February 2005

Innovation Tips

...ideas for building collaborative innovation

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Relentless Reflection

 

It is sublime, it is profound, it is simple, and it is one of the most powerful habits that any person or organization can pursue. Yet it is commonly suppressed in organizations. Relentless reflection is the productive habit that engenders continual improvement and sustained results.

 

As the management of Toyota learned in creating the most productive manufacturing company in the world; as the extraordinarily successful companies in Jim Collins book Good to Great practiced; the greatest long term value is generated by continual learning and incremental improvement. Relentless reflection leading to persistent innovation is their common hallmark.

 

Reflection is an indispensable practice in collaborative innovation. Without it, the entire system of thoughtful decision-making breaks down. Solutions do not address the underlying problems; instead they address the symptoms. Thorough reflective thinking uncovers the problems behind the problem—the underlying causes that are the true source of dysfunction. Only with thorough reflection can those critical underlying issues be brought to light.

 

The perceived problem is usually only a symptom of a larger systemic dilemma. Unless the systemic issues are addressed, the symptoms will continue to crop up in various guises. Relentless reflection fleshes out root causes while it generates renewed enthusiasm for organizational problem solving.

 

But reflection is most often avoided in our take-charge and get-it-done-now culture. We are too prone to see a problem and fire off a solution, too quick to react—to make the singular executive decision. This reactive impulse to immediate action will drive any good company into the ground.

 

Managers struggling too hard to produce quick results put out fires, find quick fixes, apply band aides, but deliver no sustainable solutions. They work harder, not smarter. Their focus is on short-term results rather than building a productive culture. They count on numbers rather than the collaborative genius of people. With this misplaced focus, the whole organization is put in jeopardy.

 

Half-baked solutions will always create more problems than they solve. Failing to consider the full dimensions of a problem leads inevitably to poor decisions. Along the way, as people are disenfranchised by faulty executive decisions, the social capital of the culture wears thin.

 

If organizations are to achieve the substantial results attained by Toyota and the companies featured in Good to Great, hasty decision-making must be replaced with the far more effective practice of relentless reflection.

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