Either-Or Thinking Doesn't Work -- Operations -- Innovation

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Either-Or Thinking Doesn't Work

Operational efficiency and creativity both play a part in business success.

In my last column I wrote about the concept of convergence as it relates to the integration of business-excellence tools and approaches: Lean, Six Sigma, Design for Six Sigma and Innovation. Since then, I read an interesting Harvard Business Review article, titled "How Successful Leaders Think" (June 2007). In it, the author focuses on the central idea of the "opposable mind," making an analogy to the profoundly primate trait of the opposable thumb. Essentially, an opposable mind can use integrative thinking to adeptly combine two seemingly competing ideas into a higher-order idea, or solution. This column is about how essential this integrative thinking is to successful businesses.

There has been some debate in the mass media about efficiency versus creativity as a strategy for business success. A recent Business Week cover article titled, "At 3M, A Struggle Between Efficiency and Creativity," pits the more blue-ocean approach of 3M's current CEO, George Buckley, against the more operationally focused approach of his predecessor, Jim McNerney. The article suggests that at 3M, efficiency diminished innovation, and perhaps, vice versa.

In reality there is no battle between efficiency and innovation at 3M or at any thriving, well-run business. These seemingly opposable ideas are applied by great integrative thinkers at successful corporations around the world, including at 3M. Integrative thinkers, and great leaders, rise above the apparent contradiction and manage it skillfully as a paradox to be embraced.

We know that organizational success requires structure, systems, repeatable processes and predictable operations. Therefore, if your company doesn't have a strong Lean and/or Six Sigma capability, you'll probably struggle quite a bit. Variation will be high, defects and errors will occur and you'll spend an inordinate amount of time fixing problems and fighting fires.

Success also requires innovation, creativity, imagination and new ideas. If you're not figuring out how to make what you do obsolete, or figuring out how to leapfrog your competitors, then it is likely that they will out-figure and leapfrog you.

McNerney inherited a company whose stock and performance had suffered for a long time, especially in the late 1990s when nearly every company had a boon. Given this, the best opportunity was to get with the Six Sigma program and root out waste and inefficiency, and the results were quite effective, as 3M's stock recovered impressively. Now, with the operational house in order, Buckley is focusing 3M's idea and innovation culture, and he is empowering the organization to do a little more dreaming and a little less analyzing.

The key is that Buckley is not doing this at the expense of Six Sigma, as that program seems to still be thriving at 3M. Why wouldn't it? Any opposable or ambidextrous thinker knows that business success is not a product of innovation or Six Sigma; it's about managing both in the right ways at the right times.

At the root, all of business boils down to problem solving. That is to say that a business doesn't even exist if it doesn't have a customer who is willing to pay for a solution to a problem. "I need food" is a problem solved by going to a restaurant or grocery store. "I need a break" is a problem solved by taking a vacation or going on a cruise.

Six Sigma at its core is a problem-solving methodology, just like innovation at its core is also about problem solving. No company should be pursuing the next Post-it® note unless it's already identified a customer with a problem that the Post-it® note solves. It's easy to cite the Post-It® note as a great success in hindsight, but at the time it was developed, the adhesive used to make it sat on the shelves for years until one day someone realized a customer had a problem.

Some problems are related to constantly improving and optimizing the business and its processes, while others are related to growing the business and creating new products and processes. Imbalance will only result in trouble for any business. But an integrative approach maximizes the chances of success. It is an important point -- and one well-taken by 3M and many winning management teams.

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