The Importance of Being Outrageous

FRAMINGHAM (02/02/2000) - The self-proclaimed dean of creative thinking, Mike Vance, believes he knows how to stir creative juices in CIOs. He's authored several books and worked with many of the 20th century's most influential thinkers, including Walt Disney and Steve Jobs. He's helped high-tech companies such as Sun Microsystems Inc. and IBM Corp., as well as old-fashioned stalwarts Johnson & Johnson and General Motors Corp., find new ways of approaching their markets. CIO asked Vance to share some of his ideas about creativity.

CIO: HOW CAN A CIO LEVERAGE YOUR METHODS OF CREATIVE THINKING? VANCE: In of one of my books, Think Out of the Box [Career Press, 1995], I start with the premise that we live in an era of technological abundance and psychological poverty. I call it the techno-psycho gap. The big challenge for all of us involved in leadership in this industry is to close the gap. How? Educating and helping people come along is the best way. Sometimes we do a lot of superficial things that don't have much effect. Underneath it all, companies have kept the old organizational formats in place even though new technologies have made them obsolete. That has caused a lot of heartaches and problems, which have often gone undiagnosed.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY A TECHNO-PSYCHO GAP? Take e-mail, for example. E-mail opened up extraordinary possibilities. However, since there was very little discussion about how to manage that e-mail, it became a sort of competitive game. People e-mailed back and forth and weren't reading the mail they got. In many companies, it's gotten to where people don't want to even look at their e-mail anymore. The whole problem stemmed from the lack of education about what e-mail was and how it worked. Those who didn't educate people have gotten into trouble.

WHEN DID YOU FIRST SEE EDUCATION AS A CREATIVE TOOL? I was one of the 20 or 30 people who helped start Apple Computer. We had to really educate our user [about this new product and how it could be used]. We published magazines and created a help desk. I think these things contributed tremendously to Apple's early success. It's hard to break away from whatever you've been brought up on-especially when the new paradigms are really different. That's why the whole emphasis should be on spending the money and the time on education. Most people will spend as little as they can in as short a time as possible, but then you pay the price later.

ASIDE FROM EDUCATION, WHAT OTHER AREAS MIGHT CIOS THINK ABOUT MORE CREATIVELY?

There are three things that we need to address and change. First is the physical environment where people are working. The second is how we interact with people, in terms of communicating and organizing. The third is the way products are developed and brought to the marketplace. To address all three of those needs at once, we recommend setting up a team center or group-groups, replacing the old meeting room with a specific resource-rich environment that uses highly visual practices, such as story boards. A team may have offices or workstations around a room, and yet you can stand in the middle and know the entire scope of its project in real-time, without having meetings or generating more reports. Increasing speed, being more adroit sounds great. But how do we do that? Reduce the number of meetings by 80 percent. That's what the group room really does. I believe this trend started back at Walt Disney in the 1950s. There were five floors accommodating 5,000 people and many team units.

Walt could walk up and down the floors any day and know everything that was going on-and never have to talk to anybody.

IS THERE A DOWNSIDE TO THAT? Some people don't like to have their work exposed in front of everybody, either because they're very private or not doing very much. Usually it's the latter. It's a very open and nonauthoritarian methodology. It doesn't fit in the hierarchical style of organization. On the other hand, I think it's catching on today because of our boundless culture. It has enabled us to get out of the old organizational form.

HOW DOES ONE BECOME MORE CREATIVE? First of all you have to be outrageous. If you can't be outrageous, forget about it; sit back, be one of the boys, and go with the flow. But if you want to make something happen, you have to be outrageous. For example, when we did "Pirates of the Caribbean" [at Disney], someone said that we should have frogs in the environment. Of course, it doesn't sound outrageous now, but it was at the time. Walt, who was outrageous, said, "What a great idea." You have to go beyond what is acceptable.

Unwillingness to do that is the biggest risk of all.

Had an out-of-the-box idea lately? Share it with Tom Kaneshige at interview@cio.com.

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