Three Stories
Each insight or question pointed toward where to go next
The following stories illustrate how three executives experienced the application of Insight Thinking within their organizations.
Product Development Lead-time Reduction
Kate, the seasoned and street-smart senior VP of operations of a multi-billion-dollar consumer goods company, was explaining with engineering precision why it was not possible to shorten their 24-month-plus product development process. She carefully outlined how her team of highly qualified engineers had been working on this for a "long, long time" and had at best been able to shave a month or so off the timeline each year. After all, this was complicated stuff - especially given the precision required for such a high-speed manufacturing system. That was the way the world was. If anyone should know how to do this well, as the industry leader, this crew should.
With a little encouragement, Kate began trying some flow thinking to surface new perspectives on this well-worn topic. The conversation started with a very familiar "been there, done that" feeling, but within minutes, Kate was starting to get curious. "Yes, 24 months seems long. After all, auto companies more or less re-engineer a car in that period." "You know, now that we're talking about this, each time we introduce a new model, we modify or rebuild the same production line. We ought to be able to do that quicker - we know those machines really well." "Why is that?" For the next 90 minutes Kate didn't really try to resolve any of her own or our questions. Despite her left-brained orientation and problem-solving drive, she seemed content to reflect and just roll them around in her mind - in a curious, but calm and reflective, sort of way. Contrary to her normal style, she seemed quite content to remain open and unresolved while she began to enjoy uncovering questions for which she didn't know the answers. The conversation began to take on the feel of an exploratory adventure rather than an analytical debate. Each insight or question pointed toward where to go next . The meeting ended, leaving Kate with a rather large, intriguing, and enjoyable intellectual itch to scratch.
As she returned to her day-to-day activities, Kate started to strike up conversations with key members of her team, specifically, those who were responsible for product development. Rather than harangue them or set them a new challenge, she stayed in her curious contemplative state of mind and soon they spontaneously followed suit with a slow-burn conversation among themselves about the topic. Again, the dialogue carried the feeling of intrigue and curiosity rather than the habitual pressure to solve a problem. Within a few weeks, Kate's team approached her with a concrete plan to reduce the process to 11 months. They weren't really "asking" Kate for the OK and they weren't really solving her problem; they were solving theirs. What was needed had become commonsensical, obvious, and clearly part of their current responsibilities - so much so that executive approval was unnecessary. Nine months later they're on track and when finished, will have generated a once off $100-million improvement in earnings.
Streamlining R&D Budget-setting
It was time for the annual quarter-billion-dollar R&D budget "wrestling match." Three experienced business unit leaders and Joe, the head of a world-class R&D organization, all of whom had acquired skill in Insight Thinking through an earlier project, found themselves in "déjà vu city" as they did every year. The usual drill was that each business would have submitted its research needs (which Joe's team would have converted into specific programs), estimated their cost, and added them up to the "this is what the businesses need to spend on R&D this year" figure. This was then compared to the R&D budget spending target set by the executive committee, of which all four leaders were long-term members. Predictably, every year the sum of the needs exceeded the target spending amount thereby provoking the annual wrestling match. First, each business leader would eloquently argue that his or her program was the most valuable and should be maintained. When this failed to solve the gridlock, all three of the leaders would turn on Joe and politely but forcefully berate him for not meeting their program needs at lower cost. Phrases such as "improved productivity" and "more aggressive outsourcing" would be added to the mêlée, followed by extensive analytics, horse trading, and "win-lose" discussions. These would grind on, sometimes for as long as six months, until the CEO's 11 th -hour arbitration just before budgets were finalized.
This year, much to their surprise and with their newly acquired Insight Thinking skills, the four of them found themselves having a very different meeting. They seemed to be more interested in each other's programs. They found themselves volunteering reductions - "you know, my business is not going to know if we need this program for six months. By then, I'm sure one of our other product targets will have failed a stage-gate and we can re-allocate the money if we need it." The meeting lasted a little over an hour and they emerged with a balanced budget, which required only minimal subsequent adjustments. They also emerged somewhat amazed - it had taken only one meeting and had been effortless. No apparent compromises had been made and as far as they could tell, they had reached the best collective decisions for the business - a pure professional and personal delight for all four.
Solving an Intractable Strategic Issue
It was the first strategy review meeting in three years for the executive team of a subsidiary of a Fortune 50 company. Three years prior, they had had launched an aggressive Asia strategy. First they had effectively shut down most of the fragmented and disruptive local producers and built their own state-of-the-art facility. Although a classical "Western" tactic, it had failed to work, despite their position as the world leader in this industry. Overnight, almost all of the local producers sprung up again with new plants financed without much regard to normal Western economics. The logical response was to try to control the demand side of the industry by forming a joint venture with the largest regional consumer. While this worked in the short term, within one year their new partner had struck an equivalent deal with their main global rival.
Steve, the well-established CEO of a global food ingredients business, had realized that their Asia strategy was failing. He was also clear that continuing to think about the problem in the same way as they had for three years was unlikely to solve it adequately. In his words, "we need to think about this differently in the face of so much old and embedded thought." A team was assembled from around the world for a three-day meeting to explore what to do next. Although "solving the problem" was suggested as a potential outcome, almost everyone in the team felt this was unrealistic. After all, they were the global leader in this business; if they had not been able to solve it in three years, three days was hardly going to be enough! After a day of exposure to Insight Thinking, they started to explore the problem in earnest on the second day. Much to everyone's surprise, three hours into the meeting, a striking insight occurred to the team. As it was explored, it became clear that this was their best chance, to date, to fix the strategic issue. What also emerged was the recognition that the "Asia problem" was also a fatal flaw in some 40% of their global business.
The breakthrough "Aha!" quickly gave way to concern that this was all too simple and that the executive board, which had sponsored the initiative, would not support their solution. They therefore spent the remainder of the three days looking for holes below the water line - anything that could show this was a bad solution. When none was found, the team agreed rather tentatively to take the plan to the board and to socialize it gently with Research, Marketing, and Engineering, the three different functions in the company that would be responsible for implementation. Much to the team's amazement, the board thought the solution was spectacular in its simplicity and effectiveness. Likewise, the future functional owners thought it was just what was needed. This groundswell of support led to the creation of a Design-for-Six-Sigma project to implement the solution. Nine months on, this is one of the company's most successful projects to date. It is expected to yield $700-$800 million of Net Present Value during the next 20 years (excluding a terminal value). In addition, it is revitalizing 40% of the business, financially and in terms of organizational motivation. Prior to this solution, this area of the business had been viewed as the "harvest" or cash cow part that had all the troubles. Now, they have a concrete plan to fix their issues. As one of the project owners told us recently, "we went from having 60 people worrying about this part of the business all the time, to having 10 people actually work on a valid solution." In Steve's eyes, the motivational impact was almost more important than the financial one.
In different ways, these stories illustrate the immense power of a striking new thought arriving at the right moment
Flow thinking is a process we teach (in 10 minutes) for discussing a problem or subject using only fresh thoughts rather than memory thoughts (thoughts which have been used and spoken previously). It provokes a flood of new ideas, rests the brain, and generally produces novel perspectives on the situation.
