[MUSIC]. So let me tell, share a little sotry about when failure is not an option. Because there's sometimes when innovation actually really does matter. About 56 hours into the Apollo 13 mission. The Apollo 13 mission they were going to go to the moon the astronauts realized that they had a problem. And what the problem was, was that there was an explosion on board. they were not really sure what it was and the thing was going crazy, they couldn't figure out what it was. and what was happening was the instruments showed all kinds of failures, a quadruple failure and they really, and they couldn't understand what was going on. And so, there was going to be a need to solve a problem, a problem that they had never faced before. What I want to do is point out some of the behaviors, some of the leadership behaviors that were want to point out some the leadership behaviors that the leader offered or engaged in that allowed the team to get through this thing. And so, I want to talk as much about what they did as about how these, sort of, categories of leadership actions that could take place. And so, one problem we have often in teams is that the teams will disintegrate. Now, we talked a little bit in, in the groups level about meaning and how groups have to have a meaning and they have to have sense. They have to know what they are doing and why they are doing it. Well, if you start reading the failure, quadruple failure, it's a problem they never faced before, all of the sudden, all the people working on the problem, they went into their little holes. And they just they're only talking to people on their teams. And so the leader here realized that the team was disintegrating that, in fact, the sense that they were all part of something, a part of a project going forward together, but they needed to be together. They need each other, was getting lost. And so we pull people together and said, hey, come on back, come back here. By doing that he articulated the norms, and said okay, this is how we're going to be. This is what we're going to to do, we're not going to guess, we're not going to all talk at the same time, but I need your attention here. And so we pull everyone together and said, this is how we're going to be. And this is what we're going to do. We also showed careful listening and so one point, one of the the. At one point of the engineers came and said hey they're running out of oxygen and we've got this problem. He said, well aren't there scrubbers on board. He said, well these are square here and these are round here and they don't fit together there. And so, this kind of careful listening is an important thing, that someone comes up and says, hey, wait, we have a problem. Even though the leader was focused on a different problem, he had to actually listen to that. And then, he saidwWell, I don't have the bandwidth to do everything and so, I'm just going to delegate authority. I'm going to say well, look, it's like, you have to do this, you have to fit a square peg in a round hole or, and you have to do it rapidly. So, take off and do that. And it's going to, delegation of authority is often hard. Because here's a life or death situation, it requires innovation, and we have to trust people to go off and do the thing that we need them to do. Taking responsibility, and so the person who's given the delegated task, takes responsibility for it. Says, hey look team, the people upstairs have given us this. we really have to come through. This is a life death, death situation. an so this kind of taking of responsibility is an important part of this as well. So, he was able to give the responsibility and the responsibility was also taken. The sub leader of the, of the smaller team was able to say, hey look this is the problem. And, and Greg came very clear with problem definition. And actually he had some props along. He said we're going to fit this into a hole made for this using nothing but this. And so they started to put on coffee, they started to express the norms that they're going to use to solve this problem together. At the same time, other teams are going and so they're doing the thing called multiplying effort. And so there are multiple parallel streams going. And when we talked about time constraints, this is a way to do, basically, get past those time constraints. And so here, they're multiplying the effort of the individual by having individuals work on the different aspects of the problem at the same time in paralell. He's able to stay fit with the landscape. And so in this case, he suspects that people are still working according to the old plan or that they have some kind of idea that they're going to stick with the old plan. Or that they keep referring back to the old plan as a way to think of going forward. I think from an innovation perspective that's not going to work. You don't want people going back to the old way. You want people moving forward to a new way. And so he does this very, sort of literal thing of taking the plan and throwing it in the trash, and says, you know, this is not what we're doing. we're going to get our people home, that's the new goal. And he's very clear about that, about how it is that they need to stay fit with the landscape. Something has changed in the environment, and so they need to change their approach to what's going on. And he has to make it clear to them that we have a new goal at hand. He also continually probed for alternatives. He says, at one point, okay, here's what we should do. Maybe we should just turn around and come right back, and then he stops and says back to listen. And then this sort of big argument breaks out. Like, oh no we can't do this, we can't do that. And people begin to poach at it, they begin to poke at it. They start lots of task conflict. engaging in there. And he lets them go through that. It's not relationship conflict. They're not mad at each other. But what they are doing is they're arguing about what is the best answer. And that's the kind of conflict that you'd like to have, right that kind of task conflict. We've talked about that. He also listens for a weak signal. At one time, he sees the contractor is getting quiet and he says you know, I can't make any guarantees. This thing was not designed to do that. And the in addition to listening to this, he uses this as a norm, as an opportunity to sanction behaviors and say, look that attitude is no good. That attitude is not going to work here. That's not what we're here for. What we're here for is to do what we can do, not what we can't do. The goal here is to say what is possible, not what is impossible? So that Contractor's response makes a great opportunity for him to step up and say something to do something that actually changes the tenor of the team. To change the emotional context within which they're operating. Goal clarity, he also says you know, failure's not an option, and basically takes it off the table. And so now, in it's, it is a very emotional thing. But to say failure's not an option actually gets people energized. But they realize now okay this is serious, this is real, we're going to go through with this thing this way. And I kind of crystal clear goal clarity is so important, because now they know what the goal is, what is that they are trying to do. And in a long way he's told them what the norms are, he's told them what the constraints are, he's told them all these things about how it is they're going to work together we get this thing done. So this kind of constraints, like navigating these constraints in the Apollo 13 movie and I'll. So the Apollo 13 movie is about The Apollo 13 story is about someone navigating all these constraints and coming through all these problems and sort of fixing the constraints one by one. And these constraints are these kind of, you know, basically these powerful lions' things that we have to sort of keep off and try to keep from stopping us as we push our innovation through. And so, what is it that we need to think about as we go forward? Well I have three things that I want to talk about in this idea of leading innovation. For one is, we've talked a lot about constraints and how they apply to us. But what I, want, also want to talk about is how the constraints apply to the adopters of our innovation, the people out there who would want to accept our innovation and certainly constraints that apply to them. How are we going to think about those? The second issue I want to talk about is what is it you need to tend to when you're running an innovation team? So you have a team working, and there's some things that we really need to attend to. And I, we talked about a great deal of them during the, the groups week but I want to talk about this a little more and bring us back to some of the important points there. And third is, how can you help your innovation team become more strategic? How can you help you help you organization become more strategic about innovation? It's not as straightforward a thing of just saying, hey, let's go be more innovative. There's actually, we have to, there's some things we have to do. Now, hopefully I'll be able to give you some tips that you can use actually to go out and do that thing called be more innovative. So next up we're going to talk about adoption. How is it that we drive adoptions in people who have constraints, and whose constraints we may not fully understand?
