¶ Introduction and Sponsor Acknowledgment
Welcome to another episode of the corporate explorer. We're getting near to the end of the book. And before I introduce today's guest, I want to thank our sponsor Wazoku, who helps large organizations to create effective, sustainable innovation ecosystems that accelerate efficiency gains and new value growth.
It does this through intelligent enterprise software that connects and harnesses the power of employees, suppliers, startups, universities, and the unique Wazoku crowd of 700 plus global problem solvers. Wazoku calls this connected collective intelligence, and you can find Wazoku at www. wazoku. com. Now.
¶ Understanding Corporate Explorers
Little intro to get started in today's episode corporate explorers are unique breed of professionals who can recognize the innovation capabilities within corporate structures and utilize, the available resources to start up new initiatives. Enabling them to do so is their ability to understand both, Formal structured and rigid processes of corporate environments as well as the more informal flexible and fast moving environments of startups.
As a result, explorers can navigate all the necessary phases of strategic innovation and growth from ideation, Incubation scaling maturation and transformation. However even the best corporate explorers won't be able to do everything alone, they need a founding team to build a new venture to do this, corporate explorers must be able to successfully identify and select the talents they need to help them execute their vision and priorities.
¶ The Importance of Strategic Diversity
One aspect and maximizing team performance is often overlooked it is called strategic diversity.
¶ Guest Introduction: Richard Robertson
Joining us to share his insights on strategic diversity and the dna of building and explore team, is co author of the corporate explorer field book richard robertson welcome to the show
Thank you so much, Aidan. Great to be here.
We met in person in london at the launch of this series as well it was great to meet you back then and it's great to, delve in to your mind today
Likewise. Yeah,, it's great to see you too, again, through our mutual friend, Andy Binns who is the author of Corporate Explorer. And it's great to be joining you here today on your show.
i know you're tired richards after running an all day workshop three hour drive away, i'm keeping him from chilling out for the evening so i'm gonna get through this at a pace that will allow him to go and chill out for the rest of the evening there's a quote
from the triumph of the nerds it's a series about steve jobs and bill gates and the early days of the internet and computers, under the quote by jobs when he talked about what made the macintosh team great and he said. It was the people working on it who were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world. He said, "we all brought this effort, a very liberal arts attitude.
We wanted to pull the best of what we saw in these other fields. I don't think you get that if you go very, very narrow. And I thought that was a beautiful way to set us up for this idea of strategic diversity and your definition of what that is, I absolutely agree. Taking on complex challenges like that requires an incredible breadth of mindsets of cognitive styles of visions. That people in, in a strategically diverse group can bring.
¶ Strategic Diversity in Teams
You're having an analogy in the book of a football team, and I'd love you to describe that in a moment. I wanted to share with you as well. I have a series of books. They're beautiful, little hard copies.
There by michael krogers and roman chapler probably butchered his name there the decision book the change book and is the question book as well but in the decision book i'm gonna share it on the screen here, there's a diagram that shows how do you pick an ideal team and also how do you identify the weaknesses in the team i thought this would be a nice way to go along as, A bit of visuals for you to describe your analogy of a football team.
So when we're talking about teams in a corporate setting, for instance, or any business like environment we are always talking about building strategically diverse teams. And basically what we're talking about. is similar to a coach building a football team, right? We are all familiar with the more classic types of diversity, right? So, gender diversity, racial diversity, cultural diversity, et cetera. And those are really important. critical for a team to succeed, right?
I don't want to take any way, any, anything away from, from those concepts. They are critical to bring about a team that, that is going to perform to its fullest potential. However, we add to that type of thinking the notion of strategic diversity. That is if a coach is going to build a football team, right? For instance, with the players you've, you've lined up here, Obviously that coach is first going to look, for instance, at skill level, right? That's obvious, right?
So, so they're going to look at the performance level of each player, their, past performances, et cetera. That makes sense. Then the coach will absolutely look at the performance. personality profiles, right? An introverted player will require a different type of guidance than an extroverted player. For instance, they will communicate differently, they will behave differently, and they will require a different way of being taught and coached.
However, besides all these really important aspects, The coach should always take into account where on the field is each player going to perform to their fullest potential, right? So for instance, a player like Rooney who scores Very high on prolific scorer, right? And who will probably take a striker position on, on the field. We'll have a mindset that is much more focused on what we call feed forward activities, right? Driving the ball forward always on the attack, et cetera.
Whereas a player like Terry, who scores lower on prolific scorer, probably is better suited at a more defensive position. right? More back on the field and, and focused more on reacting to what is happening in the best way possible. Now, every coach knows that they need to recognize where on the pitch is each player going to perform best and how can I get each player on that position.
But what is so intuitive for any football coach for some reason, That is still quite an unfamiliar notion in our business concepts, contexts, right? Where the same principle applies just within different strategic contexts. And that is really what strategic diversity is about. It's about setting up your corporate teams or any other business team in a way that it is optimally geared to tackle. The strategic challenges that it's facing at that point in time.
the big issue in an organization is we tend to have this hiring of people who are like us because it's easier. And there's loads of research on if you have a more diverse group, if you don't know the person who's coming into that meeting, you'll prepare better for that meeting. You have a better bottom line when you have a more diverse team as well. And we're not going to go into that today.
¶ The S Curve and Team Dynamics
But one of the things that you talk about here is one of my favorite curves and people who know me will be sick of hearing about the S curve, the growth curve, but what I love about what you talk about in this chapter is that an organization, as it goes through the S curve of growth, they need different types of Strategic diversity, different types of people, different types of thinkers, different players on the football analogy for those different phases of the S curve.
I'm gonna share on the screen the S curve and I'd love you to take us through the S curve, but what type of people you need at those different phases of the S curve as well,
I should say, our network suffers the same fate as the listeners you were just referring to as in, we always bring the S curve into our, our discussions as well. And what we always say is obviously this is not reality, this is a mathematical logistical function and the model is the result of that function.
And as such, it is a highly simplified model of certain processes that in reality are much more capricious, that are much more unpredictable on the detail level, but on the larger level, always follow this pattern. Now, knowing that. Knowing the development , of complex systems, whether that is a team, an organization, or any other complex system, we can always distinguish these different phases. So let's start with the ideation phase. That's the phase where the.
Vision for the new company or the team as brought forward, right? so there has been an idea and now it's up to the team to ideate , that vision, that idea to go through the phase of trial and error, falling down, getting back up, testing things out and seeing what sticks basically which is accompanied by very slow growth. Very high investments, a lot of uncertainty and a lot of flexibility. And the types of people that thrive in that are the types of people that we call strong explorers, right?
So those are people , who thrive on that uncertainty and on that unpredictability, who think in opportunities rather than risks and who actively seek out change and renewal, even if the situation doesn't demand that just yet, right? They will get restless when things get the same. So their big challenge is avoiding the new ideas loop. Yes, yes, I can. I can.
I'm putting my hand up here for those people only listening can I, go I hear Yes, I, I bet a lot of people tuning into the innovation show, they're like, Oh, that sounds awfully familiar right here. , so we always say that is at the same time, super energizing and inspiring, but at the same time, their challenge is structuring and maturing ideas and bringing them to their fullest potential.
So, right, that requires taking the next steps the next step being incubation, which is taking this idea and turning it into a minimum viable product that is taking it out of the brainstorm phase and starting to really test things out, put it through the ringer, basically, and that inevitably requires, more how do you say that? More repetition, more routine. It requires that you kill off some of your, your initial ideas that didn't turn out to be so valuable after all.
And that can be, that can be hurtful and painful for the true explorers, but the people who, who really flourish in this sort of the incubators, right? People who, who are really focused and energized by these phases in between hard exploration and hard optimization. Those are really the practical thinkers and they love working with new ideas. They may not be always seeking out radical disruption, but they love working with new ideas and testing things out and seeing what works, right?
So the phase after that becomes the scaling up phase. This is where operational excellence really. Comes to the forefront, right? This is where the people are that roll up their sleeves, that are really focused and energized by delivering results in the here and now that love building things, delivering things that thrive on these energetic environments, right? Where everyone is working together, is building and there's this huge momentum forward and seeing things grow. Operational excellence.
That's the main focus of the scaling phase here. And then, once that is all set up, so now you reach the maturation phase of a project, of an organization, etc. And this phase, this is paradoxical, right? This is where every organization reaches their maximum profit, their maximum quality and efficiency, but also where exploration usually ends. I would almost say inevitably takes a backseat, right? So here the organization becomes more repetitive, becomes more routine in their processes.
And this really requires a strong focus on structuring, on stabilizing and optimizing processes, et cetera. So this is where people thrive who love being in structured, predictable, reliable environments, who are great at monitoring. auditing, et cetera. That is really what is thriving here. Now, every organization that reaches this phase, that's the paradox. Even though this is where profits are maximized, it always is followed by the face of degradation, if you will. Right?
So that if, if you stay here too long a competition is going to catch up. Market needs will shift. Consumers will, you know, their needs will change, et cetera. So an organization needs. To reinvent itself in time to stay relevant towards the future. But now you've reached this phase where the organization as a whole has matured. So the main focus has become, maximizing profits repetitive processes, et cetera, et cetera.
Yet this is the point where it needs exploration in order to go into its transformation and reinvent itself to stay valuable and relevant towards the future. And that really requires a different mindset , of constructively breaking down the past and building up the new growth curve in time.
So helpful to think about it this way richard. We miss this so often and even from a hr perspective to know as an organization is going through transformation. You're going to need different skill sets, but also different thinkers and different energy levels . Some people are just brilliant at managing the organization for exploits and not so much. So , for explore and trying to force their square peg into a round hole can actually be very painful for people.
They feel inadequate, and then when you put the corporate Explorer into that role where they're living in Excel sheets, it's rote and repetitive. It's painful for those people. And then they usually just leave the organization. When they're needed most usually in many cases,
exactly. So, so one thing that we always say is we are not out to change people. We are out to help people deal with change. And there's a fundamental difference there that I think can be of, of great help in these challenges.
there's a tool that you share to manage human behavior, attachment exploration managing complexity for people, and this tool, again, just, if you're wondering, if you're in an organization in the midst of change, , how do you measure people? How do you assess where they are on the spectrum,
¶ Exploring the AEM Cube
? Richard takes care of that too there's a tool in the book that explains the AEM cube and i'm gonna share again on the screen for those people watching us on spotify video and on youtube, you can see the cube there i'll share it in the show notes as well but don't forget as well it's in the corporate explorer field book it's a brilliant book it covers, Every aspect of change and in this chapter richard goes deeper but for now let's share at a
high level what is cube is and maybe just a quick definition of the AEM , Richard Robertson: Looking at the AMCube or AMCube as we refer to it. It's a tool that started development in the mid nineties. And it's gone through rigorous statistical refinement and analyses over the last 30 years. And it consists, like you said, of three different constructs attachment, exploration, managing complexity, or AEM for AEM Cube.
I'm briefly going to start with the middle one here, exploration, because exploration really looks at someone's natural contribution. to this process of change. So it really connects to the growth curve that we just talked about, right? Exploration basically talks about someone's instinctive drive to seek out change, even if that's not extrinsically necessary, right?
People who score higher on Exploration score more, to the right side in the cube, and they will contribute to the earlier phases of the growth curve. So these will be the, The ideators, the incubators of a team, people who score more towards the other side of the spectrum. We call them optimizers in the cube. And they are people who contribute to the later phases of the growth curve. You raised your hand on the exploration phase, me, myself.
I naturally contribute more towards the optimizing phase, right? So we could form a really strong dialogue with you and I that we refer to as a golden dialogue from exploration to optimization or implementation. i don't know if we'd make a great football team though i certainly wouldn't be much use maybe in goals to block a few goals that be it.
No, I don't think any football team would want me as a, as a team member, but yeah, maybe we could coach them from the side. We do that pretty well. So we really refer to that exploration dimension as the speed to market dialogue in strategic terms. Now the attachment dimension, which runs from front to back basically covers your product clients dialogue, looking at a team or, or an organization or internally your process employee dialogue.
Basically the front of the cube are more content focused individuals, right? So those are people who thrive on anything content related. So that's it. Whether that be data, ideas, numbers, you name it. Those are people who can work on, on, on that content all day and just be energized and energetic at the end of the day and just love their work. Yeah. And, and be comfortable with that. On the other side of the spectrum, we have people focused individuals, right?
Those are people that really thrive on emotional connections with other human beings. So they need these human interactions. They are really natural at networking. coaching at, anything to do with human relations,, Things like sales, account management, customer service. They are really energized by those. And then finally, you've got your managing complexity dimension. Now we, continuously navigate this tremendously complex world, right?
Whether we're talking about a society of millions, a company of thousands or a team of three people, each of these is a highly complex system that we are navigating. Some of us really. Thrive on that, we call them more generalist or integrative individuals, and they score higher in the cube. So their pillar will be longer. They will seek out this complexity and they will embrace it. We often call them like broad thinkers.
They, they really thrive on strategic challenges, leadership challenges, right, overseeing the entire process and enabling others on the other hand of the spectrum, you've got your deep thinkers, right? So those are more specialized individuals. Those are your. experts in your organizations. That's not to say that they are only good at one thing.
They can have a huge array of interests and expertises, but once they're, once they're faced with a question or topic or situation, they will love to bite down on that and really go deep into that subject matter, shutting out some of that complexity, if they can and handing that over to other people
¶ Conclusion and Contact Information
Fantastic great rendition of the cube as well and we'll share this in the show notes and you can reach out to richard as well to contact him, he does work with companies on this all the time what you mentioned any bands you give a shout out to him i'm gonna give a shout out to peter robertson your dad as well because this is a book i want to cover in the future. I have it in the archives. there, "always change a winning team" and it speaks to a lot of the things we've talked about here as well.
And that's coming down the line. It'll be next year. But I know Peter's working on a new book as well. So hopefully he'll cover this and he won't want to push the new one as well. He won't be on the S curve like me wanting to go on to the new thing all the time before Richard, where's the best place for people to reach out if they want to find you?
Our website human insight. com. Or through my email rrobertson at human insight. com.
The book is the corporate Explorer. It's absolutely brilliant for understanding all aspects of change all the way from ideate to incubate, to scale and the difficulty of that scale aspect. Which is why this episode was so important. Before we wrap up i want to thank our sponsor Wazoku who helps large organizations create effective sustainable innovation ecosystems, accelerate efficiency gains and new value growth.
Wazoku does this through intelligent enterprise software that connects and harnesses, the power of employees suppliers startups universities and the unique Wazoku crowd of over plus global problem solvers. That is strategic diversity. Wazoku calls this connected collective intelligence, and you can find Wazoku at www.Wazoku.com. For now, Richard Robertson, thank you for joining us.
Thank you very much, Aidan.