Wherever you go, there you are – crossing the thin red line
Contributed by: David Thomas, European Innovation Manager,
Masterfoods, UK
At the beginning of my career, I had a strong desire to travel, something that has never left me. One of my earliest trips, I found myself trekking through rainforest in northern Thailand, and as part of our small group, I got to know Bob, a Canadian who had explored more countries than years lived, an impressive feat for someone not too far away from retirement. Whilst trekking one morning Bob remarked, ‘Well David, wherever you go, there you are!’. In the intervening 15 years, I find myself revisiting this phrase, it’s a lot deeper than it first appears.
A few years later, I took part on a training course that involved crossing a red line, I still have the 15cm piece of red plastic today to serve as a reminder. The red line makes visible those times in our life when we need to lead the way and cross over into a space where life is not as comfortable or relaxed.
In January of this year, I was co-training Masterfoods’ ‘Consumer Driven Design’ course with a large group of associates - something that I had done a number of times over before. However this year instead of the comfortable interviewing of each other, we arranged for real interviews with real consumers to take place during the evening of the first day.
The training started well, but as the deadline drew ever closer, the tension in the group grew, to such an extent that I could clearly see the ‘red line’ that my group needed to cross. Now this was not a dramatic, “do or die” red line, but there was real tension that needed discussion before the crossing could be made.
The following morning in the review, there was a buzz, generated from the previous nights interactions which added greatly to the experience of all.
Working in the front end of innovation, as opposed to further downstream, there are more places that you can go to seek fresh new perspectives on the challenges that our businesses face - such as talking directly with our customers. But with this freedom, comes ‘a not so obvious’ responsibility to lead and cross those red lines such that the new perspectives we talk about can be experienced in reality.
So the next time you are tackling an often-familiar challenge, where do you need to go, and more importantly will you choose to cross that red line, stepping into the less known, and actually go there?
2 Responses to 'Wherever you go, there you are – crossing the thin red line'
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on June 8th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
Hi David,
in innovation there are most certainly many occasions where a red line needs to be crossed!
i guess we all know when we are facing one of those lines, but what are littel aids or tips that might help us to cross it?
I´d also love to know why the tension was rising - and what you did to help the people cross the red line
.
Bettina von Stamm,
Innovation Leadership Forum
on June 11th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Hi Bettina,
Many thanks for your reply. One of the several roles I play within the business is that of the facilitator, very often in innovation sessions and workshops. Whilst training to become a facilitator, one of the many principles that I learnt about was the principle of ‘Be a mirror, not a magnet’. This is about mirroring back to the group what you observe and sense, such that a discussion within the group might occur - its no guarantee! - but in this way the unknown can be explored (i.e. just what will it be like to be sat in a room with x consumers, where are they from, for how long, do we all talk?, take it in turn?, etc.. etc…). Through the use of coaches, facilitators or members of the group sensitive to these tensions, we can achieve AWARENESS of the issues or red lines that exist, and through discussion within the group we often achieve ACCEPTANCE, such that (as in this case) we could cross the line through ACTION.
Awareness can be built into projects in several ways;
1) By just asking the group ‘What red lines do we see?’
2) It could also be done indirectly (where members might not be comfortable with sharing their thoughts in open discussion) by the project leader, coach etc.. through simple postcards given to each member in the team for feedback
3) Simply through conversations over coffee or during lunch, perhaps through an appointed ‘ team doctor’ - this can work very successfully.
4) In situations where the project runs over two or more days, the start of the second day is a good time to spot new observations - as the subconcious works on these in our sleep.
Acceptance is achieved through discussion within the team, to more fully understand and explore the red lines. Going through the mental thought process of how it will feel / or how things will look can be a useful exercise and very powerful. Take care though not to lose the context and what needs to be achieved, as discussions can sometimes start to undo the red line, blurring it and moving it back to where we feel more comfortable.
With awareness and acceptance in place, action is usally delivered with higher energy and more confidence! Action without acceptance though, often achieves mixed responses.
Returning to the example, I mirrored the issues that I was sensing back to the group, this in turn opened up a discussion on the task, where we could bring the experience more fully to life, this enabled the coaches to work more closely with the projects teams. Finally the context of it being training, and an opportunity to learn helped reframe the task. Overall these events made for a more powerful outcome that left the teams with a high the following day.
Hope these comments are helpful.
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