Potential: Revealed
Strategic Thinking, Innovative Ideas, Growth Marketing, and Revealing of PotentialArchive for creativity
Imagination
Albert Einstein once wrote that in science “imagination is more important than knowledge”. That’s a powerful thought. I suppose you might expect nothing less from an intellectual giant such as Einstein.
What resonated with me, as someone who often not only wants to understand but who finds fully understanding something (i.e., “knowledge”) to be particularly satisfying, is the caution it offered about seeing knowledge as the only worthy end (to some research you’ve conducted, a project you’ve managed, a business problem or opportunity you’ve worked hard on).
Further, in reading more about the context of Einstein’s writing this line, he is saying bluntly that science like many pursuits in life is really just a journey, full of unknowns and unfolding unendingly. At any given point in time there are many truths or facts that are well-accepted and proven but an infinite number more truths and facts that are quite unknown and sometimes seemingly unknowable. Particularly in science there are many areas of study that deal with phenomena that are not readily or directly observable.
Einstein,and other great scientists, made many of their most astounding breakthroughs using their imagination rather than getting stuck trying to understand the seemingly unknowable. They would imagine some alternative reality to what was known at the time, think through how this alternative world might look and how it might operate if it were discovered to be true, then go about experimenting, searching and testing as if the alternate view were indeed true. This gave them great freedom to work creatively rather than be confined by the “known”. As a non-scientist, for me at least, this was very revealing and refreshing – creativity and science go together! I think I thought before this that they were mutually exclusive.
I began to relate this to my work with business clients where we might be talking about a new product or concept, or a new approach to promotional marketing and other challenges where some facts are well known and many others are for practical purposes unknowable. In such a situation how do you proceed? Einstein would say, if I may be so bold as to speak for him, to first beware of investing all your time into trying to know everything. This is similar to the common advice to avoid “analysis paralysis”. He adds to this common wisdom a more unique point of advice: use your imagination and then be bold enough to just try it out! Experiment. Try. Fail. Try again with another approach.
This is of course no guarantee of success. Your imagination might fail you. But when faced with a big challenge, using your imagination can be a powerful tool to spur action and overcome inaction. At the very least, doing so will give you a taste of how Albert Einstein thought and that alone will be fun!
Creative friction
Recently I posted about an interesting research article on “The Contradictions That Drive Toyota’s Success“.
In summary the authors describe three “forces of expansion” (defined as those that lead the company to instigate change and improvement) and three “forces of integration” (defined as those that stabilize the company’s expansion and transformation). The countervailing nature of these forces allow Toyota to be widely and sometimes wildly innovative, creative, and constantly renewing itself, without undue chaos or losing its very clear and constant cultural identity. In the previous post I focused on the Expansion forces. Now a thought about Integration forces.
The Integration forces are listed as Values from the founders, Up-and-in people management, and Open communcation. Each are interesting but a part of the description of Open Communication was of most interest to me. A specific aspect of open communication was “give people freedom to voice contrary opinions”. It struck me as contraditory — ah, the authors’ title for the article was starting to make sense! — that being contrary with one another would serve to integrate the culture.
Then it reminded me of the economist Joseph Schumpeter’s thoughts about creative destruction. Schumpeter asserted that the process of innovation and growth in a capitalist economy was a strong mixture of both descruction and creation occuring simultaneously. And bringing these contradictory forces together results in a stronger, more vibrant and growth-oriented economy.
In fact in the Toyota example there are several examples cited of how allowing contrary opinions had positive impact. One I particularly enjoyed was of the new head of U.S. sales ignoring “everything those top executives told me” about what should be done to succeed in the U.S. market. It had to be clear to his bosses in Japan that the U.S. sales executive was contradicting their orders long before the results of his decisions played out, yet they allowed him to make his case and then go with his own ideas. He could have been wrong, but then if he was following some of the principles from the “Forces for Expansion” (discussed in the previous post), particularly to have an experimental attitude and approach, he would have a built-in mechanism to manage the risk of failure and to continually adjust or abandon his ideas if needed.
Most organizations and leaders will say they want to “hear” contrary opinions. Few in my experience want to “allow” those contrary opinions to be freely acted upon. And in Toyota’s case it is apparently beyond allow, but to “encourage” their people to act on their contrary opinions and ideas.
Latent value, by definition, has to be revealed. Reveal is a verb and connotes action. Toyota is a great example of an organizational approach and culture that personifies, through their actions, continually discovering and “revealing potential”.
Do you agree? Are there other ingredients that lead to unlocking latent value?
