Everyone Deserves To Tell Their Story – Especially Nonprofits

Last year, Chester & Fourth had the privilege of helping a pioneering nonprofit tell its story.

As is the case with most projects I work on, the driving force behind this project was an enlightened CEO, who understood that the organization's 25th anniversary was a perfect opportunity to demonstrate its impact to others, and capture lessons learned for the next generation of decision makers.

Sounds pretty straight-forward, doesn't it? Well, I'm here to tell you that it isn't.

The old adage, “history is written by the victors,” often falsely attributed to Winston Churchill, neatly sums up the kind of organization that usually commissions evaluations of their past actions: big enterprises with the resources to do so.

Most of these reflection exercises are done well and to the highest professional standards, whether they're aimed at an internal or external readership – at least that has been my own experience working on authorized histories and studies of major organizations for the past 10+ years.

But all of these studies come at a price. Whether by accident or design, they risk drowning out the smaller players who do the hard work on the ground, and have their own formidable stories to tell. Sadly, very few of them do.

One reason for this neglect is, of course, money. Nonprofits with shoestring budgets don't have the luxury of commissioning special projects. One possible workaround for this dilemma is to find a service provider who is considerate of their limited resources.

The other reason is bandwidth. Many smaller nonprofits question whether in their daily struggle for survival, and amidst their taxing workload on the frontlines of social change, there's indeed time (and a need!) for critical reflection and milestone celebration.

I hope the following excerpt from the 25th anniversary report mentioned at the outset of this article will do away with any such hesitation:

Professional engagement with one’s own history is rare among not-for-profit organizations, no matter their size, age, level of influence, or geographic area of operations. Interested outside observers can at best hope for a timeline of notable accomplishments, often conveniently and unobtrusively parked in the About section of an organization’s official website. Present concerns (balancing budgets, administering programs, managing stakeholders, etc.) all too often prevent leadership and staff themselves from developing anything more than a rudimentary understanding of their organizations’ evolutionary trajectory, leaving many of them ill-equipped to address strategically vital questions such as ‘What have we done in the past?’ or ‘How did we get to where we are today?’ Answering these questions correctly is not a frivolous pastime of philosophers and historians. For organizations that depend on public, private or social sector funds for survival, it is an operational necessity. Why? For one, grant proposals and funding requests invariably require the applicant to write something meaningful about their history and mission. Beyond the immediately practical, a sophisticated historical understanding can highlight an organization's distinguishing features and capabilities, which will make future strategy and other forward-planning exercises more likely to succeed – to say nothing of the benefits that the spreading of awareness and sharing of lessons can bring to the entire nonprofit ecosystem. These insights are rarely gained from perusing and producing timelines alone. They emerge from a form of storytelling that is finely attuned to organizational idiosyncrasies and big-picture developments, yet does not lose sight of the chronology of events.

Creativity: The 21st Century Skill We Actually Need

Whether you’re a salaried employee or a gig worker, a member of the C-suite or an entry-level workhorse, the odds are pretty high that you’re currently drowning in a sea of reskilling and upskilling buzzwords, most ending with the letter -y.

 Agility, empathy, integrity, flexibility, adaptability, transparency, sensitivity, accountability, sustainability, resiliency, digital literacy: best to possess some or ideally all of them if you want to be future-ready (another one!) in the volatile professional landscape of the 21st century; or so I’ve been told by every business and management magazine worth perusing when procrastination on social media or reading a real book just don’t seem to do the trick.  

 Not commonly mentioned among these archetypes, core competencies and must-have leadership skills – not all of which have any practical bearing on the daily necessities of life and work for professionals on planet earth, that is – is creativity. The reasons for this omission are as numerous as they are complex.

 Let’s start with the most obvious connotation we have of creativity: the stereotype of the entertaining, mildly eccentric but also starving artist. Yes, creativity is commonly associated with the arts, especially the performing arts. Who could possibly exude more creativity than the jazz saxophone virtuoso improvising in a packed to the brim, smoke-filled speakeasy well after midnight? What about the brilliant painter who puts herself through art school by setting up shop next to popular historical landmarks on weekends, working away on her latest creation in full unimpeded view of curious pedestrians and no(i)sy tourists? Or how is that even after 23 seasons of The Voice we’re still in awe of the sight of the struggling singer-songwriter sensation who’s persevered through unimaginable hardships yet is lighting up the stage with their amazing vocal talents?

 The point here is that most of us have typecast creativity. We think of artists, authors and performers, not people in the professions, possessing and doling out our daily dose of creativity. Even more rarely do we tie our own personal and professional identity and aspirations to such an intangible artistic ability. Ponder this. When was the last time you described your actions or achievements to others as creative in the hopes of eliciting positive feedback? Or better yet, when did you last refer to yourself as a creative unironically?

 A less obvious takeaway from these earlier scenes of artistic creativity is that we seem to have no issue recognizing and appreciating the trait in others, even when it strays far from its original context. The world of professional sports is perhaps the best example. Try sitting through a Kansas City Chiefs game without hearing the announcers praise Patrick Mahomes’ quarterback play for being creative and crafty at least a few dozen times. The same goes for former Barcelona great now American import Lionel Messi. While some athletes possess that indefinable split-second creativity that can turn around a game, others have used theirs to redefine an entire sport. Think of the “Sparrow from Minsk,” Belarusian gymnastics legend and 3x Olympic gold medal winner Olga Korbut, whose dazzling acrobatics brought the sport into the mainstream.  

But what exactly is creativity? How do we define it? My doctoral supervisor and others who’ve spent long hard years training me would shudder at such a belated introduction and explanation of this article’s key concept. But ignoring conventions and using a bit of creative licence on where to place my definition of creativity is a perfect, albeit extremely geeky, illustration of what it means to be creative.

 Far from being unmanageable and elusive, creativity is, according to my own and my company’s interpretation, a universal human trait that can be harnessed and taught.  Creativity is much more than a sudden flash of brilliance, a single triumphant Eureka moment, that is often difficult to explain and even harder to replicate. Nor is creativity reserved only for special times and occasions, for moments of artistic brilliance or scientific breakthroughs. Broken up into its constituent parts, creativity becomes something that can be attained by just about anyone: a useful tool to navigate the mundane and the extraordinary.

 All creativity starts with interest and curiosity, followed by efforts of varying lengths of time at understanding that what has captured your interest and piqued your curiosity.

 Once the rules, patterns, and relationships of the subject of your fascination become intelligible, creativity then demands of its practitioners to be willing to transcend tradition, to have the courage to sidestep or outright ignore the status quo. Creativity, up until this point, is therefore as much a conscious and subconscious learning and observation process as it is a shift in mindset.

 Curiosity, understanding, and courage is then followed by experimentation. In order to improve the present state of affairs we are confronted with or affronted by, new ideas, alternatives, and solutions have to be generated. This can be done by modifying and manipulating the existing pieces of puzzle. Let’s look at my favourite example: creativity in the culinary world. Chefs typically spend years learning and honing their craft before they can get truly creative. At one point in their careers, first-rate chefs will start tinkering with the cooking techniques and recipes they’ve been taught, putting their own unique spin on old classics, or even creating an entirely reimagined dish, cuisine, or dining experience for their customers.

 We all practice creativity daily. We just don’t take the time to acknowledge its presence or retrace its origin. We find alternative routes to work when an accident shuts down the street we usually take. We redecorate our homes to address our current living or remote working situations. We adjust our resumes to make ourselves more hireable for the job we’re eager to land. We sometimes go to great ingenious lengths to steer clear of situations and people that bring us discomfort. We use a 7-iron for a bump and run onto the green instead of opting for a regular wedge shot.

 If this last example hasn’t made you want to click the exit button on your browser, you may wish to stick around for this last part.

 Even though creativity is ubiquitous and of immense value for managing complexity and navigating much smaller moments of adversity and opportunity, it remains unevenly distributed in the world of work and across organizations. While the design industry or marketing departments are often but not always replete with creative talent, other arenas remain virtually untouched by those who either know how to use creative problem-solving, non-linear thinking, and abductive reasoning, or those who can recognize and reward good new ideas and alternative possibilities when they’re presented to them.

 Creativity, it bears remembering, need not be purely generative after all. When curiosity, understanding, and courage is paired with an ability to spot productive departures from the business-as-usual trap, particularly by those in decision-making positions, creativity has the power to help any organization unleash their innovative potential.

Strategy and Planning: Better off Separated

Have you ever heard of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon? Also known as the frequency illusion or red car syndrome?

It’s when something that has recently captured your attention, often for the very first time, is suddenly everywhere.

I didn’t need to ask Google or pay a subscription fee to ChatGPT to come up with suitable examples. My own family provided me with plenty, free of charge:

My parents recently bought a new SUV to make their road trips in Europe more comfortable. Upon their return to Canada, they noticed that the same SUV existed like “Sand am Meer.” Meaning, the frequency with which they encountered the vehicle had gone up exponentially. This was due to their heightened awareness of said object, not because the carmaker had cranked up production.

Another family member is currently in the midst of a move to the American South for the next chapter of her exciting R&D career. It’s probably fair to say that she had never actively thought about the state or the city she was moving to. But as the move crept closer, and friends, colleagues, and former mentors bode their farewells, she was astonished by the number of people within her network who, against all odds, had either lived near or previously visited her new place of work. For people who’ve never heard of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, they’d think it's fate, a sign from the universe, but in reality it’s merely a flawed way our brains process obscure pieces of information.

My own recent run-ins with this cognitive bias are a lot less glamorous, more bothersome really. The first one is downright comical. A colleague pointed out to me that “As per…” is completely redundant (much like putting “completely” before redundant). Thanks to this colleague, I now live in a world where grammatically incorrect sentences such as “As per my last email” and “As per usual” greet me at every corner. Seriously, just drop the “as.”

The second run-in is the subject of this article.

Reading, and I mean really reading, the strategy greats of our time (Roger Martin, Richard Rumelt, Michael Porter, Henry Mintzberg, etc.) has left me with a deep appreciation for what strategy is, and an allergic reaction to what it isn’t.

And what some of them are saying is not difficult to comprehend, nor in the least bit controversial. Yet, inexplicably, contestation on fundamental norms lingers on.

Strategy and planning are not the same thing. In fact, they are completely different activities. Related, sure. Mutually reinforcing, sometimes. But the same? Absolutely not.

Throwing the word “strategic” before planning doesn’t marry the two concepts. Strategic planning more often than not produces an unhappy relationship, where neither partner gets to enjoy life to the fullest. They are better off separated. Just like Megan Fox and MGK, 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner, all-season tires, or convertible pants (Yikes!).

There are not many useful comparison tables on the internet describing the differences between strategy and planning, so I’ve prepared my own to fill this gap:

See Table

But how do those differences between strategy and planning play out in real life? Let’s look at two examples:

In War

Generalship (the original definition of strategy) of an army requires military commanders to make both high-level choices and set specific goals in order to achieve victory. They can choose, among others, to fight an offensive or defensive war, define who qualifies as an enemy combatant, rely on a professional army (not the draft), engage in day or night combat, opt for a combined arms approach, select theatres of operations, or avoid casualties altogether through a strategy of deterrence. Battle plans, on the other hand, require a more specific list of targets, procedures, timetables, force concentrations, tactical maneuvers, and more. In short: the art of the general consists of creating a framework for decision-making, which then serves as the underlying logic for the allocation and scheduling of (human and material) resources during specific operational contexts.

In Philanthropy

Funders in the social sector face a long list of options before they can even fathom making a meaningful contribution to society.  Since doing strategy is an exercise in deciding what to do and what not to do – an important decision for cash-strapped and affluent philanthropic players alike – the quest for impact does not begin with the design of innovative programs and success criteria (that’s putting the cart before the horse), but by determining the broad parameters of effective giving. This could include choosing your focus area(s); an appropriate vehicle for your philanthropy; to ‘spend-down’ or operate in perpetuity; your geographic scope of operations; whether to act alone or in collaboration with partners, who, in turn, require careful selection and vetting; your appetite for risk (e.g., choosing to fund early-stage ventures or household names); and the list continues. Once you’ve solidified your base, let’s say by choosing to operate as a private foundation that supports conservation and environmental efforts in the Pacific Northwest by partnering with a consortium of indigenous groups through general support grants and the establishment of intermediary organizations, then and only then does it make sense to set more specific (and quantifiable!) outcomes and grantmaking targets, as well as values, behaviours, and processes that underpin them.

Through Time And Space

The most valuable communication advice I've ever been given and still heed to this day goes something like this: If you can’t explain difficult concepts in simple terms, neither you nor your audience are likely to understand them.

A quick Google search confirms that this was not an original tip – free ones rarely are. Public relations specialists, business leaders, moral philosophers, and physicists have all been preaching the importance of translating complex ideas into accessible language for many years. But understanding the need to abandon our innate complexity bias and actually doing so aren't just opposite sides of the same coin. They're different coins altogether.

I learned this the hard way when I tried to breathe some life and clarity into a concept that has not only gripped my attention but exerted an ironclad stranglehold over it: thinking in time.

The concept of “thinking in time” is borrowed from the work of the same name by historians Richard Neustadt and Ernest May, who made a powerful case for the professional use of hindsight “to stimulate imagination” during policy- and decision-making processes. For me, thinking in time, or temporal thinking, holds allure because it transcends the traditional boundaries of academic history and management thinking alike.

Here's a very relatable situation that everyone has encountered at some point in their professional careers or personal lives. I’d wager some of us even experienced it this very week:

You're sitting in front of your computer and suddenly an email arrives in your inbox. Against your better judgment you stop your current task to get that pesky unread email off your plate as soon as possible. You open it, start reading, and after only a few words in, red-hot anger begins building inside: you're the recipient of a rude email.

Damage done.

It's the next step that defines what kind of person or co-worker you are. Should you give in to temptation and respond in kind, and possibly escalate the situation? We all have done it and regretted it afterwards.

The wiser move is to give the situation “time and space,” as the title of this article suggests. Removing yourself physically and mentally from the object of your ire almost always results in a more carefully calibrated and well thought out response upon your return. With your prefrontal cortex back in charge, you're able to regulate your emotions and process information in a rational manner. 

But there's another reason why this strategy works. By stepping back from the problem at hand, you are able to cast forward in time and weigh the likely consequences of your actions (future) in the context of the event that precipitated the email and the relationships involved (past) and the reactions it has now provoked (present). 

This is temporal thinking, and it can help leaders faced with much graver challenges than an unwelcome e-mail, whether it's guiding a country's post-pandemic recovery, or future-proofing an organization against predictable or unpredictable bouts of uncertainty.

"Time and space" can not only help decision makers rise above the narrow confines of their own lives and relate with compassion and awareness to their constituents and environments (present). It can also reveal the origins of the challenge at hand (past) and the likely implications of the decisions they take to address it (future).

Of course, unless the leader or those they rely on for advice are already trained in the art of temporal thinking – and very few of them are – they'd benefit from having a guided tour through time and space.

Chester & Fourth has yet to crack the formula for actual time travel, but our services can help leaders understand critical business issues more comprehensively, and respond to them with agility, grace, and good judgment. And when the pressures of the moment have passed, we offer direction on how the same problem-solving techniques can become embedded outside the C-Suite, allowing temporal thinking to become your organization's next strategic capability.

Then And Now

As an organizational consultant and scholar, I am used to holding up a mirror to firms and their own performance and culture, so that they can have a better grasp on their identity and learn from past successes and failures.

Like people, organizations evolve and are in a constant state of flux. Over the course of their lives, they go through different developmental stages and cultivate different personas and attributes.

This is not a phenomenon reserved for established companies that have been in business for decades, sometimes centuries. In the fast-moving and action-packed world of the 21st century, where frequent disruptions are common and the art of the pivot has become a must-have leadership skill, a single year can often feel like ten.

Industry incumbents and new entrants alike are therefore wise to make internal benchmarking a more regular practice – if only to ensure that reacting to markets and competitors is not the only trick they have up their sleeves when formulating a successful differentiation strategy.

Holding up the mirror to my own start-up experience of the past 12 months has been equally enlightening. 

When I introduced my business in January 2021, I described my service as follows:

“Chester & Fourth assembles small teams of out-of-the-box thinkers and strategists, who have carved out meaningful careers across a wide range of industries and disciplines but have in common a desire to effect positive change beyond their everyday roles, and unlocks their innovative potential with the help of interactive brainstorming retreats.”

After spending the better part of 2021 garnering stakeholder feedback and studying the latest industry trends, I have kept Chester & Fourth’s core identity intact – that of an idea incubator – but significantly expanded my innovation management service offerings.

I also came to the realization that some organizations want more than a temporary infusion of ideas and expertise to overcome obstacles.

To create a more permanent source of creativity and innovation for clients, I looked to my decade-long consulting background to develop an evidence-driven change management process that introduces organizations and their employees to a new way of thinking.

Below I have captured Chester & Fourth’s services as of January 2022, a far cry from the initial value proposition offered all this time ago...

But as the world is slowly learning the Greek alphabet, while simultaneously attempting to contain an endless series of geopolitical, macroeconomic, sociocultural, environmental and technological threats, I have no doubt that January 2023 might once again look very different.

All Good Things Come In Threes

In 1972, NBC began airing a new children’s game show as part of their Saturday morning line-up called Runaround. The format of the show was simple. 9 children had to answer multiple choice questions by running towards three doors, each displaying a possible answer to the question. To prevent the contestants from chasing each other and copying answers, the show host would ask them to ‘runaround’ or jump between the three marked answer areas in front of each door until the last possible moment. When time expired, every contestant had to have chosen an area and stand still. The door with the right answer would subsequently light up, permitting players with the correct answer to pick a ball from a large bowl in the middle of the stage and place them in a translucent tube that kept their score. Whoever had the most balls in their tube by the end of the show was declared the winner and won a prize.

 Runaround only lasted for 1 season and 13 episodes in the United States and was cancelled in 1973. Like many of the United States’ successful and unsuccessful cultural experiments, the show was exported across the Atlantic and found slightly more success in Britain, where it ran for 100 episodes between 1975-1981. Yet whereas English-language TV audiences had perhaps a difficult time warming up to the concept of pitting children against one another in a contest of wit and endurance, the show has remained an absolute hit in Germany since it first aired in 1977.

 The success and longevity of 1, 2 oder 3 (“Eins, Zwei oder Drei”), as the show is known to German speakers, may also be due to an element of inter-European rivalry that the British and US versions lacked. The 9 contestants are split up evenly into three teams, representing Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, where the show is simultaneously broadcasted by the countries’ public TV stations.

What remained consistent throughout the various versions of the show was the emphasis on the number 3: contestants had to choose between three – no more, no less – options when answering questions.

When I experienced my 30 minutes of child ‘stardom’ as a contestant and winner for team Germany in 2000, I think my brain was permanently altered to think in patterns of threes. Turns out I am not the only one.

Human brains are hardwired to look for patterns. Three (‘3’) is merely the smallest number of elements that can form a pattern. What I did not realize until it was time to think of a new and final 2021 Insights piece for Chester & Fourth was just how pervasive, entrenched, and omnipresent the number 3 was both in my service offerings and human society more generally.

Outfitting my website with different representations and symbolisms of the number 3 was not a premeditated move. It just happened. It seems that we are all, to some extent, neurologically and culturally adapted to the number 3. Let’s take a look at some examples.

 Omne Trium Perfectum.

 For those of you who did not have to suffer through Latin lessons in high school, the phrase translates to, “Everything that comes in threes is perfect.” 3 is considered a perfect or lucky number by ancient Greek philosophers and Chinese numerologists alike. And it is easy to see why. Three perfectly encapsulates the stages of human existence (birth, life, and death) and even time itself (past, present, and future). Entire societies were (are?) divided into three different classes. In France’s ancien régime, for example, individuals belonged to one of three estates (clergy, nobility, and commoners). The Mayan counting system, one of the most sophisticated mathematical systems ever developed in the Americas, required exactly three symbols to function.

Not convincing enough? Okay. Earth is the third planet from the sun. The universe as we know it, once we ignore Albert Einstein’s variable of time and Facebook’s metaverse ambitions, has to abide by a three-dimensional playbook (width, depth, and height), and even atoms are made up of three basic particles (protons, electrons, and neutrons).

 Storytelling, the backbone of human civilization and social cooperation, traditionally uses a tripartite structure, featuring a beginning, middle, and end. How many musketeers were there, and how many days did Rumpelstiltskin give the queen to figure out his name? Yes, you guessed it, 3. Despite J.R.R. Tolkien’s depiction of Hobbit eating habits and my own generation’s endearment with brunch, we typically eat three times a day during breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The chorus of songs is usually sung three times and famous operas, like Puccini’s Tosca, have three acts. In sports, we award Olympic winners gold, silver, and bronze medals for their achievements. In hockey or football, we give special recognition to players who score three goals in a single game, a hat-trick. Ever since the Boston Celtics and the Miami Heat’s successful player trades, other NBA team have tried to create their own ‘Big Three’ in pursuit of a championship.

Equally well-documented is the centrality of the number 3 in Abrahamic religions. Islam has the three holy cities of Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem. The trinity of the father, son and holy spirit is one of the foundational beliefs of Christian doctrine. The Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh (an acronym), is divided into three parts. Even in polytheistic belief systems, 3 makes repeated appearances. In Greek mythology, it was Cerberus, a three-headed dog, who guarded the entrance to Hades (hell).

3 is also fundamental to the way we teach and communicate with each other. The English language is littered with such examples. “Third time’s the charm,” “One, two, three… Go!” or “Blood, sweat and tears” come to mind as means of emphasis, ordering, and persuasion. One of the most memorable phrases of the US Declaration of Independence is “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness,” not least because people remember concepts better when they are grouped in threes. When we orient ourselves, we use triangulation, and when you ask architects which shape they count among their favourites, it would be the triangle.

These examples are just the tip of the iceberg, but my main point should be abundantly clear by now: the number 3 played, and continues to play, an outsize role in the way humans conceptualize the world around them, whether in business or elsewhere. The famous Swiss psychologist Carl Jung offered the best explanation for why we are so drawn to this magical number: “Every tension of opposites culminates in a release, out of which comes the ‘third’. In the third, the tension is resolved and the lost unity is restored.” As we are about to enter the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic, it may be worth paying closer attention to patterns that influence us all…

Putting the Strategic back into Strategic Management

Despite its youthful, post-World War II origins, strategic management is as firmly established of a field of study as they come. So much so, that business school enrolments surpass those of many traditional academic disciplines by a long shot.

Management scholars have, since the 1950s, produced a steady stream of theories, concepts, models and frameworks to help aspiring and practicing business leaders keep their organizations afloat and ahead of the competition. While the foci of their efforts may have evolved over time – from process optimization, planning, positioning, competitive advantage to strategic innovation – the underlying truism of ‘adapt or die’ has not.

For strategic management to be effective and value-adding in the 21st century, three conditions have to be met: it has to be evidence-driven; it has to occur episodically; and, under the rediscovered rules of stakeholder capitalism, short-term gains have to be subservient to long-term impact.

Concerns about sustainable business practices and socially responsible investments have drastically increased the time horizons of some strategies, casting their desired outcomes much further into the future than ever before. This, naturally, requires foresight: strategic foresight and strategic planning now go hand in hand, which has proven to be a great boon for those specialized in anticipating and building plausible or entirely imagined visions of the future to support executive decision making.

But sustainable strategic management cannot be one-dimensional. Its pendulum does not only swing forth – it also has to swing back. A holistic approach to business strategy needs to take into account to what strategic hindsight practitioners commonly refer as organizational experience.

This is not the experience Boston Consulting Group (BCG) founder Bruce Henderson and Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter wrote about in their respective treatises on cost behaviour and structural determinants of industry attractiveness. It is the kind of experience that first rose to prominence with the works of business historian Alfred D. Chandler Jr, who used history to gain a better understanding of an organization’s evolutionary path.

Simply put, organizational experience is the biography of an enterprise in its totality, in all its flattering and unflattering glory. And like all good biographies, it is a story that has to be told within the context of wider exogenous currents in order to escape the narrow confines of its own life.

This definition comes with two important stipulations: For organizational experience to be useful it cannot, or at least should not, be autobiographical; its usefulness must not be weighed by company insiders alone.

Second, and contrary to what one might expect, harnessing organizational experience is not an intuitive skill, a gut feeling, that only company ‘lifers’ come to possess. It requires systematic analysis involving a wide range of qualitative and quantitative data – far beyond the scope of business records that companies are legally required to retain.

Looking to the past is not an exercise in nostalgia but a crucial first step when developing a long-range outlook that sees through the fog of quarterly pressures. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has given this argument renewed urgency.

To prevent company leaders from cycling aimlessly through the assessment and decision-making stages of a generic strategic management process, the historically determined parameters and boundaries of the firm – start-ups and large, established companies alike – should be at the forefront of everyone’s mind. Seeking transformation without adequate information is, after all, one of the leading causes for companies that struggle to keep their identity and vision aligned.

Strategic management that is anchored in the realities of both the past and the present allows companies to steer clear of strategy theater: box-ticking exercises that disguise as thought-provoking pastimes for those involved but are otherwise detached from enterprise capabilities and stakeholder interests. A firm grasp on their own organizational experience allows mission-driven companies to chart a path that is uniquely suited to them, not others.  

4 WAYS TO HELP INNOVATION-DRIVEN ORGANIZATIONS THRIVE

The benefits of open innovation have become far too numerous for even the most stubborn companies to ignore.

Widening the pool for value creation beyond traditional corporate boundaries and engaging with audiences who are not your own employees has resulted in tangible and very lucrative returns for some of the world’s most valuable brands. Just ask the French multinational insurance firm, AXA, the global logistics provider, DHL, or the world’s leading toymaker and perennial RepTrak leader, LEGO, about their own successful experiments with open innovation and you cannot help but walk away convinced.

For every success story we hear, however, there is bound to be a matching, or perhaps even a much greater, number of failures that escape notice. Failures or ‘flops’ that found their way into the public spotlight should serve as a stern reminder and warning sign to all those who have come to adopt too uncritical and optimistic of a stance on open innovation practices.

Buoyed by earlier successes with open innovation, soft drink brand Mountain Dew fell flat on its face in 2012 when its ‘Dub the Dew’ campaign generated a leaderboard of new product names that would have turned the stomachs of even the most liberal-minded censorship office. Henkel, a German chemical and consumer goods giant, too, experienced the limits of co-creation when a crowdsourcing effort created a “chicken-flavoured” dish soap design.

Naming contests that were hijacked or ended badly are, of course, just one example of the pitfalls that may come along with broadcasting your innovation challenges to a wider audience. In addition to attracting the wrong kind of talent, poor coordination, lack of participation and commitment, mounting costs, missing C-suite buy-in, intellectual property concerns or inadequate software solutions can cause diminishing returns for organizations involved in open innovation.

Despite these and other challenges that open innovation poses, a return to the silo mentality of closed innovation models is not advisable – not if your goal is to maintain or achieve a competitive advantage. To better manage the risks involved in the solicitation of outside knowledge, Chester & Fourth can offer relief to innovation-driven organizations in 4 important ways:  

1. Launch an Exploratory Mission

The problem with open innovation is that once it takes off, it is hard to stop. And due to the visibility of the exercise, involving stakeholders who might not be bound by the same NDA requirements as your employees, premature termination or lackluster outcomes are bound to raise some question marks about your ability to innovate.  

Chester & Fourth’s retreats offer a risk-free glimpse into the potential future return on investment (ROI) of a large-scale open innovation campaign.  

2. Be Strategic about Complex Challenges

There will come a time when the innovation challenge you are about to broadcast requires ideas from adjacent or unrelated industries but is simply too complex and important to leave in the hands of the many.

Chester & Fourth harnesses proven practices from the worlds of design, strategy, and research to produce evidence-based and experience-driven results that rise to the challenge.

3. Introduce a Control Group

Whether you should choose to fill your innovation funnels with ideas from your employees, customers, or individuals completely removed from the ecosystem you inhabit, you do not want to wait until the later stages of the innovation management process to introduce proper checks and balances.

The results from Chester & Fourth’s idea generation projects can be added to the innovation funnel alongside other inflows of knowledge and serve as a vital, cost-saving quality assurance tool at the start of your innovation journey.

4. Take Recycling Seriously  

Entrepreneurial strategy maps allow for the creation of several business models from the same innovative idea. Organizations would be wise to adopt a similar logic when they reach the end of a successful (or unsuccessful) innovation project.

Chester & Fourth offers a rigorous post-mortem assessment of your innovation journey to identify those ideas that may have been the wrong fit at the time but could serve as valuable fuel for future innovation programs.

What Exactly is an Idea Incubator?

When entrepreneurs navigate the formative stages of a new business, they invariably prioritize some aspects over others. For me it was important to land on a name that has personal meaning, a background story that resonates because it has been shaped by real-life events, and a service offering that embraces open innovation and design thinking.

Once the essentials for an interesting elevator pitch were in place, I turned my attention to an even more vital task. In 2020 I was introduced to an uncomplicated but powerful mnemonic by Professor Constantinos Markides that every strategist should master in order to create and capture value: the who/what/how framework.

To distinguish one’s business model from the competition, three simple questions have to be answered:

• Who are the customers?

• What is it that you sell to your customers?

• How do you plan to make money?

The challenge I posed to myself was to convey all the information needed to answer these questions in five words or less. I ultimately settled on international idea incubator.

To be perfectly candid, Chester & Fourth shows little resemblance to traditional business incubators (see definitions here and here), which are present in nearly every imaginable industry. If we stretched the definition, and our own self-importance, to the utmost maximum, I could say that we, too, provide advisory and networking services to startups and early-stage companies, among others, and that our main goal is to see organizations succeed. But that’s beside the point.

The innovation labs I took notice of were firmly situated within, or functioned as extensions to, large companies. Prominent in-house incubators that may come to mind are Bell Labs, IBM, Cisco, Walgreens, Google, Lufthansa, Nestle, and the very long list continues.

Generally speaking, companies can pick from a number of menu options to complement traditional brick and mortar R&D activities. Internal and external innovation capability can be boosted by means of incubators, accelerators, corporate venture capital, or M&A.

A company that has done particularly well in finding innovation outside its own corporate walls is consumer products giant Proctor & Gamble. At least by the start of the new millennium, P&G realized that its invent-it-ourselves innovation model was no longer up to the task of producing consistent growth. Under new CEO, A.G. Lafley, P&G introduced an external partnership program, Connect + Develop, which remains operational to this very day, alongside some of P&G’s other open innovation initiatives, such as P&G Ventures and Signal P&G.

Mobilizing external stakeholders as co-creators in the innovation process is what Chester & Fourth is all about. But since not every organization has P&G’s resources, and monopolies of any kind can stifle innovation, we aim to be the coordinating mechanism for multi-stakeholder input for a new generation of innovative enterprises.

Classifying Chester & Fourth as an incubator works for another reason. Some companies still forget the golden rule of business: treat your customers and employees (or in our case, consultants) well.

This rule is frequently tossed out of the window when companies enter the gig economy. When I was perusing the management literature on innovation, I came across a definition by Robert Howard that stuck: “An idea incubator is an inhouse program that provides a safe harbor where ideas from employees throughout the organization can be developed without interference from company bureaucracy or politics.”

With Chester & Fourth, I expanded on the concept of a “safe harbor” for idea generation within a single company by creating a similar environment for professionals from many different organizations from around the world. Why else would I have named our service offering a retreat?

A Technique for Producing Ideas

Let’s talk about ideas.

What are they? What role do they play in our everyday lives? And, most importantly, is there a secret formula for generating them?

The etymology of the word makes plain that its current use, outside of philosophical circles, has lost a great deal of complexity and intellectual sophistication. Gone are the days filled with discussions about ill-lit caves and French mental imagery.

In my narrowly defined version, ideas are the necessary ingredient to bridge the gap between a problem and a solution. They spring from our imagination, our minds: they can be created consciously, other times they come to us when we least expect them.

Both professionally and privately we place a premium on those around us who come up with good ideas quickly. Since we’ve forgotten or ignored the evolution of the concept altogether, having original ideas is inextricably linked or synonymous with intelligence, creativity and innovation.

Our very human obsession with finding the next big idea drives progress and fuels competition. But is there a process, a method, possibly even an algorithm, that can lead us to the promised land of infinite answers?

Some companies would have us believe that their service offerings can achieve just that.

Yet marketing stunts and competitive positioning aside, there’s something to be said about the exercise of trying to standardize the idea-creation process.

One person, who devoted serious attention to this question over the course of his illustrious career as an advertising guru, was James Webb Young. Without any formal higher education to speak of, Young became, in 1931, the first professor of advertising and business history at the University of Chicago. Ever the consultant, Young also held positions with J. Walter Thompson, the Economic Cooperation Administration, and the Ford Foundation, among many others.

In 1965 Young published his seminal work, A Technique for Producing Ideas, which, as the back cover suggests, has since “helped thousands of advertising copywriters smash through internal barriers to unleash their creativity.”

More than fifty years later, the crossover appeal of his work remains undeniable.

According to Young, an idea is "nothing more nor less than a new combination of old elements.” And this “capacity to bring old elements into new combinations depends largely on the ability to see relationships.”

(It is easy to see why Young’s work has the potential to inspire a loyal following among humanities and social sciences graduates.)

Young asks his readers to keep these two principles in mind when he, finally, presents his five-step procedure for producing ideas:

1.  Data Collection: During this initial stage, Young emphasizes the collection of not just (product-)specific materials, but also the accumulation of general knowledge. More on this later.

2.  The Digestive Process: The gathered materials, the different pieces of the puzzle, have to be examined and “felt.” At the end of this stage, Young expects us to feel drained and that “everything is a jumble in your mind.”

3.  Distraction: During this third and probably most crucial stage, Young implores us to step away from the subject altogether in order to let the unconscious take over the creative process.

4.  The Eureka Moment: If the rules of the first three stages were obeyed to the letter, Young expects a new idea to appear. “It will,” he argues, “emerge when you are least expecting it – while shaving, or bathing or most often when you are half awake in the morning…”

5.  Real-Life Application: In the final instance, Young wants us to take our newly-born idea out into the world of reality, and to submit it to the “criticism of the judicious.”

The ingenuity of Young’s work lies in its simplicity. Whoever studies it walks away thinking, ‘I’ve done some of these things before.’ And chances are they actually have.

Despite, or perhaps because of, its simplicity, the five-stage model works.

It works because it

• puts people – not machines or machine-like thinking – in the driver’s seat of innovation;

• promotes temporal thinking;

• endorses ideas big and small;

• recognizes that all knowledge and experiences matter – whether reading a subject- specific book or travelling the world;

• stresses the importance of taking a break.

The last point has left the biggest impression on me personally. Stepping away from a problem when I’m stuck or mentally drained isn’t my strong suit. More often than not, I kept chipping away at it until it was time to go home.

Avoid digging your heels in next time this happens and let the matter rest for a day or several days, and trust your unconscious to do the heavy lifting. You might be pleasantly surprised.