The Innovation Room E20 - Innovating Around What’s Pivotal with Stephen Shapiro

Hello and welcome back to the Innovation Room, a podcast where we get to sit down and talk with researchers, authors, leaders, innovators, and a bunch of other fascinating people about the tools, strategies and tactics for taking our innovation efforts further. This episode is brought to you by Hype Innovation. And I'm Colin Nelson, your host of today's episode. I'm delighted to be joined by Steven Shapiro by means of introduction. Steven started his innovation work over 25 years ago while while founding and leading Accenture's 20,000 person process and innovation practice. Since then, he's written seven books on innovation, including Best Practices are Stupid, which was named the best innovation and creativity book in 2011 by Porchlight. He was also an international number one bestseller. His next book and one I would like to dig into today. Creating Sustainability in an Uncertain World is scheduled to be published this summer. He's also the creator of Personality Poker, a card game used worldwide to develop the high performing innovation teams. Steven's presented in over 50 countries and in 2015 he was even inducted into the speaker hall of fame. So no further ado. Welcome Steven Shapiro. So thank you, Stephen, for joining us. Great to see you again. How are you today?

I'm doing fantastic and I'm looking forward to our conversation.

And I have to mention the color purple that's all over here. I mean, what's this about? This looks great.

So I always loved purple. I mean, it's interesting. When I was younger, I got a geode, so you've got to see a bunch of geodes that I have here. And so I always was fascinated by Amethyst. And so when it came time to do one of my books, solutions decided to go with the purple cover. And then we sort of carry that forward with like the reeds, they're stupid. Adding some purple. And my next book is purple. So everything I do now is gonna have some level of purple. And, and I think you'll appreciate this. I've also been told that purple is the color of innovation, so why not?

Absolutely. I'm delighted you shut up. Best Practices Stupid. Because that feels like something I've been saying for 15, 20 years. I remember when I first entered the innovation industry, people would say, I want to be like Apple, I want to be like P and G. And I would say, you do realize being like somebody else isn't very innovative and they wanted to try and learn what these best practices are, but in a very different organization. Now I'd love to start our conversation with a little bit of history. Now, I've known you A little while. But what I've never asked you is about your background and how you found yourself in the innovation industry. And I'm aware you obviously worked at Accenture for a while, but how did you end up being in this, in this space, in this industry which we all found so fascinating?

Yeah, and I sort of stumbled into it because when I got into innovation, it wasn't something that people were, you know, they weren't really talking about innovation. So what happened was in the early 90s, I was involved in, in something called business process reengineering. And I was one of the co leaders of our global practice around that I went around the world, helped companies basically optimize their processes. That's pretty much what we did. And the thing which I realized is that when companies optimize their processes, they tend to downsize the workforce. And look, I knew this was happening. I was doing this work for years. Didn't really think about it until one day, one of the projects I was working on, they announced 10,000 people lose their job. And again, it's a large number, but it didn't impact me the same way until I went into the hotel one night, I was watching a TV show about three executives from that client, the client that I was working with that day, three executives that lost their job the year before. And the first person was the most optimistic because he had an inheritance and was living off of that, but still didn't have a job. And again, these were executives. Second person cried the entire interview because he was mowing lawns just to put food on the table to feed his family. And the third person committed suicide. So I'm like, whoa, that's pretty heavy stuff. So I went back into the office, asked the client, was this true? They said, absolutely, it's true. And I walked off the project, took a leave of absence, actually. I looked to quit my job, but Accenture was kind enough to give me a six month leave of absence. Really thought about what I wanted to do and basically just sort of put a bow on the story as I decided. I liked what I was doing, but I didn't want to help companies shrink, I wanted to help them grow. And innovation wasn't a popular term back in 1995, but that's what I did. I focused on innovation. That's all I've done for almost three decades now.

Fantastic. And how did you start to learn about this subject? I mean, because it evolves and it evolves, evolves. It innovates itself. Where did you start that sort of learning Process.

First thing was I surrounded myself with a lot of really, really smart people. I think that always helps because a lot of people are going to have different perspectives. But the great thing is I had a huge Laboratory. We had 20,000 people in our process practice within Accenture. And so basically I was given that group and we created a day long program, Innovation. We rolled it out to all 20,000 people. We wrote a book. But then I would test concepts, what worked, what didn't work. And so a lot of my experience with innovation is less about being theoretical and studying and more about let's try this, did it work? Nope, that wasn't so great. Let's try this. And so we had this great laboratory to experiment and then that's really. Almost everything I've done has been through real world, hands on application.

I love that the best learnings come from the stuff that fails. As we always talk about in our industry. Do you remember anything that sort of particularly struck you? What was the biggest difference between what you expected and what, what you got? I always have this one story in my mind about expecting one thing and getting something radically different. You must have one as well, I.

Would say early on, because again, in the early 90s or mid-90s, it wasn't that popular. But I think most of us at that point collapsed innovation with either product development or they collapsed innovation with creativity. And what I realized is it's a cousin to both of them, but it's not the same thing. And especially in the world of creativity, one of the things which I've discovered is an overemphasis on creativity kills innovation. When we are so focused on just pure quantity of ideas and just the pure volume, like brainstorming. I'd be in a brainstorming session and people would be coming up with thousands of ideas, okay, what are you going to do with this? And I go, we don't know, but we feel good, we feel good, we're making progress. It's like, I don't think 1000 ideas that you're not going to implement any is progress. And that's really been my biggest learning is sort of realizing that it's not about quantity, it's about quality. And quality comes from identifying what is the real problem or opportunity that the organization needs to focus on. And how do we sort of reverse engineer solutions from that as opposed to sort of smoking a joint, looking at the stars and coming up with some wacky ideas, which is, I think, what a lot of people think innovation might be.

You're giving it boundaries, right? I mean, boundaries actually help foster this innovation, making it practical, feasible. It's so funny you say this resonates very strongly with experiences I've had. We just want as many as ideas as we possibly can. We want, we don't want any boundaries. There is no box. There's always a box. And it usually has a number on it, is what I often say, a number in a time period. So it sounds like that's where your initial ideas and your methodology started to formulate that trial and error. Trial and error. Trial and error, the approach you started to develop.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it started at Accenture. So when we launched the innovation practice, it was actually under the COVID of process, but it was really as a process practice, focused on innovation. So we rolled out something called Process Excellence Principles. And it was really just pretty amazing how we took a group that had no understanding of this. And within nine months we put 20,000 people through a full day training program. 40,000 people got copies of the book. And I still see people 20 years later, almost 30 years later, and they still remember the content, they remember the program, and many people still have the materials. Because it was that relevant. We focused on principles, not methodologies, but rather fundamental, timeless principles that will work 30 years ago and will hopefully still work 30 years from now.

Fantastic. Now, I first heard the name Steven Shapiro in reference to personality poker, and I think it was about 15 years ago, something of that realm. I was fascinated. Now, I've never actually had a chance to explore personality poker, so I would love to know more about it. Tell me a little bit about that particular approach you take.

Sure. So personality Poker is a card game that I developed close to 20 years ago now, but I didn't really commercialize it until the time that you're talking about 15 years ago. And basically what it is is it's a deck of cards. So you can see here, it's a deck of cards, suits, colors, numbers, like a regular deck of cards, but then there's also words. So there's like diplomatic card or the rational card or the empathetic card. And so there's 52 cards. And so the way the game works is people are dealt five random cards. And the goal of the game is to get five cards where the words best describe how you see yourself. And we go through a couple different rounds of trading and you trade basically trying to get rid of cards that don't describe you and collect cards that do describe you based on the words. And in the end you'll have five cards. You also Go through a process of gifting so that people can see how they are perceived by others, which is always a lot of fun. But here's the really fascinating thing is most personality tests, if you want to call it that, focus on who you are. The real value in personality poker is if you have five cards in your hand, there's a 95% chance that you are missing one suit from your hand. That's the insight. The suit you do not have in your hand tells you the person you need to work with. Because the suits relate to the step of the innovation process and the primary innovation style. And so, for example, when I play personality poker, I don't have any clubs in my hand. That's the organized, methodical, systematic person. I'm a disorganized mess. If you looked around, everything looks nice and neat inside the camera. Everywhere else, not so much.

Not so much.

So what happens is if you have that club card, let's just find a good club card here. I've got a deck here. Definitely not a perfectionist. So far away from that one you could possibly believe. But anyway, goal oriented. Like, I'm not goal oriented. I have a book called Goal Free Living. Okay, that tells you something about me. So my point is that you play this game. It's high energy. People are trading cards. You get to see how people perceive you, you get to see how you perceive yourself, but then you also get to see what's missing. And that's the whole goal, is you want to play to your strong suit, what you do best, but you also want to make sure that your team is playing with a full deck. And that means that not every person can be every single style all the time. So who can I talk to? Who do I part with? So since I don't have clubs, which are the organized, structured people, anytime I'm working on a project, the first person I bring on to my team is going to be a club, because that's who I need. And the numbers also have meaning. So actually what I really need is a low club. The low club is the person who likes the plans, the projects, the steps. I'd rather go see to the past. So I need that person who's going to drive me crazy. But they're very important.

So I love this.

We've been doing this now for 20 years. It's an absolute blast. It's one of the things I do that I think is probably the most fun.

It sounds fantastic and it really resonates with me in terms of what we're trying to do is pull different types of people into the innovation process. Right. I mean, you talk to the arch creatives, they're desperate to keep the finance people out of the equation because they don't want to have to talk numbers, they don't have to deal with business cases. And I said, no, hang on a minute. We need them involved very early. You know, we're very early because those, those insights, those challenges they give you, those are gonna be things that you're gonna have to solve anyway at some point. You might as well solve them early before it becomes a yes or no, fait accompli. So I love this idea of being more diverse in terms of the types of people that we bring into that innovation process. Because what we know is that teamwork, that diverse perspectives, they drive better solutions. And that's clearly what you've seen.

Yeah, I'll give you. This is. So the diamonds are the creatives. I don't know if you. It's the scattered card.

That's the one.

I basically like to stick that one on my forehead and say, okay, that's who I am.

Fantastic.

So, but look, if I'm going to be scattered, I need somebody who's not. And so the suits, the colors and numbers all have meaning. It's a great way to build a high performing team. But I think here's the important point is it's not just like saying, okay, I'm a creative, disorganized person, therefore I need to be with somebody who's organized and structured because we're going to fight. So the other part of the game, though, is also to have a deep appreciation for what the people who complement your hand bring to the table, why we need them, how to appreciate them, understand how they're going to drive us crazy, but also understand how we can actually forge a more solid relationship with those individuals to make sure that we're getting the most out of everybody's innate skills and gifts.

Yeah, I love that. Why are they bringing this to me rather than what are they bringing to me? That's the magic there. So you've written several books and you've got a new one coming out this summer. Pivotal, pivotal. Even creating stability in an uncertain world. Tell us about that. Sure.

So the pandemic was a time when pivoting is actually the. You know, many organizations said pivoting or pivot is the word of the year for 2020, but the concept of pivoting certainly predates that. It's been going on for decades in the world of business. We're always changing direction. The problem is, what I found is that in organizations, we're so enamored with the new that we forget what's now. We're so focused on what's next. We're not really focused on where we are today. And we're so focused on what does change that we're not as focused on what shouldn't change. And so when I've been working with my clients over the last. Since the last book, which came out four years ago, one of the things I saw over and over and over is just sort of this burnout, this confusion, this overwhelm, this worry with the number of, I'll call them bright shiny objects, the number of seeming opportunities that are often distractions. Now, it could have been the pandemic. It could have been supply chain issues, inflation, you know, recessionary worries. It could be AI. All of these things we need to ask ourselves, are they opportunities? Are they problems? Are there things we need to deal with and how do we get the greatest leverage? And so the whole point of pivotal is to. Instead of pivoting, which is sort of like spinning around in circles, being pivotal, the dictionary definition is to be of crucial importance. And that's really what I want my clients to be, is of crucial importance to their customers, to be of crucial importance to their employees, and also for employees to be of crucial importance to their employers. So once we start thinking about what makes us special, what are our innate gifts and talents and skills and differentiators as an organization, we can leverage that. So instead of changing direction, instead of pivoting, we double down on what's most important. So that's, in a nutshell, the essence of the new book.

So that implies, though we do quite a bit of work in thinking about what are our core competencies and assets, which I think is a question that not enough organizations really ask themselves. What are we good at versus what do we sell? Often not the same thing. Are you seeing that organization start to challenge themselves in terms of trying to understand what is that rich secret sauce?

Yeah. So a lot of organizations would be very product or service oriented. I sell this, I do this, I make that. And the reality is products and services can be replicated. They have a limited lifespan. I mean, our phones, let's face it, every year or more often, there's a new phone coming out. So if we're product centric, we're spinning. We're always having to see what's next. If we're capability focused, then we can figure out what it is that we can actually invest in that will give us future products, give us future services without having to completely reinvent them. So to me, the key distinction is what I would call. If you look at the work that people do inside of organizations, it falls into three different categories. And this is, I want to be clear before I describe this. These aren't departments, these aren't functions, these aren't people, these aren't jobs. These are activities. Every person in every department does a combination of all three. So you've got support. Support does not create customer value, but these are the ones that we need to use to create internal value. Payroll, you have to have a good payroll system. But investing in creating the world's best payroll system, as you know, would be a bad investment. It's the next two that get more interesting. Core are create customer value, but they're not the reason someone would do business with you. But they would be the reason someone does not do business with you. If you get it wrong, they're the table stakes. We have to get these right. And what I see way too often is organizations spending way, way, way too much time investing in those core activities, the table stakes, when in fact, the best strategies for those are either optimizing them or finding partners that do those particularly well. The goal is to actually focus most of your energy on differentiating work. The work that makes you special, that makes you unique, that makes you desirable. And you put all your energies there, you double down there. And basically the overarching mantra is to innovate where you differentiate, and then you find different strategies for everything else in your organization. And it's a simple concept, but when you really blow it out to the implications for the individuals, the teams, the organizations, the departments, it's really profound in terms of the impact it can make.

It's a completely different mindset, isn't it? And I think for leadership, it should be much more comfortable because they're under pressure to feel like, you say, I have to pivot, I have to pivot, I have a pivot. I don't know what's happening in the future. I have to be so agile that I don't even know which way I should be facing. What this says is actually, let's take a breath here, understand what on earth we're actually good at, what our core strengths are, and then let's say, double down on those. And then the other stuff can be the things that we change, but not the core, which is, I think, is a really interesting way of looking at it.

Yeah, absolutely.

So let me Let me take a look at some of the challenges that we face as innovators at the moment. You know, you work in the corporate world like I do you quite a bit. And I think this is a really interesting period. We've been through probably more disruptions in the last 15 years than any of us would have expected, be it boats stuck in the Suez Canal or the pandemic or credit crisis. And now we have wars in various different parts of the world as well. We've also got a massive pace of change, increase in terms of technology, which always seems to be driving, driving, driving a lot of different types of innovation activity. Where do you think the challenges are for corporate innovators specifically right now, today? What are those big, meaty things that they need to get right?

I think it comes back to what we were talking about related to pivotal, is that we need to first, and I love your word, just sort of pause, take a breath and figure out what do we do better than anyone else that the world values. And that's going to stand the test of time. If we can find those and invest in those, that's going to really give us some level of stability and sanity, which is, I think, what we need right now. And let's just take AI as an example. Everybody, as I suspect you've seen with your clients, AI is the buzzword. Everybody wants to use large language models and whatever versions of AI that they think is appropriate. And it's important and it's valuable. But coming back to my support, core and differentiating, I would argue that AI for most organizations is core and only core. It's not differentiating now. Maybe if you're the leader, you'll get a head start and it's differentiating today. But it's important to recognize that what's differentiating today is going to become core tomorrow. And so I see so many innovators and so many companies saying we need to change our strategy to become AI centric. And I'm like, look, yes, you need to leverage AI, but if your sole strategy becomes AI, you're a commodity now because everybody's doing AI. So it's really just getting that right that I think is so critical. And if you can just get clear on what's core and what's differentiating, just be able to really get clarity on that, that really will go a long way for any organization.

And I think it's getting away from that core product centricity thing, isn't it? This is what we sell, this is what we sell. This is what we provide to the market and actually looking at what underpins and makes you special and why people buy you, which is usually something quite different. You know, they might be attracted initially by the product, but the reason why they keep coming back is because of these other things and these other opportunities and these, you know, the way that they, you deal with it with an organization, your brand, your network, all of these other complementary pieces which may well make you special. And I think the organizations undervalue this, this area. So we talked about some of the challenges. What about the positives? What excites you about the innovation industry moving forward? What do you think are the big ticket items that we should be thinking about in terms of the get our juices flowing? Because we love being in this industry, don't we? We've been in it for decades. It's great fun. We're in front of the bleeding edge in every sector. What gets you excited about the next five to 10 years?

Look, I am excited about the role of AI. So even though I don't think it's differentiating for most organization, I think its potential is still exciting and massive and game changing at so many different levels. But then again, there's a lot of technologies that have that potential. So I'm excited about all that. But I think what really just it's recognizing that as we get deeper and deeper and deeper into technology, the importance of human beings I think is actually going to increase, not decrease. And if we can really embrace that and understand what it is that the technology can do for us, which then frees us up as human beings to do that next level, higher level of thinking, I think it's a very powerful time and it's an exciting time. And so when companies recognize that people will always be their greatest assets and with the right people, with the right capabilities, the right skills, they can invent whatever is needed next, I think that's just incredibly exciting.

And in some respects it's a little bit moving from the industrialized history to more of an information economy. It's no different than that. We use machines to take away those repetitive tasks, will use machines in the shape of AI to take away those boring repetitive tasks that actually people don't enjoy doing anyway. It frees them up, as you say, to use their time differently and to focus on the new and interesting and exciting future. Fantastic. Well, Stephen, tell my audience where they can find you. I mean, we've already referenced some of your books, but they want to learn more about your work. How would they find you online?

The easiest place is to go to Steves and if you don't know how to spell Shapiro just go to innovationinstigator.com that's another place that will just redirect to my website. Don't have to worry about spellings at that point but that's the best place. And if you want to learn about personality poker, that's personality poker.com but you'll find everything on my website.

I'm going to go and get that. It reminds me of playing strategic games with my 8 year old and my 12 year old and the 8 year old always kicks the 12 year old's ass through the negotiation process which I will find very amusing. Fantastic. Thank you ever so for your time today, Steve. It's a pleasure speaking with you as always. And yeah, looking forward to the next time.

Excellent. This was fun. I look forward to another time. Let's do it.

So that's everything from today's episode of the Innovation Room. Thank you so much for watching and listening. All the links and resources mentioned throughout this episode will be linked down in the show notes or the video description, depending on where you're listening. If you're listening on this on a podcast platform, please do leave a review or or if you watch on YouTube, consider subscribing. Leave us any comments, questions, ideas about the episode down below. We'd love to hear what you think. Thanks again for listening and thank you Steven Shapiro. We'll see you next time.