy of Tech]

The Joy of Tech comic

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;-)

Buying WebOS a last gasp for Samsung?

Samsung rumored to buy webOS to compete with Apple’s iOS, Mac OS X
[Via AppleInsider]

In an effort to more directly compete with Apple’s integrated hardware-software approach, Samsung is rumored to be interested in buying webOS from Hewlett-Packard.

[More]

And where would Android now fall?

There’d be Apple, making its own handsets with its own OS, Samsung making its own handsets with its own OS and Microsoft/Nokia making  its own handsets with its own OS.

Will Google now simply fold Android into Motorola, making its own handsets with its own OS in direct competition but leaving behind all those who licensed Android? And leave all those licensees hanging in the wind?

Four sets of hardware and integrated software. Which one will have an advantage over the others?

Only Apple and Microsoft have a history of producing both excellent software and great hardware. SNeither Google nor Samsung have been able to demonstrate success at such a integrated device.

And this goes beyond smartphones but also includes tablets and upcoming devices. Only Apple and perhaps Microsoft have any background in creating the ecosystems needed to produce all the novel devices in the pipeline.

Not a great forward path for either Google or Samsung.

A party trick that teaches evolution

by magnusfranklin

An Irreducibly Complex Party Trick
[Via The Panda's Thumb]

Wanna demonstrate how evolution and scaffolding can produce irreducibly complex structures at your next ivory tower wine and cheese party or evil atheist conspiracy kitten roast? Just repeat the demonstration see in this clip.

(HT: Nick Matzke.)

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One aspect of evolution often talked about is that some current processes seem like they are too complex to have evolved,especially since the intermediary steps would not easily be useful.

But we have examples of so-called scaffolds – part of the process that existed previously and helped the structure/process evolve but then were lost after the structure/process no longer needed them

This video shows what we mean. The final structure is actually almost impossible to produce on its own. but with certain scaffolds, it forms quite easily and is very strong even after the scaffolds are removed.

Same things often happens in evolution.