Ep. 14: New York Times Best Selling Author Brant Cooper on How Companies Can Manage Uncertainty
In the episode, Darren Reinke chats with Brant Cooper, Author of the New York Times best selling book The Lean Entrepreneur and CEO of Moves the Needle. Brant discusses how companies can better manage uncertainty and disruption, the importance of balancing new idea exploration and execution, and how companies can use hackathons to test new ideas and drive results.
Brant has over two decades of expertise helping companies bring innovative products to market. He blends agile, design thinking, and lean methodologies to ignite entrepreneurial action within large organizations.
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SHOW NOTES
Brant's Transition into Tech [1:10]
The Power of Creating a Lean Startup [4:13]
The Relationship Between Uncertainty, Disruption, and Innovation [7:43]
How Leaders Can Balance Exploration, Execution, and Chaos [15:10]
Why Agile Leadership Isn't Limited to Tech Companies [23:52]
Explaining the Horizon Model [30:22]
Brant's Advice to Leaders Thinking about Exploration [33:55]
How to Build Alignment at The Executive Level [37:10]
How Companies of All Sizes Can Use “ Impackathons” not Hackathons to Drive Results [40:00]
Brant's Advice for Navigating Innovation, Disruption, and Uncertainty [48:16]
SHOW LINKS
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PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
Darren Reinke: Welcome to The Savage Leader Podcast, where I interview leaders from all walks of life so that you can walk away with tips to apply to your life and your career. But this isn't your traditional leadership podcast because I believe that leadership tips come from successful entrepreneurs and business executives, of course. Still, they also come from unexpected places, like Navy SEALs, successful professional athletes, sports coaches, musicians, entertainers, and more. So let's dive right into today's episode; my hope is you walk away with something tangible that you can apply immediately to your life in your career. Today's guest on the savage leader podcast is Brant Cooper. Brant is the author of The New York Times best selling book, The Lean entrepreneur and the CEO of moves the needle. Brant has over two decades of expertise helping companies bring innovative products to market. He blends agile design thinking and lean methodologies to ignite entrepreneurial action within large organizations. Hey, Brant, thanks so much for coming on today.
Brant Cooper: Darren, thanks for having me, man.
Darren Reinke: So just to start off, how does a rugby player from UC Davis get into technology and entrepreneurship?
Brant's Transition into Tech [1:10]
Brant Cooper: Good question. How does a not very big, not very fast person get into rugby is maybe the more relevant question. I didn't play football in high school. And I was actually very proud of that fact. Because it made me think that I was gonna grow up with knees that were okay, and all the rest. But then I picked up rugby in college. And you know, it all just goes to hell in a handbasket. I don't know that it relates to technology, though, I guess it's kind of funny how you can look back on your life and find a thread through it, even though when you were living it, you didn't necessarily see it. And so I guess I was just sort of always open to other experiences and not taking the road well traveled, as a famous poet once said, and so I think that that's yeah, rugby was something different than, you know, a good group of guys. And I was the captain of the B team, not the A team. And when I was in school, I took a little bit of everything. So I'm majoring in economics. But the reason why I chose the major was because it had the fewest required number of units. And it led me to take everything else: chemistry, calculus, computer programming, Psychology, History, sociology. And so back in those days, you know, everybody said I, you got to specialize. And I did exactly the opposite. And I actually think these days, the digital revolution, having a broad base, a broad perspective, I think, helps connect dots in a more complex world. And so I think it's actually served me well, in the end.
Darren Reinke: Yeah, it's actually really interesting for me, in my early part of my career, in my early 20s, I felt like being a jack of all trades was actually a detriment. And I saw friends of mine in finance, and tech and different things that were just accelerating, just an incredible clip. But then over time, I realized that those buckets have enough knowledge and expertise, where it's actually a big asset in terms of being able to shift and pivot from one conversation to the next.
Brant Cooper: That's my experience. Exactly. And I think in the end, you know, maybe that's who, you know, there's leadership skills that are developed there that allow you to apply it to just sort of a broader base, that's maybe where CEOs come from, to some degree, or should come from, or if they're able to evolve in that way to be a little bit a jack of all trades, but know where your weaknesses are. So a jack of all trades doesn't mean like, I should be CTO. But it does mean that I can understand what the CTO is saying when explaining something to me, right?
Darren Reinke: And I also think just in terms of how things are shifting so fast that the ability to think and to learn new things and have a broad area of expertise, I think can really be beneficial.
Brant Cooper: I agree. So it's really something that I'm sure we're going to touch on today a little bit. It's really, to me, it comes back to mindset. And so somebody that's looking for that broad base in the beginning, already has sort of that mindset that then, you know, now serves as a benefit in this crazy complex world we're in.
Darren Reinke: So I'd love to hear about the Lean Startup movements. I know you've been one of the big pioneers in that space. But can you talk a little bit about what that is? And how you got involved with it?
The Power of Creating a Lean Startup [4:13]
Brant Cooper: Yeah, so the way I view it, it's so funny, you know, I lived through the dot-com boom and bust up in the Bay Area. And you know, there's one characteristic of the Silicon Valley mindset is that we invented everything, nothing existed before us. And so when the startups all were failing at the dot-com bust, there were a number of people that were looking at this and kind of going like, Well, why are we trying to make startups look like big businesses, we should look at the startups that succeed and model those businesses after that. And so then we sort of pretended to invent all of these methods and processes that would do that. And back in that timeframe, mid 2000s, Steve Blank was getting a little bit of popularity and in his book, The Four Steps to the Epiphany Which was really just a compilation of his lecture notes. So he was at UC Berkeley talking about these things about this learning, before executing. And Eric Ries was one of his students, and was in, you know, seeking investment in his startup. He was CTO at IMVU, which is still around actually, though he's not part of it. What Eric did was start to set up some, he was able to take what Blank had been doing and coupling it with modern digital technology, and agile concepts works. We're also just sort of gaining popularity. I mean, back in my startup days, we didn't do anything agile, it was all waterfall and all my stories are waterfall and the problems with that, to be honest. But so, you know, I was one of the handful of people, maybe the only one in San Diego that was reading this blogging about it doing my own version of it that you know, I didn't, you know, before I had caught on to those guys. And so then I ended up writing the book with Patrick Vlaskovits, the entrepreneurs guide to customer development, which was the first purpose written book that talked about customer development, Lean Startup, Product Market Fit and Dave McClure's pirate metrics, and a lot of these things that were gaining a lot of traction in sort of Silicon Valley style startups in the late the late aughts of the 2000s. And there was a, you know, a Google group that, you know, people participated in, and it was a growing group. So it was sort of this movement. And the people in the Google group, even more than Blank or Ries, to be honest, were figuring out the real ways to apply this stuff. So beyond philosophy, and beyond principle, what is actually, what does it actually entail? How do you actually have these conversations with customers? And what is an experiment and how does it run? And what does it look like and all of these types of things. And so it was super interesting. And I was just, you know, in that, you know, the OG version of that and wrote the book, and that took off and frankly, just launched this whole new career. You know, Eric Ries his book, The Lean Startup just kind of blew the top off the market and a bunch of corporations started looking at it, usually for their innovation arms. And I followed up with the Lean entrepreneur, which again, was a deep dive in how to do that stuff. And really, over the last seven years now, I've been bringing these principles to very large organizations, with a major discovery being in my view, that it applies all across the company to varying degrees. We can touch on this, but it's not, you know, I'm not a believer in this Ambidextrous Organization or the bimodal system, or the dual operating system, because everybody faces uncertainty. And so everybody needs to learn and apply these skills, but just two different degrees.
Darren Reinke: So before we actually jump into that, I would love to talk about the Ambidextrous Organization, but just just to level set a little bit, you talk a lot about three big and probably sometimes misunderstood terms, uncertainty, disruption and innovation. Can you explain the relationship between those three topics?
The Relationship Between Uncertainty, Disruption, and Innovation [7:43]
Brant Cooper: Yeah, Well so, most of us in this era grew up on Clayton Christensen's Innovator's Dilemma, right, an absolutely brilliant book. And I've taken so many stories from that. And he was really, really a pioneer in developing that thinking. To be honest, I think it's a little bit dated, and it needs to be updated. So he coined the term disruptive innovation. And it's a very specific method of new technology brought to market that completely ends existing markets. And it usually starts with selling low end. And that's really sort of proving out the technology and even proving out the market and then goes upstream. So it ends up taking away market share from the big, existing 800 pound gorillas in any particular market. And so that's disruptive innovation. And so it's new technology that solves real problems at scale. And up ends whole markets. Innovation itself. The word and really, since then, is just a buzzword. It's just undefined. Most organizations, whether they're startups or large enterprises, or government institutions or education, nobody stops to define what this word means for our particular organization. And so I actually think that the word does more harm than good. In a lot of instances, the CTO will think it's the invention of new technology. The marketing department thinks it means you know, sort of more of a, you know, we're out there on the cutting edge, whatever it means. It's just good marketing fodder, HR culture, people, you know, that's open floor plans, and you know, Nerf guns and scooters and Red Bull in the refrigerator for free. The CEO thinks it means new growth, I want new money. And I don't care how we get it, and I'll call it anything you want. But you know, bringing you innovative ways to bring money tomorrow. And all of those definitions are bantering around in the same organization and they all mean different things in life in terms of the tactics that you'll use to go into To find those things, and it's a problem. And I believe there's this whole innovation industry that loves that that's a problem because it allows them to sort of sell these services and these other things that will help straighten out that organization. And they fail as well and usually suffer from the same, the same builds, even inside their organization. If we take the word disruption away from the word innovation, and just talk about disruption, I think that that's a super interesting topic, because it doesn't require innovation at all. Right, so the pandemic, you know, cause the third massive economic disruption this century, so that's three in the first 20 years of the 21st century, these are supposed to be once in a lifetime events, we've had three, that's disruption, even, you know, Black Lives Matter and insurrection on the government energy grid, affecting 10s of millions of people in Texas, a ship getting stuck in the canal, disrupts global supply chains. So I think that we're living in an era of endless disruptions. And it's sort of that, you know, cliche of the butterfly in the Amazon, you know, causing chaos on the other side of the world. And we're seeing that. And so I think that's an interesting topic, because it's different, it's new. And yet, I think that the way we organize and manage our businesses is from a less complex, simpler time where the interconnectedness wasn't such that it affected the world, the same.
Darren Reinke: I love just the idea, although a little bit scary for us, as business leaders about endless disruption, it almost makes me also connect back to uncertainty. And 2020 really shined a spotlight on uncertainty. But really, it's been around forever. It's been around for a long time. Can you talk a little bit about uncertainty and what's really driving that?
Brant Cooper: Yeah. So I think that that's exactly right. I think it's, you know, increased complexity, and endless disruptions cause uncertainty. And why is that? Well, it's because what used to work doesn't work anymore. So right, there's the old cliche, you know, that if you keep trying the same thing, but expecting different results, that's insanity. Well, what if you keep trying the same thing, and you get different results where you want the same result, but you're not getting it? I mean, that's uncertainty. And so I think it's That's exactly right. It's the increased complexity of the world, the interconnectedness, you know, we're in a mesh network, the speed of information, the speed of disinformation, somebody pointed out to me the other day, all of these things cause uncertainty, best practices don't necessarily work anymore. So that's the fundamental idea. We've got a command and control hierarchical management system laid over a very complex system. And so sometimes best practices work, and sometimes they don't, that causes uncertainty, and sort of channel Donald Rumsfeld. You know, it's sort of like the whole known knowns and unknown things. And so there's uncertainty that we don't have control over. I mean, we could predict that a pandemic would come, we couldn't predict the severity, we didn't know how long it would last. We don't know what the world looks like on the other side. So there's uncertainty that we don't control. And so we have to think about as leaders, what is the uncertainty that we do have control over? Well, so during the beginning of the pandemic, a year ago, now, I would talk to leaders, and they're like, We really got to buckle down, we got to buckle down, we gotta get back to what we know. And I said, Well, what do you know anymore? Right? Your core business is selling to small businesses who are going out of business in droves? Or you're selling to consumers that don't have any money? What do you know, you actually have to go back into exploration mode to figure out what are the products and services and how to distribute them? And how do you need to engage customers in the pandemic? That's a learning exercise, not an execution exercise, where else you're just going to run it into the ground. And so we have to be able to as leaders, we have to be self aware, to admit what we know versus what we don't know. And then to break down the don't know into, well, are there experts that I can just go talk to so that's something that this is like a I don't know if you know, Dave Snowden cynefin model. But it's very helpful in this respect. There's places where best practices can still be applied. And then there's the unknown, but we can just go find the right expertise. And that's complicated, but not complex. And so we tend to hire, you know, the big consulting firms for all of these. And then there's complexity where there's not one right answer. And there's too many variables for us to sit there and think harder and come up with the answers. And so there's when we have to go into what I call or what people call this exploration mode, because we have to figure out what works within these sets of conditions and within these variables. And then there's this other part which is chaos, which maybe requires actually some of the older school command and control leadership because you have to, you have to get the organization functioning to such a degree so that you can go do the exploration. Are the knowledge gained best practices? So it's hard to implement those things in a chaotic organization?
Darren Reinke: Yeah, something you mentioned earlier. And something I think a lot about, I think it's so important is mindset. So what do leaders need to do to balance that focus on exploration, execution, and even this new piece, which is around chaos?
How Leaders Can Balance Exploration, Execution, and Chaos [15:10]
Brant Cooper: Yeah, I think that to me agile, and I'm gonna say agile with a small a, not the rigid implementations of a safe or a Scrum or whatever. I mean, those are all fine. I don't, I don't want to disparage them. But going back to the core Agile principles of forming teams of smart people to solve problems, and then giving them the authority and the accountability to do so the authority, the responsibility, the resources in the accountability to go and solve those problems. And so it's not, this is what we're going to do. It's, hey, you guys go figure it out. And I think that we hire smart, creative people, because that's what we need from them. But then the organizational structure that we often deploy limits that rather than makes that, you know, safe, and gives the time and space and the resources to go do it. So to me, step one is to apply agile principles throughout the organization so that smart people can solve problems. And these can be big problems, where is our revenue going to come from? It can be small problems, even fixing internal process issues, increasing efficiency, if done correctly. I guess the biggest fear when I talk to leaders is they think that exploration mode takes away from execution. In my view, proper exploration mode makes execution more efficient. And so you should actually see growth opportunities because you're properly balancing the two. And so it's leaders themselves have to kind of get over the fear that this is going to take away from their business when in fact, I think it'll add to it.
Darren Reinke: It's interesting, I love the parallel between talking about the waterfall versus agile development model. And you're actually talking about from an org model perspective, instead of more of a hierarchical top down here are functions or silos, you're talking about the Agile creation of teams, and just how that can actually be effective in terms of being more balanced in terms of execution and exploration. That's exactly
Brant Cooper: right. I mean, so if you're, if you're in certain agile implementations, their sprint planning, right, and so you look at all of the things that you could be working on. And as a team, you figure out, well, what am I going to work on? And oftentimes, people implement that way too rigidly, for example, oh, we're gonna have weekly sprints or bi weekly sprints. But you know, the work that I did with Roche diagnostics over the summer is to define what the right sprint length is, we did month long sprints. If you're actually building hardware, and it takes you three months to build a piece of hardware component, it doesn't really make sense to have a weekly sprint, right? I mean, so that sort of average unit of work that you're doing the two things that I think about in terms of the sprint length, what's the average unit of work of what you're working on, if it takes months, then you know, your sprint, you know, can be longer. But the second part is how often people should be taking in external information that might change my work. And again, if you're in sort of core manufacturing hardware, even if something happens out the outside, it may not have any effect on the work that you're doing. But maybe having increased knowledge of, you know, foreseeing supply chain issues, allows an Agile team even in manufacturing, to think about how they might pivot their processes earlier rather than later. So it's really, it's interesting. And that Agile process allows people to do that sort of planning, and then checking in with the plan. And then having team meetings that improves the performance, all in service to delivering on a mission. And so you're assigning these agile teams a mission. And those are the missions you can draw a straight line between that mission and the strategic priorities of the company. So again, people get scared of the word agile because they think of consumer internet apps and weekly sprints. But that's not the point. The point is forming teams around these missions, and being able to allocate the resources actually on the fly based upon changing conditions in the world. That's why it's using the word agile, that allows you to make changes necessary. And that's how we can start weathering these storms of disruption is because we've structured the company to be flexible, but strong, it's not like infinitely flexible.
Darren Reinke: I can imagine that's frightening for a lot of leaders who are used to more of a command and control structure, use the word chaos, they may view that as chaos, right? You're unleashing these teams that are working and working on independent projects and doing these sprints. How do you get into the mind of leaders actually, to help them understand that but also to adopt that agility?
Brant Cooper: To be honest, I'm not sure I'm very good at that. I mean, I've been lucky to find leaders that sort of already grok that And then I can help them through the process. But like, Have you heard of David Marquet's book turn the ship around? I think it's what it's called. He was a submarine commander. And you know, there's really not any more of a command and control hierarchy situation than a submarine. And it's a super fascinating book about how he empowered his people. And really quite extraordinary. I love that book as an example. And so I would, I would first Darren and as I tell, you know, have you told your leaders that if the submarine commander can do it, you know, they can do it. But the other book is General McChrystals Team of Teams that ran into the exact same issue. And it's not surprising that the US military would be one of the first to run into this new networked world, right. And so going into Iraq in the early 2000s, using old school command and control style military, they had no problem taking out Hussein. But Al Qaeda in Iraq was exactly this network, an interconnected mesh network, cells popping up anywhere, no centralized control, communications not centralized. And the US military really struggled using their old school style on trying to mitigate that threat. And so McChrystal, just absolutely brilliantly, in my view, restructured his task force to be able to take that on, and he wouldn't use the word but he created agile teams. And then he had to create this layer of Team of Teams is what he called it. And that's where that phrase comes from. And so what's interesting is that I think the loss of control requires a lot of trust. But it also requires a very committed conscious effort of setting up the new communications flow. And this is where I think a lot of people miss the boat, old school command and control hierarchy, everybody actually has the same information, because it's coming from the top down. But if you're living in a networked world, where big information is being created by these agile teams, that doesn't happen anymore, you have to actually implement specific processes and flows so that the information flows up and across the organization. And what's interesting, just in the last couple of years I've come to this is that middle management is always often left out of the equation, when we do these top down changes, and where then, you know, the leaders at the top are going through all of their vulnerability and awareness and empathy. And those are all great. And then the teams on the below are learning how to do design thinking and running experiments. And these middle managers are like, I still get this top down stuff, but I'm not allowed to do this bottom stuff, what the heck is my role. And the role really is being able to align the work that's being done with the priorities, but also to get the communication flow happening across up and down, and allows them to be more strategic, which is what middle management has always wanted to be. And it allows them to be more proactive, because they're not fighting all the fires down on the agile team layer. So it's really, it's really powerful, I think. And you can have multiple layers of the team of teams. So we have less hierarchy. But it's not that there is no hierarchy, we still have accountability, we have learning metrics, we have performance metrics. And then we have this flow of information that's coming up with insights, understanding customers, understanding problems, understanding what worked and what didn't work. And that information flowing horizontally into other business units, other divisions is just super powerful. And there's some organizations out there that are doing this work and figuring it out. And it's super fascinating. And I think is, will eventually be the new structure and the new management practices for the 21st century.
Why Agile Leadership Isn't Limited to Tech Companies [23:52]
Darren Reinke: Can you share an example or two cuz I think a lot of people are probably imagining Silicon Valley startups in terms of deploying this Agile methodology in teams of teams, obviously, the military is a different point, of course, but can you talk about some examples and how it is not just for technology, but it could even be for older industries, like manufacturing, but even small and midsize businesses as well.
Brant Cooper: So I N G is maybe further along. So that's a bank, in Europe and other places. They have what they call their innovation program called PACE. And basically, it's lean innovation. It's a combination of design thinking, lean startup, and agile. And they have a program which is called PACE every day. So that's applying that to the core business, everyday work. And they have one that's, you know, a program for, you know, what they call the horizon twos for two or three years, you know, they're still generating the evidence that those ideas can scale. And then horizon three, which is, you know, just the early idea stuff, and, you know, what does banking look like in five or six years? So they've got that covered across the timespans. They got that covered across from all groups inside the company. It's not an innovation group that does all of that. It's everybody. And then they restructured the whole company. So all of the different banks are structured loosely based upon the Spotify model. And so they have tribes and guilds and chapters in these different dimensions of how people's performance is measured. And it's not based upon departments anymore. They don't have departments. So they don't have silos, they do cross functionality or interdisciplinary, where it's required. But not that doesn't mean it's everywhere, it's where there's a certain level of complexity or uncertainty that would benefit from having, you know, different viewpoints, a diversity of viewpoints. And so ing, sort of, you know, further along, and it's pretty extraordinary what they've been able to accomplish. We've done a bunch of work with Roche, the diagnostic and the diabetes groups. And so they're doing a massive digital transformation program that is incorporating an agile and team of teams style approach. And when I say Team of Teams, it's really, you know, sort of not McChrystals, Team of Teams approach, I should say that because he has his own consulting business. From what I've seen, it has not worked really well, in corporations, because it's maybe too much following a military model. The idea is correct, but it's difficult to find out how it works inside corporations. A couple of case studies in my book, Cargill, the food company is really extraordinary, they've got a, they've got a center of excellence that acts as a sort of a definer of what innovation mindset means to the company. It can be modified, of course, but it's, here's sort of the way we view it. And they act as internal consultants to different parts of the organization and can connect them to external consultants or agencies to help them do the work. But it's trying to bring this you know, sort of this learned view of how to have this innovation mindset everywhere in the business. And then they formed these cross functional interdisciplinary teams that reach out to all corners of the company, different business units, get them to buy into this new product idea that has already been proven, right? They didn't have to innovate, they didn't have to invent, they could look at alternative protein markets and go like, okay, it's reached a certain level of maturity. What can Cargill bring to that based upon our incredible size and experience and supply chain expertise and all of these quarter capabilities that they have? What can we bring to that existing market? And again, this is so fundamentally different than the way the innovation industry will pedal, how Cargill needs to go find new growth opportunities, oh, no, you've got to be first you've got to reinvent yourself and all this other kind of, you know, Bs, when they can watch a market mature with the understanding of they've got something that all those startups don't have. And the great thing about the way they did it is touching all of these leaders in these different business units, giving those leadership some amount of buy-in. And so they wanted to see it succeed. And so they participate. And they put people into it. And that, you know, there's still battles over budget, and headcount and all those types of things, but they get to see the work and they can start understanding that this exploration is not so radically different, and that it can be applied to the core business. And so they start pulling it in. And so that's this major, like, incredible tipping point is when the business units can, can have that type of activity close to them, and that they are involved with without, you know, I don't know, without them feeling like they're over committing to it, they really can start to see how its applied and how it's needed and how it can be leveraged to increase the efficiency of even their existing core business.
Darren Reinke: Yeah, I love those examples. Just such a variety talk about Cargill and ing. So more legacy companies. And just I think it brings up a point, which is innovation just looks different in different organizations. It doesn't have to be a startup looking for breakthrough products and new things to be truly disruptive. But you know, companies like cargo that can leverage its size and scale and its customers as data for its existing products. That's actually to be quite innovative, but in a much different perspective.
Brant Cooper: Totally. Right. Exactly. Right. And then so not what I was drawn to that company, because I did a little roundtable and Innovation Roundtable and they were there and the woman, Laura Nehring was just so confident about their innovation capabilities, and how they defined innovation and across the table was somebody that was new to it and was rather insecure. And so defined innovation, the way the innovation industry told them to define it, you know, that horizons were based upon the level of innovation instead of where growth is going to come from. And that you know, that you had to do a 70 20 10 split across the horizons which is, is so completely arbitrary. To say that all businesses needed to, you know, allocate across horizons in that way Like it was in a Harvard Business Review article. And and it's like, it's so arbitrary and so wrong, but it was the difference between a very, you know, old established company that's keeping fresh and very confident and how they look at these things versus, you know, somebody that's just kind of entering the foray, and sort of just like, you know, completely digesting all of the BS that's out there.
Explaining the Horizon Model [30:22]
Darren Reinke: You've mentioned the horizons, the horizon model a few times for those people who are not versed in innovation methodology. Can you just talk real quickly about what that model is?
Brant Cooper: Yeah, sure. So the horizon model came out of a book called the alchemy of growth, which was actually produced by McKinsey partners, I think, in the early 90s. And they barely mentioned innovation in the book at all. It's not an innovation book, it's not an innovation model. It's a growth model. Where are my revenues going to come from, I need to protect my core business. Now I need to improve it, see if I can get more revenues out and extend the life of my existing. But I also have to start today to figure out where my, you know, big markets are gonna come from that emerged two or three years down the road, or five, or six or seven? It's funny to go look back at that. But now the timelines are like, way too long. Like the H three, which is further out is like 10 years? And that's like, no, no, that H threes are like five years now, I think. But anyway, it's looking at all of the different ways that you might generate that revenue and growth, it could be acquisition, it can be investing in startups, right. So that's your, your corporate venturing side, it can be invention, if that's what your company does, if you invent new technology, yep, your r&d group should be out there inventing, and maybe one of those things will become some great innovation that you can bring to market but its invention needs to be separate from innovation. But it also can be selling existing products into emerging businesses in emerging countries. And if that takes you five or six years, that's a horizon three. So what happened was that the innovation industry then grabbed this horizon model, and in my view, bastardized it by defining the horizons by level of innovation, rather than by evidence that an idea will generate revenue or growth. And the latter is the proper way, sort of the modern way, in my view, to define the horizons. So if you have an idea, and you have zero evidence for the idea, that's a horizon three, I couldn't care what the idea is, the idea could be to invent a new jet propulsion system. Okay. But the idea could be, well, maybe we should go and try to sell this in Timbuktu. And so it's the level of evidence that starts determining what horizon it is zero evidence is an h3, maybe it's even an h4, it's just an idea. And then you start going in generating evidence for it. And you figure out well, how much evidence is there for this? And how far along Am I in capturing that market? And so that's where the time starts coming in. If you've got a an idea, that's like, I'm going to go sell my existing product in Timbuktu, and it's going to generate, you know, a billion dollars in revenue, and you just go in there and you start, you start seeing rapid growth, it immediately could become an h2, because you can say, Listen, it's only take a couple of years for the revenues to be large enough that it can fit into my core business. And that sort of the, the, the switching point between h2 and h1 is it's ready for the core business, core business wants to suck that stuff into early though. And core business will kill it if the revenues are not sufficient to compete against existing core business. And so again, it has nothing to do with the level of innovation. It has to do with how much revenue is bringing in by when. And so I think it's super important for leaders to not look at h threes as breakthrough innovation. H threes are, there's no evidence that this idea is going to produce any revenue. So we need to start creating the evidence.
Brant's Advice to Leaders Thinking about Exploration [33:55]
Darren Reinke: So it gets back to something you talked about before, which is how do you balance exploration and execution? So what's your advice to leaders in terms of how they should be thinking about exploration? Which are these other ideas in terms of whether it's time horizon or whatnot, but how should they be thinking about balancing those two things?
Brant Cooper: Well, so again, I think that it becomes part of the Agile process in the sense that it's pushed down to the lowest levels of the company, in the core business. And so people need the skill. As a matter of fact, this stuff is already applied in the core business, if you're doing anything digital, and your team is running split testing, that's exploration. I think that the idea of being customer centric in the sense that people are actually out talking to customers, that's all exploration work. And so, you know, if you're a designer or engineer or somebody goes out into the real world and is interacting with customers, and they figure out there's new features that they could put in right away that would solve a problem. That's exploration work. If on the other hand, what they do is they come up with an idea that goes like, yeah, we can't do this right away. But this is super. We're cool. And we could redo our technology. And we'd be able to capture this that's come from your core business going out and doing that work. But you can say, Okay, well, that's an h2, because we actually have to dedicate teams to go and build out that new product based upon our existing technology. And so you spin up an agile cross functional, agile team to go and start doing that. And they get funded in tranches based upon accomplishing their learning metrics. So now you've got, I mean, again, Darren, call it innovation, or don't call it innovation, I don't really care. It's just it's this mindset of then I've got to go explore and, and that team, if it's an h2, and it's two, three years away, they're not only doing exploration, they've got to execute, right? They've got to go out and talk to customers, they've got to build the product, they've got to do stuff. It's not just so they're already balancing that execution in that exploration. And then maybe even those same insights go like, well, wow, man, what if we did this, we actually acquired that startup that's working on that technology. And we married it to our supply chain over here, we could totally capture this market out here. I mean, maybe, and you're like, Oh, well, that's crazy far out. So again, it maybe require zero innovation. But it's five, six years down the road, you spin up a team to start testing that, and they only get funding. It's not a functional program that gets budgeted annually. It's that's where you start needing this, you know, different investment strategies, internal investment strategies, a growth board and an investment board. That is just putting a small, inexpensive team to start that exploration work. And their job is to generate evidence to the point that Yep, we need to fund it some more and it becomes an h2. I make it sound so easy. Darren it's just
Darren Reinke: It's mind blowing. Innovation is such a buzzword, such a loaded term, in a way that talks about invention versus innovation. You talked about the different horizons, you talk about balancing that exploration with execution, it's a lot to handle. You talk about the three or four very different definitions of innovation, whether you're talking to the CEO, and growth or marketing and new products, or HR and Nerf guns. So how do you go about gaining that alignment? So in terms of obviously, it starts at the top in terms of understanding what innovation is, and probably even more important, what is it is how do you go about getting that alignment up top?
How to Build Alignment at The Executive Level [37:10]
Brant Cooper: Yeah, I mean, it's really really tough, right? I mean, all of these things are really what my next book is disruption proof. It's really trying to give leaders I don't know, we always want to use terms like blueprint and and roadmap, and it's just even in my book, it's not that simple. You brought this up earlier, Darren, it's really that trust aspect, right? I mean, people feel like it's chaos, because you're supposedly pushing all this decision making down to people and you just don't know if they can do it. And so in a lot of ways, my kickstart phase is about building trust. And you do that just by running kind of like hackathons, except that, instead of working on a product, you're working on generating evidence for an idea. And you do it in such a way that you're, you're tackling near term issues where you can see the impact. And one of the nice things that can come from that is the building of trust, if leaders can actually see that their people can do this work, that's what starts building the trust. And so instead of a lot of top down planning, and you know, sort of big consulting, firm lead rewards, which are just like a killer for culture and all these things, it's launched these programs that can just get going that generate real business impact, not huge, but positive ROI, but also just demonstrates that the capability exists inside this house that we don't have to go and hire all of these other people to go and do that. And so that's kind of my first, my first phase, my second phase accelerate is okay, now that we've proven that we can do it, we've got these programs running, let's step back and take our best stab at what a roadmap might be is how we roll this out, branding the program there. And so this is super important. Because you want to, you want people to feel like this is an internally driven program. It's not an outside party. It's not using all of the, oh, we're doing design thinking and you get a bunch of other people going like that's not real design thinking or the same thing with Agile. You want to try to get rid of that dogma by launching your own program. And so this is again, this INGs pace. Procter and Gamble's got one called growth works. Humana, the insurance company, did a fast start. So you name and you brand this stuff and you sort of define what your innovation mindset is forgetting, like all people have to do with this word innovation is just use innovation mindset instead of innovation. And you like solved half the battle but you start creating those, those definitions and communicating that to the company and shining a light on the good work that's going and that's actually what starts creating this, this momentum for change.
How Companies of All Sizes Can Use “ Impackathons” not Hackathons to Drive Results [40:00]
Darren Reinke: He gave a great example in that first phase about hackathons and I think Likewise, with some of the things you talked about before, people tend to think of technology companies in startups in Silicon Valley. Can you give an example of how organizations, maybe small organizations, or other industries outside of tech can use this concept of hackathons to drive results for their company?
Brant Cooper: Yeah, so I have a website, it's up, it's actually called Impackathons. So it's, it's hack with impact. It's not impact imp, I'll put it, you add it to your notes, instead of me explaining it, but basically, it's got a DIY download. So you know, you don't have to contact me, you can actually download a document that tells you how to do these things. But so the idea is, is that it's just, you know, leaders and team members and back office support functions come up with ideas where they could use help, where's their uncertainty. And so then you run, you know, a two day event where teams go and try to tackle those problems by generating, you know, ideas on how to solve them and testing those ideas. One of my favorite examples is one of these that we ran for a clothing brand. And so they manufactured high end, outdoor gear, including for the US military, but they were too slow. And so they invested tons of money into digital fabrication equipment, design tools, software plus hardware, digital cutters, digital sewers, really pretty extraordinary stuff. And the idea was that they really needed to cut down the amount of time it took to do samples. And so the samples of these new products, which then they had to get vetted by the military, you know, it would be designers and then go back to the manufacturing that would make the samples and that whole iterative cycle was taking months, and it was killing them. And so they had all this new equipment, but the processes didn't change, because they're human beings, since they do the work the way that we've always done the work. And so in two days, I can't even say it was we in two days, they reinvented how they work together. And it was just using the same sort of process, right? You go and get empathy. So the designers acted like the startup and the manufacturing floor was the customer. And as a matter of fact, when we first went in there, Darren, the designers were all like, yeah, we want you guys to do this, this is gonna be great. And the manufacturer did not trust this at all. They were just like, No, this is dumb. We don't want to do this. And it's because often the manufacturing and the engineers and developers are blamed for almost everything, right? And the moment we said, No, you're gonna be the customer. And the design team is gonna be the startup, they were all like, Oh, cool. Yeah, I'm sure we can improve things we can help. And so it was really sort of this interesting, dynamic. But anyway, so the design team acting like a startup, the first thing they have to do is go get empathy for the manufacturing team. They have to understand what the processes are, what is their day in their life, like, what are the constraints that they're under? You know, why is the current thing not working for them? And then the design team goes back and I create, here's a bunch of different ways that we might want to change it. And now we're going to run an experiment. Okay? Manufacturing, we're going to send it over this new way, Just act normal, you know, let's see how it works. And they just went through that iteration cycle in two days, and completely reinvented the way that those two groups work together. So it's a great example of exploration, drastically improving the efficiency of core everyday business.
Darren Reinke: I just love the example too, because I think people tend to think about a hackathon as being externally focused testing a new product testing, a new idea, testing, messaging, and what you're talking about as internal in terms of how you can improve speed to market specifically between the interface between the designers and manufacturers. I think that's an important point. Because it doesn't have to just be some external exercise or hackathon, but it can also be internal as well.
Brant Cooper: Well, in the trick there that I found is just everybody inside a good company actually has a customer. They're just internal customers. And so you're running the exact same process as if you were doing external facing, it's just, you know, the HR department can figure out how to do reviews better, or performance management, finance can figure out if there's new ways they can fund programs so that they're more iterative, instead of annual budget, legal can set you know, guidelines for how to, you know, legally interact with customers, IT can set up an experiment infrastructure, so people can run experiments in an easy, safe way without seeking permission. Every time marketing can provide guidelines on how to use a brand or when not to use brands in a way that, you know, reinforces this innovation mindset. And so all of those groups can run, be part of their impactathon. And these are the challenges that they're going to try to do, and all of their colleagues here are in their same building, or at least via zoom these days, but they're all readily accessible. And you can do all of that learning. And that's all exploration mode is. So yeah, it takes some time. But if it improves the efficiency, it's a positive ROI.
Darren Reinke: Yeah, I think it's really important as you're talking about pushing, exploring into all parts of an organization. I also think from a leadership development perspective, I often think about and work with companies about how they can push leadership mindsets, and skill sets out into all the tentacles of the organization, because that's where you're hearing about new innovations, new disruptions, new products, new, you know, latent opportunities, etc, is I think it's so important that about what you're talking about more from an innovation perspective is, is pushing that, that mindset for exploitation, exploration, as well as the skills and tools to actually push that into all parts of the company.
Brant Cooper: Yeah, I think that, you know, it's one of those tough things, because you have experts inside your company. And so that's how they define themselves is that they're able to do it. And listen, they will be able to do it better than the HR manager, but it doesn't matter, the HR manager is going to get some level of insight and actually help their career and help them become a better person, I think. And so not everyone has to be the, you know, the human centered design expert, but everybody can learn, you know, some skills around how to develop empathy for other human beings.
Darren Reinke: I don't know if you want to split test the recruiting process, but it can be interesting. Applying some of these concepts,
Brant Cooper: Listen to this stuff has been applied a lot to recruiting, there's a crazy story. Matter of fact, there's a feedback article I have up on medium. And the second one was about how TechStars startup developed a recruiting platform for very large enterprises trying to hire software engineers, because they really struggled. And it was a completely crazy story. And it came about because the TechStars guys spent two weeks just observing the existing recruiting practice, it was really insane.
Darren Reinke: That's fascinating, just in terms of all the different applications for this.
Brant Cooper: Yep. Whereas I just say it's wherever there's uncertainty. And I think there's, again, there's sort of a word there that if leaders can really sort of, you know, grok it and kind of think about it, you know, uncertainty that we have control over. And then there's small amounts of uncertainty. And there's, and there's vast amounts of uncertainty. And that's really what horizons are. Small amount of uncertainty is your core and vast amount of uncertainty is your h threes, the ones that are way out. But there's been, you know, inside of these types of impactathon. Sales teams will just test new sales scripts. So that's telling you that in their given day, they don't believe they have the time and the safety, to experiment on sales scripts, their calls are probably being recorded, or there's a manager that's leaning over their shoulder. And I you didn't say what you're supposed to say it's like, these are the people because they're right there on the edge, talking to the customer, they're the ones that are going to come up with an idea that just says, well, like, if we rewrote this paragraph, I think we're gonna get a bump. And so you got to give them the time and the space a little bit. So they can go and run those experiments and test and see. And if you get a bump, back, we've just like increased our revenue.
Darren Reinke: Yeah, just get back to what you said before about having an innovation mindset. So if everyone has that mindset, you can do all these tests, you can do all this exploration in all parts of an organization. It's not just product development. It's not just manufacturing. It's not just sales marketing. Yep, exactly. Right. So I could talk to you for hours about this. But I do really appreciate your time. Any final words of advice for leaders in terms of how they should be thinking about either innovation or disruption or uncertainty?
Brant's Advice for Navigating Innovation, Disruption, and Uncertainty [48:16]
Brant Cooper: You know, I mentioned earlier, a lot of the soft skills that they've learned, and I just I find leaders have, like, really bought into a lot of the stuff, which I think is amazing vulnerability, self awareness, being able to cut through their own biases, admitting when they're wrong, and when admitting when they don't know. And it doesn't apply to everything, right, it has to be applied to things that it's safe to admit. And that's totally fine. It's how to apply that stuff that becomes tough, right? You're looking at your numbers and the things that you need to hit. And so how to apply those skills is hard. And I think this is a great way to apply these skills is learning how to fail small inside the organization so that you can iterate to a more high performing organization. And so I don't know I'm of the mind that leaders are bought in, we just need there's this little gap here about how to apply it and where to apply it. That is the real trick. And yeah, I'm hoping disruption proof helps as a guide to that.
Darren Reinke: Yeah, where can people go to find out about your book to place an order, and just learn about all the great things that you're doing?
Brant Cooper: Yeah, so there's a placeholder page on disruption proof. co. But the best place to go right now is brantcooper.com. And we've got a community that we've developed if people are sort of change agents inside their organization. Darren, you're welcome to join, but any of your listeners can join. And then I have a bundle page. So if people want to preorder from their favorite retailer, they can now there's also a bunch of bundles there that I've got. However, you know, if people want me to come in and talk or if people want some tools that go along with this stuff, then you can look at the different bundles. And I'm just you know, I'm available to Brant Cooper on all social media and brand to brand cooper.com I respond to all emails, you know, LinkedIn, Twitter and all the rest. So yeah, I'd love to, I'd love to hear some from people who are looking to make some of these rather large changes in their organizations.
Darren Reinke: Fantastic. Well, Brad, thanks so much for coming on today. Really appreciate it.
Brant Cooper: Yeah, it was a fun conversation, Darren. Thanks for having me, man.
Darren Reinke: Thanks for listening to today's episode of The Savage Leader Podcast. My hope is you walk away with tactics that you can apply to become a better leader in your life and in your career. If you're looking for additional insight in tactics, be sure to check out my book titled The Savage Leader 13 Principles to Become a Better Leader From The Inside Out. Also, be sure to subscribe to the podcast and I would truly appreciate it if you would leave a review and also rate the podcast. Thanks and see you in the next episode.