Naming Innovation 1

Morpheme – An Innovation Consultant helps Gavitech loosen up. A Naming Story.

Naming Innovation

A short story


“Dang! Drat… drat… double dang!” It was Tom, the hulking Canadian expat from MarComm. “Ever since Mads (Madhav) lost it, we’ve had to sit through these ridiculous sessions with that rat Trivedi. One of these days…”

Madhav, the next in line to be head of Sales here at Gavitech had to be admitted after an emergency last week. Acute nervous breakdown. Apparently the mounting targets just got to him. The powers that pee soon picked, Hanu Hunter Trivedi- head of H.R to help the rest of us ease stress without breaking stride. Hunter it seems has taken the task to heart. To make matters worse some bright spark had gone and gotten him a copy of Bono’s lateral thinking, and now he absolutely insists on trying out chapter after harrowing chapter on us.

Sandhya from the next cubicle ambled over. “Shit. That fucker had me doing bunny hops and musical chairs to Mambo on the day I decided to wear tights.”And that stupid albatross story”…: It was Maya, also from Marcomm. “What the hell does cannibalism have to do with ERP?” Sandy started to curse again. I caught Tom wincing and grinned. Tom used to be a lumberjack, but even he couldn’t hold a candle to these two. The yelling continued until I shouted for them to calm down. “C’mon, give him a break guys. He’s just trying to help out. He’s supposed to be H.R right?”

“Yeah I understand the company’s responsibility here” said Tom, “But he’s crucifying us!”

“There are alternatives!!”

Everyone shut up, stopped and turned. It was Weasles. Well, Waynad Putthukeril actually, but everyone just called him Weasles. He was the intern. I saw him start to tremble as Sandy began to stare him down. “For real, man. I have a cousin who works at this place. They’re experts. They specialize in this stuff. Here wait, I’ve got a card.”

He passed it around. And I opened Firefox to check the website out. Morpheme. I thought that sounded Greek for some reason. The website had a story, so I shushed the gang and read it out loud. It was an anecdote about Walt Disney and pigs.

“Pigs is sow right…” mumbled Weasles and everyone groaned.

“Let’s just call the guys right? Let’s ask them what they think” It was Hunter. He had heard the whole thing. Everyone nervously looked at each other, but he just smiled. “Look I’m sorry you feel that way, but maybe you’re right. I’m not a specialist; let’s just speak to the experts. In fact, let’s call them on speaker.”

Some one answered, and Hunter asked for the marketing dept., politely announced that he’d like to put the guy on the other line on the speaker phone. “This guy’s got balls” Tom whispered.

“Hi, I’m Somesh… and I’m an engagement officer. How may I help you.”

Hunter crisply explained the situation. How does one help people as a collective? A sales target is a physical reality. It’s the reason people wake up and come into this building. H.R on the other hand is essentially a value addition. “I never have trouble dealing with people individually. Even stress relief measures aren’t that much of a problem. It’s trying to quantify vague goals like – Fostering Innovation that get me. I don’t think there’s anyone on this planet who has the metrics to track innovation growth.” There was an edge to Hunter’s voice. I visualized him squirming before the board.

“Actually you’d be surprised,” replied Somesh. “Tell me, Did you have a look at our website?” “Yup” I answered. “And did you read the story?” All of us except Hunter knew Walt Disney’s Piggy story. “Yeah, we read about the pigs.” “So, what was your take away?” asked Somesh.

I looked at the others. “You’re saying that conformity doesn’t always pay. That companies ape each other like lemmings, and when the market draws blood everyone pays more or less the same price.” “Yeah like that H.R crisis wave that hit the I.T industry in 2006. All the biggies, Satyam, TCS, Infosys and Wipro. Everyone Suffered.” Said Sandy. “Yeah sure” added Hunter. “We get the point.”

“Actually you’ve missed it” said Somesh flatly. There was an uncomfortable silence. “See, there’s language. And there’s meta-language. And innovation is a meta-term. One innovates in retrospect and one never actually ‘sets out to innovate’. You got the moral of the story right, but what you missed was Walt’s insight. The keystone that changed the animation industry was not THAT pigs ought or not to be repeated. But that a single insight, a momentary flash of innovation could change everything.”

“I still don’t get it” said Hunter. “You’re saying that innovation cannot be gotten at through direct action? That it isn’t a process oriented ‘cause-effect’ thing.”

“Oh no!” corrected Somesh quickly. “It is in fact process oriented, but it can only be understood in the light of meta language. Here, let me use a traditional example. Say you were tasked with teaching someone, a nephew perhaps… to be brave. You see the problem here? You can teach someone self defense or public speaking techniques, but bravery is a byproduct of experience. It’s a meta-term to describe a state of fearlessness. Innovation is a similar thing. It’s a byproduct.”

I think I saw a flicker of understanding in Hunter’s eyes.

“What we do is we take a look at your business, your workflow and the overall system… and then we design a program that we actually measure over a period of time. If you have a minute, I could explain it to you”

Hunter vacillated but the rest of us got the lead on him. “Nope, go ahead.” I said.

“Our program is called One Eighty – As in, the number 180.”

I called it up on their website. Yup. There it was…. 180 in big bold letters!

“See, this is based on our internal philosophy called Quantum Innovation. An organization is just like a cellular organism. It’s a living breathing entity with a personality that we call Brand equity. It competes for life and survival in landscapes that are similar to ecosystems elsewhere. The smallest indivisible particle of such an organism is the individual. This is where innovation really begins, and this is also why we call it Quantum Innovation.”

“The 180 refers to a turnaround in the individual.  We literally make people step back and look at the structures that support them. Teamwork is not an aspiration or even a directive. It is merely a fact of life. Society is nothing but teamwork on a cultural scale. We help individuals recognize their own standing within a larger system and innovate at the grass roots.”

“Hey look, there’s tonnes more I could tell you. We have actual case studies I could show you on how we helped organizations do a 180 degree turnaround from a me-too to market leaders…”

“Yeah, why don’t you drop in sometime” said Hunter.

“Thursday good?”

“Yeah”

“I’ll send you some stories meanwhile. It’ll give you an idea of what we do.”

“ok.”

“Great Hanu, see you there. Later Guys.”

There was silence. Sandy broke in first. “Hey Hanu, sorry da. Shit, this really is specialist stuff… I know you tried your best. It just got to me thats all.”

“Shucks, that’s ok” replied Hanu. “Hell, now I see that book in a whole new light. Lets get that guy in and sign up for a 180 ourselves.”

“C’mon boy” Sandy called out to Weasles. “You deserve a commission for this. I’m buying beer.”

At the sound of beer everyone filed out. With a quiet office I settled down to think. I remember an old zen story about this monk who pointed out the moon to his students and all they did was look at his pointing finger, never the moon. That’s what the guy was trying to tell us. When someone like Covey comes up with a bunch of management principles, he’s pointing at the moon… but all the piggies are busy staring at the finger.

Well, Thursday works for me.

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