Many thanks to Marty Letscher who sent us a report he spotted in the Chicago Tribune by Dale Dauten—self-proclaimed corporate curmudgeon. Dauten asks, "What's the great enemy of innovation?" And he answers, "Not evil management. Not bureaucracy, or even lack of imagination. No, the great enemy of creativity is the To-Do List."
"What Shakespeare called the 'rough torrent of occasion' carries us dutifully and efficiently to mediocrity. While being creative may be one of the most important things you will do this year, it's one of the least important things you will do today. Innovations slips away, not for want of skill or imagination but for want of a priority on today's list. When people finally decide to get creative, they brainstorm till their eyes water, then everyone goes back to his or her desk, takes a look at the old To-Do and gets back to the same work; busy-ness eventually kills business."
I, for one, am guilty as charged. However, while thought experiments may be the easiest prey of our To-Do Lists, the real victims are the actual experiments. What we learn from the results of these actual experiments, whether “successes” or “failures,” tells us whether we are on the right track and even whether what else is on our To-Do List is relevant or not.
Most of us conform to Drucker's label of “knowledge workers.” As such, many of us crave the ability to show something tangible for our efforts. Taking some measure of daily pleasure from crossing off items on our To-Do Lists may give us a feeling of accomplishment. But if we are not learning anything new, it should give us pause to reconsider whether what makes it on to our professional To-Do List is getting us closer to creating value or merely keeping us busy.
Instead of the more common greeting “How are you,” my former boss and mentor, Bill Wilson, used to ask us “What's new?” and wait for an answer. I always felt a little guilty when I couldn't immediately respond. However, as the years have gone by, I now find it much easier to respond to “what's new?” than the more difficult (and likely more valuable) “what did you learn today?” I suppose we need both questions, but ideas are just ideas without the traction that actual experiments can bring to them.
Perhaps we too easily allow ourselves and our organizations to fall prey to the tyranny of “success” and “failure” rates, increasing the former and decreasing the latter. If what makes it on to our organizations' To-Do Lists, even our “strategic To-Do's,” leads to results without learning, then we may be starting the precipitous decline into the no return(s) world of undifferentiated value.
Our friend Leo Shapiro is fond of reminding us that most companies know what their competitors know and vice versa. Discovering something that your competitor does not know yet is what gives us a competitive edge. These discoveries are likely to come not only from thought experiments, but also from the actual experiments we muster the courage to actually do, not simply to check them off our To-Do Lists, but to learn. Perhaps we should invent a metric that helps us calibrate whether what we are doing is producing useful lessons—a “usefulness” rate—rather than relying on success and failure rates. I suspect the more clever among you know how to design learning rich experiments without completely distorting the usefulness of the results.
The secrets of how we get and stay ahead of our competitors are reserved not simply for doers. They are for aggressive learners—those who are hungry for discovering what their competition does not know, whether its about the end-users, changes affecting the distribution channels, or the potential of some competitive innovation in product or process.
I suspect that you and I are too busy to answer these questions right now. We have got to get back to our To-Do Lists.
This article was originally published in Innovating Perspectives in November 2002. For this and other back issues of our newsletter, please visit our website at innovationsthatwork.com or call (415) 460-1313.
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