How Laziness and Psychological Safety Contribute to Innovation
The Digital Strategy & Product department of CBC is committed to providing their people with the support they need to foster career growth and progression by nurturing technical innovation in 20% time. By taking on exciting new innovation opportunities, individuals are able to experience and learn new skills and competencies, while increasing breadth and depth in their areas of specialty.
The series New Technologies and Innovation invites people to take a courageous step and tell the story of their journey as to how they applied creativity to innovate, highlighting the support they received along the way that resulted in the creation and evolution of great digital products that people love.
Wei Yuan is a Lead Developer.
- When did you discover your passion to innovate, and how did this passion become apparent? What was your first technical innovation?
I do not think of myself as a creative person but I have one good quality of being innovative — I am a lazy person. I like to find ways to make my routine easier.
As an employee, I found myself having more ideas when I had time to reflect without worrying about the delay of work. I think having a psychological safe environment is very important to innovation.
My first technical innovation at CBC happened in my first few weeks here. During onboarding, I learned that some content producers prefer to write their stories in Google Docs then paste them into our Content Management System (CMS). I did not blame them, I would do the same if I were them — it’s more convenient. Soon after, our department planned an Innovation Sprint, which allowed us to spend two weeks working on an idea we have. I thought it would be easier if we could automate a process that would allow content producers to send their stories directly from Google Docs into the CMS.
Firstly, I shared this idea with team members, and got support from them. This gave me the confidence to bring it to the Innovation Sprint, and during this sprint, we recruited some developers to make this idea happen. We named this product “CAT” — Collaborative Authoring Tool.
After the Innovation Sprint, this product became real, and people have been using it daily for several years.
New Technologies and Innovation Questions
- Briefly describe the technical innovations you have contributed to over the course of your career. What was rewarding about this experience?
Working on a 20% project is a rewarding experience. The world of technology develops super fast, and most developers would like to get hands-on experience on stuff that interests them. Unfortunately our usual work does not always give us the chance. Sometimes we have to work on a technical stack from decades ago. In this case, 20% projects put us in this win-win situation: developers sharpen their skills and in return, the results of 20% projects may benefit our company.
- How do you identify opportunities for innovation?
It’s important to have a good understanding of how users use our product. You need to listen to their feedback and feel their pain points by putting our feet into their shoes.
- What is most important to consider to determine if an innovation will be successful? What does success look like?
I believe in the end, technology is used to help people. It is hard to know in advance what kind of innovation will be successful or not. What we can do is to be agile, test ideas with people often and make improvements based on feedback. The success should be that there are people who like our products and are willing to use them.
- Who do you feel is important to work with when innovating and why?
Target users. When we were innovating on CAT, we were working with selected users while we built it. We let them try it in a test environment, and had them share feedback with us. So we knew how users wanted to use our product.
- When do your best ideas come to mind?
I get all my best ideas in a weird way — I get them when I am in the washroom. Sometimes when I am brushing my teeth, sometimes when I am showering, etc.
- What do you consider to be important when preparing to pitch your idea?
I find it challenging to share ideas or views with others. We tend to assume other people know what we know already, but that’s not always the case. I usually share ideas in an iterative way. First, I put what I think I want to share together and test it out with a coworker I am comfortable with. I’ll collect feedback, and improve. Next, I iterate with more people within my team, continue improving, then iterate and expand the circle slowly.
- How do you receive feedback on your ideas and the progress of your innovation? What is most important to consider when receiving feedback?
I think the most important thing when receiving feedback is not to take it personally and be courageous to ask people questions. Yes, negative feedback hurts sometimes but that’s valuable feedback pointing out the direction where we should improve.
- What would you imagine to be the next technical innovation in your plans?
The next innovation I am working on is a flexible and reusable content management system that can be used by different teams. It will reduce silos, reduce work redundancies, decrease the number of systems the data has to travel through before getting to the audience, increase efficiency on software development, and promote collaboration.
