Idea Agent

Leadership that Liberates Creativity and Accelerates Innovation

Lina Echeverria

• Publisher: AMACOM
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9780814432181
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

Leaders are responsible for helping their teams meet and advance organizational goals while nurturing intuition and growing talent. Drawing on considerable experience assembling and nurturing cutting-edge teams at Corning Inc., author Linda Echeverria shows how leaders can serve as a team catalyst through which new ideas come to fruition. The results apply well beyond traditional creative domains--propelling innovation across entire organizations. You'll gain an arsenal of instantly actionable tools and will learn how to unleash passion and drive, embrace productive conflict, and emphasize excellence and structure while promoting values that liberate creativity in the workplace. One of the most daunting challenges leaders face is discovering how to harness creativity--without stifling passionate, intelligent people. How do you unleash their energy and simultaneously channel it into something tangible? By showcasing how to juxtapose creative freedom with management rigor, Idea Agent gives readers the skills to lead dedicated professionals through one great innovation after another.

PASSION 1

Into the Ring of Fire

AS ANYONE WHO HAS BEEN SURROUNDED by creative artists, writers, or musicians knows, creativity often comes along with strong—even conflicted—personalities who will not stop in the face of obstacles along their way. The drive to materialize their vision is stronger than themselves, and today we enjoy the beauty they have created. Painters and writers such as Van Gogh and Hemingway come to mind. The former never sold a painting in his lifetime, and his wonderful contribution was cut short. The demons of the latter were never conquered, and we are left to wonder what he left unsaid. But even when the best of circumstances are provided, the personalities, the egos, the insecurities, the jealousies, create conflict. Though the world created by the Medicis was enviable to anyone outside its aura, even the two creative geniuses sheltered by it, Michelangelo and Da Vinci, could not escape the sting of rivalry.

KNOW AND UNDERSTAND CREATIVES

Creativity can be a hot fire and you have to love it to gain from it. Fear of managing the passions of creative scientists will only lead to missed opportunities. Not being afraid of moving to free up and channel the energy and the creativity, on the other hand, can open worlds of opportunities. But on most days, this does not feel comfortable. It is not about running teams that are always agreeable and polite, where everybody respects the turn of the other and the unexpected does not happen. It cannot be stressed enough: it is about understanding each one of the players for who they are, where they come from, what drives them, and what they can bring to the solution. And from this understanding, leadership that liberates creativity is about managing conflict—not preventing conflict from arising, but stepping into the ring of fire and managing all its actors and stages.

Double Duty

Balance Personalities to Realize Team Dynamics

Peter Murray, a forceful and creative scientist and one of my early hires as we expanded the glass research group to meet Corning’s growth goals in the mid-1990s, personifies the hot fire of creativity. A midcareer hire from one of the national labs, his zeal for all things was palpable from the first day of his interview. His interests were broad and he excelled in everything he did, from playing classical piano, to understanding complex glass systems and predicting their behavior as their composition changed, to cooking any cuisine or debating on any subject. Bright, articulate, and forceful, his presence was felt as he walked into any room. Feedback from some during his interview process was, “He is too good for Corning. He won’t last long.” It was clear that he was a winner, but it was also clear that we had a good challenge in our hands if we wanted him—and Corning—to succeed.

I assigned him to a project addressing a manufacturing issue in Corning’s U.S. display glass plant. Years earlier, Corning had developed a process for making the highest quality ultra-thin glass in the market, used today to manufacture specialized thin glass for display purposes ranging from large-area LCD screens to laptop computers and smartphones. With the world’s voracious appetite for large-area displays, the applications continued to expand, and with them the need to develop new glass compositions to meet new needs. When we hired Peter, Corning was beginning to open what was then a new market space that today represents a leading business for the corporation.

LCD precision glass, a premium product designed to have semiconductors and color filters deposited directly on it, has strict requirements that do not tolerate flaws on its surface. One defect capable of blocking a single pixel on a meter-wide sheet of glass renders the entire sheet unacceptable. In contrast with today, when Corning has manufacturing plants in four different countries and a great deal of flexibility for process development, in the mid-1990s it relied almost exclusively on one U.S. plant for its process development and for a large portion of its supply of product. At the time this was one of only two plants in the world devoted to the manufacture of ultra-thin specialty glass for display applications. And it had been experiencing a manufacturing upset that caused the glass to grow tiny crystals, surface flaws that rendered the huge glass sheets unacceptable. We had struggled with the issue in research and in manufacturing, and as Peter joined the team, his new ideas started flowing, expressed in his unique and forceful way and leaving little room for the voices of other team members to be heard. He had a vision, the experience to back it, and the ability to roll over all other team members with his arguments. Other team members, with alternative views and softer styles or shorter appetites for active engagement, could not make their voices heard. He represented the research part of the equation and was willing to take on development and manufacturing. It was clear that he had the knowledge and experience that could lead us to a solution, so the question was twofold: Could the team survive with him? And could we survive without him?

BE COMFORTABLE AROUND CONFLICT AND ADDRESS IT DEFTLY

The creative and the passionate are difficult to manage. Their strong egos drive them to make their vision a reality even if this means creating conflict, which can happen even under the best of circumstances. Leading a creative team means harnessing this conflict and managing it to benefit, not detract from, the work. Even if your larger corporate culture does not encourage, reward, or even tolerate much disagreement or dispute, it is your job as manager to create a space where it is safe to challenge teammates, to argue, to disagree, and ultimately to seek a better, more robust answer.

If creative beings can be conflicted internally, just think of the conflict that can arise when strong creative personalities, with different approaches or visions driven by their own creativity, are brought together as a team. You will have divergences, clashes, and tension. And if you have not experienced it, perhaps the level of control in your organization is high enough that the dissent is being discouraged. But then so are the good ideas, the ones that come at a ninety-degree angle from your planned path. Attempting to stay on or manage from the sidelines will keep you there: on the sidelines and far from the goal. As a leader, it starts with you knowing your people, their reactions and expectations, their roles in the team. There are different-colored tools on your palette to use at your discretion, starting with the self-management resulting from self-awareness. An understanding of each human being and the way he or she relates to others needs to be your guide. It continues with being comfortable with conflict and with understanding that arguments and discussion are as essential to science as experimentation itself. And it moves on with playing an active role in managing conflict, literally sitting at the negotiating table rather than shying away from it.

In Peter’s case, I weighed the options: playing the roles of functional and project leader simultaneously—a less-than-ideal long-term solution—or adding a scientist to the team with the sole purpose of easing the tension and improving the communication between main players, or bringing in a guru with a Buddhist approach to help team members move into awareness. As a leader, the need to jump into the fire and manage conflict was imperative.

Because of the gravity of the manufacturing issue, which was preventing us from delivering Corning’s first new composition for an emerging market, and because of the potential that was evident in Peter as a contributor, it was necessary to pull out all the stops. Knowing him well enough to understand his intellectual capabilities, strong personality, and need for respect and recognition, and as the functional manager for the glass research, I took on the role of project leader to ensure a forceful presence that would create space for all voices to be heard. It was important to be strong but thoughtful and accepting, to be inspirational without losing rigor. Though it was not a sustainable long-term solution, I ran the project, convened meetings, set the agenda, and defined timelines. But most importantly, on a dayto-day basis, I was responsible for the dynamics of communication, for weighing in on different arguments, for making sure that the floor was clear for open debate and that opinions were heard and discussed, and, most importantly, that Peter’s driving force guided the project while preventing the force of his personality from steamrolling others.

As those who have transferred technology from research to manufacturing know, it was also important to maintain strong communication between the research group and the development and manufacturing groups. But Peter’s strong personality and superior knowledge of glass science had brought out all the insecurities of Chris Cunningham, the glass scientist responsible for the technology transfer between research and manufacturing. Now in the development group, Chris had been one of the first scientists to ever report to me when I was first made a research supervisor. A solid glass scientist with good practical experience and a proven record of invention of glass composition, he had a sense of ownership of the compositional area applicable to display glasses, having worked under the pioneer in this field of glass research. But trained in the practical tradition of glass science rather than having the sophisticated theoretical background that Peter possessed, Chris saw in Peter a major threat, and he reacted accordingly, with both active and passive resistance. A quiet personality, Chris had a rich personal life and devoted much of his time outside the lab to his farm, an activity shared and enjoyed by a handful of other scientists in the glass research group who saw Corning’s location in rural upstate New York as an opportunity to follow their passions inside and outside the lab.

There was a small community of “scientist-farmers” with common interests who shared concerns and trusted each other. And it was this connection that provided the key to solving the team communication issues. I asked Rick Laredo, a glass researcher who was a member of the scientist-farmer community with a good relationship with Chris, to join the team, with the sole purpose of improving the communication between research and development. I explained clearly the situation to him and my expectation of him.

The assignment was unconventional: scientists are supposed to do science, not personnel development—that is the domain of human resources. It also carried a risk. Without a specific technical responsibility, what would Rick have to show as his results for the time invested at the end of the year? I had been managing the glass research group for more than a year, and there was already a culture of common goals, of pitching in, of making things happen together. The risk of not developing a manufacturing solution was greater for the whole, and Rick came on board. Already enjoying the trust and personal friendship of Chris, he soon established a close relationship between the research and the development group, who welcomed his addition to the team and felt the relief of having a go-between. But my responsibility to create the space and opportunities for Rick to continue to develop his own work, his personal career, his sense of worth, was not one that I could take lightly. I had to make sure that his role as communicator within the team was neither all-consuming nor too long-lasting, that he would have the space to create and investigate on his own, part of the time during the assignment and back to full attention in a short time. Jointly, we balanced both requirements, and so in time Rick Laredo became the father of glass-binding technology at Corning.

Chris pursued a different path, moving on to the customer interface and becoming over time one of the display industry’s most influential glass technology advocates. In his soft-spoken way, and always armed with a solid understanding, he became a reassuring presence for customers as they adapted the new glasses demanded by new applications in display technologies.

The goal was not—and it never should be—to eliminate the discussions or to shy away from disagreements and heated arguments. Instead the goal is to capture the energy of disparate viewpoints and use it to move the team forward rather than slowing it down. Though it was draining on my energy and my time—my full-time job was to lead the glass research group—I continued to manage the team, and the discussions were passionate. We did not shy away from conflict or try to suppress it. It was a long, arduous project, tackling a difficult problem. The cast of characters was large, from research to development, engineering, and manufacturing. In the end, the solution required input from all sides: glass compositions were changed, manufacturing processes readjusted, engineering modifications to the equipment made. But we had achieved a state of “creative conflict,” which allowed all the voices to be heard, and thus we were able to find a robust solution.

With these two elements of project management and team dynamics addressing the main issues, the team went on to deliver a solution to the specific manufacturing issue. This enabled Corning to open a market and enabled the world to enjoy large-scale manufacturing of LCD television displays of increasingly larger sizes. More importantly, Peter’s energy and contagious enthusiasm allowed him to gain the trust of the manufacturing community, which eventually yielded to his pressure to test new conditions that would allow an ever-widening world of glass compositions to be made into high-precision flat glass. The world of display and tele communication products that we see today owes a debt to that insistence by one outspoken scientist, expressing his opinions assertively and insisting on maintaining high technical standards, who was not shut down by his environment.

For me this was a reassuring conclusion to what had been months of highly visible, intense effort—even participating by teleconference in daily meetings with the glass composition team and the manufacturing community during my family vacations in Colombia—where I was leading by following my intuition and common sense. For, as young managers everywhere know, there are no “how to” manuals, and for me, as well as for many others, it was “learn as you go.” One at a time, I had started to place the bricks for a good foundation.

Managing conflict and tempers, however, does not mean compromising. Yes, it would indeed be much easier to allow the superstars in your group to get their way. It would seem a natural reward for their contributions. But it does not foster the culture of accountability that is critical for trust. And, just as the “domestiques”—the “support” members of a Tour de France cycling team whose role is to put the star on the podium at the end of the grueling three-week race—need to trust their leader to give for him all the power in their legs during those hard Alpine climbs, so does the technology delivery team need trust to follow what might appear to be a harebrained idea. So as leaders, we must demand mutual respect and create a culture of accountability—starting with our own and making no exceptions. For the best scientific intellects are also capable of the highest levels of ethical behavior. So even if the delivery is painful, do not compromise.

The Crown Jewel of Tools

Self-Management Through Awareness

With the display technologies unit’s manufacturing issue solved, it would have been simple to call it a job well done. But the ultimate goal of creating a culture where innovation thrives and delivers would elude us, and, just as important, Peter’s development as a total being and the potential in his career would not be well served. It was just as important for him to gain the awareness of his role in the conflict and its solution. That is where the guru comes into play.

His name was Dasa and I first encountered him as he led a group of managers through a workshop in providing 360-degree feedback to employees during their annual performance evaluation. It was my first year as a manager and I found the information useful and his focus on self-awareness very insightful. I began calling on him to help me support the group on management of conflict. With a Ph.D. in history from Yale and years of experience on the Cornell faculty, he was a vast resource on the literature of workplace leadership, high performance, philosophy, psychology, and the like. His passion was in the actualization of human potential in the workplace and, even though conflict management was not his preferred area, bringing awareness to leaders and employees was part of his path.

This part of conflict management, of leading individuals through the process of gaining awareness, is not easy. Nor is it instantaneous. It requires insight, perseverance, and, overall, a willingness to gain awareness. Fundamentally, it starts with an agreement that there is an interest in the process, continues with a collection of feedback on the behavior of the individual and its effect on others, and follows with a series of coaching sessions. The duration of the relationship is determined by the appetite of the individual. I was working with Dasa myself after gaining the understanding that the first quality of a leader is self-awareness. My own work on self-awareness with Dasa went on for many years. Peter’s relationship with this work had more of a seesaw quality to it.

From this work Peter learned that he was received for what he was: a creative researcher, frequently offering useful ideas and suggestions, and coming up with new approaches to difficult problems. He learned that he was viewed as energetic, displaying contagious enthusiasm and having a positive effect on his colleagues. That he enjoyed collaboration with other scientists and that he had demonstrated an interest and ability to mentor younger scientists was also apparent. These were not surprises to him, and neither was it a surprise to learn that he was outspoken, expressed his opinions assertively, and helped to maintain high technical standards. The focus of the work for Peter was the awareness that the same qualities that made him a powerful source of positive energy would at times swing back and result in behavior that negated his valuable technical contributions. Perhaps the biggest surprise for him was that even though he was seen as a positive element in challenging the status quo and in removing barriers to his and others’ contributions, his exuberant energy was overwhelming to colleagues with more sedate personalities. From his self-assured vantage point, he had not been sensitive to this.

Peter started to work on modulating the oscillations and keeping his energy centered around more even behavior patterns. A few months later, feedback indicated that the beginning of a positive change was already recognizable. This was just the beginning of his process, and wor...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Prologue—Leadership for Fast-Paced Innovation
• My Personal Journey—Conflict in Art and Science
• Passion 1—Into the Ring of Fire
• My Personal Journey—Finding My Wings
• Passion 2—Let the Best Take Flight
• My Personal Journey—Standing Up for Values
• Passion 3—Live Values That Liberate Creativity
• My Personal Journey—Demand for Excellence in the Tropical Rain Forest
• Passion 4—Demand Excellence and Enrich Lives
• My Personal Journey—Culture in the South Pacific
• Passion 5—Create a Culture
• My Personal Journey—An Urgency for Structure
• Passion 6—Structure a Clear Organization
• My Personal Journey—On My Way to France
• Passion 7—Provide Authentic Leadership
• Epilogue—Let Life Continue
• Acknowledgments
• Index
• About the Author