Want to kill a good idea?
Form a committee.
Why are we so committed to committees? Meetings and committees seem to be the place where good ideas go to die. When too many people are involved in trying to move something forward, a great plan often gets no traction. The hive mind clings to the present status quo, even when it isn’t working well. Why? It’s comfortable because we know it. It may be completely stuck in the mud. It may be stagnant. It may be completely toxic. But it’s safe, because it’s familiar. And in a meeting or on a committee the group will generally side with the consensus. It’s been demonstrated over and over in psychological studies, we side with the majority, even when the majority is wrong.
It’s easy to spot it. Look around. You float an idea in a meeting and the responses are lukewarm to dismissive. “It would be too hard” “There’s no time” “We need to focus on what’s in front of us” “We don’t have the capacity to spare”. The majority in the room nod and agree.
There are definitely some people up the ladder who could be considered to have poor judgement, and that severely curtails progress. I’ve heard it said that poor judgment often comes from an inability (or unwillingness) to consider all the possible solutions to a given problem. Figure out what roadblocks your manager might throw up if you have a manager who is averse to change or to considering any options beyond their limited ability to see past their own short-sightedness. So, depending on what sort of person your manager is, maybe that’s not the best place to start. To be fair, there are a lot of great managers out there who will respond with something along the lines of “Dig into that, see where you get, ask so-and-so for some support and come back with that idea fleshed out better“. Those managers are sadly limited in some organizations….most just want to stay safe and not risk their own progress by backing something that doesn’t look like a sure thing.
We know floating a novel idea is hard, it takes courage. And when it gets shot down in front of others it’s both demoralizing to you, but it also tells the rest of the group that they shouldn’t try. When you go it alone, you’re a dissenting voice, a troublemaker trying to buck a trend.
It seems that there is a sweet spot for working on something novel, important, out of the ordinary. I’ve found this myself on more than one occasion in my own workplace. Sometimes you have a great idea that needs a bit of a radical shift in thinking. You bring it to a manager and it gets brushed off. You bring it to a team meeting and you get a “oh that would never work” reaction, or “that’s too difficult“, or, the worst “but we’ve always done it this way and it seems to work ok“.
But there’s a better way. Sometimes you get lucky and you bring the topic up with one of your coworkers and they tell you that they see some merit in it.
That’s the sweet spot, that’s where you start. You found a crack in the wall of ‘Change is to be avoided’.
The two of you talk, spitball, throw some ideas into text. You debate, maybe you argue. There might even be some harsh words and hurt feelings. There probably will be some harsh words and hurt feelings. Get over it. Because if the idea is worth it, you figure it out, you mend the feelings, and you build on each others’ thoughts, and your idea starts to take shape. It’s no longer some amorphous blob….it becomes more.
Eventually, between the back and forth, the writes and rewrites, you’ve got something that you feel good about. Or at the very least you might say to each other…”I think we have something here…..?”
Should you set it free?
Probably not yet.
If you have what you think really articulates what you want to do, what you want to see happen, what you want to change, what you want to share, find a third party that you have some measure of trust in. Probably not a manager yet, maybe another colleague, maybe even someone who you think might be critical if the idea was floated in a group setting.
To expand your point of view, ask that trusted colleagues for input: “I’ve been thinking about X, and here are the trade-offs I see. What am I missing?” Share the thing. Ask for feedback. Be open to criticism. See if what you’ve come up with stands up, is well enough justified that you have a pretty solid and defensible case that someone not overly enthusiastic (but open minded!!) sees some strength.
Take what you get and build on what you have. Think about what they’ve said/written and use it to see what holes other people will find and use. Decide where you’re wrong about things and do some more work.
Rewrite, refine.
Fill the holes, make the arguments, make absolutely certain that you’ve considered all the reasons you might be wrong and why this thing is a terrible idea. If you only focus on why you’re right and why this is a great idea, you not only won’t be able to debate when you set it free, but you will be blind to anything but your own biases.
Your position will be weak if you haven’t done anything but pick the information that supports why you are right.
You can’t convince people that you might have a good idea unless you have carefully analyzed all the reasons you might be wrong.
That part is uncomfortable, but necessary.
Then….when you’ve done all your homework and explored all the reasons you might be wrong, make your pitch. And while there is no guarantee that you’ll get buy-in…..there’s a much better chance that you’ll gain some traction for an idea for positive change when you’ve really put it through the washing machine.
I’ve known this, and I’ve used it to my advantage many times in the past. It takes work.
It’s been harder lately because, a couple of years ago, my work community dwindled to what could probably have been called nonexistent with respect to having anyone with shared history/thought processes. When you feel alone it’s a bit of a downward spiral.
So what do you do?
Find a buddy; get shit done!
(I read the article and wrote the post a week ago and it took until today to pull out the camera and decide what photo to take to go with it. I’m definitely not so quick with my creativity these days, with having set aside the 365 this year)
Got a Radical Idea at Work? Find a Partner.
by Roberto Verganti and Paola Bellis
February 08, 2024
Reposted from Harvard Business Review
Summary. The story of Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman, the winners of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries underpinning the mRNA vaccines against Covid-19, holds lessons for others who are pursuing radical ideas. Drawing on their interview with Karikó and those of others with Weissman and her, the authors extrapolate lessons on why pairs can be more effective in pursuing seemingly wild ideas and how to find someone to take the journey with you.
Imagine you have an unorthodox idea — one that challenges the dominant assumptions in your organization and industry. How do you develop it? Moving forward alone is hard. On the other hand, you are unlikely to attract or be provided with a large team to pursue an idea that most see as crazy. Our research suggests that such radical thinkers thrive in a unique organizational setting by finding one other individual to work with — by operating in pairs.
Consider the example of biochemist Katalin Karikó. Early in her career Karikó wanted to explore the use of mRNA for therapy. This technology, however, was seen as unpromising both by mainstream scientists and industry; its promoters were disregarded. Across three decades, she was marginalized, struggled to obtain funding, suffered demotions, reductions of salary, rejections, and continuous restarts. Her collaboration with another scientist, Drew Weissman, was key to overcoming all those hurdles. Eventually, the pair received the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries underpinning the mRNA vaccines against Covid-19.
There are several examples of pair collaborations in breakthroughs (Steve Jobs and Jony Ive, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, just to mention a few). Karikó’s story — our account here is based on an interview and additional sources — provides another illustration of why and how a pair can help you develop unorthodox ideas, and how to avoid the pitfalls of such a collaboration.
Why a Pair Is Better than a Large Team
By looking at Karikó’s journey, plus other cases we have studied in the past years, we noticed that the dynamics of working in a pair to develop an unorthodox idea is more effective than trying to do so in a large team for a number of reasons.
It is less daunting to disclose a half-baked idea to one person than a group.
A key moment in any innovation journey is when, for the first time, you dare to share your half-baked idea with others. When your idea is unorthodox, presenting it to a large group of people, many of whom may think your idea is crazy, is hard. But when your audience is just one person, you are likely to be more willing to take a chance, and that person is more likely to pay more attention to your idea than a large group would.
“I was working in an Ivy League school [the University of Pennsylvania] that had lot of great scientists. I was nobody, and nobody listened to me at all,” Karikó told us. “I never got an RO1 grant [a grant mechanism used by the National Institutes of Health (NIH)]. If I tried to set up a meeting, when people learned that I did not have an RO1 grant, they canceled the meeting. So, I was mostly working by myself. …It was very consuming.”
Then in 1998, she ran into Drew Weissman at a slow copy machine at the university’s Perelman School of Medicine. The two were working in different departments at the school and in different buildings. Karikó dared to share her idea. “I told him that I was an RNA scientist,” she recounted. “Drew did not know anyone who would make mRNA. But he said he was interested in creating a mRNA vaccine against HIV. I said ‘Okay, Okay, I can do that.’”
It was a What! You too? moment. Karikó was not alone anymore. Everything changed. “You need at least one person who is behind you who’s cheering because you would not survive without someone believing,” she told us. “It is so different when another person is around.”
Reframing the idea is easier to do with one other person.
At the beginning of your innovation journey, your idea is just a half-backed intuition. To avoid getting stuck in unpromising explorations, you need someone who challenges you but in a supporting fashion — someone who shows you what does not work in your current approach and steers you onto paths that have more potential. Getting someone to abandoning some of his or her original assumptions and embrace new perspectives is a delicate process. While open critical feedback is crucial, the way it is delivered must be handled with care, especially when an idea is unorthodox and initially fragile. It’s hard for large teams, which are also notoriously prone to groupthink, to play this role.
In Weissman, Karikó found someone who listened and engaged. Initially, the two did not even share a common goal. “Drew wanted to make a vaccine; I never wanted to make a vaccine,” she told us. “I wanted to do therapeutic mRNA. I was working for 10 years in cardiology and neurosurgery, and I wanted to treat patients who have had a stroke. But Drew came and asked if I could make it for vaccines.”
Eventually Karikó embraced Weissman’s perspective, and things initially proceeded smoothly: “Drew was happy with the mRNA I made because it created a lot of proteins.” But soon Weissman noticed that, in experiments with animals, something in Karikó´s mRNA was not working — that it sparked an immune response: “He came back, and he told me that the mRNA was inflammatory,” she recalled. “I said, ‘No! That’s not good.’ I felt that the 10 past years of my life went wasted. So, I worked even more, and I started to think what caused the inflammation.”
A pair can often better handle ambiguity than a team.
Pioneering an unconventional idea involves a non-linear and unpredictable innovation process marked by uncertainties and ambiguity. Navigating this path necessitates trust and continual adaptation, which comes more easily in a pair relationship than in a large team. When one loses her or his creative steam there is someone there to take the baton.
When Weissman discovered the inflammatory reaction, Karikó and Weissman pondered the possible causes. “It was a lot of back and forth, generating new thoughts in the other person,” Karikó told us. “We started to do experiments. We could share ideas at any time. We were always thinking about what’s the next test. And then we found that tRNA [another form of RNA in the human body] was not immunogenic. And then I realized that maybe a nucleoside modification in RNA could be the reason for it. We looked at the data again, and we got just excited looking at the results.”
A pair can be more resilient than a large group.
When people are tackling radical ideas, they are likely to face significant failures and anxiety along the way. They need to be resilient to overcome such moments. In large teams, people can silently reduce their efforts when times are tough or may even give up and choose to focus on more orthodox ideas. But when you work in a pair, you are less likely to step back and just leave. You feel more responsible and committed — not only to the idea but also to the other person. Pairs tend to stay the course.
Karikó and Weissman helped each other get through the heavy disappointments they encountered. For example, when they discovered that by incorporating pseudouridine instead of uridine into mRNA they could prevent a reaction from the body’s immune system, they thought that everyone would finally listen to them. They patented the finding and started writing grants and submitting articles to leading scientific journals, expecting the best. Eventually the journal Immunity published their research in 2005. “Our phones are going to ring off the hook,” Weissman told Karikó according to an account he later gave to Bostonia, Boston University’s alumni magazine. “But nothing happened. We did not get a single call.”
Even though the scientific community ignored them, they persisted. They moved forward to evaluate different mRNA purification techniques. “This was more challenging than we have anticipated, and the search for the right technology lasted for several years — with lots of trial and error” said Karikó in an interview with Immunitycommemorating Weissman’s and her paper in the journal. Their perseverance and resilience was rewarded: The pair succeeded in generating highly purified mRNA. “We got $1 million small business grant from the NIH, and I said, ‘Okay, goodbye university,’” Karikó told us.
The two then created a company called RNARx. But because the patent belonged to the University of Pennsylvania and Karikó and Weissman hadn’t secured a licensing agreement with UPenn, they could not attract additional funding from venture capital firms or pharmaceutical companies. So the company languished and eventually died. (Eventually, the University of Pennsylvania licensed their work for $300,000 to a small company, Cellscript, that later would receive $75 million each from Moderna and BioNTech in sublicensing fees for the mRNA modification patent). In 2013, with no company and no stable position at the university, Karikó joined BioNTech, and continued her work by commuting to Germany. That work ultimately led to the Covid-19 vaccine.
How to Find Your Partner
Pairs have something that large groups can hardly offer: a close professional connection. This intimacy — where people feel mutually bounded, safe, and understood — happens rarely in organizations. But when it does, it most often happens in the small, protected space shared by pairs.
So, when you start a journey to pursue an unorthodox idea, think not only about which team you need, but also who within that team may be your pair.
How do you find that person? Most likely it will be someone with complementary skills. Weissman, an immunologist, complemented Karikó’s expertise in biochemistry. You might also see that the other person rounds out your way of working. “He’s a quiet guy; I’m not,” Karikó said in a Penn Medicine video interview, adding that Weissman told her: “You know Kati, from A to B you zigzag, zigzag, zigzag, zigzag! And I am just like, straight.”
Yet, competences and way of working are not the only key elements. Also pay attention to those signals that suggest the two of you can relate to each other — that you can connect. “If you work with somebody, you have to like that person, at some level, and you need to respect each other,” Karikó told us. Beyond liking each other, look for a mutual sense of curiosity and energy. “What I liked about Drew was that he was driven by science. He was not driven by publishing or making a career, but by the will of understanding. Drew was a real scientist with a will to know. That’s kind of rare. On that one we were very similar.”
Once you find each other and start working together, nurture that relationship. “We educated each other,” Karikó told us. “I learned immunology from Drew Weissman. And conversely, I explained mRNA to him. We started as experts in different fields, and slowly we found a common ground.” This way, when one got stuck in the creative process, the other could easily jump in, even if the task did not concern her or his specific field of science.
This does not mean that there won’t be difficult times in your relationship. “There was six months we didn’t talk to each other” due to disagreements about an article they were writing together, Karikó said. Yet, intimacy needs to be continuously nurtured by investing in mutual commitment, mutual education, and trust. When the article came back from the review, they got over the tension and continued the work.
Finally, realize that you eventually will need the rest of the team — you will need their skills and resources after the breakthrough idea is over the hump — i.e., after you have proven that it has legs and is ready to be turned into an actual product. Yet, even during the heavy-duty part of the development stage, when working in large teams, your pair relationship will still be essential. There will be further moments in which you will need to reframe or be resilient. In those moments, a close reflection with your partner can help you unlock your mind, regain confidence, and go back to working with the larger team with new vigor.
- Roberto Verganti is a professor of leadership and innovation at the Stockholm School of Economics and a visiting lecturer at Harvard Business School. He is the author of Overcrowded: Designing Meaningful Products in a World Awash with Ideas and Design Driven Innovation: Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating What Things Mean.
- Paola Bellis is assistant professor of organizational behavior and leadership and innovation at Politecnico di Milano.
Repost from Harvard Business Review – https://hbr.org/2024/02/got-a-radical-idea-at-work-find-a-partner