The exploration lab that you haven’t yet started
Things have been working out pretty well so far and your products are really taking off. It’s easy to get carried away when things are great and the users are loving everything you do. But.. at some point products become systems. And your system should work with other systems. And then, products naturally need to be upgraded. Which adds more features. Which adds complexity.
Suddenly, you find yourself in a situation where your product range looks like a bunch of school friends hanging out for no specific reason at all. The user experience isn’t consistent, there is no clear design language across the portfolio and your technical architecture actually consists of small individual systems that suddenly don’t speak the same dialect of Aloha. If this wasn’t enough of a headache, your competitors are starting to humblebrag about their new products and how they utilize the next generation of technology enablers. Your products suddenly feel old and outdated. Fantastic.
You and your colleagues have started to talk about the importance of innovation almost every day. You even said disruptive innovation today! And maybe that’s where things started to sneak away. The I-word. Talking about disruptive innovation only makes sense in hindsight; if you’re a history professor.
It’s starting to get sweaty. Did we miss the road signs? Maybe we should rethink everything and pivot into connected scented candles after all? You’re probably in the innovation panic zone. Calm down, it doesn’t have to be this way, we will sort this out. I’ve got some advice to get you inspired & start sorting this out today. Or tomorrow.
1. Make up your mind — get your priorities straight
The most brilliant and successful companies we’re working with have the same characteristics in common. They continuously explore, prototype and test new directions, technologies, and design patterns in a structured way. No exceptions. We call that continuous strategic exploration. It might sound like the most obvious thing to do but it’s actually not that easy to pull off. You’re simply too busy with shipping really urgent and important work, no time to do what’s best for the long run.
There is a lot of inspiration found in the personal productivity space aimed at getting more momentum when running and building product organizations. The Eisenhower matrix is a handy mental model to help you twist around your priorities as a product team. The simple takeaway: dare to invest in activities that are important but not urgent. Initially, it seems impossible, how can you possibly take your best minds away from the crucial and high-priority battlefield and have them play with how to make sense of the future through VR experiments? Not going to happen.
2. Practice the art of doing, not talking
A well-balanced load between urgent and non-urgent activities isn’t something that you magically wake up to one day. It comes only by design. You have to be disciplined and decide how you and your team should spend time and resources.
In the beginning when everyone is very busy, get your team together for only a day and go somewhere to get away from distracting urgent tasks. This is by far the most efficient way to get started if you’re the busy team type. Be creative and use team day budgets, that’s a starting point that actually works if you’re lacking resources. If this feels like a scary or cheesy thing to facilitate, bring in some help!
Your team day was great and everyone got fired up and inspired. The team came up with multiple interesting and challenging ideas and embryos for future products and services. Many of the ideas were actually really good and have the potential to gain traction. Remember that the most interesting concepts often start as crazy ideas without a clear market or portfolio fit. Find the ones that challenge the current path, don’t shoot them down.
3. Prioritize momentum, not alignment
Start nurturing a creative environment and culture where you encourage and support your team to create low-cost, low-distraction and low-risk experiments fueled by individual passion. Protect your creatives from creativity killing alignment discussions. Remove team FOMO, help them understand these are experiments. Get the gear they need to experiment and allow some slack. Sometimes it’s VR goggles, sometimes it’s a laser cutter, sometimes it’s a 3D-printer. You probably already know what’s right for your team. The idea is that by building a playground for creativity — the magic will start to happen almost by itself.
Now when you’re starting to see some action, zoom out and think about how things can be reinforced in a momentum machine. Below is an example of a momentum machine, or a flywheel as Jim Collins describes it in his book Turning the Flywheel.
When your team has started to spend time on the more future-looking experiences, prototyping and firing bullets, it’s time to communicate what’s going on. Create videos, functional prototypes and invite demonstrations internally to get attention. Try not to let perfection get in your way, let people use their imaginations to fill in the gaps. Get buy-in and start firing cannonballs with higher ambitions.
Equally important is to communicate outside your organisation. You don’t need to reveal secrets to tell an interesting story. Two great examples are the Airbnb Engineering & Data Science blog and the Spotify design blog. It’s not a secret that passionate people thrive being around other passionate people. Nobody knows your team is exhilarated and passionate if you don’t communicate that externally. By attracting passionate designers and engineers your culture is going to be continuously revitalized and your culture will develop. The linked activities create a positive self-reinforcing momentum. What would your flywheel look like?
At the end of the day, the best way to predict the future is to be an active part of creating it. It’s all about making some room in your roadmap schedule, planning and mixing in some balanced bets outside of the obvious track. Bring in help from the outside to either get new inspiration or free up your team a little bit.
Thanks Joe Kim and Hackaday for letting me use your artwork 🙏
