Innovative Technologist — The Basics
Learn How to Implement Business Understanding, Creativity & Effective Communication
Intro
IIt took me a long time to realize I do (or try to do) innovation. I recently had a discussion with my wife about an educational approach we might want to take with our daughter and she said something like: “It's so much like you to just throw all the Psychology experts to the garbage and just say you’ll invent it yourself”. She didn’t mean it in a good way, and that's important. Thinking innovatively can be quite annoying. It means not accepting the accepted truth as it is. It means really questioning things. I know it sounds romantic, sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t, but it can be rather annoying (for other people). There is a delicate balance between questioning common beliefs and being just plain irritating. A machine-learning guy is not exactly a Che Guevara, but it takes some amount of rebelliousness to think the way I speak of. You need to be able to think differently although people are not going to like it.
Let me say that again, don’t let it sound like a genius sitting in a lab inventing the world. It’s not always fun. That being said, I was led to this. It called me, it’s who I am. I believe you can take a healthy dose of innovation and it will completely change the impact you make. Just don’t think it comes without a price. The more innovative you become, the more learning to mitigate that gap between you and others becomes a difficult task.
Salvador: In the technological part of the course we talked about the basics, basic Python. In this complimentary lesson, we’ll speak about the basics of the other 3 pillars. To demonstrate the idea, we’ll take a basic concept that most of the people working on technology know — the daily. Daily, sometimes called “stand-up” is a short meeting, that should take about 3 minutes * number of participants. Every participant says what he’s worked on yesterday, what he’s going to work on today, whether he faces any blockage, and whether there is a delay or change in plan he thinks the team manager should know of. We will use daily as an example to strengthen our Innovative Technologist skills.
Salvador: Business understanding basically means you’re able to take into account the economic context of your technological endeavors. You build a product, and you want someone to pay for your time and efforts. You need to understand what he wants, what bothers him, what he’s willing to pay for and how to solve it. After you understand the general interest, you need to understand specific details, learn how the customer thinks and what he really wants, not only what he communicates he wants.
Customer, What do you want?
Salvador: Let’s take the daily ritual as an example. A daily meeting teams in the tech industry do every day. We want to add value and we do that by implementing Innovative Technologist principles. Let’s see how it goes with business understanding and the daily meeting.
Salvador: The first question we ask is?
Dali: What does the customer want?
Salvador: Great, or very close to great. First of all. Who is the customer? Is it the employee? the manager? the top management? the HR who wants to make sure things are done properly? Who is the customer?
Salvador: For this example let’s say the manager is the customer. The daily is for her, we want to make sure she understands the progress employees are making and whether they are blocked.
Dali: Whose making the innovation? The manager?
Salvador: One of the employees.
Salvador: We know who the customer is. What does she want?
Dali: She wants to keep track of the progress employees are making.
Salvador: Is it? is it what she really wants? Or is it an implementation of her real need?
Dali: Is this some kind of seduction technique? Yes that's what she really wants. She wants to understand what progress is being made.
Salvador: What I think she wants, is to make sure employees are keeping up to paste, or better said, will finish their tasks on time.
Dali: That's almost the same.
Salvador: It’s far from being the same and we’ll get to that in the creativity section.
Dali: Okay so for this specific example, we decide what she really wants is to make sure the employees are on time?
Salvador: Yes. We could dig further. Ask why does she want that? so the team will perform well. Why does she want the team to perform well? So she gets a raise. Why does she want a raise? if you asked enough recursive questions to get to the answer: so her parents will love her, you’ve dug too deep.
Salvador: Just for the sake of example, let’s stay with the basic level, she wants to make sure the tasks are being done on time.
Dali: Okay, like I said, same thing. What’s their progress, are they done on time, same lady.
Salvador: Creativity has endless definitions, and as you might’ve understood by now, I’m not an easy follower. I did however come across 2 definitions that I like, one by Einstein who said creativity is a combinatoric game, and one by Steve Jobs who said creativity is connecting things. This is somewhat related to my experience of it. But definitions aside, in the context of what we do here, what is … creativity?
Salvador: Creativity is a cognitive skill that helps you solve problems in unique ways. Unique obviously doesn’t always mean good. If you do it right, out of the many unique ideas you’ll generate, 95% will be garbage, and out of that, you’ll filter another 95% to find some real gold. Nonetheless, it’s an extremely useful skill that can really set you apart.
Dali: Not sure I get it. You’re a technologist, aren’t you? A numbers guy. We haven’t learned it yet but to my understanding machine learning is basically a math issue. You multiply numbers, what’s so creative about that?
Salvador: First of all, just because there is one correct solution does not mean the way to get to that one solution can’t be creative. Mathematicians find ways to improve technology 10-fold by applying creative routes to that one solution.
Dali: Okay, so creativity can improve stuff. But what is it? What is it really?
Salvador: It’s a cognitive act, it’s a mindset. It’s a way to express yourself.
Dali: If I’d wear an eggplant on my head to work today, that would be creative, wouldn't it? I like eggplants, my father was an eggplant, I’m half eggplant.
Salvador: Yes, it would be creative.
Dali: Well then creativity isn’t very useful, is it? I’m not sure wearing an eggplant on my head is going to make my models run faster.
Salvador: First of all as I said, creativity is a mindset, it's a way of thinking. You can use creativity to make your models run faster, but it's not what it is.
Dali: OK, but again. You’re teaching me to be an Innovative Technologist, how is wearing an eggplant on my head innovative?
Salvador: It’s not. It’s perhaps creative (not sure it is), but it’s not innovative.
Dali: So?
Salvador: So … In the same way you need to learn how to use a sword, you need to learn how to use creativity.
Dali: I always use swords. Daily. I slaughter dragons on my way to the car.
Salvador: You see. This is not creative.
Salvador: Car. Not sword. Drive a car. Happy?
Creativity Is a Way of Living
Salvador: Creativity is a life philosophy. You can implement creativity techniques without being a creative person, but you’ll rarely see a creative person not applying creativity to his everyday life.
Dali: What do you mean by everyday life? I thought it’s an ideas generation technique.
Salvador: No no. One of the ways creativity can be useful is to help create ideas. Living creatively means you keep on thinking of how to design your life in the way you want. You question conventional wisdom in the way you should work, eat, exercise, party, give birth, and clean your house. It is about understanding who you are, accepting yourself for who you are, and acting upon it. It doesn’t always sound good, it doesn’t always look good, but it’s always who you are. It helps you find new ways of living life fully in the way you want to be.
Dali: Have you got an example of this utopia you’re speaking about?
Salvador: It's not a utopia. It’s not easy, and people don’t always like it. Let’s continue our daily example. The customer wants to make sure we are on time with the task. For that we report daily in a meeting, usually first thing in the morning with all the team members. How could we do it better?
Dali: We could … meet at the end of the day, not the start. Do it personally, not with the entire team. Use a text-based report like an excel file or something. Swear to god we’ll do it on time in the first place.
Salvador: OK, good enough for now. Now let's say I want to add some fun to it. As meetings are not usually thrilling, and a daily meeting doesn’t exactly spark excitement, let’s add something.
Pushup Contest!
Salvador: A long time ago I taught creativity full-time. One of the things I did was teach a school class. 9 year olds. In that school, when the “teacher” came in, they had to stand. I couldn’t stand it. I'm not an education mastermind, but I’m just completely opposed to that. Anyway, that was the school’s rule so I had to follow. Or had I?
Salvador: I had to do something, some kind of ceremony when I came in so the school principal wouldn’t be mad and so I wouldn’t break the other teachers' routine. That being said, I wasn’t willing to make them stand. I prefer making people run from me, than stand for me.
Dali: I’m not sure that’s better!
Salvador: Indeed.
Salvador: Anyway, this is what I ended up doing. It was a religious boys-only class. At age 9, they appreciate physical strength, so I did a pushup contest. Whenever I came into class, that was the rule, we immediately start a pushup contest. Everyone (including me) drop to the floor and start doing pushups. Whenever someone breaks, he starts cheering up some other kid. Soon enough, all the class is cheering up the one kid making the most effort, and it's me against him, head 2 head. They are 9 year-olds, so I usually win. It wasn’t easy to hear anything with 35 children cheering, but suddenly I hear the door open. I gave a slight look (while doing pushups) and I saw the principal. She opened the door really hard, expecting to see a rebellious chaos, she was furious. The furious look changed to shock, then she smiled at me, and got out.
Salvador: I wasn’t planning to go along with making children stand when I walked in. The school wasn’t going along with me not following their rules. I had to find a way that combined who I am (I was training pretty hard at the time) with who they are, while … following the rules.
Dali: Wow, amazing. I guess you had an amazing year, the children really admired you?
Salvador: Nope. Not a tiny bit. A minute after we finished they turned back to being a bunch of brats.
Dali: The best ones are.
Creative Daily
Salvador: Back to our “problem”. I want to spark some bit of fun into that daily meeting. Let’s say my manager likes sports. The office I work in is next to the beach. Like 10-minute walk. Perhaps we can do the daily on the beach, bouncing a soccer ball between us. Won’t be easy, but we’ll get used to it. Worse case, it will take longer.
We also have a pool table in the office, perhaps once a week it's someone's turn to tell his part using the pool balls. He prepares the table in advance. For example, if he wants to say he’s blocked, then he puts the white ball (the one you use in pool) in an impossible situation, blocked by other balls. Or if he wants to say he finished one task yesterday and starting a new one today, he sets up the table so there are 2 balls (besides the white one). One ball that is set up so he very easily shoots it in the right hole and the second so it's much harder and he’s going to miss.
Dali: The first idea sounds like a LOT more time and you need the beach next to you. The second idea doesn't sound like much fun.
Salvador: I agree. Both ideas are probably not good enough. They are more creative than doing a normal daily and it's closer to useful than the eggplant on your head example, but it’s probably among those 95% ideas we’ll filter. Coming up with great ideas isn’t simple, but it can happen. This is the process you do for doing so. In later lessons, we’ll learn specific techniques. In the end, creativity is a mindset that helps you understand, express and design the life you want, for yourself and others.
Salvador: Communication is something we do all the time. All of us, all the time. From the minute we walk into a room, dressed as we are, smiling if we are, ignoring if we are. If I get a WhatsApp message, and I choose to answer it, I obviously deliver a message. If I don’t answer it, I also deliver a message. A message of: I’m ignoring you. It doesn’t necessarily matter if I saw the message for the other side to get some “message”. Communication always happens, whether we’re active on it, or not. We can choose to influence it in the way that we want, or we can choose to let the gods roll the dice for us.
Salvador: Effective communication will usually but not always be active. It might also be that it is effective for me to ignore someone, but most of the time, it won’t be the best way. Effective communication is our ability to transfer our message in the way we want it to be received. It's not about what I say or do, it's about what they understand. The difference between communication which happens with or without me and effective communication, is my ability to influence what the other side will think, what the other side will feel. When I generate innovative ideas, they aren’t going to be risk-free, easy to implement, success guaranteed. More often than not, it will be risky, unclear, and stray out of our carefully pre-planned, pre-funded, pre-authorized plans.
Effective Communication is an Ice-Cream Shop. Something for Everyone
Salvador: We will learn specific techniques in the following lessons but the secret sauce will always be the same: We need to curate the message to the audience. You need to think carefully about who you’re speaking with. Some people are afraid to fall, others are afraid they will never take off. It’s a different mindset, and the message should be delivered accordingly.
Salvador: Some years ago I was a manager at a startup based in Berlin. About 30 people from 20 different countries. Most of them were born in one place and lived in another. The CEO and solo founder was super strict. The daily meeting was exactly at 18:06, it took exactly 6 minutes and all 5 managers had exactly one minute to speak + the CEO’s one minute. It was of course timed and you had to stop the second the bell rang. People usually only spent 40 seconds cause they were too afraid it was going to cross the one minute.
Dali: Sounds crazy. I imagine the startup failed soon after that.
Salvador: Actually it didn't. It’s still alive, 6 years later, and going quite well. Either that or their marketing team is just doing a great job.
Salvador: Anyway, you can imagine it wasn’t simple to suggest new innovative stuff and when I did without asking in advance, it didn’t go well. This (and other things) kind of work environment didn’t fit me, so I soon left.
Salvador: With what I know today, I’m sure I’d be able to communicate myself in a much better way that fits the CEO kind of communication style and get much more of what I wanted done.
Salvador: Back to our daily story, if I know my manager is super strict, likes things very timely and appreciates employees who do a good job, I’ll spend 10 minutes before the meeting, getting ready for it. I’ll write 4 bullet points of exactly what I want to say, making sure it answers all the questions she might have (progress, blockage, next steps). I’ll adjust my communication style to hers, it will only take me 10 minutes, and I’ll score extra points cause I’ll be as effective as she likes.
This concluded our first full series of basics in the Innovative Technologist course. After enhancing our technological abilities by speaking about basic Python we moved to deal with the other 3 pillars. We said business understanding is basically understanding what the customer really wants. We followed by talking about creativity and how it might help us generate new ideas to do things differently, hopefully in a more useful way (otherwise it makes no sense). Lastly, we talked about effective communication, stating we should match our communication style to that of the person we’re speaking ti. Especially if we want to successfully deliver a difficult message like an innovative idea.
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Let’s walk the talk a bit, shall we? Say I want to do the exact same exercise with the Retro meeting. A retro (retrospective) meeting is a meeting tech teams do after a sprint (usually 2 weeks of work) is done. It’s the usual, what did we do well, what should we improve talk. How can we improve this? How can we answer the 3 questions:
- What does the customer want? (Who is the customer?)
- How can I improve this by implementing some of my personality into the new solution?
- How do I communicate that to the person who needs to authorize this?
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this in the comments!