[music] Welcome to week 3 of the Strategic Innovation Class. This week, we're going to talk about Group Constraints. And basically, we're moving up a level of analysis. Remeber last week we talked about the individual, what goes on basically between the ears. So for individuals, we talked about perception, getting information in and how if we don't get new information in, we're not going to come up with new ideas. We talked about intellection, different ways of thinking about things like how and where the different problem solving strategies we had for ways of looking at the world. Then, we talked about expression, getting our ideas back out because our ideas have to be meaningful in the world. And so the way the psychologists, this would be basically in a psychological view think about the world, is really different than the way groups people think about the world. So there's this type of person called a social psychologist, and so social psychologists think about the world really differently. And so what social psychologists talk about is things like risk. So for example, social psychologists might say, hey, you know what you give me a bunch of Leonardo da Vinci give me this rely smart people, and I'll say what I'll do. I'll put them in a room and having start brainstorming and bring the boss in and say that's a dump idea, that'll not work, last person said that got fired, and what happens innovation. Its gone and so we do need to pay attention that there may be something in our innovation process in the way that we're trying innovate that the group really matters. What really matters about what the group does, and how the group behaves together. And in fact, there's a great deal of research that shows, that brainstorm groups actually are not that good. And in fact, they may produce fewer ideas, and less unique ideas, if you put people together in a group, rather than putting them apart. And so let me say that differently. If I put a bunch of people in separate rooms and have them brainstorm ideas, I would come up with more, different ideas, than if I put them in a room together. And so the things we want to know is why would that be. You know, we would think that people together should be able to do something more than people apart. And also we want to say,what can we do about it? That is, how can we help, how can we get past the problems that group have. Especially around brainstorming, it was one the primary activities we are going to use groups for. So the subtitle of this, this piece of the of the class. This group level piece is really sort of like why are brain storm groups worse than no groups at all? Why, why is that and how can we fix that and what is it that we can do? Our agenda for this week, we're going to talk about information processing in groups that is how groups go about processing information because that is what we use groups for [inaudible] in a second. We're going to talk about emotion. What's the role of emotion? There's an argument that emotion is something that is social, that we learn, that we, we interact with other people and that causes emotion for us. What's the role of that? We're going to talk about culture, group's cultures and how groups think about themselves and know about themselves. We're going to talk about environment. The group's environment within which they innovate, within which they work together and what effect that might have on innovation in that group. Also we're going to talk about process. We're going to talk a fair amount about process because I think that if there's nothing else that you take from this group level thing, that it's that process matters. Process matters a great deal, also give you a couple of hints on the idea built which is part of the project assignments for this week. So the first question we will ask is why use a group, I am sure many of you have been in groups and then founded to be very, very painful, I've find it painful often in groups and so why we even use groups and what's the idea behind that Well one idea is that groups are really good for information processing. That is, we bring people together and those people help us they, they basically multiply the effort of individuals and so as individuals we can take three of us and we have a larger more complex problem that we address, for example. So, if we have to dig a bigger hole, more people, the faster the hole goes, the better it is. And so you have a big piece of work and you split it up lots of ways and you can have people help you do that. And that would be one reason to use a group. Another reason to use a group is that you have a wider and more diverse information store. Groups may know more different things because of the different kinds of people in there. So they may have different problem solving approaches. Remember that's on the individual level. We talked about why having different problem solving approaches matter. They may have deep, deeper base of domain-relevant knowledge. That is, they may understand more about things that we don't understand. And also they may have this wider base of potentially relevant knowledge. So not only expertise, but they may be broad also by having more people in there, we sort of broaden this thing out. And people have lots and lots of different kind of pieces of information, perceptions, and like ideas, expressions that they can bring to bare on the problem we're trying to face. And then, thirdly, if we're going to assess our problems for constraints, so again, we're trying to do innovation, we're trying to. Figure out what the constraints are going to be and if we have more people there may be they can help us, may be they have a broad sense of what the constraints are. If I work in product development, early stages of a product and some one else works in manufacturing a later stages of a process. If I bring them up they may understand that hey you designing something that's 20 and is wide but our press is in the back are only 18 inches. With so something 20 inches cannot be made. So I want to know that up front, because that's a constraint that I would want to have an understanding of. So again we're going to multiply the problem solving efforts of individuals. We're going to have a larger and more diverse information store. And we're going to have a better assessment of constraints. You know, what's not to like? Aren't these good things for us? But what can go wrong? Because those thing s don't always come out in groups. And sometimes as I'll show you it can be really, really problematic. So I want you to watch this piece of video here you can find it on YouTube. I put a couple of links to it, you can also Google that the terms down there to find the piece of video here. That's pretty interesting is that information processing? I mean getting thrown out of a window would you call that information processing? Whats going on there? You know, where is this, this multiplying, problem solving effort? Where is the larger and more diverse information store? Where is the better assessment constraints? Well, there's a problem, and groups do information processing. That's what we want them to do, but they end up doing this thing called emotion processing. There's lots of emotion processing stuff going on, and the problem is in groups is when the groups or trying to do information process but the social processing gets in the way. This emotional stuff gets in the way. So think about it this way we're trying to do information and some how the social junk the, the adversity the problems that people have with each other. That stuff takes off and become problematic. The answer is not just to say no emotion in the group because that want work. Because we need emotion for motivation, we need it to feel good, we need it also for coordination, for cooperation. All those things require emotion, require us to be pro-social, require us to be able to take, read cues from other people. So it's not just a matter of getting rid of the emotion. We really do need to think about how do I bring a group in a way that's emotionally sound but that also allows them to do information processing without that being adverse. So, some of the kind of social phenomena that we're going to be talking about. We're going to talk about self-esteem social status. These are all the kinds of things that social psychologists study, and that they look in. They try to understand what is the, what is the nature of these things in a group setting. And for our purposes, all these things affect innovation. That is if people feel like they don't, aren't part of the group. If people don't have meaning. If they're not motivated. If people are not risk tolerant, you're not going to have innovation. And so I want to understand how are, is it that these things manifest in a group and what is it that we can do to get past them? And so let's see if we can understand the group constraints and understand what's going on there, there are basically, I'll call em four group four group innovation constraints. We're going to put em in sort of four rough categories. First category is emotion, we're going to look at the role of emotion and what happens for people emotionally in groups. When other people are around there's certain things that happen that we need to take account of. We're going to talk about culture, that is, how groups sort of think about things and how groups know what they should be doing and what they shouldn't be doing even without talking about it. We're going to talk about the environment, again, what's the environment within which the group operates. If you're in a classroom, it's very different than being in a meeting room, it's very different than being in a library. And those are very different spaces and we want to sort of understand what is the nature of the environment and it's something that we can become strategic about. And then finally, as I said before, we're going to really be focused on process. What are the things we can do, in what order, in order to make sure that the job gets done? That innovation actually happens in a good way. [music] What I'd like you to do, is to try this exercise. This is an exercise we often do in class and after the after you try it, then you can watch a piece of video. I've seen some people in my class doing this thing, this is called the animal farm exercise. And what I want you to do is to think about your, you, think of your surname, your last name and the first letter of it. So if the last, if the first letter of your last name begins with the letter A through E, I'd like you to visualize a sheep. And so up to the last week in the visual constraints you probably pretty good at, at visualizing sheep, F through K if you'll ask them again begins with F through K when you think about a pig, L through R cow, and S through Z is what you think about a horse. Okay and so to do this exercise well I think you go outside and find a place where there is a, a few people around, so see if you could find a place where there are some people around may be its in, in the cafeteria in your school, in your office may be its there on the street, at a bus stop or on a bus or some place like that. What I'll need to do is to make the sound of your animal as loud as you can for about 30 seconds and see if you go out and do that and see what happens when you come back and again. So give it a shot. I assume that was hard for you to go out and make some animal sounds in some way and if you see the piece of video from my class, you can see there's lots of nervous giggling and people are averting eyes because they're nervous. There is a nervous tension there. So what is it about that why is it such a hard thing. If I say go in your closet go by yourself go find a space where no one can see you make the noise. I'm a sheep right its easy no problem you can do it. On the other hand when other people are around its really different so that's what we're after trying to understand what is the role these other people play in making us feel differently. I think of the animal sound in my own case, as, often when we have a faculty meeting. That's when I have the animal sounds. Because they're, people are talking down there. And I'm thinking, like what's going on? [inaudible] and I'm afraid to say something. Because I worry it's going to come out like an animal sound, everyone will look at me and, and possibly criticize me. And think, like, what is wrong with Owens? Why is he baa-ing like a sheep? That's not even his last name letter. Okay, so let's talk about emotions. Let me go ahead and talk a little bit about the understanding. So the expereince was to make the animal sounds, and now we want to make sense of that. How do we make sense of what was going on there? There's also some of this in teh video you watched, also the Super Bowl video as well. Okay so, so some of the problems in groups, we going to think about the issues of, of ego, the issues of social status in, in terms of the following. We generally afraid to be criticized, we don't like to be criticized in public you know if we in private it has to be okay but really don't like to be criticized, criticism is considered a negative thing, we are afraid of making mistakes on our own, if I'm writing in my notebook by myself I'm not that afraid of making mistakes but when other people are around, other people are watching me, I'm very much afraid of making mistakes. And we also tend to avoid conflict, so all these things make us feel, that is from an emotional perspective, make us feel not very good. And so let's think about why that is? I mean so I've talked to you a little bit about why that is? Well, Sigmund Freud suggested that creativity actually is a response to this thing called it id, the animal, the inner, there's like an inner consciousness. The id is the inner drive, the ID, the inner drive. And this inner drive was this thing, was a force for creativity, in fact. But the problem is, is hat the If everyone behaved that way, it would be real, really problematic. And so what we do is, we sort of you know, put it on the yoke of society, that society says we can't act that way, and we begin to internalize that. And his term for that is the ego. So we have this ego that's this sort of moralistic censor that sits on our shoulder, and in a sense it says, like don't say that you can't think that and don't do that. For Freud, this was the source of lots of neuroses. That people, in fact, were sort of suppressing this, this inner drive. And so, in a way, he's saying that everyone's creative. Everyone has this drive to be creative, and the problem with creativity is that we stop it. That we're, we're pushing it back. And so we're going to keep an eye on this ego thing. And try to understand, how is it we can remove the ego sufficiently, that we can actually get things done. We're afraid of criticism. Criticism does not feel very good. So let me tell you about a study about criticism that was kind of interesting. So, it was a research study, and the person doing the, the researcher, what he did was, he hired two actors. And these two actors played a different role. So there was one actor who was D, being criticized and another actor who was the criticizer. So this person said to this person, you could have done this better, and then they switch roles. And they said, well you could have done this better, right? So they're the same two actors, and they switch roles. So we can take the individual out, and what did they find? They asked people, they said to watch one piece of video of the actors in the one situation, or the actors in another situation. And said, please estimate the IQ of these two people. What do you think happened? Well turns out that the IQ of people who were being criticized was rated as being much than people who actually were doing the criticizing. That's kind of interesting because it doesn't really seem like it should make sense. Because it's probably easier to criticize, you probably notice it's easier to criticize someone than it is to think of ideas and to put yourself out there, put yourself at risk and so why would it be that criticizing is perceived as smarter, someone who criticizes is smarter, I don't know I could just conjuncture that it has maybe something to do with. The way we're, we're raised was, when we were small children, we were always told, don't do this, don't do that, that's wrong, that's not very good, this isn't very good, and we become to believe, somehow, that maybe it's that people who criticize us are smarter than us somehow, and that's we begin to internalize that. And so criticism really does not feel very good. So there's a problem when people criticize in groups. Criticizing is easier and it's, bip destroys group functioning, right? Because we don't want to cri, we don't want to be criticized. So you've probably been in a brainstorm session where you say well, we can do it this way. Somebody say that won't work. Well, we could do it this way? Well, why would you do it that way? Well, we could [inaudible] pretty soon, after lots of criticism, we just stop. We understand, we get the message we're not to say anything else. So, that's the problem with criticism. We're also afraid to make mistakes. Making mistakes is problematic because if we make mistakes in front of other people they start to judge us. They think I'm wrong they might eject us from the group. I love looking at a picture like this. Probably every year I see a picture like this in the newspaper that says, you know, someone has misspelled the word school, in front of a school. Right, because that's where we paint on the ground is at a school. And we think about what would happen here, we would probably be really afraid to make a mistake like that. Because what happens if you make a mistake like that? Well, probably you'll get fired, and if you get fired probably your spouse leaves you, and if your spouse leaves you probably your dog hates you and your dog bites you and your car breaks down. Wow, if all that bad stuff happens from having a mistake, I don't want to have any mistakes. And so what's the safe way to go is to not do anything that will incur any risk. Right, just do something really keeps myself little nice and, and easy and simple do what I've done before. So I don't make a mistake in front of other people. The third kind of constraint was on, on this sort of emotion when we're talking about ego and social statuses, avoiding conflict. We absolutely do not like conflict. I mean some of us are, are better at managing conflicts and some of us know when there is time to go have conflict. But for the most part we really don't like it in groups especially not in brainstorming groups, and so often what we'll do is we will just go ahead along with someone's idea even though we don't think their idea is good we may throw out some oh, that's really good what a great idea you have there In order to avoid any kind of conflict and in, in order to say, wow, that's a dumb idea we shouldn't really do that. And also we have the problem now, if I say that's a dumb idea, now I've gone to the criticism place. And so there is really a difficult place to sort of step through here in a way how that works. Well, let's think about it this way. In a group we all want esteem, we want to feel like we're you know, an established member of a group. Well, we could use Mazlow's hierarchy as a way of arguing that. There's all sorts of, of research that suggests that people have the desire to be with other people. And they want to be valued by those other people. And so if I'm want to be valued by a group, how could I do that? Well, I could help a group grain, gain resources. Alright, I can go find resources for the group and bring it there. So if my group is working on a problem, I can say well, I can go get us some coffee, or I can get us some money, or I can get us some information and bring that to the group, wouldn't that be a good thing. I can help lead the group to a solution to another solution. I mean we're worried about not being known, not being seen in the group. But in fact, if we can bring the group something, then they might actually like us. The group also has this giving them good information bringing new information from the inside and also what we want to do is stop bad decision in a group. If i'm a high value to group if I can say let's not do that because that road is we'll go over the cliff at the end of that road. Or if we try and do it that way it want work. Or the boss doesn't want us to do it that way so let's do it a different way and by stopping a bad decision in the group, I am creating value. I'm being valued by the group, if they recognize that. Now, the problem is that there are these unintended consequences potentially. So if I ever lead the group to a solution, right, that's how I show value and that's how I get esteem in the group. Well I might stop other peoples solution from being considered from going on. So if I criticize someone's like that one work, like I have a better solution, I'm implicitly criticizing someone else's solution and that makes stop the group functioning that way. I may through by desired to group information I may drown out other people. I may stop other people from giving their ideas, because I'm dominating because I want everyone to hear ideas and hear my good information. And to stop bad information, to stop bad decision making in a group, is I may go out of my way to not share decision making responsibility. That I take over and I say I'm the one who just decides and you guys don't get to decide and that, I preserve it for myself. And that will allow me to be in charge, and to produce that value. On the other hand, what does it do for everyone else? It puts them out of it. It makes them not really willing to participate. And that's this kind of stuff here, like emotion, motivation, excuse me. Groups, if you're not motivated in a group, you're not part of something special, you're not a part of something, and that's going to reduce your motivation. That's going to make you less likely to Innovate which we saw at the individual level. Commitment you know, I'm with these people, do I want to stay with them to the end? Do I, does this feel good, does this not feel good? What about risk tolerance, do I feel like I could take a risk by saying something in front of these people. Or if I try and experiment, will and that goes wrong, do I feel safe about it, are they going to ridicule me, are they going to throw me out, are they going to tell other people? What a fool I was? So these are all the things going through people's heads as they participate in groups and so that's what we wanted to be thinking about, how can we stop those things from happening?
