What Are You Doing For The Rest Of Your Life?
By Brian Walsh
What type of systems did you work on five years ago? What are you working on now? What type of products/services did your organization offer five years ago? What makes money for your organization today? Chances are very good that in five years you'll make your living delivering a product or service that hasn't been thought of yet. Moreover,
you'll be working with products that do not exist today (can you imagine "legacy Windows applications?").
 This cycle of innovation, delivery and production gets shorter every year. Companies that master the constant introduction of change will rise to the top, and network managers skilled at it wil
l succeed. What will that entail? Coming up with new products and ideas almost constantly. In other words, always being creative.
How are you supposed to manage something as amorp
hous as that? You don't want to baby-sit a bunch of creative types. It's not apparent that innovative notions, random thoughts and other attributes of the creative process can help a manager whose goals include decreasing costs and improving efficiency. These things, it seems, don't contribute to the bottom line.
Doing an About Face
There's a quote attributed to Intel CEO Andy Grove, "Let chaos reign, then reign in chaos." What do you think happens at Intel? Do you imagine that Intel got where it is today by focusing exclusively on the incidents of silicon yields defects or on bean counting? No, of course not. Intel continually develops processes to foster innovation.
If the term "creative types" still conjures up an image of a cross between a kindergarten art class and a clearance sale at Filene's Basement, consid
er what the managers at an advertising agency do. Their job is to ensure that their products are innovative, strategic, on time and on budget. More and more of the organizations we work for will resemble the ad agency rather than the old manufacturing concern, pumping out the same product year after year. Even previously staid industries like banking are pushing out products faster than you can keep track of them.
If your industry segment talks about competitors that weren't in business five or 10 years ago, you can bet the pressure will be on you to come up with creative solutions that deliver a competitive advantage. Upper management realizes the need for novel ideas, and if they don't get them from you and your team, they will look elsewhere.
You will have to develop new ideas. The challenge is to develop them with the talent you have in-house. The realities of budgets and the market indicate that you can't just hire brilliance.
Even Great Generals Lose
One of the broad truths about the c
reative process is that it sees more failures than successes. Your job is to make sure that the failures are not costly and they come to be viewed as learning situations. Punishing failures
can be a failure. The job market for engineering talent is tight these days and likely to remain so. If your environment punishes a failed idea with a court-martial, don't expect many volunteers for the next challenge. Instead, establish an atmosphere of direction and supportive criticism, where influence and not dictation is the standard practice.
As a matter of fact, if someone can't describe at least one failure for which he or she has been responsible, that person probably hasn't been doing much, if any, thinking at all. The question is this: Can he or she get up, dissect the failure and try again? On a small scale, empower people to work towards goals, rather than to simply perform specific tasks management has dictated.
Choose Your Battles
Most of us are not in environments that support "pure" resea
rch. The problem of getting the most creativity out of everyone on the team remains the same regardless.
First, I am not recommending you turn your department into a R&D group. Nor am I recommending you spend a great deal of time on R&D. Even at very innovative companies, only about 10 percent of the company may be dedicated to research.
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