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Would you work for Thomas Edison if
you knew you had to improvise during
your job interview?
Imagine this scenario:
During a job interview for a position
in Edison's
lab at Menlo Park, your prospective employer
(Edison) gives you an experiment to complete
on your own, asking you to follow instructions
that he provides. Edison - your
future boss - states that he will
leave you alone to complete the experiment,
then return in an hour to assess your
results. As you complete the experiment - which
involves mixing chemicals - soap
suds begin spewing out from the test
tubes rather than some cool, high tech
concoction. What would you say
to Edison upon his return?
Imagine this second
scenario: During
a job interview at West Orange, your
prospective employer - Edison again
- gives you a pile of machine parts to
assemble. No instructions are provided. Edison
leaves the room and states he will return
in an hour to assess your progress. What
would you say to him if you couldn't
assemble the parts?
The answer in each
case: YOU WOULD IMPROVISE. To
succeed as an employee in Thomas Edison's
storied laboratories, you were expected
to be able to operate in an unscripted
environment. Yes, there were rules,
and there was structure, but unexpected
outcomes were more the norm than the
exception.
So, to qualify
as a new hire you had to improvise,
think on your feet, and find clever
explanations for the phenomena you
were observing. In short, improvisation
was a key driver of Edison's innovation
success.
The Innovation Value of Improvisation
and Play
In Edison's lab, there
were few wrong answers. Beyond his hiring
process, Edison placed value on improvisation
by also cultivating "playfulness" and
promoting shifts in context. For
example, he often feted his teams with
what he called "Midnight lunches" when
they had to work past 8 PM. Edison
would order in dinner (read Lunch) and
everyone would enjoy a hearty meal.
They sang songs, told jokes, and Edison
would often play the pipe organ he'd
had installed in the lab. Employees were
even encouraged to invite their families
in for these events.
By making Lunch
occur after Dinner, and by bringing
play into the office, Edison helped
support the idea that innovation could
happen all day long - and
play was critical to its success.
Edison's 72-hour "Improved
Phonograph"
In 1887, two competitors
decided to go head to head with Edison
in the phonograph market. One was a
colleague - Ezra
Gilliland - and the second was
an employee of Alexander Graham Bell's
named Tainter. When Edison learned
that these two men were intent on introducing
machines with sound quality superior
to his own phonograph, he vowed to beat
them to the market.
In June 1888, Edison cloistered nearly
a dozen of his best people in the West
Orange laboratory for 72 hours, emerging
with a phonograph that featured an improved
engine to rotate the record cylinders,
an improved manufacturing process for
blank cylinders (allowing individuals
the means to record their own voices),
plus a horn offering improved acoustics.
Edison advertised
the Improved Edison Phonograph with
a playful marketing technique - the
Phonogram. He personally recorded
messages about the features of the Improved
Edison Phonograph to thought leaders
in the U.S. and abroad, and sent them
off by mail and steamer. The thought
leaders were thrilled to receive a recording
with Edison's own voice, and soon
became advocates for the new machine.
The advantage of
improvisation to Edison? He
reached into his organization, and in
a matter of minutes created a team that
knew how to improvise, how to play, how
to make the phonograph more fun, and
make the experience of listening to a
phonograph even more powerful.
Three Ways You Can Learn to
Improvise
CNN.com recently
ran a fascinating article on improvisation
and its ability to speed the creation
of new ideas. I also spoke with a local
Chicago colleague of mine, Zach Kaplan - founder of Inventables - whose
firm specializes in helping executives
expand their comfort with "play."
Here are three techniques drawn from
these sources to help you cultivate improvisation
and play in your work environment, all
of which Edison would admire:
- Move the conversation forward
by telling stories:
Toward the end of a meeting when
you have 5 extra minutes, put
10 words up on a white board. Pick
someone to start telling a "story" using
the first word. They only
need to create one sentence with
that word, then the next person
continues with the second word. Try
to forward the story through
each additional word. Play
this until at least everyone
has used two words.
- What you will learn:
Improvisation helps us recognize
that our idea doesn't
always have to be the best one;
it just needs to supports the conversation
productively. This is how
breakthroughs emerge!
- Create an "exploration" budget:
Similar to what 3M and Google do
by allowing engineers and other employees
to spend 15 - 20% of their
work time outside of their normal
responsibilities, Zach Kaplan recommends
creating a budget that can be allocated
to help teams shift their thought
patterns. This would include
ideas like taking an improv class!
- What you will learn: Ways
to make "play" feel
safer, and position it as an accepted
way to spend time in your organization.
- Create situations in which
you allow a playful approach
to be taken to solve a problem: Whether
it's Edison's ability
to improve the phonograph in
72 hours or some other story,
as Zach Kaplan says, "the
process of playing becomes a
gateway to new thoughts and ideas
that your mind might otherwise
censor. Play contributes to innovation
because, while playing, you defer
judgment. There is no "wrong
way to play" so you let
your mind wander. Often
times innovations come when you
get your mind into a new place
and discover something other
people haven't thought about
before." So create
a problem-solving situation where
it's safe to play, to improvise,
and go!
- What you will learn:
You will create new brain pathways
that allow you to associate new ideas
with known concepts. This expands
your entire neural network, particularly
in your right brain.
Resources
for "Play"
Check out the Inventables website at www.inventables.com. Also, click
here to
watch a YouTube video with a segment
that ran on CNN, showing executives interacting
with one of Zach Kaplan's innovation
kiosks.
Go forth and improvise like Edison!
In
the next issue: How
Diversity Drives Innovation
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