Issue #2 of The Two But Rule
But Heads
Behavioral Innovation in an Age of Toxic Positivity
Issue #1 of the Two But Rule mentioned the phenomenon of “innovation theater” that rises from a “no-buts” policy. Before we proceed with tips on how to sculpt well-formed buts, here’s a little more on why the no-but policy police are killing your ability to innovate and turning your corporate culture into a disengaged high school classroom.
Innovation Inertia
Try forcing any group of employees to participate in a brainstorm or other innovation workshop, and then watch closely for the eye-rolling. Some are better than others at hiding it, but only the most pollyanna-like pusher of positivity can fail to see it. These hardcore optimists believe that the hapless employees remain in the session because they like it, not because it’s hard to walk out after you’ve removed their buts.
Harvard Business Review cites research showing that while “innovation” is a perennial top priority for C-level executives, the prospect is terrifying for rank and file employees. Fewer than 25% of surveyed employees aged 35–45 think positively about the prospect of participating in innovation programs.
The management consulting firm, McKinsey, regularly conducts surveys of how corporate executives feel about their innovation programs. The results range from abysmal to muted disappointment. And other studies have shown that big innovation programs at companies tend to live about 2–4 years before getting shut down. This is the case even though it’s also well established that new corporate ventures take seven years or more to mature into viable businesses that move the earnings needle. This vicious cycle results in a culture of cynicism that makes it even harder for the next idea to find purchase in the parched soil of a jaded organization.
Anyone? Anyone?
Imposing too many ill-conceived innovation exercises on employees — and also on yourself — is like that gym membership you’re thinking about getting…for the tenth time. Somewhere inside you is a toxic mix of too little hope and too much loathing at the prospect of canceling it after rarely having gone. “Fool me once, shame on you,” you say to yourself. “But fool me a dozen times — shame on me.”
The culture-killing scourge of lazy and poorly-conceived idea mining invades the organization through grand programs and the cumulative effect of everyday team meetings. You know the ones. A manager asks for ideas and gets back a cocktail of nada, zilch, spilkiss. The agony is punctuated by that one guy who’s going to ruin everyone’s day by chiming in. Management then praises their half-baked idea while letting it die on the vine of positive — but inert — reinforcement.
Eventually, even the hand raiser stops taking the bait, and meetings become reminiscent of Ben Stein’s classroom in the movie, Ferris Bueller, as he asks his drooling high school students to answer questions, futilely repeating, “Anyone? Anyone?”
One-But-Guy’s Mistake
About the only thing worse than the above scenario is when hand raiser is followed by someone else with the audacity to challenge their idea. On the bright side, everyone is now alert. Even the guy drooling on his desk perks up. Why? Action! The chance, finally, for some forward momentum. Except for one thing. Everybody hates the but head who just made the meeting even longer.
To be clear, but head’s mistake wasn’t that he engaged in the conversation. It was that he only offered a single-but:
“But that won’t work.” Mic-drop. Momentum crushed.
The life of one-but-guy is a tough one. He is habituated to challenging others’ ideas, and that has made him either a barely tolerated team irritant or an outright pariah. The boss keeps him around to break up the monotony and stir the pot…until he oversteps. The halls of mental health practitioners must be filled with but heads. It’s stressful being on the outside looking in, especially when the urge wells up to buck groupthink and point out the obvious flaws in a plan.
This is a gross waste of talent. One-but-guy might be annoying, but they’re more valuable and far less pernicious than the no-but policy police.
This is not to say that there’s no place for withholding judgment momentarily while a new idea is forming, and people should absolutely feel safe forming those ideas out loud. But in a social environment where it’s unsafe to speak negatively about anything, the no-killer-phrases rule is as guilty of killing forward momentum as the skeptic who flatly says, “But that won’t work.” Both are conversation stoppers, but the no-but policy papers it over, making it hard to re-engage later, resulting in the loss of a potentially practical idea.
Like a Shakespearean tragedy, the no-but policy starts in a state of positivity and ends in carnage after the main characters ignore all the signs of impending doom.
Maintaining forward momentum. That’s what we’re after. So how do we get it? How do we rescue one-but-guy and transform them from the villain of the story into the hero? Subscribe to The Two But Review for upcoming issues that explore exactly that.
Originally published at https://johnwolpert.substack.com on December 26, 2022.
