Building innovation ability in others = the best thing you can do?
/By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.
Reading time: 8 mins
Summary:
IMO what matters is not your current skill level, but the growth rate of your skill level.
IMO what matters is not how good an organisation is at programming new skills into you, but how good an organisation is at being able to help you build new skills for yourself; to build new programs for yourself.
I used to think that good managers improved the skill levels of directs as much as possible. I now think that good managers help directs figure out how to improve their own skill levels as much as possible.
Giving yourself new skills = Innovation = 1. Figure out what the problem is * 2. Solve the problem
IMO one core measure of a manager's quality is their ability to build innovation skills in others.
Generations of thought:
Past view:
manager quality = the rate of skill growth of their directs
team member quality = strong work ethic and attitude
Current view:
manager quality = how much the manager has improved a directs ability to improve themselves AKA innovate
team member quality = has shown growth in problem solving and innovation
Future view: I don’t know yet… however the only constant is change!
Helping = building others ability to upgrade themselves.
Hindering = upgrading others (and thereby robbing them of the opportunity to upgrade themselves).
“To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.” Churchill
Jingle: To grow is to improve; to grow yourself is to be able to innovate; to grow others is to unleash human potential!
The body is limited, the mind is limitless… if it can innovate.
IMO the goal of education is for people to be able to eventually educate themselves. IMO the goal is not to increase the speed at which we can program skills into others, the goal is to minimise the time until everyone can create new programs for themselves. IE accelerate the time till 90%+ of humans can innovate.
Visualisation time:
Elon Musk - “Tesla should really be measured by how many years we accelerate the advent of sustainable energy. It will happen, with or without Tesla, but the fundamental good is by how many years do we accelerate it.”
Perhaps Edrolo should be measured by how many years we can accelerate the advent of 90%+ of humans being able to innovate?
+++++++++++
Details
Giving yourself new skills = Innovation = 1. Figure out what the problem is * 2. Solve the problem (see blog)
IMO innovation is the master skill as it is the skill that creates all other skills.
IMO the best managers build innovation ability in others. This means the best managers are:
Able to improve others ability to “2. Solve the problem”
Able to improve others ability to “1. Figure out what the problem is”
Generations of thought - perspective as a manager
G1: it’s all about hiring the people with the right skills
G2: G1 + onboarding people well and building a team where ‘1+1=3’
G3: where an employee starts is important… but ultimately should be miniscule to where their skill levels end. It’s the organisation’s / manager’s job to level up their direct employees
G4: while of course you want to help others, IMO the ultimate way to help others is to ‘help them figure out how to help themselves’. AKA can build innovation skills in others.
Generations of thought - what it means to be a good team member
G1: someone who is enthusiastic and has a strong work ethic will go far
G2: G1 + has growth mindset
G3: G2 + can be given a problem and figure out a solution (“2. Solve the problem”)
G4: G3 + can “1. Figure out what the problem is” AKA can innovate AKA can add new skills to themselves
G5: can build innovation skills in others. “We are all players, we are all coaches.”
Innovation is the new literacy
200 years ago 10% of humans could read, now 90% can (related blog)
“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. ” ― Alvin Toffler.
All repetitive jobs (physical and mental) are being replaced by machines as the capacity of what can be replicated improves.
As such eventually the only jobs left will be ones requiring innovation.
As such to have a job eventually you’ll have to be able to innovate.
So the most important skill to build is ‘innovation ability’? IMO yes. Not just for ‘future proofing yourself’ but also as it’s the skill that builds all other skills :).
IMO currently ~10% of humans can ‘innovate’. Just like one can learn to read, IMO one can learn to innovate. Let’s get humanity to the point where 90%+ of humans can innovate.
Generations of thought:
G1: First you learn to read, then you read to learn.
G2: First someone teaches you how to innovate, then you teach yourself how to innovate.
G3: First you learn how to innovate, then you learn how to build resources (that can scale independent of humans) that can teach others to innovate.
Comment
IMO a person can close your mind and teach you to hate.
IMO a person can open your mind, help you discover the love of learning… and teach you to innovate :)...
… IMO a book can close your mind and teach you to hate.
IMO a book can open your mind, help you discover the love of learning… and teach you to innovate :).
IMO what a textbook can do is limited only by our imagination. I believe a book can help teach any mental skill. Trying to see how for example we can teacher Innovation through a Year 7 science textbook is some of the most epic fun I’m aware of :)!!
Hope is not a strategy. Innovation is not magic. You make progress in solving problems you try to make progress in.
Good managers help change directs’ growth trajectory.
An example of manager strategy to build innovation skills: helping vs hindering
An oversimplification: there are two states:
1. You have time pressure to hit a deadline => optimise for getting things done - short term win
2. You don’t have time pressure to hit a deadline => optimise for the directs’ growth trajectory (aka innovation ability) - short term loss, long term win.
An organisation is the sum of the capacity of its people.
IMO to optimise for the long term ‘growth’ / ‘potential’ of an organisation; optimize for the short term innovation ability of your people. So ‘going slow’ in the short term IS going fast in the long term? I think it so.
Problem solving = going from a unit of unknown to a unit of known.
If you show a direct how to solve the problem at hand IMO you are ‘robbing’ them of the chance to build a unit of ‘problem solving’ ability.
If something is not right (eg unhappy customer) and you ‘figure out what the problem is’ and then give it to a direct to ‘problem solve’; IMO you are giving them the opportunity to ‘figure out what the problem is’ BUT robbing them of the opportunity to “1. Figure out what the problem is”.
Growth generations:
Past view: the best manager is the best helper. Often this actualised as the being the best at ‘robbing’ a direct of the opportunity to build innovation ability by ‘helping’. So in fact past ‘helping’ was actually ‘hindering’ innovation ability improving.
Current view: the best manager is the best at fostering innovation ability. This means providing the space for a direct to ‘wrestle’ with unknown and slowly make progress.
Flailing is not failing. Flailing is a necessary step in building innovation ability called ‘wrestling to a unit of unknown to hopefully turn it into a unit of know’.
If you only take away one thing
I don’t want to do an endless series of university subjects, I don’t want the possible upgrades I can do to myself to be determined by what I can order from an online course list or what the organisation has internally.
I don’t want to be able to only learn things others have already figured out. I want to be able to teach myself new things. I want to be able to do things that have never been done before.
I want to be the limit. When I’m the limit, am I limitless? I hope so!
IMO try to get great at adding new skills to yourself (aka innovating).
IMO try to get great at helping others get great at adding new skills to themselves (aka improving others ability to innovate).
IMO try to get great at building resources that help others build innovation skills (aka improving humanities ability to innovate).
+++++++++++++
Addendum: some further thought on innovation and jobs (not Steve) - the percentage of jobs that could have innovation vs the percentage of jobs that have to have innovation
In some respects there is a race on.
That abilities of machines are improving means slowly there will be no repetitive tasks left that machines can’t do better than humans.
So for humans to have jobs in the future they will have to innovate?
So we are in a race to build innovation ability in humans faster than machines can replace repetitive jobs?
Oversimplification:
Which jobs are the machines replacing? Repetitive low wage bad jobs.
What are the new jobs? Interesting non repetitive high wage jobs.
If you look at places like the US pre COVID there were more jobs advertised as a percentage of the total workforce than ever before… and the types of jobs with job shortages had a higher salary vs average than ever before. Bigger shortage = higher salary.
IMO there isn’t a shortage of jobs. However, the new jobs have the higher and higher required skills than before.
So there is a skills shortage, not a jobs shortage.
In hunter gatherer times the world was zero sum. IMO if you can innovate the world is positive sum.
Many unemployed people = social unrest.
Idle hands are the devils workshop.
The machines are improving. If we don’t improve humans' ability to ‘innovate’ then we’ll have an increasing portion of the population who are ‘unemployable’.
Perhaps Edrolo should be measured by how many years we can accelerate the advent of 90%+ of humans being able to innovate?
IMO improving the percentage of humans who can innovate should significantly improve societal cohesion.
If you can innovate, machines are your slaves?
If a significant portion of humans can't innovate will we all be slaves to demagogues?
*aside: I’m talking about a time before the advent of general artificial intelligence. IMO the recent gains for machines have been in ‘specific verticals for neural nets’ like ‘can convert audio to text based on huge corpus of training data and powerful new processors’ or ‘can convert an image to text saying ‘it’s a cat’ based on huge corpus of training data and powerful new processors’. This will mean there is a new class of activities machines can do, not that they can ‘invent’ or ‘problem solve’, just a new category of repetitive tasks they can do that eg involve vision in manufacturing.
Societal output = 1. Innovators * 2. Ability to scale
The only way to scale used to be humans, then slowly we built technology to replace repetitive tasks. Eg a tractor. Eg a factory to make widgets.
When the only way to scale was through humans, almost all of us were involved in just getting enough food to not starve. Now in Australia 1.3% of the workforce feeds everyone else. Innovators have freed us from subsistence farming.
Eventually machines will be able to scale any task. Then the size of the pie (total societal output) will be dependent on the number of innovators.
Want to future proof your ability to have a job? IMO learn how to innovate.
Want to help improve society? IMO learn how to innovate AND learn how to build innovation skills in others.
We can have enough for everyone. We can have a constantly rising social safety net. But can we only do this if we constantly increase the number of people who can innovate? IMO quite possibly.
If everyone has the tools to build a good life (strong societal safety net) and everyone knows how to use these tools to build a good life for themselves (innovation ability) then the chance of a cohesive society should be very high!
IMO the biggest risk to humanity is humanity itself. One core strategy for civility is improving innovation ability?
Percentage of jobs that could be ‘innovation’ = percentage of jobs that have to be ‘innovation’?
IMO there is likely a slight lag between the percentage of jobs that can be innovation vs percentage of jobs that need to be innovation.
Yuval Harari talks about the advent of a ‘useless class’ as machines abilities improve. IMO before general artificial intelligence this is only if humans can’t innovate.
If we don’t have human’s who can innovate then they won’t be able to have jobs so we’ll have to have something like a universal basic income which I think will be hard to pass politically… but more than that IMO if we have unlimited ability to scale through machines then the only reason we won’t have abundance for all humans is due to a lack of innovation ability.
Everything for everyone?
If everyone can innovate we’ll all be able to have jobs?
If everyone can innovate we’ll be able to make sure that most everyone has all the basic necessities met?
If everyone can innovate we’ll have grown the ‘pie’ (aka total societal output) massively more than if eg ‘50% of humans are a useless class AKA unable to innovate’?
The bigger the gap between the percentage jobs that need innovation and the percentage of people who can innovate IMO the more likely there is to be civil unrest. As such, what Edrolo is trying to do (get 90%+ of humans to be able to innovate) isn’t just nice to do, it’s must do?!?
Innovation ability = one path to a good job. Lack of Innovation ability = one component of social unrest.
So as such building innovation ability isn’t just a path for a better humanity? It’s a necessity to make sure inequality isn’t too high, that there are not the haves and have nots but that everyone has, it’s the path to ensure no useless class?
I think the biggest risk to humanity is humanity itself.
Once we were barbarians, now we have modern civilization.
IMO if we don’t have good jobs and rising living standards for everyone then, as is happening in many places now, we could have civil unrest until we turn back into barbarians! This isn’t equality of opportunity, it’s improved opportunity for all segments of society generation on generation. IMO this is what Rawls put forward in his ‘veil of ignorance’.
Yes we need to get to sustainable energy and transport, but IMO we also need to level up all humans to be able to innovate which will hopefully mean we can provide a job for everyone that is above the living wage (...if people want a job).
IMO if eg 50%+ of people are unemployable due to not being able to innovate (similar to being illiterate and trying currently to get a white collar job) then this could well be the conditions for civil war.
IMO improving secondary education to help people build themselves better lives is nice…
… but more than this, improving secondary education to where 90%+ of people leave with the ability to innovate so that everyone can have a job could be a necessity!